Pedestrians, trees and automobiles: the quest to re-green our cities
You might recall from our recent white paper Real estate and environmental performance — Bridging the gap with PropTech that our built environment has a long history of coming into conflict with the natural environment. There are a number of transformative moments of history we can look to, such as the acceleration of land clearing that took place as a consequence of the Agricultural Revolution, as well as the population and pollution booms that resulted from the Industrial Revolutions…
The century of the automobile
Last week I had the privilege of catching up with Florian Kraus, the CEO and co-founder of Austria-based ClimateTech start-up Greenpass. The Greenpass team has recently commenced our growth programme as part of cohort 10. Boyan will introduce you to the cohort next week. During my conversation with Florian, we discussed the impact private motor vehicles (PMVs) have had on urban design, and what is referred to by some in the profession as sneckdown. In essence, you can see how much of our urban environments cater to PMVs, versus how much is actually used, by seeing where vehicles clear the snow and where it remains untouched. Automotive-centric design reminded me of the 20th-century origins of the term jaywalking — a phrase that rose to prominence as a slur to deter pedestrians from using the streets the way they had for millennia. Suffice to say, it hasn’t always been this way, and perhaps it doesn’t have to be this way in future.
Changing attitudes…
There’s little doubt in most minds that PMVs played a significant role in social and economic development across the world over the past century. It enabled the suburbanisation of high and middle-income countries, facilitated trade, and created new opportunities for the economically excluded. In recent years, however, push back against automotive-centric design of our towns and cities has emerged. Florian gestures to Mariahilferstraße, Vienna as one of the many examples where shared space for pedestrians has returned to being the rule rather than the exception. This didn’t happen without resistance, which remains one of the key challenges for this type of transformation.
Greening our urban environment
Greenpass is doing its bit to transform our urban environment by providing planning, design and development professionals with the software-as-a-service tools needed to integrate vegetation and their ecosystem services more impactfully in their projects. Much of this involves repurposing rooftops and facades for existing buildings, and designing around buildings, materials and vegetation for new builds. Returning to PMVs, Florian identifies our roads as some of the most opportune space to integrate vegetation to mitigate the effects of biodiversity loss, urban heat islands and net positive emissions. According to data from a Greater London Authority land use survey analysed by Pi Labs, roads comprise nearly 20% of Inner London’s surface area, which is roughly the same as all buildings combined (see below). Although still green, domestic gardens and other greenspaces also often fall short of their potential due to the water footprint and lack of biodiversity of manicured lawns and unsuitable vegetation. Such factors are accounted for by the scientifically-developed Greenpass platform, which includes more than 50 indicators on the six urban challenges of climate, water, air, biodiversity, energy and cost.
Proof of concept
Greenpass was put to the test in a major project for retail giant IKEA. In 2021, the new IKEA Vienna Westbahnhof store was opened. Recycled construction materials and 160 trees were included in its design — increasing the area’s green space by 2,700sqm, improving biodiversity, absorbing 6kg of CO2 per heat day, and reducing air temperature on a hot day by around 1.5C. The social benefits of this project also received attention, with the roof garden accessible to the public. Overall, the project attained the world’s first platinum score on the Greenpass platform, as well as a BREEAM rating of excellent.
Where to from here..?
As 2050 fast approaches, evidence is mounting that we aren’t doing enough to meet net-zero targets in the built environment. Associated environmental challenges such as biodiversity loss are also becoming more embedded in our collective consciousness. A challenge facing the industry is that the vast majority of 2050’s building stock has already been built, which places significant emphasis on retrofits. In that case, there is often limited structural work that can be completed to improve the building’s environmental footprint. Florian and his team believe the role of vegetation is even more significant in this situation — offering benefits such as urban cooling, insulation, air quality, flood resilience, mental wellbeing and sun protection to both occupants and wider communities.
