TOWARDS Net-Zero Future Living
Manchester is facing surging problems related to carbon emissions and housing affordability amidst the intensification of climate change and increase in cost of living. The ambition of becoming a zero-carbon city by 2038 ahead of the rest of the UK is met with contradictions and challenges stemming from its current approach to urban development. Moving away from Manchester's phase of deindustrialization, we seek to transform its built environment for the benefit of the inhabitants and the environment. Peering into the future through contrasting views of dystopia and utopia, we investigate the problems and shifts caused by the increasing cost of living, gentrification and climate change through urban development and their impact on the feasibility of net-zero carbon living in the future.
East-Manchester's struggle with redeveloping its old industrial neighborhoods is caused in part by a current lack of amenities and increased levels of deprivation, which in the future could be exacerbated by current emerging and surging problems such as gentrification and an increase in carbon emissions. Our approach is integrating future technologies and social housing with amenities to create mixed-use and affordable urban residential developments. Through the use of concepts such as urban metabolism, compactness and resilience, we will look at how adaptable future scenarios of urban systems can create and maintain equilibrium and function after undergoing transformation at block and urban scales that impact the whole system socially. economically and environmentally.
