Kirsten Henson - What Makes a Sustainable City?

In January this year I went back to Cambridge University to attend the Cambridge Forum for Sustainability and the Environment review of their 2014 Sustainable Cities programme. I contributed to the forum last year as an expert witness and was invited to return to hear the panel discuss the outcome of their year-long programme. As one might expect, the sustainable cities discussions threw up more questions than answers and was considered invaluable for directing future PhD and Masters Research within the University.

Diverse topics were discussed from design to governance. Of particular interest was the suggestion that we had a lot to learn from developing countries; a degree of elasticity and disorder was deemed critical for resilience. The developed world tends to have more fixed and structured cities and therefore when the barriers are breached, the consequences tend to be catastrophic. It was surmised that the resilient city lies somewhere between the regimented system of the developed world and the organised chaos of cities in developing countries.

The panel warned against a sole focus on climate change. Working in silos and optimising a single element of a city’s challenges is likely to lead to detrimental and often unintended consequences elsewhere. This is an area that I have written about before, following on from an EU Knowledge share programme between East London and Gothenburg in Sweden. A sole focus on the provision of exceptional new services in a deprived area in Gothenburg had no impact on the health and well-being of the local population, largely due to a lack of engagement, employment and social networks throughout the process.

The need for adaptable, flexible design that gives due consideration to the many trade-offs and balances, acceptance of soft-failure and consideration of ‘good enough’ is fundamental to creating sustainable cities.

Fundamentally we should not be over-engineering our cities, whether from a hard engineering or social governance perspective. We should take pleasure in the murky corners and nurture the informal networks, celebrate the diverse space from formal squares to a forgotten leafy corner with a tired looking bench. We must give due consideration to, but not try to engineer out the social deprivation that lives alongside the shiny new development and ‘regeneration’ projects. These juxtapositions, found across our cities make them vibrant and exciting places to live and provide an element of resilience.

I have been involved in the Olympic Programme since 2006 and during this time my belief of what success would look like for the Olympic regeneration programme has changed somewhat. When I first started I believed that we could only claim success if we created a vast improvement in the social deprivation indices in the host boroughs and changed the very fabric of the surrounding area.

But, as one Newham councillor told me, the people of Stratford want to shop in the Stratford Mall. They like it. It offers a place of strong social identity and cohesion unlike the polished floors and bright lights of Westfield. It isn’t so much ‘them’ and ‘us’ it is perhaps as simple as people not easily engaging with change, particularly when they feel they have a community on their doorstep.

So provided the opportunities are there for those that want to take them and the services and facilities are affordable to all let us celebrate the different cultures, lifestyles and environments we find in our city. How foolish of me to think that everyone would aspire to live in a new zero carbon home on the edge of the Queen Elizabeth Park. Inevitably new people will be drawn to this area and the challenge is to ensure that this new London quarter develops its own identity, its own community, and is one that sits well between the already strong identities of Hackney Wick and Stratford.

Kirsten Henson is a director at KLH sustainability.

http://www.klhsustainability.com

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Derek Clements-Croome - Lessons from History and Nature

Buildings and Cities Planned and Designed with Lessons from History and Nature

Intelligent Buildings are buildings which respond to human needs whilst being economic in the use of resources. Today they often include digital technology which make them smart but this alone does not make an intelligent building as the history of vernacular history shows. Buildings and infrastructure make cities and they have to be adaptable and resilient over the long term.

It is only in the last 300 years that cities have evolved on the scale we are used to today. Before that time for millions of years people have been hunter gatherers living in the countryside. By 2050 we expect 70% of the world’s population to be living in urban landscapes. The danger is that mankind is becoming disconnected from Nature. The garden cities movement in England at the start of the 20th century was an attempt to rectify this. Now we have the medical evidence to show that Nature affects our mood, stress levels and well-being. We need greenery around us for a host of reasons and biophilic design reflecting our innate love of Nature is emerging as a significant discipline.

Green Mega City: Lilypads by Vincent Callebaut

But now we have another concern and that is climate change. It is expected that the Summer of 2003 which caused the death of some 35,000 people in western Europe will be prevalent here in the UK by 2080. So buildings within cities have to be designed or refurbished with resilient measures so their occupants will remain healthy. Vernacular architecture is the history of buildings over thousands of years of change and show many ingenious examples of resilient design using few mechanical devices and which we know as passive environmental design using orientation, materials, building form to handle the climate inside the building. This is demonstrated by the wind towers prevalent in Islamic architecture which inspired the ventilation for the Queens building at De Montfort University. Passive solutions also have the advantages of durability and low maintenance. 

Wind towers in Yadz, Iran and also De Montfort University

Building services consume energy and require careful maintenance if they are to be continuously reliable. Compared to the building fabric their lifetime is comparatively short. However they help to make buildings habitable for people to work and live in them by providing air and water at suitable temperatures besides light , power and a host of other utilities for the occupants. Heating , ventilation and air-conditioning are a major consideration because they provide fresh air, heating and cooling for human needs. Cities can be noisy places so many buildings are sealed forcing the use of air-conditioning rather than natural ventilation. With the pressures to design new and refurbish old buildings which are sustainable and also healthy we need to consider alternatives to the traditional approaches to systems provision. The solution being proposed here is use the lessons from Nature and vernacular architecture blended with the judicious use of smart technologies.

Technology is advancing more and more rapidly but cannot provide all the answers. Throughout history people from all cultures throughout the world have discovered ingenious ways of dealing with the rigours of climate whether hot, humid or very cold. The marvels of the plant and animal worlds give ceaseless wonder and can stimulate us to think more laterally and learn from the beautiful optimal ways in which Nature is economic in the use of energy and water.

The camel’s nose is a humidifier and dehumidifier and conserves some 70% of the water present in the breathing cycle or the termitaries which inspired the Eastgate shopping centre in Harare are examples. 

The camels nose and termite mounds can both teach us much

By reviewing the thinking behind vernacular styles and being prepared to learn from Nature we can design more naturally responsive buildings. Let us adopt a more organic and holistic approach together with appropriate technology to the design of buildings, infrastructure and systems as a whole to achieve sustainable intelligent and resilient cities for people and society.

Derek Clements-Croome

Professor Emeritus in Architectural Engineering

University of Reading

September 2015

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Polly Turton - Let’s not just talk about the weather

The British love to talk about the weather. Comedians have even suggested that without the nations’ favourite topic of conversation to fill the silence, romances might fail and families fall out. And it is only going to get worse... 

The weather is forecast to be the subject on everyone’s lips even more often in future, but, unfortunately, for all the wrong reasons. We have already arguably seen the impacts of climate change manifest in such extreme UK weather events as flooding of the Somerset Levels and the Dawlish railway-line collapse. The sad fact is that we now associate the weather with making big headlines, as much as small talk. 

Furthermore, it is not just rural and coastal areas affected. Built in 1982, the Thames Barrier was designed to be deployed on perhaps two or three occasions a year to protect the Capital from flooding. Last winter, it was closed a record 50 times. 
Just like homeowners, businesses are facing up to this new reality. They are already experiencing the effects on their shared environment and community – stocking up on sandbags, whilst insurance premiums rise. Retailers in particular are coming to terms with what it means to be prepared and resilient. 

At Arup, we have been working with Marks & Spencer to assess the weather- and climate-related risks to their UK stores. We are developing appropriate climate change adaptation and resilience strategies in response to their Plan A commitments, for both existing properties and new development. 

M&S are not dealing merely with some ‘what if’ scenario. Climate change impacts are real and happening to them, their staff, customers and properties. Despite M&S being alive to the issues, passionate about good store design and committed to high standards of operation, there is still no escape. In the last decade, weather-related incidents have affected M&S buildings thereby justifying a business case for climate change adaptation. What is also plain, however, is that this is not a topic any one organisation should or can tackle on its own. Let’s face it, when has a storm or a heatwave ever hit only your house and not that of your next-door neighbour? 

Shared problems call for shared solutions. Accordingly, M&S is leading a collaborative drive to pool knowledge and resources, boost understanding of risks and speed response.
To do this, as well as reaching out to customers and local community networks, M&S has also brought together a broad mix of government bodies, businesses and NGOs in a series of round-table discussions with external stakeholders. 
From technology trends to climate maps and from landlords to health professionals - sometimes with issues this complex and perspectives that varied, the best place for people to start is, literally, in the same room. 

Taking this approach also means that the financial, social and environmental benefits of climate risk management can be shared across companies, catchments, cities and communities. 

The collective wisdom of this expert cohort is then being disseminated even more widely via the Environment Agency (EA), so other companies and organisations can benefit. For M&S, working in tandem with the EA in this way also builds on their successful collaboration around ‘Flood Hubs’ last year. 

Meantime, the weather continues to make news, with the hottest July day ever in the UK recorded last month. The burning question M&S is asking, through its collaborative approach to climate change adaptation, is what are we going to do about it, together? The time for just talk is over.

Polly Turton is a Climate Change Adaptation Consultant at Arup.

This blog was reproduced from one originally published by M&S.

Polly has also written on this topic for the Arup Thoughts blog, and she will be presenting on the subject in the Resilient Cities session (9.45-11am on 4th Nov) at the CIBSE Conference.

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Julie Futcher - What makes a tall building good?

‘Does London need Tall Buildings?’ is the title of an upcoming Council of Tall Buildings and Urban Habitats (CTBUH) event; it poses disarmingly simple questions such as ‘what is the practical contribution of tall buildings to the urban realm? and; Are tall buildings good or bad for us? Not surprisingly the answer to these questions is not straightforward and depends on the perspective (whether indoor or outdoor), the purpose (for commercial or residential use), the context (as an isolated tall building or as part of a cluster) and the metric (energy, density, profit, etc.). However, to some extent the questions posed are moot; London already has an eclectic mix of tall buildings and many more are planned. Here, I look at the effects of some tall buildings on the distribution of natural energy (sun and wind) in the surrounding urban landscape.  

Section through the Eastern Cluster City of London

In an urban setting, buildings interact with each other and the intervening streets, parks and plazas and it becomes impossible to examine buildings in isolation from their urban context. Tall buildings will cast shadows, reflect light, divert wind and modify all aspects of climate at the ground. Where air quality is poor an isolated tall building may aid in the ventilation of near-surface however, it may also result in gustiness that makes walking difficult. While taller buildings may be a more efficient use of space and offer the potential to reduce carbon emission, they can also make outdoor spaces less pleasant and increase the energy demands of buildings cast in shadow. In fact, a marked feature of the new tall buildings in London is that they trumpet their green credentials as making best use of natural resources to achieve energy efficiency while ignoring their impact on the surrounding area.

20 Fenchurch Street- 2015 carbuncle cup winner

The potential impact of tall buildings on the urban realm is best demonstrated by 20 Fenchurch Street which has a BREEAM rating of excellent and an unusual ‘form’ that earned it the 2015 Carbuncle Cup. This ‘form’ caused the surface to behave like a parabolic mirror focusing the Sun’s energy onto a nearby street; since 2013 the envelope has been modified to prevent this from happening again. However, what is not so well known is that the buildings height interfered with the ‘rights to light’ of neighbouring buildings. Nonetheless, the buildings sustainable credentials (including the Sky Garden) were considered so significant that the Corporation of London made a compulsory purchase on these rights, effectively reassigning ownership of shared resource.

Another example is 100 Bishopsgate, yet to come out the ground, but once built the bulk and height will shade the south facing façade of the neighbouring Heron Tower for much of the day. In normal circumstances, this might be beneficial. Most commercial office functions occur during the daytime when the combination of internal and external loads generates a significant cooling demand; in these circumstances shading of a glazed surface reduces this demand. However, in the case of the Heron Tower, the soon-to-be shaded façade is where photovoltaic array have been embedded in the fabric to generate electricity. 100 Bishopsgate will simply block access to its energy source.

100 Bishopsgate (Red) over shading the solar array on the south facing façade of the Heron Tower (Blue)

‎At 22 Bishopsgate, a planned 278m-high tower sits among other tall buildings. While the mutual shadowing effects may benefit the buildings and their energy use, they also create an outdoor space that is almost always in shade; while this might be a desirable outcome in a hot climate, it does not make for a pleasant space in mid-latitude London. There is little to be gained if tall building achieve efficiencies for indoor private spaces at the expense of the outdoor public spaces.

22 Bishopsgate (Red)

In general The Eastern Cluster the City of London is a good example of how tall buildings can be mutually beneficial by providing shade. However, what is best for office buildings may not be best for residential buildings, which are occupied in the morning and evening hours.  

The proposed residential Bishopsgate Goodsyard (BGY) Development on the boundary of the City of London occupies a wide site oriented east-west. BGY will cast a shadow on its neighbours which includes the Boundary Estate, a historic social housing scheme that was designed to maximize ventilation and access to sunlight. BGY will make best use of the natural resources available to it but because of its height it effectively captures these from its neighbours. These two neighbouring residential schemes highlight the growing conflict between the right to a passive resource and those of high density.

The proposed Goodsyard development (Red) on the underlying Boundary Estate (Blue)

These examples demonstrate that energy management strategies require a spatial approach that accounts for the wider impacts of buildings on their surroundings. But currently we have no way of evaluating the influence of the ‘form’ a building takes outside the envelope of the building itself – rather buildings are seen as isolated entities that neglect their dynamic effect on the neighbouring buildings. 

There are many examples of good tall buildings throughout the city and the world that demonstrate that tall buildings have a role to play in resilient cities futures. However addressing their strategic role in their urban setting is only part of the picture, we need a resilient city wide plan that considers current and future needs of urban occupation that ensures all new buildings, streets, parks and plazas are ‘designed in an integrated way’ that addresses many of the issues that organisations like CIBSE Resilient Cities and CTBUH are starting to address. But what is for sure London is about to embark on a massive change to its infrastructure, to be successful we need to be vigilant and take our time.

Dr Julie Futcher is an architect and freelance consultant at Urban Generation.

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Robert Diamond - A Buddhist Concept for a Resilient City

"Our situation is not comparable to anything in the past. It is impossible, therefore, to apply methods and measures which at an earlier age might have been sufficient. We must revolutionise our thinking, revolutionise our actions, and must have the courage to revolutionise relations among the nations of the world." Albert Einstein, 1948

Over the next three and a half decades, the world’s cities are predicted to increase by 2.5 billion people with almost everyone living within in a day’s trip of a city. This boom will place a massive load on current infrastructures, air quality, pollution and waste. Can our current methods and measures solve these issues as we come to this critical juncture in our time (as when Einstein addressed the World Congress of Intellectuals regarding atomic weapons) or can alternative paradigms offered by ancient wisdom offer any guidance?

Cities are complex in their scale, speed, diversity and connectivity and are full of contradictions - no two cities are alike. The history, culture and the people within them have unique identities and all make up the story of a city. The global city of the future shows great promise: well-designed cities are not just good for prosperity, they can meet our basic needs: e.g. sanitation, education and healthcare. But they can be prone to fundamental problems: crime and violence, radicalisation and disasters of all kind from natural (e.g. flooding, one of the most frequent natural disasters), technical (e.g. failure of infra- structures) to the human-made (e.g. international terrorism).

Although at the time of the Buddha there were none of the environmental issues now facing us, including pollution, global warming and climate change; his teaching is typified by respect, humility, care and compassion that show affinity with the deeper ecological movements of today and could provide radical answers to the issues facing us.

One of its key teachings is of the interconnection and inseparability of action and effects, as well as an appreciation of the interdependence and inseparability of all things; this could equally be applied to the environmental crises. One cannot look in isolation at any one aspect: social, political and economic strategies and policies all have an impact. Our systems based on growth and global capitalism are built on the premise that this will lead to human happiness and well-being, assumptions that have led us to where we are now.

Indra's net, a multi-dimensioned jewelled web, is a metaphor to describe interconnectedness found within the Buddhist tradition in ‘The Flower Ornament Sutra’, a third century text. Indra’s net consists of hundreds of thousands of jewels reflecting against one other in a myriad of mirrored jewels, each jewel unique but each jewel a reflection of all the other jewels.

The net strikingly foreshadows contemporary ecological thought, which is equally focused on relationships of interdependence rather than isolated entities. But the net prefigures more than ecological discourse for although found in modern systems theory, the net signifies a purified level of consciousness – an ‘Enlightened’ perspective.

Holistic planning often suffers from a sector by-sector approach across competing jurisdictions, and policymakers fail to see the city as a single entity. This sector by sector approach is very much indigenous to our entire world view. However if we can see the city as we do within Indra’s net, we can see very fabric of the city itself: one that is interconnected, related, evolving and alive.

Viewing a city in this way we see that everything effects everything else: although contemporary design and build contacts encourage the developer to maximise profits and the cost of the tenant, ultimately a green building, although costing more, provides more benefit ultimately. For example, green roofs and walls cost more than traditional roofs and walls, but they improve air quality, provide space for ecological enhancement, improve aesthetics, reduce heat loss and improve drainage run-off. Although not costed in these ‘externalities’ effect the city and therefore society as a whole.

Underpinning the philosophy of Indra’s net is the freedom to overcome self-interest, whether individual or for the benefit of the shareholders – so to encourage a dialogue beyond our own circles –engineers (really) talking to architects (really) talking to contractors (really) talking to planners and so on, beyond self-interest, with a wish to understand and share ideas and information – and see each other’s view.

Indra’s net seeks to overcome social isolation. Our cities have been designed around an aged infrastructure built on the car, at the expense of the green spaces where people would naturally congregate. Indra’s net sees the benefit of increasing green spaces, although on the surface the selling of land to build means more profit for the landowner, ultimately everyone loses.

Indra’s net would look to community based projects, an energy infrastructure where all benefit, shared local energy centres, promoting renewable technologies to move away from our addiction to oil, electric vehicles to reduce pollution and to reduce noise, improved cycling facilities to reduce our car use.

In short, none of these ideas are new, but a joined up approach is needed, going beyond a “one-size-fits-all” approach. Indra’s net lets us see beyond our limited views and perceptions, beyond immediate profit, for in the end everyone loses. A genuinely resilient city would be one which fulfils human needs, it would be diverse, and it would be a city of equality and one where the individual, community and wider society would benefit

Author: Eur Ing Robert Diamond BEng (Hons) MSc CEnv FEI CEng FCIBSE

Contact: robert.diamond@ingletonwood.co.uk

Robert Diamond is an chartered energy engineer and chartered environmentalist and a Fellow of CIBSE and the Energy Institute. He is Vice Chairman of the CIBSE HCNE Region Committee, and has presented at low and zero carbon buildings events to the RIBA, RICS, Energy Institute and CIBSE, at EcoBuild, and on behalf of the British Embassy in Latvia to promote international sustainability.

He works as a sustainability associate for Ingleton Wood, a multi-disciplinary practice based in Colchester. Last year he decided to pursue a part-time MA at the University of East Anglia in the field of Environmental Humanities, a new forward-thinking environmental studies programs integrating the environmental humanities with the sciences.

His on-going dissertation looks at alternatives to the current paradigm within the sustainability/resilient dialogue, and looks to the Eastern religion of Buddhism to see if it can offer any alternatives to these discussions, in particular to the concept of interconnectedness, suggested by the Indra’s Net metaphor. This blog forms part of his thinking, although the final work will not be complete until September 2015.

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David Coley - Climate change means we can’t keep living (and working) in glass houses

London’s famous Shard is one big window, but bricks and wood are more efficient. Bill Smith, CC BY

How do we go about designing buildings today for tomorrow’s weather? As the world warms and extreme weather becomes more common, sustainable architecture is likely to mean one major casualty: glass.

For decades glass has been everywhere, even in so-called “modern” or “sustainable” architecture such as London’s Gherkin. However in energy terms glass is extremely inefficient – it does little but leak heat on cold winter nights and turn buildings into greenhouses on summer days.

For example, the U-value (a measure of how much heat is lost through a given thickness) of triple glazing is around 1.0. However a simple cavity brick wall with a little bit of insulation in it is 0.35 – that is, three times lower – whereas well-insulated wall will have a U-value of just 0.1. So each metre square of glass, even if it is triple glazed, loses ten times as much heat as a wall.

While the climate is changing, so too is the weather. Climate is expressed in terms of long-term averages, whereas the weather is an expression of short-term events – and the weather is predicted to change by much more than our climate. This creates challenges. A 0.5℃ increase in monthly temperature can made a difference to farmers, or the energy used by an air-conditioning system, but a peak temperature of 38℃ or a vicious cold snap can be far more serious. Buildings are designed to handle extremes, not just averages.

Architects and building engineers around the world are now having to struggle with this issue, especially since buildings last so long. At Bath we have recently been awarded a grant to look at long-term weather forecasting and how building design will have to change. After all, you can’t move buildings to a better climate.

One obvious possibility, for UK designers at least, is that they pick a place where the weather currently is similar to what the Met Office suggests the UK will have in 2100, and simply put up buildings like the ones they have there.

The problem is this ignores the low-carbon agenda. Many hot countries have spent the past 30 years designing buildings similar to those found in more temperate countries, while leaving enough space for monster air-conditioning systems. The air-conditioned skyscrapers in Las Vegas and Dubai, for instance, look just like buildings you might see in London or Boston, despite being built in the middle of a desert.

Las Vegas’s glass boxes couldn’t exist without air conditioning. Bert Kauffman, CC BY

As an experiment, type “Dubai Buildings” into Google images and take a look at what has been built and, more worryingly, artist’s impressions of what is on the drawing board. You can even see this inefficiency in cultures that one might expect more of, for example the famous energy-guzzling glass towers of Vancouver.

Buildings will have to be simplified. Heating, lighting, energy supply, air con, escalators, IT networks and so on – all these “building services” will have to be stripped right back. Those services which do remain must use almost no energy – and possibly generate the energy they require on site.

Cutting back on glass would be an easy win. Windows need to be sized, not glorified, and sized for a purpose: the view, or to provide natural light or air. Windows also need to be shaded. Many would argue that we need to re-invent the window, or the building. We need to build buildings with windows, rather than buildings that are one big window.
Maybe we should look to the Mediterranean. People have mainly lived in countries such as Greece, for example, without air-conditioning – and it is true that such heavyweight, thick-walled buildings with small openings are capable of moderating external conditions very well.

Small windows and thick, white walls keep the inside of this traditional Greek house nice and cool. ncfc0721, CC BY

However they don’t offer the climate control we are used to, especially if you pack them with people and computers. The people of the Mediterranean also had generations to adapt themselves and their working arrangements to fit with the climate. We don’t have this luxury: the weather is changing too fast.

We have yet to invent architecture ready for whatever happens to the climate, but it is clear that we need to take lessons from the past – and from other cultures. We can’t simply air-condition our way through global warming.


David Coley is Professor of Low Carbon Design at University of Bath.
This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.

The Department of Architecture and Civil Engineering at the University of Bath has recently been awarded EPSRC funding for their project: The creation of localised current and future weather for the engineering community. The project will aim to develop a methodology for creating weather files for building simulation that capture the local environmental conditions. The weather files will be available for the period 2015-2080, at 5km resolution, for the whole of the UK, with an emphasis on extremes, particularly heat waves and cold snaps. CIBSE will be working closely with the project team representing its members and ensuring applicability of outputs to industry practices.

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George Adams - Cities: the battle ground between the global financial market forces and the drive for a low carbon future

All human societies fundamentally depend on natural resources and the environment; we now outstrip Earth's natural replenishment capacity by 50%. Climate change has become an ever more irrefutable and urgent issue but still we have no effective international agreement that has any chance of stopping the rise in carbon emissions let alone reduce the levels. What we do have is more conferences and more publications giving the impression to the general public that somewhere the powers that be are solving the big issue. The reality is a continuance of pouring vast sums of money into finding, supplying and consuming more fossil fuels; emissions are predicted to increase by 29% and energy consumption up by 41% by 2035 (BP report 2014).

My questions are these: how do we get local communities to align with the common cause of creating sustainable urban environments, and how do move globally to a new carbon adverse economy to avoid the bigger risk of a future based on fossil fuels.

A longer-term agenda could be about people, their place and surroundings. Local smart solutions could be about Local Authorities, business and communities working together to recognise the responsibilities of location and society with Cities at the heart of this; as we move towards 80% of humanity living in them. The urgency would then be to move forward with the re invention of cities into sustainable, adaptive, healthy and responsible urban communities; able to cope with the inevitable complexities of our future existence.

So I put it to you that our cities will be the battle ground between traditional financial market forces and the urban drive towards essential low carbon smart city economies. It seems to me, the World’s financial markets can't be expected to solve the fossil fuels dependency problem because they simply don't know how to make the big changes quickly enough to avoid the potential for the biggest ever economic meltdown if we continue the current path towards 4 to 6°C of global warming.

We all know there’s been a vast amount of climate change information produced over the past 20 years. But we are in danger of assuming it is producing meaningful action.

The past financial crisis demonstrated what happens when big risks accumulate without adequate management; as indicated by Lord Stern saying the risks are "very big indeed". Sadly it’s not much different today. The so-called "carbon bubble" is a result of an over-valuation of oil, coal and gas reserves held by fossil fuel companies. According to a UCL report in 2014, at least two-thirds of these reserves will have to remain underground if the world is to meet the existing internationally agreed targets to avoid "dangerous" climate change. The recent Earth Day 2015 report concluded that broadly we must keep 75% of all known fossil fuels in the ground.

London, as with many cities, faces future challenges relating to: growth; urbanisation; pollution; resource efficiency; and a changing climate.  London’s population is projected to grow by 12% over the next 20 years. The resulting demands and pressure on energy infrastructure and natural resources obliges city infrastructure providers and consumers to adapt intelligently to ensure efficient, affordable and sustainable solutions. London and other UK cities are with others at the forefront of this change, piloting and pioneering new secure, flexible, low carbon and growth-stimulating urban based solutions that could be cost-effective, smarter, cleaner and locally managed. The difficult organisational system and societal changes need to merge the role of consumers and producers in developing and providing, healthy energy, food, water and mobility integrated solutions that respect the limits of natural resources, the need for total recycling of waste and create cities that integrate strategic urban green landscaping. The real innovation is to join it all up in a holistic systems approach to achieve best value, clean urban environments and sustainable low carbon economies. 

For example the path finding works by the city of Durban. Where transitioning to a low carbon city was the focus of a consensus study from which its report provides 12 key strategic recommendations, as well as sector-specific recommendations, which Durban needs to address in order to transition to a low carbon city.

I believe the issues are beyond international leadership and global conferences now and that a world of local empowered urban communities working in parallel with each other, backed up by enforceable law is likely to provide the fastest and most effective strategy. People are the cause and yet they are also the solution. The Rocky Park community garden scheme in Bethnal Green London which I visited recently is a great example that people can take positive action to green – up their local urban area and bring about better social behaviour.

The role of governments I suggest is to educate and empower cities and urban communities to change and to respond to the biggest conflict and opportunity the human race has ever needed to grasp.

George Adams

Susie Diamond on the new CIBSE Resilient Cities group

I was drawn to join the new CIBSE Resilient cities group through a funky mixture of curiosity and pessimism regarding the future of our urban environments. Cities have been evolving around the world for centuries at an ever-increasing pace. What they’ll look and feel like to inhabit even in just 50 years is hard to imagine. A large proportion of our current buildings are likely to remain, but interspersed with many new ones, and the way we’ll be using them could be very different. Some of this change could be really exciting, but I am troubled by the uncertainties of climate change and what the implications might be for future generations of city dwellers; how will we manage to maintain the standards of comfort we are used to, and keep using the technology we value without exacerbating climate change?

When this group coalesced we quickly realised that writing a definitive guide for CIBSE members regarding adapting and designing resilient cities was not a realistic proposition. A great deal of work is being done across many sectors to plan and future gaze on this subject, organisations such as The BRE Trust Future Cities Programme, the C40 Cities group and the Future Cities Catapult are just the tip of the iceberg. We therefore felt a more useful remit was to start collating and disseminating the information already out there that is most relevant to CIBSE members, and begin to create some thought leadership regarding what our contribution to the resilience of our cities should be.

“Resilience is the ability of assets, networks and systems to anticipate, absorb, adapt to and / or rapidly recover from a disruptive event.  In its broader sense, it is more than an ability to bounce back and recover from adversity and extends to the broader adaptive capacity gained from an understanding of the risks and uncertainties in our environment.” (Cabinet Office)

One dissemination avenue that this group will be pursuing was inspired by a book edited by Angela Brady, past president of the Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA) and director of Brady Mallalieu Architects Ltd, called The British Papers - Current Thinking on Sustainable City Design (RIBA Publishing). The book is a collection of 31 invited essays that cover a wide variety of topics and themes; and give diverse personal perspectives on the issues and challenges of future city design. Contributors are largely from an architecture background, and their pieces are illustrated, short and relevant. Specifically it’s also a really good read. 


So why not develop the theme and build a similar collection of essays with a more CIBSE focus? We know lots of interesting people within the industry, people with vision and passion, people with a story to share or a new technology to develop.Climate modelling has given us a good idea of where our climate is heading, but there is a wealth of opinion on how this will affect us and how our cities will adapt and evolve to suit these conditions in the late 21st and 22nd centuries. Hearing these voices would be inspiring, thought-provoking (or even enraging) and the ideas presented may be ignored and forgotten or might take hold and ultimately make their way into our thought-processes and the way we practice our work.
Without the resources (yet) to publish a physical book, we are going to invite essayists to write blog posts to publish here as a series that will build up over the coming months. If you’d be interested in contributing to this series then please get in touch with us through: resilientcities@cibse.org