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Award/Grant Name: The Challenge of Learning from What Works in the Development of Sustainable Communities: Closing the Skills Gap by Raising Competencies
Award/Grant Holder: Mr Mark Deakin
Co-applicant(s): Professor Stephen Curwell, Professor James Powell, Professor S Allwinkle
Start Date: 01/05/2007 End Date: 30/06/2008
Award/Grant Description

Previous evidence-based reviews of neighbourhood renewal have suggested, ‘learning from what works’ provides the means to close the skills gap and raise the competencies of the core occupations responsible for the development of sustainable communities. Yet, the proposal for urban planners, property developers and designers to learn from the generics of what works in the development of sustainable communities and use this shifting knowledge-base as a platform for raising social competencies tends to raise as many questions as it answers. These, as yet unanswered, questions being:

  • What exactly are the generic skills in question? 
  • What has been learnt about how they work in the development of sustainable communities?
  • How does this shift the knowledge-base?
  • How can this, in turn, be used as a platform to raise the social competencies required for the development of sustainable communities? 

This research aims to answer these questions by putting  learning very much at the centre of the actions taken to close the gap (between subject-specific and generic skills), shift the knowledge-base (from the former to the latter) and use this as a platform to raise the social competencies required for the development of sustainable communities.

 

Keywords: sustainable communities, neigbourhood renewal, learning, skills, competencies, knowledge-base, core occupations, urban planning, property development and design.
Award/Grant Amount ESRC Grant Number Institution Discipline Award/Grant Type
£78,873.28 RES-182-25-0004 Area and Development Studies Substantive Research Contract
Web Links
Press Kit

Award/Grant Outputs and Documents

Click on Download to download the document. Number of Documents: 3
  Title Type URL Author Published
Plain English Summary Plain English Summary , 17/03/2009 12:26
Full research report Full Research Report Deakin, Mark 19/12/2008 8:49
Non-technical summary Research Summary Deakin, Mark 19/12/2008 8:47