Sustainable Cities

Nobody knows exactly when the City of London was first founded; though Godfrey of Monmouth made a fanciful stab in the middle ages-

 

“I

n the year 1108 bc Brute, lineally descended from the demi-god Encas, the sonne of Venus, daughter of Jupiter, builded this city upon the river now called Thames, and named it New Troy”.

 

More reliably, we know that following the destruction of Londinium by Queen Boadicea in AD 61, the Roman Town Planning Department set about rebuilding the City on a comprehensive scale, including public buildings, customs houses and an advanced water supply. Archaeological evidence on display at the museum of London suggests that then, as now, the City was founded on trade.

Following a brief dip in London’s fortunes in the dark ages, the City’s prime location and first class communications began to tell, London began its inexorable rise to prominence as a global trading powerhouse, and for the last eight hundred years, the Guildhall and the Corporation of London have been protecting the City’s interests.

Sustainable development and environmental protection have only really entered common parlance in the last few years, but the issues associated with them have placed limits on the growth of the City since its foundation.

The Corporation has long been aware that a clean environment, quality of life and economic prosperity go hand in hand. the problems facing Mayor and alderman in medieval times have a peculiar resonance today- water supply, adulteration of food, building regulations, refuse removal and the suppression of nuisance including smoke and noise.

In the past these issues only constrained the City for as long as it took for technical solutions to be thought up to solve them. This is what led to the great municipal revolutions of the last century when London became the world’s first Megacity thanks to its development of an effective sewage system, a clean water supply, street lighting and underground railways. Others soon copied London’s example.

Megacities continued to grow fuelled by their ability to exploit what was seen as the boundless wealth of the Earth’s natural resources;

·        Problems of waste were dealt with by exporting it to other locations to be put in holes in the ground;

·        Problems of pollution were dealt with by building ever higher chimneys;

·        and problems of supply were dealt with by importing food and raw materials from further and further afield.

However, we are now entering a new era when cities such as London are once again facing challenges and unlike the problems faced by cities in the past, these impracticalities are complex, interdependent and far reaching in time and space;
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How do we plan Cities for a planet which will contain 10 Billion people? How will these people be fed, receive water and energy, be transported and have their waste disposed of?

Meeting these challenges will not be an easy task as unlike the problems faced by the engineering geniuses of the 19^th Century, the solutions will require dealing with the terrible synergy between consumption and waste, convenience and consequence.

What is required is little less than a revolution in the way that cities are planned and run and core to this must be a new contract between the communities who make up cities (individuals, businesses, voluntary groups and the public sector) and the democratic bodies who serve them. This contract must balance the rights and responsibilities of those communities- The right to a clean environment, a sound economy and a good quality of life, balanced by; the responsibility to take ownership of their actions and the consequences of those actions.

To some extent this revolution is beginning to take place, the retreat of the public sector combined with globalisation means that increasingly it is cities rather than nations which are competing directly against each other.

This is leading to a fundamental re-assessment of the importance of quality of life factors in determining competitive advantage, and searching questions are being asked about how services and infrastructure can be planned for funded and delivered over the long term.

Our new clarion call for the 21^st century is sustainability, and it will take just as much effort and cunning as that shown by our Victorian forebears if we are to succeed.

Quality of life, the new global battlefield

I attended the launch of London's Quality of Life Indicators 2012 report on Wednesday evening.

The report itself makes for very interesting reading. However, what I found even more interesting than the content was the context in which the report was set.

The event was intensely politicised and the presentations were very on message with respect to London's performance. I don't propose to comment on the basket of indicators chosen or the methodology used in displaying them- read the report for yourself.

Matthew Pencharz, the Mayors Environmental and Political adviser was on hand to set the scene and his fundamental message was simple- In a globalised world, London has to compete directly with other cities in order to attract investment and talent, Quality of life is one of the fundamental weapons in its armoury.

This ties in neatly with a major research initiative the City has planned for a little later this year.

The concept is fairly simple-

In 2050 the planet will have around 10 billion people living on it. The majority of those people will live in cities.   

Those people will need feeding, housing and transportation. They will require water to drink, their waste will need to be disposed of and they will need energy. 

How are these challenges going to be met, and with the retrenchment of the public sector where is investment in this infrastructure going to come from?

I will let you know more about how we intend to answer these questions in due course.