Urban regeneration. A manifesto for transforming UK cities in the age of climate change

How can architects and urban designers regenerate UK cities in the service of their citizens’ health and well-being? How can Urban Regeneration help cities in limiting global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius?These are the overarching questions that frame Prof. Lehmann Steffen’s book,URBAN REGENERATION. A Manifesto for transforming UK Cities in the Age of Climate Change. The book represents the results of a series of ‘Urban Breakfast’discussions, a trans-disciplinary, participatory, year-long process in which more than 140 participants from Prof. Lehmann’s Cluster for Sustainable Cities debated the issues,with the aim of creating a set of shared guiding principles for urbanization and urban regeneration of UK cities. As Prof. Lehmann states, ‘urban regeneration’ is an elastic concept, more than three decades old. It is often about incremental change and has been used interchangeably with other similar or complementary concepts such as revitalisation, renewal and renaissance. Urban regeneration is a ‘comprehensive and integrated vision and action which leads to the resolution of urban problems and which seeks to bring about a lasting improve-ment in the economic, physical, social and environmental conditions of an area that has been subject to change’.