The geoscience context for Europe's urban sustainability – lessons from Glasgow and beyond (CUSP): preface

In 2007, the proportion of the world’s population living in urban areas exceeded that in rural environments for the first time in history. The global urban population is expected to rise by 66 % by 2050 (UN 2014). This threatens the sustainability of cities, which face huge infrastructure and planning challenges to meet the growing demand for urban living and to provide equitable economic and social benefits as well as environmental protection across communities. The United Nations’ (UN) Sustainable Development Goals acknowledge this in the UN’s Transforming our world: the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. Of the 17 ‘Global Goals’, Goal 11 in particular focuses on sustainability (to achieve sustainable cities and communities by 2030), and other goals in the Agenda are also relevant to sustainable cities (e.g., Goal 6 addresses clean water and sanitation). Despite these goals, the potential importance, and contribution, of the subsurface to sustainable urban development (a combination of economic, social and environmental factors) is generally poorly appreciated. The importance of the subsurface in relation to sustainable development is exemplified by the general recognition in the construction industry across the UK, Europe and the wider world that insufficient understanding of subsurface ground conditions is a key factor in overspending, project delays, overly conservative design and a barrier to development (e.g., Clayton 2001; Parry 2009; Baynes 2010). To address this, in the city of Glasgow (UK), the British Geological Survey (BGS) has been working in partnership with Glasgow City Council and other organisations over a number of years. Under the Clyde-Urban Super-Project (CUSP), three-dimensional (3D) and four-dimensional (4D) subsurface models and other geoscience datasets (geochemistry, groundwater, engineering geology) have been developed specifically as an aid to planning and development. This Special Issue of the Earth and Environmental Science Transactions of The Royal Society of Edinburgh comprises a collection of papers presented at the Conference on ‘The Geoscience Context for Europe’s Urban Sustainability: Lessons from Glasgow and Beyond (CUSP)’, held in Glasgow, 29–30 May 2014. The Conference attracted delegates from 20 European countries and included over 40 oral and poster presentations, highlighting the challenges in understanding urban ground conditions to aid city regeneration and sustainable development. In addition to showcasing the work of the CUSP project in Glasgow, presentations included examples of urban subsurface characterisation from Germany, the Netherlands and Norway. Thirteen of the conference contributions are presented in this volume. These focus mainly on the CUSP project. CUSP has also been used as an exemplar for other cities in Europe and the wider world. Lessons learnt in Glasgow have been shared especially through the European Cooperation in Science and Technology (COST) Action (SUB-URBAN: TU1206). This has focused on sustainable urban subsurface use, and transforming relationships between those who develop urban subsurface knowledge and those who can benefit most from it – the planners and developers of the cities of tomorrow. Therefore, SUB-URBAN has mirrored the original intentions, and the achievements, of CUSP and developed them more widely.