Five years on

In our regular critical review, we revisit stories we identified as interesting back in January 2000 – and check where they’re going now.

Capital cuts

Canals continue their slow resurgence as infrastructure for the 21st century. Five years ago we reported on London’s Waterway Partnership (LWP), then entering its third year [GF20, p11] and offering a new set of grants to groups wanting to improve their local waterways. Though the partnership formally ended in March 2004, the legacy is a new focus on London’s waterways, better working relationships between the many organisations that formed the partnership, and most importantly, a fleet of innovative and successful projects brought to life by £28 million of funding.

A new dry dock in St Pancras, a new business park in Enfield, and a new freight scheme in west London are part of this portfolio, rejuvenating canalside property and beginning to restore traditional uses of ‘the blue ribbon network’. The Essex filter beds in Leyton, abandoned after a century’s use in 1970, are now the site of the WaterWorks Nature Reserve and Golf Centre, pulling in more than 100,000 visitors a year to learn about the nature and archaeology of the area.

More innovative projects include a new marina in Uxbridge on a previously contaminated site; the Beauchamp, the first of three new floating classrooms; and ‘business barges’ adding 700 square metres of new office space to the Shoreditch area by converting old canal craft. The Regeneration and Taranchewer may not be the most romantic names ever to grace the prow of a boat, but reflect these new vessels’ task of chomping through surface-borne waste, a vital part of the 5,000 cubic metres of waste that LWP schemes have now cleared. To Ed Fox, communications manager at British Waterways, the partnership’s added value came from the way it simplified access to funding for the myriad projects it supported, and its legacy is very much alive.

“The LWP’s big hits made the news, but it also brought countless small improvements – new seating on stretches of canal; community events; 26 new business start-ups; new bridges and towpaths; a dedicated graffiti removal boat and so on – many brought about with the help of local people. These schemes have really helped reposition the city’s waterways from a derelict hinterland to a thriving part of London life. Though the formal scheme has ended, the framework’s now there for the revitalisation to continue.” – Ben Tuxworth
www.britishwaterways.co.uk

Measuring metabolism

We hailed it as a simple way to help organisations get their heads around greenhouse gas reduction. Designed for quick and easy environmental reporting, the CarbonCalc software from consultants Best Foot Forward [GF20, p13] would work out the numbers on carbon emissions, with other greenhouse gases conveniently converted to their CO2 equivalents. All they had to do was put in the figures for their energy, water and transport use. In the event, only a handful of organisations signed on for this DIY accounting.

However, over 30 local authorities did take up the ‘ecological footprinting’ service which Best Foot Forward launched at the same time. Growing out from there, Regional Stepwise has given Scotland [see GF46, Briefings, 'Scots well over the limit'] and Northern Ireland a clearer picture of where to cut back on consumption. It has had London stepping on to its scales too – with results that show the metropolis in not such a bad light, compared with the rest of the country.

The difference between the Londoner’s eco-footprint and the average Brit’s is mostly down to tourism bringing in all those extra bodies. Some regions, seeing the size of their footprints, have been moved to make serious changes. Essex County Council’s analysis, for instance, has formed the basis of its community priorities – in a financially binding Public Service Agreement. “People are always surprised at the results,” says Nicky Chambers, co-director of Best Foot Forward. “We get ‘Wow I never realised it was transport that counted for all that’, and it really makes them change what they do.”

All these facts and figures are also helping to make up a much bigger picture of how heavily different regions are treading on the earth. A national framework is currently on the drawing board. It’s called the Eco-Budget UK project. Sponsored by WWF-UK and Biffaward, it’s bringing together footprinting and mass balance (resource use and flow analysis – see GF44 Briefing) under one roof, and in a compatible format, for the first time.

The results and policy implications should soon be making their way towards policy-makers’ in-trays – in a set of proposed tax and fiscal measures, based on the findings, which will be presented in a green briefcase to the Chancellor in 2006. Also keen to see some joined up action is Forum for the Future, in partnership with Biffaward. They’re getting collaboration going among those who are behind the 50-plus mass balance projects that have dissected both regions and industry sectors. It’s hoped that, together, all this data can become more than the sum of its parts. – Hannah Bullock
Best Foot Forward, 01865 250818,
www.bestfootforward.com www.agreeneressex.net
Eco-Budget UK,
www.wwf.org.uk/researcher/issues/footprint
Mass Balance UK,
www.massbalance.org

The roof that breathed

Have green roofs outgrown their wacky image? Where once they were few and far between, now they’re erupting across London, with everything from corporate HQs to Peabody housing estates topped off with vegetation. We’ve come a long way in the five years since we first reported on the planting of Chicago’s City Hall with grass and ivy [GF20, p11].

A typical green roof is composed of a ‘mat’ of sedum – a creeping, colourful plant whose English name, stonecrop, shows just how well suited it is to the task. Some are more elaborate affairs, with thicker soil to support shrubs and even small trees, as on the rooftop parks in Canary Wharf and Cannon Street station. They’re not just an aesthetic rebellion against all that sterile concrete, either.

A living roof makes for a more liveable city. Its insulating mass keeps the building warmer in winter and cooler in summer (so cutting bills for heating and air con). It soaks up carbon and pollutants, and breathes out oxygen. It provides a home for wildlife and – thanks to the bugs it attracts – a larder for birds. The black redstart, one of London’s rarest birds, has been given a new lease of life by living roofs – and the last few months have seen English Nature enthusing over their role as a haven for rare beetles too.

With climate change bringing heavier storm bursts, green roofs also come into their own as living sponges, soaking up excess water which would otherwise put the city’s struggling drainage system under even more strain. Remember last August, when it rained so heavily that the Environment Agency had to release 600,000 tonnes of water into the Thames? “Just 13 square km of green roof in the Heathrow area would have prevented that,” says Dusty Gedge. A circus performer turned conservationist, he’s the founder of the Living Roofs website – and winner of the Andrew Lees Memorial Award in this year’s British Environment and Media Awards.

Green roofs featured in one in five shortlisted schemes in the Royal Institute of British Architects’ ‘Future House London’ competition – and Ken Livingstone recently joined Richard Rogers in signing a ‘Living Roofs Statement’ designed to spur their growth across the capital. The latest crop (either built or at the planning stage) range from grand schemes such as the new Komodo Dragon House in London Zoo and the Barclays Bank ‘garden in the sky’ at Canary Wharf, to more modest applications on terraces of new homes from Woolwich to Notting Hill, and the conversion of a former mattress factory into a green oasis overlooking Ridley Road market in Dalston. – Martin Wright
www.livingroofs.org

26 January 2005

Ben Tuxworth, Hannah Bullock and Martin Wright