How cities can catalyse change for a greener future.
This article is a joint collaboration between Kate Beaumont, marketer, Isabella Frisch, Project Lead Climate KIC- Cities and Sean Lockie, Director, Climate-KIC.
The appetite for setting and achieving zero carbon by cities is accelerating at pace; 823 cities and 101 regions now have net-zero targets. This represents more than 828 million people and 11 percent of the global population.
However, many targets are being set with unclear baselines, a disconnect from their local communities and with zero carbon goal dates that are often too far in the future for any immediate action (e.g. 2050).
Ultimately, targets are not being delivered quickly enough, with limited consequences; the only force to drive change being either a moral risk or the perceived risk by its citizens of being left behind whilst other cities progress forward. Meanwhile, the negative effects from climate change continue. Cities are hotspots for emissions with over 70% of global emissions occurring within them, yet their density, potential for economies of scale and direct access to some of the most talented minds and prosperous financial markets also make them prime testbeds for innovation.
So how can we see substantial results by 2030? Why do cities struggle with implementation when the desire, ambition and vision is there? How do time poor, overloaded cities demonstrate change on the ground? Competitions can help provide an answer; they enable implementation by providing the opportunity for city officials to experiment within the setting of a physical site. This is what we set out to do in the Healthy Clean Cities program.
Place based competitions to catalyse change for a greener future.
Competitions can catalyse change in a city as a partnership between the public and private sector. The city puts forward land that might be challenging to use and invites consortia to tender. The lease or sale of this public land is then based on environmental and social criteria rather than solely on best price. It delivers better terms for all stakeholders, resulting in private projects for public benefit. Our work with the C40 Reinventing Cities competition has shown successful examples of this approach being adopted in locations such as Madrid, Milan, Oslo and Paris. This method can be used as a prototype for others to follow, to bring about transformative change in under-utilised sites within urban areas.
The process also commits a city to work through any potentially limiting design factors, such as procurement rules and regulations; therefore, immediately tackling common barriers to innovation within ‘normal’ projects. Any possible regulatory or legal minefields need to be mapped out by the city from the outset. This can cause controversy; experimentation can shine a spotlight for public scrutiny; however, the best learning always comes from doing. Good stakeholder management is key to delivery.
Successful projects need a holistic approach, including places for people to occupy that are sustainable, healthy and socially inclusive. C40’s Reinventing cities competition proposed 10 challenges across different areas to produce an integrated approach and solution. The city procurement team set the bar on aspects such as: energy efficiency, sustainable materials, sustainable mobility, adaption to climate hazards, green services, green growth (jobs and business models), water management, biodiversity preservation, community engagement and innovative architecture and place making.
These competitions represent a great procurement approach to produce inspirational results. It may not be the only tool in the box but has been shown to catalyse change in a city and demonstrate a clear way of achieving and fast-tracking net zero deliverables. Outcomes have been large scale urban regeneration projects, with proven goals across several sustainability metrics.
So how does this solution ultimately drive change and innovation?
Most regulations and procurement processes are not yet geared up for innovation at speed, being resource intensive to work through policy and regulatory barriers at scale. Global competitions help address and expose these obstructions in order to best implement and drive agile change with greater impact. Oslo was able to go beyond existing national building standards as the competition process pushed the learnings about their regulatory context and finding solutions. This project is now having ripple effects in the city.
Engagement and participation from community is a vital tool in the climate education and adaption toolkit. Though residents may not be familiar with all their city’s carbon-related targets, they can more easily engage with a specific physical site in their area, which in turn raises its profile, makes it ‘real’ and increases ‘ownership’ at an individual level. Competition projects help build a community’s understanding and awareness of what climate resilience actually is. Citizens are involved in the L’innesto site in Milan as part of the design process, down to the level where they are involved in designing their own unit. This means that buy-in is higher, and at a much earlier point in the process. This can have the effect of a community then bonding, being more willing to share their assets and ultimately work together more easily. The sharing economy is far more effective when you know the people you are going to be sharing with, whether it be DIY equipment, mobility (bikes cargo bikes, or e-vehicles), food, managing utilities or childcare.
The collaboration within consortia is diverse from private sector, science, business, NGOs to local citizens. The exchange of information from all actors coming together, rather than working in silos, provides a more successful, holistic approach which results in far more original concepts. The more diverse the team, the better the outcome. The development of multi-disciplinary teams, with a focus on innovation and environment, has become more standardised across France following the success of its first competition in Paris in 2017.
These competitions can be worldwide in scale, while each city has its own unique set of adaptation and mitigation requirements, there has been the opportunity to share best practices from the winning teams across projects in other cities. This creates not only a knowledge exchange but a competitive element that drives inspiration and furthers new concepts. For example, in Paris, ‘conventional’ boundaries were pushed by looking for sustainability innovations from using timber-based buildings. The success from the project has given city officials enough confidence to now specify that all new public buildings in Paris will need to have a minimum 50% timber. An example of sustainable procurement principles in action, with the public sector creating new markets and driving sustainable change through their ability to specify.
Key benefits
Once a city commits publicly to a project like this, it often generates a snowball effect, creating a new normal, raising expectations on other schemes within countries and beyond borders. High standards are infectious, cross-pollinating to other regions/ projects across the globe. There is a visible and physical showcase across large urban areas demonstrating credible, measurable action and driving further innovation. Icelandic city Reykjavik’s best practices has contributed to its country’s progressive reputation on a global stage.
Learning through innovative bidding methods and evaluating these complex types of projects, builds greater knowledge and capacity within public sector procurement teams, with city personnel developing greater knowledge of specifying targets, the value of collective bidding, the evidence base, and mobilising communities. It’s also important to note that not all competition sites are building sites, as projects can be urban gardens, regenerated parks or sculpture gardens. Once an abandoned piece of infrastructure, the ‘highline’ in New York is a great example of how a community got together to create an environmental asset which the general public now enjoys. Madrid is currently piecing together pockets of land that surround the city to create a forest park ring right the way around the city.
There is a social and economic impact for local populations. A run-down site being regenerated in ground breaking ways has a knock on, ripple effect on adjoining sites, creating desirable locations within areas. There is the social value of providing hope, job creation and community in previously deprived areas. It improves the circumstances and future prospects of local residents by providing a beacon of change.
Involvement with flagship competitions also provides the companies involved great showcase projects, whilst also building expertise. The collaboration between larger and smaller firms allows for innovation between the small and nimble with the more mature and stable, giving them both new value propositions by working together. Companies then benefit from a competitive edge in the marketplace (the small) and a proven track record (the big). The level of time and financial investment in the bidding process can be a barrier for smaller organisations so this also needs consideration.
The ability to bring and leverage finance is a fundamental challenge in urban planning. Cities that own land and grant permission can leverage finance, particularly if they also oversee education and healthcare budgets, thereby capturing these benefits too. Most cities want to do more with SMEs, as small enterprises often bring fresh thinking but have weak balance sheets, and track record. Startups for example may have a great idea but no experience, so how can they get a piece of the action? The answer here is in partnership with players that have the balance sheet strength. Cities can have the big and the small, the academics and the NGOs working together if they structure the ask specifically. Proof of concept aids attraction to funders. If something innovative happens on a small competition site, testing can be done more effectively, at far lesser risk, before it’s scaled. One such example is Copenhagen’s use of the rooftop market gardens to supply local restaurants. This started as a small pilot and is now being scaled to great success all over the city. Another example is Paris now being much bolder in its use of timber in buildings because of what they have seen from the competition process.
Conclusion
Fundamentally, cities need transformative solutions to drive change and deliver on their zero carbon targets at the pace that our climate demands, but they need a place to start. Things must be done differently to how they’ve been done before and using competitions that encourage systemic outcomes from rich multidisciplined teams is part of the answer. We need to see more from the small and ‘unusual suspects’ to push a deeper collaborative approach. These help show city inhabitants what is possible, pushing higher standards (setting collective voluntary standards) in the procurement/bidding process as all stakeholders are invested in the outcome of the journey. Standards are pushed higher via a set of collective voluntary norms and best practice can spread across borders. This innovative, agile mechanism gives a city an excellent place to start.
