A seminar to discuss the challenges and opportunities involved in gaining public consent for infrastructure. New findings will be presented from the SusGrid research project.
Place: Bloomsbury Suite, Friend's House, London
Date: 24 November 2014. Time: 9:30 to 15:30
Full programme and registration details.
Update 25/11: Download the presentation slides from the workshop (PDF).
Industry professionals, researchers, policy-makers, and people with an interest in infrastructure and community relations are invited to attend this workshop.
Workshop aims:
Efficient and innovative infrastructure – whether high-speed railway lines, broadband networks or electricity power lines - is a vital contributor to economic growth and social cohesion in developed economies.Electricity grids, and high voltage transmission lines in particular, ensure that we ‘keep the lights on’ to power homes and industry. Across Europe, as well as in specific countries such as the UK and Norway, significant investments are planned to upgrade existing networks and to construct new ones, for example over £100 billion in the UK alone (DECC, 2011).These proposals presume that such infrastructures have public consent and will be socially acceptable to the communities living nearby. However, experience shows that such communities often object to infrastructure proposals, and controversies have provoked both local and national debate, as was witnessed with the Hardanger case in Norway.These controversies lead to delays or abandoned projects, and communities are often blamed for ‘NIMBY’ (Not In My Back Yard) responses driven by ignorance, emotionality or parochialism. They reinforce the necessity to better understand the causes of such conflicts, based upon robust evidence rather than anecdote.The SusGrid research project is funded by the Norwegian Research Council, involving academics drawn from several social science disciplines in both Norway and the UK.