UN SDG 11: Sustainable cities and communities
Make cities and human settlements inclusive, safe, resilient and sustainable
Our research
The National Centre for Resilience (NCR) is dedicated to enhancing Scottish communities’ capacity to withstand and recover from natural hazards. This year the centre’s project call is focused on enhancing community resilience to natural hazards across Scotland. Proposed projects will deliver against one of the five themes of: Community preparedness; Risk assessment & early warning systems; Infrastructure & built environment resilience; Social & economic resilience; and Community engagement & education. We believe that building resilient communities is crucial to minimise the impact of natural hazards, protect lives, and promote sustainable development. We aim to support innovative and impactful projects that empower communities. The NCR utilises existing knowledge and commissions new projects to address real-life issues faced by resilience practitioners and communities. Using our networks, we create links for researchers to help them adapt their project outputs into tailored briefings and tools for end users. We help maximise the potential use and impacts of this work by disseminating research outputs beyond the immediate project stakeholder group and into the wider resilience audiences across Scotland.
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A major programme of conservation has restored the beautiful townhouses of University Gardens and increased their long-term energy efficiency.
Learning & teaching
The Earth Futures: Environments, Communities, Relationships MSc is offered by our highly ranked School of Geography & Environmental Science and is an interdisciplinary programme bridging knowledge across the social and physical sciences. The Masters in Earth Futures aims to equip students with the expertise, experience and skills to tackle the environmental and societal challenges of sustainable development in the Anthropocene. Through a compulsory placement module, students develop practical experience of working in social and environmental governance, activist and community sectors. This is supported by research-led teaching covering key global challenges and ethical imperatives in sustainable community and environmental development.
Our Adam Smith Business School offers a postgraduate programme in Environment & Sustainable Development, which focuses on the key issues confronting economies in attempting to reconcile economic growth with environmental and ecological constraints. It also explores the relationship between the role of international environmental agreements and the relationship between the environment and the economic system.
University operations
This year, our Estates team completed an 18-month conservation project to protect
and restore the historic terraced houses at University Gardens.
The project enhanced the workspaces for colleagues and students, while improving the buildings’ long-term energy efficiency and wind and waterproofing.
The team replaced 100 tonnes of natural stone, 1,000 slates, overhauled and draught-proofed over 450 windows, and repaired and rebuilt numerous chimneys and gutters. The project also uncovered unique features in the stonework and hidden decorative elements.
Originally built between the 1880s and 1900s, these listed buildings, with warm-toned sandstone facades set behind front garden walls, represent a variety of architectural styles ranging from Italian and French renaissance to what is known as the eclectic Glasgow style, as well as influences from the world-renowned architect Charles Rennie Mackintosh. Originally used as private residences, University Gardens housed prominent figures within society including shipowners, engineers, professors, and wealthy whisky merchants. Later these buildings were gifted or purchased by the University. Now it is home to the University’s College of Arts & Humanities.
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Civic engagement
The Hunterian Art Gallery was proud to work in partnership with The Glasgow School of Art, Dovecot Studios, and Panel: a curatorial arts organisation focused on projects related to particular histories, archives and collections; to develop a solo exhibition by Turner Prize-winning artist Elizabeth Price. The commission focused on the textile heritage of Glasgow’s industrial age and in particular Stoddard and Templeton, world-famous carpet manufacturers based in Glasgow and Renfrewshire, and was open to the public in 2022 and 2023.
Students and academics at the University have helped to recreate the 18th-century Ellisland Farm, home of Scotland’s national bard Robert Burns, in Minecraft. The project, led by Dr Timothy Peacock and Dr Matthew Barr, is a partnership between the University’s Games & Gaming Lab and Minecraft Society, Robert Burns Ellisland Trust, and South of Scotland Destination Alliance. Minecraft has nearly 140 million monthly active players worldwide. Players now have an opportunity to not only hear Burns’ poetry and song in game but also interact in Scots with the poet and his wife Jean Armour. The Minecraft Ellisland project was shortlisted for the Scottish Knowledge Exchange Innovation of the Year Award (2023) as well as the Best Educational Programme at the Scottish Games Awards (2022). The project represents a creative way of using technology to bring Robert Burns to a younger audience, encourage tourism to the Ellisland Museum and Farm, and inspire future cultural projects.
Find out about our progress towards the 17 SDGs:
