GCHU intern Callum Young shares insights from his spring internship placement, exploring Oxford’s housing challenges and the potential of empty homes to ease local pressures.
Dream Cities, Real Costs: Funding the Next Generation of Garden Cities and New Towns
In this blog, GCHU intern Amrin Golam revisits the UK’s long-standing ambition to design urban spaces that harmonise housing, employment, and green space.
Banking on Better Cities: Financing Sustainable Urban Growth
In our latest blog, GCHU intern Maria Chow explores diverse financial models used across the Global North and South to fund sustainable urban development, critically examining their effectiveness, limitations, and potential for scalability through global cooperation and innovative tools like digital finance.
Transport policy? Ask the citizens!
GCHU Research Associate Dr Alison Chisholm shares insight into Oxfordshire citizens’ assembly on transport and travel.
How healthy are Healthy New Towns?
In our latest blog, we highlight the work of GCHU interns Ushika Kidd and Ozan Somyurek who investigated how Healthy New Towns in Oxfordshire promote wellbeing using qualitative and spatial fieldwork, presenting their findings via ArcGIS StoryMap.
Listening Exchanges – listening to opposing perspectives on a contentious community issue
As the final report of the recent GCHU “Listening Exchanges” pilot project is published, Becks Sutton, a mediator on the project, describes the experience of working locally to explore ways of staying in respectful connection with our neighbours when we disagree.
Rethinking Tronchetto: Sustainable Textiles for Venice’s Future
As part of the GCHU’s Summer School blog series, Mia Frleta’s explores reimagining Venice’s Tronchetto island, proposing a sustainable textile factory, Algitura, that uses algae to create eco-friendly fibers, addressing over-reliance on tourism while revitalizing the city’s historical textile industry and offering diverse employment opportunities.
A patchwork of participation: Community-led solutions for Venice’s Tronchetto
As part of the GCHU’s Summer School blog series, Merit Zimmermann proposes a community-led redevelopment of Tronchetto in Venice that prioritizes local residents’ needs by promoting affordable housing, vibrant cultural hubs, and environmental stewardship, while addressing the challenges posed by overtourism and climate change.
Lungs of Venice: Reimagining Tronchetto as a model of urban wellbeing
As part of the GCHU’s Summer School blog series, Vanja Pandurevic’s explores a proposal to transform Venice’s Tronchetto island into an ecologically sustainable “Communal Backyard,” integrating green spaces, urban agriculture, and cultural hubs to enhance community wellbeing, preserve Venetian heritage, and position the city as a global leader in sustainable urbanism.
Working Across Boundaries: Findings in Applying a Multidisciplinary Integrated Strategy Towards a Sustainable Tronchetto, and Venice
As part of the GCHU’s Summer School blog series, Jessica Zhang writes about her collaboration on a multidisciplinary design project to revitalize the Tronchetto area by integrating green and blue infrastructure, fostering community engagement, and addressing social and environmental challenges.