Richard Shirres

A chartered engineer with a second degree in science*, Richard’s interests in environmental impacts go back to the early 1970s.
With diverse experience in UK & overseas, he has spent the last 17 years in environmental regulation and natural resource planning but urban sustainability, heritage and climate change have been particular interests in recent decades.

“Core to my philosophy of sustainable urban development is the need to rein-in personal ‘activity space’ (enabled by cheap fossil fuels), the expansion of which has attenuated community interaction, undermined local viability of amenities and promoted energy wastage with pollution. Increasing residency-time within neighbourhood areas is essential for refocusing a community ethos but it depends upon community-engaged planning which designs for pedestrian accessibility, and far more creative attention to quality of the built environment, including the optimisation of integrated blue-green infrastructure. Congress for the New Urbanism (1993) and Council for European Urbanism (2003) promote key reference standards.”

• MSc (App.Env.Sc.), MICE, C Eng.