How sustainability will change the look and feel of our cities

Build­ings and motor vehi­cles are fun­da­men­tal parts of the mod­ern metrop­o­lis – and both are among the largest con­trib­u­tors to glob­al car­bon emis­sions, giv­en the former’s need for heat and pow­er, and the latter’s con­tin­u­ing depen­dence on the inter­nal com­bus­tion engine. The good news is that sus­tain­abil­i­ty con­cerns are at the fore­front of sev­er­al ini­tia­tives to shape the cities of the future.

Plan­et Mark is an organ­i­sa­tion that’s com­mit­ted to trans­form­ing soci­ety through the mea­sure­ment of car­bon and social data. It cer­ti­fies busi­ness­es and prop­er­ties for cut­ting their car­bon emis­sions.

“To keep the cer­ti­fi­ca­tion, an organ­i­sa­tion must reduce its car­bon foot­print every year,” explains Plan­et Mark’s founder and CEO, Steve Malkin. “On aver­age, cer­ti­fied busi­ness­es make a 16% car­bon sav­ing per employ­ee through effi­cien­cies in ener­gy, waste, water, trav­el and pro­cure­ment.”

Malkin says com­pa­nies that make year-on-year reduc­tions can achieve ben­e­fits rang­ing from effi­cien­cy gains and cost sav­ings to an enhanced abil­i­ty to attract and retain the most tal­ent­ed peo­ple.

Mount Anvil is the first res­i­den­tial prop­er­ty devel­op­er to have achieved Plan­et Mark’s cer­ti­fi­ca­tion for new devel­op­ments. The firm’s mar­ket­ing direc­tor, Tom Beard­more, says that its goal is for res­i­dents to thrive in their homes.

“We know that healthy homes con­tribute to res­i­dents’ well­be­ing,” he says. “We’ve put that prin­ci­ple at the heart of the homes and com­mu­ni­ties we’re build­ing. Exam­ples of this include the 5,000m² of land­scaped green space we’ve intro­duced at Roy­al Eden Docks in the Lon­don Bor­ough of Newham and the bio­di­ver­si­ty net gain we’re incor­po­rat­ing into The Verdean, our scheme in Eal­ing.”

Else­where, archi­tec­tur­al firm Heather­wick Stu­dio – famed for design­ing the new Routemas­ter bus and the caul­dron for the Lon­don 2012 Olympics – is pri­ori­tis­ing large urban projects with the great­est poten­tial to ben­e­fit soci­ety. It states that some of these devel­op­ments “use tech­nol­o­gy such as the solar pan­els and geot­her­mal piles, but we also use nature. Trees not only sequester car­bon; they also cre­ate a more human envi­ron­ment than the relent­less monot­o­ny of hard sur­faces.”

Underground transport as the future?

It’s not only the urban con­struc­tion sec­tor that’s devel­op­ing inno­v­a­tive solu­tions to tack­le cli­mate change. For instance, Oxford­shire Coun­ty Coun­cil has just col­lab­o­rat­ed with AI soft­ware firm Alchera Tech­nolo­gies on a sys­tem to sup­port con­nect­ed and autonomous vehi­cles.

The company’s co-founder and head of oper­a­tions, Anna Jor­dan, says: “As cities adopt elec­tric bus­es, tram sys­tems, micro-mobil­i­ty ser­vices or any oth­er shared trans­port modes, hav­ing con­trol of how these mech­a­nisms get used for the ben­e­fit of cit­i­zens and com­muters is becom­ing ever more impor­tant.” 

Con­sumer demand and leg­is­la­tion are also dri­ving the devel­op­ment of green­er trans­port and logis­tics sys­tems. For instance, the sale of new petrol and diesel vehi­cles will be banned in the UK from 2030. But, when it comes to the move­ment of goods, there is an alter­na­tive to elec­tric vehi­cles. Lon­don firm Mag­way is devel­op­ing a zero-emis­sions under­ground deliv­ery net­work that claims to reduce the need for HGVs.

“It doesn’t rely on bat­tery pow­er and can, when con­nect­ed to a renew­able ener­gy source, deliv­er goods with­out releas­ing any emis­sions,” says Huw Thomas, the company’s devel­op­ment direc­tor. “At the same time, by remov­ing the need for vehi­cles, Mag­way also reduces city con­ges­tion.”

Thomas says that there has often been a focus, in plan­ning new urban devel­op­ments, on how cities work for dri­vers, rather than for oth­er road users and pedes­tri­ans.

“Imag­ine a city where prod­ucts are deliv­ered through pipes, enabling most HGVs to be tak­en off the road: you instant­ly far less traf­fic to deal with,” he says. “Then, if you con­nect all the remain­ing vehi­cles in a net­work, they can move faster. Vehi­cles linked this way can trav­el at a more con­stant speed, as they know what those in front of them are doing. If peo­ple are also shar­ing vehi­cles, you reduce the need for car park­ing space as well. The land freed up can then be put to bet­ter use – con­vert­ed into green areas for peo­ple to enjoy, for instance.”

Human-centric cities of the future

Although tack­ling cli­mate change is clear­ly a pri­or­i­ty, much of the sus­tain­able devel­op­ment occur­ring in cities goes beyond the press­ing need to reduce car­bon emis­sions. Inno­va­tors see their work as a chance for cities to be reshaped into places of togeth­er­ness, accord­ing to Thomas.

“Sus­tain­able cities should not just be thought about as being bet­ter for the plan­et – although they undoubt­ed­ly will be – but bet­ter for peo­ple liv­ing and work­ing in them too,” he says. “With all these excit­ing devel­op­ments, we have so much to look for­ward to with our cities. It’s an excit­ing time of inno­va­tion and action, with the goal of a clean­er, health­i­er plan­et with­in our reach.”