In this blog, GCHU intern, Rui Castellino explores the lessons offered by small settlements for sustainable urban development through community-led governance, local resources, low-carbon living, and protection of cultural and environmental assets.
The Imaginary People who will Fix Britain’s Buildings
This blog by GCHU intern, Moli Birkinshaw, argues that Britain’s ambitious plans to retrofit millions of buildings face a major obstacle of not having enough skilled workers with the right expertise and calls for sustained investment in training, stronger industry standards, and policies that create reliable demand for retrofit.
Planning for Health: Lessons from the New Towns
In this blog, GCHU intern, Grace Baldauf, explores lessons from the UK’s New Towns, showing how urban planning can support health through green spaces, walkability, recreation, and access to healthcare; highlighting the need to plan for the long-term health and changing needs of communities.
Imagined Community: is village life just a dream for people in modern towns and cities?
In this blog, GCHU intern, Greta Stone details ways in which the social functions of historic settlements can influence and be adapted to produce newer, often larger modern developments.
Data centres: How bad can they really be?
This blog by GCHU intern, Ronan Wilkinson, examines the environmental and public-health impacts of data centres, particularly their growing energy and water demands driven by the rapid development of AI.
Is Oxford an Age-Friendly City? A Student Perspective
In this blog, GCHU intern, Stefania Malos reflects on the lessons she learnt from the Age-Friendly Oxford project during her internship at the GCHU.
Interning at the GCHU: What I Learned About Oxford’s Housing Challenges
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.
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.