The approach of the SUME project overall is designed
- to raise the level of understanding about the interrelationship between the existing spatial forms of urban built structures ("urban forms") and the levels of resources being used to maintain them;
- to set these currently existing spatial structures in a comparative perspective, defining types of urban forms, and in a dynamic perspective, exploring ways of urban restructuring and change;
- to develop a spatially explicit, agent-based urban metabolism model, which can be used to estimate the influence of various urban forms and development strategies on the quantities and qualities of resources being used in maintaining the urban system;
- to estimate various strategies of transforming the existing urban systems into metabolically improved structures and establishing a relation between the resources spent on this transformation and future resources saved;
- to develop impact assessment methods for existing structures and models of future urban forms, which are application-oriented and can be used by urban planners and policy makers to metabolically improve their development strategies;
- to evaluate current urban development strategies and actors’ behaviors to discover alternative development strategies;
and, finally
- to evaluate the state-of-the-art research in the fields of urban metabolism, urban development and planning policy analysis with respect to resource use and land consumption and
- to suggest advancements and additional enquiries for future research.
One of the potentially most fruitful impacts is the improved communication between research communities. If the suggested, innovative approach is producing new and applicable results, a strong impulse for future research and development activities across these communities’ boundaries will be given.
The communication of the suggested approach and of the results produced to policy makers, stakeholders, urban planners and social networks will be an important impulse for achieving high quality results and also will improve tools for future dissemination to a wider public.
