New year, new cities — and some hope for 2021
For the first time, our 24/7 cities have the chance to stop, reflect and make some overdue changes.
After an unpredictable 2020, the idea of new year’s resolutions felt a tad overwhelming.
For cities, however, there’s never been a better time to reflect, readjust and put into effect some resolutions.
They’ve been hit disproportionally hard by the pandemic. The once-packed trains funnelling us into offices, schools and entertainment venues emptied, as we stayed home to work, teach our children, and Zoom friends. I went from crossing the Thames every day to spending my time in Haringey, a North London borough home to amazing Turkish restaurants.
Having experienced London very differently this past year, I began to mull over three resolutions for cities: how to be greener, enhance our communities, and transform old spaces.
The dramatic halt that COVID-19 imposed on ‘business as usual’ is an opportunity to rethink the way cities work. What course do we want to chart out of this crisis?
Resolution 1: It’s time to move into the Doughnut
They’ve had a rough year, but our cities have long been the catalysts of economic growth and innovation. Now home to over 50% of the world’s population, cities account for over 60% of global energy use, and more than 70% of global greenhouse gas emissions.
With city life coming to a standstill, the decline in pollutants has been profound. One Nasa model reveals that in 2020 levels of nitrogen dioxide — an air pollutant produced by the combustion of fossil fuels — fell by nearly 20%.
That being said, this dip will not salvage things when the threat of climate change looms. Cities need to make an important resolution to reimagine the shape of progress — towards supporting the needs of their citizens whilst respecting planetary boundaries.
For Kate Raworth, Oxford Economist and author of Doughnut Economics, this must involve a move away “from endless expansion to thriving in balance”. Her new vision of prosperity comes in the form of a doughnut. The inner ring represents the basic social foundations for living — from having enough clean water to adequate housing. The outer ring is the ecological ceiling of earth’s 9 planetary boundaries, including ozone depletion and chemical pollution. To overshoot the outer ring is to cause irreparable damage to the planet. The goal is to meet the needs of all people, within the boundaries of the living planet. The goal is to be within the Doughnut.
Cities have a big tendency to overshoot the ecological ceiling, whilst in many cases also failing to meet the social foundation of citizens. There’s work to be done.
Raworth helps cities to define their future vision. She starts with a question: How can our city be a home to thriving people in a thriving place, while respecting the wellbeing of all people and the health of the whole planet?
In answering this question and transforming the design of cities, networks and collaboration are key. C40 are a group of cities working together to tackle climate change. They recently signed a collective declaration to procure only zero-emission buses from 2025 — speeding up procurement and the development of sustainable technology.
Likewise, collaboration within cities improves efficiency and reduces waste. Fluxx’s work with the London Borough of Croydon and Atkins led to Collaborative Street Works. With around 15 percent of congestion caused by streetworks, the team created an approach that brought utility companies together to coordinate their projects, significantly reducing disruption. Instead of one utility company digging up a road one month, and another digging up the same road the next month — works can be coordinated. The simple idea was tested iteratively over 18 months in just one borough, with an impressive 98 days of road closures avoided.
These are the pipes and cables that help underpin the social foundation — delivering clean water, warmth and means of communication to our homes. This example shows that through collaboration they can be repaired, maintained and updated in ways that are less disruptive to the community and the environment.
With 2021 the year of COP26, the UN Climate Change Conference marking the 5th anniversary of the Paris Agreement, it’s a good time to build momentum.
There are lots of ways to answer Raworth’s question to cities — but once we’re through the worst of the pandemic and can begin to rebuild, 2021 will be a good year to start moving into the Doughnut.
Resolution 2: Less commuting, more community
Despite the price of country homes reaching a decade high in the UK, the reduced need to be in the office has not — and likely will not — lead to a mass exodus from cities.
That said, millions of us have enjoyed relief from daily commuting, becoming free to spend this new-found time in other ways closer to home. As John Harris documents in his series Anywhere but Westminster, despite the pain the virus has inflicted, the sense of community in 2020 shone bright.
What’s more, the forced experiment of remote working revealed that in many ways these changes were more seamless than expected. As the acclaimed urban theorists Richard Florida, Andrés Rodriguez-Pose & Michael Storper recently wrote, the lockdown is showing ‘that there are radically different ways of living made possible by digital tools’. Fluxx’s own research at the start of the first lockdown also showed this to be the case.
Post-pandemic, centre footfall will likely return thanks to an appetite for cultural experiences and face-to-face interaction. But, in the longer term, it’s also likely that many of the Covid-induced behavioural changes are here to stay.
Recognising flaws in the way our cities are structured, Parisian professor and advisor to the Mayor of Paris, Carlos Menos, has developed the idea of the 15-minute city. It’s an effort to redesign urban neighbourhoods to meet our needs to live, learn and thrive within our immediate vicinity. It represents the possibility of a de-centralised city; a move away from discrete zones fulfilling different functions to a “mosaic of neighbourhoods’’ in which our needs are met.
But if we continue spending more time closer to home, how can city centres be transformed? For Andy Burnham, Mayor of Greater Manchester, a transformation will happen across three phases. The first phase is one of ‘Net Damage’, in which businesses continue to suffer as footfall fails to return. But from net damage, Burham predicts a second phase of ‘Accelerated Change’ commencing in 2022. He sees this as a time of opportunity for greater pedestrianisation, more green space and a shift from offices in our centres to shared, creative space.
All this leads to a third and final phase of the ‘Reborn and corrected city’. Cities will emerge as “more liveable, more affordable, less dominated by the car, more vibrant and less soulless.”
As the balance between commuting and community naturally tilts, a unique opportunity emerges to re-imagine and re-purpose cities. If we seize this, we can bolster communities and enable city centres to transition from primarily places of work to, first and foremost, places that are good to live.
Resolution 3: Out with the old and in with the… old
As cities transform and develop to become ‘reborn and connected’ we need to think about how existing infrastructure can fulfil new roles. As flagship stores like Oxford Street’s Topshop close their doors and office blocks remain empty, what are the ways to reimagine these spaces?
Successfully repurposing city infrastructure is nothing new. Once a district trainline, the High Line in New York, has become a pedestrian passage weaving through new spaces above the bustle of the city, connecting people to museums, cafés, and nature.
In Paris, old highways have become parks and cycle routes. You can glide by the Seine on a bike or a scooter, along streets once dominated by cars. By 2024, in time for the Paris Olympics, the busy roads surrounding the Eiffel Tower will have been transformed into the city’s largest garden.
For buildings, adaptable designs are coming to the fore. Marriot has built the world’s tallest modular hotel in New York City. Instead of constructing the hotel on-site, the parts of the hotel are built off-site to be later assembled. This creates a more efficient building process, and greater flexibility of use. Modular buildings can be disassembled and the modules relocated or refurbished for new use — a hotel one year, an office block the next.
This is a big opportunity for legacy developers and property companies to carve out specialisms in repurposing and re-using existing assets. This past year Fluxx have worked with Landsec, the UK’s largest commercial property business, to imagine new possibilities for existing properties.
Without transformative action, cities’ annual demand for Earth’s resources is predicted to rise from 40 billion tonnes in 2010 to nearly 90 billion tonnes by 2050. Amsterdam is already leading the way in this transformation with plans to halve material use by 2030 and have a fully circular economy by 2050.
This goal fits with Amsterdam’s vision to be ‘A thriving, inclusive, regenerative city for all citizens while respecting planetary boundaries’. How can other cities follow in their footsteps by transforming existing spaces?
In London, 2021 hasn’t been off to a good start. But with vaccines rolling out and an opportunity to rethink the way our cities are transformed, there’s reason to be hopeful.
Having had the rare opportunity in 2020 to slow down and reflect, cities now have the chance to make some new year’s resolutions. Through enhancing our communities, revitalising old spaces and respecting planetary boundaries, it’s a chance to become more vibrant, more liveable and more sustainable places to be.
Rory Keddie is a Consultant at Fluxx. Stay tuned with all that’s Fluxx by following us on LinkedIn or signing up for our WTF Newsletter. Get in touch at rory.keddie@Fluxx.uk.com.
