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Building 'must stand up'

Martin Hunt, October 15th 2008, Built environment

It was somewhat unnerving.

There I was, all set to help develop a positive, forward-thinking work programme with one of Forum’s business partners. And here was the MD, introducing the internal sustainability workshop. He highlighted the company’s decline in profits. He had important messages to get across about staff cuts. He spoke of the current lack of liquidity in the marketplace. And I began to feel like the last item on a News At Ten bulletin: “And finally, sustainable development…”

It did get better. After that sobering start, discussions became quite positive. There was a feeling that the company could move forward with exploring new sustainable approaches and products – if a clear business case could be identified. But that meeting reflected the nature of others I have attended of late. Glance at the recent headlines, and it’s evident that many construction and property companies are suffering at the minute.

I respect the difficulties that they are in. But there’s a danger. In the built environment sector, businesses that don’t have sustainable development at the core of their business model might assume that environmental and social issues can be ‘dropped’ for the time being, to be picked up again when the marketplace is more buoyant. This goes on the assumption that sustainable design and construction practices are ‘nice to have’ rather than a ‘must have’. I would argue that this assumption is fundamentally flawed – lacking long-term strategic thinking, and damaging to future business prospects.

Because, whatever the current market conditions, the road ahead is pretty clearly signposted. We have greater certainty about regulation; a few years ago, who would have thought we would have specific UK government targets for zero carbon buildings? The EU, too, is not going to let up on tightening environmental requirements. We also have greater clarity about the government’s expectations as a client; the sustainability criteria of Public Private Partnership projects like Building Schools for the Future are patchy but improving.

It is also pretty obvious that the case for greater eco-efficiency – doing more with less – is being strengthened as construction costs, energy prices and landfill taxes rise. Of course, this is a consequence of current global supply and demand issues, but do we really see this upward trend changing? If not, it remains crucial for the construction industry (including our architects) to increase the longevity of our buildings and their components, add long-term value to existing stock through energy efficiency, and improve the reusability of materials already contained in our built environment. With the current decline in housing sales also placing greater emphasis on retrofit and refurbishment rather than new build, a forward-thinking company would be looking to align themselves and their workforce to these market developments.

Speaking to those involved in delivering sustainable built environments, I’m confident that the slowdown in construction will free up more time for real thought leadership around the projects that are going ahead. There are many talented and progressive individuals looking to incorporate sustainable design out there, but such has been the ‘heat’ in the market over recent years that they have often been so pressed for time that they have had to compromise their aspirations with operational reality. Now is the time to go back to the drawing board and rethink the way we build. This is not high risk. It’s about investing in some serious long-term thinking, and anticipating the opportunities that are likely to arise as we move towards more sustainable communities, buildings and infrastructure.

Martin Hunt leads Forum’s work in the built environment

This article also appears in the current issue of Green Futures

Sustainable Cities Index 2008

Helen Clarkson, November 10th 2008, Built environment

Forum for the Future has published its 2nd annual Sustainable Cities Index. The easy headlines are that Bristol has leapfrogged Brighton and Hove to take first place, Newcastle has risen up the rankings to become the only northern city in the top five, and three of the bottom four places are still held by Birmingham, Liverpool and Hull.

It gets more interesting when you look behind the rankings. The exercise ranks the cities against one another and is designed to help city leaders benchmark themselves against meaningful indicators which they can do something about, like recycling rates and readiness for climate change.

But it doesn’t mean that Bristol is a genuinely sustainable city, it’s just faring better across the board than others in the UK. Furthermore, Britain’s cities lag behind international rivals on sustainability and we lack the shining examples that others can come and learn from.

Looking at those international cities that are raising the bar on sustainability – such as Portland, Oregon, and San Francisco, we can see that their success now is due to far-sighted policies in the 70s and 80s, which are coming to fruition now.

Back in the 70s when the rest of the US was embracing shopping malls, Portland enacted strong land-use policies, which set the city boundary and encouraged housing density. This means that now it can aspire to be a “20 minute city” where citizens will spend no more than 20 minutes travelling to work, shop, or play. They are currently in the process of updating the Portland Plan which aims to take the lead on “sustainable, equitable, and economically viable long-range planning”.

As part of the work for the Index, we interviewed nine UK city leaders (both elected Leaders and Chief Executives of the city councils) and got their views on leadership in cities. They shared the view that good leaders will have a vision which they can articulate, be passionate about and motivate people to follow. Looking at those international examples we think it needs to go further than this. If a uniting vision isn’t sustainable in itself then trying to graft sustainability onto it results in a strategy full of compromises and trade-offs. A strategy, like Portland’s, which is driven by questions such as “How can we design a city which thrives whilst minimizing carbon emissions?”, is more likely to lead to long-term success than one where sustainability is an after-thought.

We’ve seen a similar shift with companies. As we noted in our Leader Business Strategies report back in January, companies we work with have moved from asking us "What should our sustainability strategy be for our business?", to "What should our business strategy be, in the light of sustainability?" Substitute the word ‘cities’ for ‘business’ and this is how we need our city leaders to be thinking.

Leicester City has recently released just such a plan “One Leicester", which includes ambitions such as “Planning for People Not Cars”. We believe visions like this, which are driven by the principles of sustainability, will lead to real change for British cities, and we hope that increasingly city leaders look to sustainability for the answers to the pressing questions they are dealing with, rather than seeing it as one more agenda to addressed alongside all the others.

This blog entry has been amended to reflect revisions to the Index. City rankings have changed slightly after corrections to an error in the air quality data.

Jonathon named environmentalist of the year

Alex Johnson, November 14th 2008, Built environment

Jonathon Porritt has been named environmental personality of the year, following in the footsteps of Al Gore.

Jonathon, a founder director of Forum for the Future and chairman of the Sustainable Development Commission, picked up a trophy crafted from recycled scrap metal at the edie Awards for Environmental Excellence.

“Following in Al Gore’s footsteps, in receiving this award, is obviously a great honour,” he said, paying tribute to the former US Vice-President who won the award last year after the release of his climate change film An Inconvenient Truth.

“This is very timely given just how important it’s going to be to keep green issues right at the top of the agenda in such difficult economic conditions. That’s certainly going to be my principal challenge over the next few months.”

Jonathon was chosen from a shortlist which included Prince Charles, Gordon Brown, David Attenborough and George Monbiot. The awards, sponsored by Europe’s biggest environmental website edie, were presented on Thursday November 13 by impressionist Alistair McGowan at London’s Natural History Museum.

Sustainable Cities Index 2008 - update

Peter Madden, November 25th 2008, Built environment

Today we republish the rankings in our second annual Sustainable Cities Index. I'd like to take this opportunity to apologise on behalf of Forum for the Future for the clerical error which distorted our original tables.

We take the index very seriously. We have chosen our indicators because they measure things which councils can act on to improve the quality of their citizens' lives, the environment of their cities, and to future proof against a changing climate.

We know that councils benchmark their performance against this data and therefore it’s essential for it to be accurate. So when we were made aware of an error in our air quality figures we took the report off our website and launched a thorough review of all our data. We will be learning lessons to make sure this does not happen again.

What has changed as a result? Not much. The top eight cities are still in the same positions. Liverpool, Birmingham and Hull remain in the bottom four places. There have been minor moves: Liverpool is up two places; Coventry down two; London, Bradford, Sunderland and Leeds are all up one; Nottingham, Glasgow and Birmingham are down one.

The fact is that the revised index still paints much the same picture as the original one. Individual cities may have moved slightly in comparison with each other, but it still tells the same story about where each has been successful and what challenges they still face.

The index has received widespread coverage. We are now reviewing the media articles and where we feel the new figures fundamentally change the published story we will contact the newspaper, magazine or website concerned.

We will be releasing a revised report on our 2008 Sustainable Cities Index on our website in the next few days and we will send complementary copies to councils in all 20 cities. In the meantime, here are the correct 2008 rankings.

2008 rank (2007 rank)
1 (3)    Bristol
2 (1)    Brighton & Hove
3 (4)    Plymouth
4 (8)    Newcastle
5 (6)    Cardiff
6 (2)    Edinburgh
7 (7)    Sheffield
8 (14)   Leicester
9 (10)   London
10= (9) Bradford
10= (11) Nottingham
12 (13)  Sunderland
13 (5)    Leeds
14 (17)  Coventry
15 (12) Manchester
16 (16) Wolverhampton
17 (20) Liverpool
18 (15) Glasgow
19 (19) Birmingham
20 (18) Hull