The Greater Manchester Local Interaction Platform’s  Mapping the Urban Knowledge Report synthesises a series of collaborative, cross-sectoral activities in 2012 which chart the many different perspectives, practices and capacities for urban sustainability amongst different stakeholders.

The report includes summaries of activities including:

• An action-research project with the Environment Commission of the Association of Greater Manchester Authorities to examine the governance, policy and knowledge base of city-regional urban policy;
• Perspectives written by policy-makers, practitioners and citizens in relation to sustainable urban development;
• Exploring the role of creative production and play in engaging school children in debates over sustainability;
• Working with community researchers to examine ‘sustainable stories from the grassroots’;
• Developing Platform;
• Hosting an exhibition, ‘Sustainable Stories’, as part of the UK’s national Economic and Social Research Council’s Festival of Social Science;
• Understanding how Greater Manchester’s responses to the challenges of sustainability compare with those in other UK cities.

The Mistra Urban Futures centre as a whole started with the idea that existing paradigms aren’t sustainable – that being the case, new forms of living, working, thinking and doing are needed. We need to look at alternative forms of sustainable urbanism.

Many articles on these activities have already made their way onto Platform on our developing sub-site http://gmlip.ontheplatform.org.uk/

And you can read what Salford's Vice Chancellor, Martin Hall, had to say about it here

http://www.corporate.salford.ac.uk/leadership-management/martin-hall/blo...

If you’d like to discuss any of the issues raised in this report, please get in touch  b.perry@salford.ac.uk.