Emma Elston

Amid escalating climate instability and continued urbanisation, the urban edge is framed as a critical locus for placemaking that requires an integrated cognitive, social and ecological perspective. The project advances an alternative suburban fringe typology that counters incremental, low‑density sprawl, advocating spatially intensified, mixed‑use edge conditions that function both as intentional limits to urbanisation and as laboratories for reimagining suburbanity. It conceptualises the city edge as a socio‑ecological interface where habitability, identity and environmental resilience are reworked through multi‑scalar processes mediating between abstract policy frameworks and the lived realities of edge‑dwelling populations. By theorising the interrelations of ecology, sociology and architecture and grounding these in empirical study of peri‑urban and suburban environments, the project seeks to inform more sustainable, climate‑responsive approaches to the design, governance and delivery of edge settlements. In doing so, it aligns with and extends debates on transitional edges, peri‑urban governance and critical placemaking, positioning the suburban fringe as a key terrain for negotiating urban limits and sustainable futures.

Names of Supervisors: Dr Husam Al-Waer and Dr Andy Stoane