Dan Doctoroff at NLA

Dan Doctoroff

This post is by Bruce McVean, Integrated Design Manager at Beyond Green

This morning NLA hosted an interesting talk by Dan Doctoroff, CEO and President of Bloomburg and former deputy Mayor of New York. While working for Mayor Bloomburg’s administration Doctoroff oversaw the development and implementation of PlaNYC, which provides an ambitious and comprehensive framework for developing a sustainable (in every sense) future for New York.

His main theme was that friendly competition between London and New York drives innovation in both cities and ought to allow them to maintain their position as great world cities long into the future. Both cities are very similar in terms of size, diversity of their populations and forecasts for economic and population growth. By a long way they lead the world as centres for financial industries, with Doctoroff claiming New York has a slight edge over London (using the number of Bloomburg subscribers as the measure).

Doctoroff sees quality of life as essential to ensuring London and New York’s long term success. It is at the heart of his ‘virtuous cycle for a successful city’ – quality of life attracts people (residents and visitors), which drives the economy, which provides the money to invest in projects to improve quality of life. Those projects must be part of comprehensive strategy for urban transformation. The High Line for example has not only created a fantastic new public space in the centre of the city, but was also the catalyst for wider change in over 40 neighbouring blocks.

Creating a great city for walking is central to the PlaNYC transport strategy and has driven much of the rapid transformation of New York’s public realm over recent years. Improvements that are also helping to create a cycle network that in terms of its eventual coverage and quality of provision is miles ahead of London’s Cycle Super Highways.

The first London Plan, drawn up under Ken Livingstone, was the template for PlanNYC, but New York’s plan is much more ambitious. Doctoroff politely suggested that New York was still learning from London, using the example of the cycle hire scheme (which London can hardly claim to have pioneered), but it is London that must now learn from New York.

Posted 17 May 2012 by Bruce

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London’s election cycles

Vote Bike

This post is by Bruce McVean, Integrated Design Manager at Beyond Green and Founder of Movement for Liveable London

The votes are being cast and we’ll soon find out who will be Mayor of London for the next four years. It remains to be seen whether the unprecedented mobilisation of London’s cyclists will help decide the outcome, but judging by the polls it seems unlikely that Ken Livingtsone (the preferred candidate amongst the big two) will emerge victorious.

Regardless of the eventual outcome this election is likely to prove pivotal in deciding the longer term future of cycling in the Capital. London’s cyclists are more politicised than ever thanks to the fantastic efforts of Londoners on Bikes (an organisation that didn’t even exist 6 months ago, that has turned out to be a very smooth and savvy operator); strong campaigning from the London Cycling Campaign under the banner of Love London, Go Dutch; and the excellent Cities fit for Cycling campaign run by The Times. They’re also increasingly vocal and visible – a process that started in 2011 with hundreds taking part in the first Blackfriars flashride and culminated (for now) with 10,000 braving the rain to join LCC’s Big Ride last Saturday.

Judging by his track record and manifesto commitments four more years of Boris Johnson won’t be great for cycling, but it need not be disastrous. Johnson has signed up to both The Times Cycle Safe manifesto and LCC’s Go Dutch principles. That doesn’t mean he’ll necessarily deliver on those commitments, but it does make it easier for the cycling community to hold him to account. In the short term this will hopefully mean that at the very least some of the most dangerous junctions will belatedly be improved and the next generation of cycle ‘super’ highways ought to be an improvement on the last.

But whether it’s Boris or Ken who starts work at City Hall on Monday, the real opportunities are longer term. Creating the conditions for mass cycling to flourish in London will take time, and it will be at least four years before we find out whether London is to become a true cycling city. If it is, then the debate at the next election can’t be about cycle safety. London’s cyclists, building on the momentum gained during this election campaign, will need to be at the vanguard of a mass movement for a more liveable city, with everyday cycling at its heart. As I’ve argued before, we need a transport revolution not a cycling revolution.

Posted 3 May 2012 by Bruce

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Sustainable development, I presume

Suburbia

This post is by Neil Murphy, Director, Policy, Planning and Economics

Perhaps people are just bored with the subject, but the publication of the final National Planning Policy Framework at the end of March seems to have generated little other than mild relief from supporters and critics alike.  This despite a series of concessions from the draft version that, arguably, go further than the development industry and not as far as the conservation lobby wanted and certainly retain most of the flaws in the draft which I previously highlighted , especially the where-practicals that provide a get-out from anything too awkward.

One inclusion receiving strikingly little comment is the statement that “[t]he policies in paragraphs 18 to 219, taken as a whole, constitute the Government’s view of what sustainable development in England means in practice for the planning system”.  As a way of getting around the criticism that it had not defined what the sustainable development in favour of which it wanted a presumption actually is, this is ingenious: it’s whatever we say.  An adaptation of the Nixon defence, (“when the president does it, it is not illegal”), and the kind of evasion that could easily be the payoff in an episode of Yes, Minister, this amounts to any development allowed under the NPPF being, by definition, sustainable regardless of whether or not it makes any environmental or social sense (any development, of course, always makes economic sense to someone).  The competition is now surely on to see what execrable scheme can stretch the definition farthest, for what pitifully small recompense: whither the next ‘green’ business park with a wind turbine,some shiny PVs and 2,000 parking spaces?

For those of who think sustainable development has a bit more rigour – some of the rigour of, say, a nine-tenths cut in rich-world CO2 emissions by 2050 to avert catastrophic climate change – the NPPF represents just so much more of planners talking their material considerations while the world gets hotter, more unequal and increasingly prone to affluenza.  One thing that can be said for the NPPF, however, is that it ought to make development that really does seek to address the challenges of sustainable development (qua Brundtland rather than qua Pickles) a little bit easier too.  As we at Beyond Green prepare to submit our planning application at North Sprowston & Old Catton, north of Norwich, for what we believe will be the first authentically sustainable urban extension in the country this summer, we hope to hold ourselves to higher standards than the NPPF does.

Posted 3 May 2012 by Bruce

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Bruce McVean appointed as Living Streets Trustee

Living Streets

Bruce McVean, Integrated Design Manager at Beyond Green has been appointed to the board of trustees at Living Streets – a UK based charity that campaigns for pedestrians and promotes the creation of safe, attractive, enjoyable streets where it’s great to walk.

We take walking seriously at Beyond Green. For our own development projects and when we’re advising clients, the walkable neighbourhood is the basic building block of sustainable places – ensuring that all residents are in easy walking distance of the shops and services they need day-to-day. We believe that the creation of high quality streets and public spaces that make walking a pleasure and the natural choice for shorter journeys is an absolute must if we’re to break free from the social, economic and environmental costs of car dependency.

If Beyond Green had been around in 1929 we’d probably have joined the Pedestrians Association, which became Living Streets in 2001. Originally founded in response to the seemingly unchecked rise of the motor-car and the spiralling numbers of pedestrians being killed or seriously hurt on Britain’s roads, Living Streets now has local groups up and down the country. With over 1.6 million children involved in their Walk to School campaign each year, and a range of other campaigns and actions aimed at all walks of life, they continue to champion the rights of pedestrians up to the highest levels of government. This month they’re running the Great British Walking Challenge as part of National Walking Month.

Bruce is passionate about sustainable transport issues (he’s our resident transport specialist and founder of Movement for Liveable London) and is looking forward to helping Living Streets make our towns and cities great places to walk.

Posted 2 May 2012 by Bruce

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A breath of corporate fresh air

Unilever Sust Living Plan Cover

 

This piece is written by Jonathan Smales, Executive Chairman of Beyond Green

Last Wednesday I joined Unilever’s Sustainable Living Lab – a novel on-line debate facilitated by GlobeScan. The purpose was to reflect on some key themes in Unilever’s bold and innovative sustainable living strategy, marking the first anniversary of its publication.

The first thing to note, it seems to me, is what a remarkable cultural phenomenon this is in the field of sustainability. When I was MD of Greenpeace UK in the 1980s major corporations were of course inherently the bad guys: evasive, carefree and careless, unapproachable megaliths which had no discourse on environmental issues still less sustainability. Unless and until attacked on a specific campaigning issue they had little or nothing to say about the environment.

Waves of change came and went from Elkington and Hailes’ ‘new consumer’ of the late 1980’s and Schmidheiny and Timberlake’s World Business Council for Sustainable Development at and beyond Rio, to later work on corporate accountability and environmental reporting in the 90’s. This work laid the foundations for what is arguably now a flowering of myriad big business initiatives in sustainability. We’ve gone from the environment being ignored to becoming a reputational threat, to a marketing opportunity, to what is now seen in the best corporations as a great opportunity. If climate change is the greatest market failure the world has seen let’s create new markets. If aid can’t solve poverty let’s start environmentally benign new businesses that employ people and generate revenue. If the old technology threatens life on earth let’s quickly invent and design some new kit.

This is not to waft my inner Dr Pangloss airily over what is an area still fraught with profound contradictions, huge gaps between promise and delivery and, let’s be honest, continued widespread corporate negilgence. But would that we had a government that put sustainable living right at the heart of its programme as has Unilever? Would that we had a national equivalent of M & S’s Plan A. Would that we looked deep into our whole manufacturing process and examined cradle-to-cradle with the rigour of InterfaceFlor.

Beyond Green’s own philosophy is captured in the phrase, ‘How Shall We Live?’ The challenges of the 21st Century are so urgent and so different that we need remarkable change at remarkable speed. And it is no longer possible, if indeed it ever was, to be serious about sustainability without re-considering how we live well (individually and collectively) and with far greater social justice, but with a carbon and wider environmental footprint one-tenth of that we impose on the world today. We can re-design our cities, de-carbonise our energy grids and reconfigure the world’s agriculture…but there is no technological panacea in sustainability. It is not a design problem per se. We must embrace the challenge – indeed the opportunity – of living differently. And this is why Unilever’s work is a breath – even a blast – of corporate fresh air.

Posted 30 April 2012 by Bruce

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Bruce McVean to speak at Newcastle Cycling Campaign on 12th June

Newcastle cycling campaign2

If not now, when? Prospects for a cycling revolution in 2012-13

Bruce McVean, Principal Consultant at Beyond Green will be speaking at Newcastle Cycling Campaign’s quarterly meeting on the evening of 12th June. His presentation will consider whether 2012 will mark a turning point for mass cycling in the UK.

See the Newcastle Cycling Campaign website for details.

Posted 10 April 2012 by Bruce

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Disgusted with Tunbridge Wells

RitzCinema

This piece is written by Jonathan Smales, Executive Chairman of Beyond Green.

Good friend and Beyond Green associate Paul Murrain mailed me a copy of an AP release yesterday reporting the alarming increase in greenhouse gases between 2009 and 2010. Apparently the rise of 6% is the fastest increase on record, equivalent to an extra 564 million tons of carbon which itself is a number bigger than the emissions form all but three of the world’s countries – China, the US and India (link to article HERE).  This is a sign of ‘how feeble the world’s efforts have been at slowing man-made global warming’. One commentator, Chris Field from Stanford, asks in the light of this astonishing increase whether we might need to look beyond the International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) ‘worst case scenarios’ for global climate to ‘something more extreme’.

But rather than look beyond the IPCC let’s look a little closer to home. After a tiring day at work and despite the grim news on carbon (which actually was no big surprise) rather than stay at home and do something sensible (and low carbon) like read or listen to music, my partner and I drove to the cinema in Tunbridge Wells. Normally when we go out we travel 5 miles to the lovely cinema on the high street in Uckfield but we wanted to see Stephen Soderbergh’s ‘Contagion’. The journey turned out to be a horror show cameo of how mixed up and plain stupid things have become with regard to the messy but vital trinity of travel, town planning and carbon.

At first we couldn’t get out of the drive of our house because cars were speeding along the road through the village with its token 30 mph speed limit at what must have been at least 50 mph; presumably they were in enthusiastic pursuit of former Transport Secretary Phillip Hammond’s advice cum admonition, offered in defence of his proposal to increase motorway speed limits to 80 mph, to ‘get into the fast lane of the global economy’.

Arriving eventually in Tunbridge Wells we were sent on a cook’s tour of the town wiggling this way and that for mile upon mile, exploring all manner of suburbs and dead ends. After several wrong turns we found ourselves lost! Stranded, bemused and spooked in a giant, out-of-town, hybrid shopping centre, business park, entertainment complex. With no obvious landmarks (all the glass and steel sheds look exactly the same but for the luminous corporate logos polluting the night sky), normal
street patterns nowhere to be seen, legibility zero, people nil, alienation at max, we jiggled around haplessy until miraculously after half-an-hour of disorientation and lots of iPhone wayfinding we ’arrived’ at the cinema. At first we weren’t sure it was a cinema – it could have been a car showroom, a tile centre or perhaps a Staples. Surrounded by a vast car park with row upon row of cars  (but still strangely no people to be seen) we made our way to the garish entrance to be greeted by massed ranks of snacks, sweets and video games illuminated by a power station load of garish lighting. Still no people.

Now, apparently, Tunbridge Wells used to have a charming cinema in its centre, close to proper cafes and restaurants, shops, bus routes and the like. But at some point in the last 20 years the town spewed important parts of itself into that carbon hungry, car-frenzied, car-dependent, hybrid business park jobbie. With transport representing c.25% of our carbon footprints (and growing) how can there be any place for these no-place, remote, soulless, commercial theme parks. They take the heart out of towns, create congestion, destroy character, reduce social interaction and drive up carbon emissions. What’s the opposite of ’win-win’? If they can be allowed in a beautiful town like Tunbridge Wells (where one of the MPs, Greg Clarke is a Planning/Localism Minister in government incidentally), what chance elsewhere? And what do we do with them once carbon has a proper price and people can no longer afford the frequent private travel. ‘Re-purposing’ (as the Americans say) one of those monsters is beyond belief. Except maybe the sheds could be used for carbon capture? Or maybe we could move into these sealed environments as safe havens when the climate outside in real places has become too fierce?

The film was rubbish incidentally. Don’t go. and especially don’t go there.

 

Posted 7 November 2011 by Admin

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Richard Kendall speaks at Imperial College on water neutrality

SuDS Hammarby water feature

Beyond Green Managing Director Richard Kendall recently spoke at an event hosted by Imperial College in London on 21st September.  The theme of the event was water sensitivity in urban developments, with a panel of experts being represented from DEFRA and ICL academics. Richard was the sole representative from the development industry. Prior to a Q&A session, he talked about Beyond Green Developments aspirations to achieve water neutrality (using the same amount of potable water after development had finished across the area) at their Broadlan project in North Norwich.

The key catalysts for achieving this aim were a rainwater harvesting ring following the site’s natural contours which channel water below ground and through over-ground water features, the use of green water (water that is dyed green and delivered through nonstandard pipes) recycling for flushing loos and irrigating green infrastructure, the introduction of water consumption displays and progressive pricing strategies, and a comprehensive network of SuDS (sustainable drainage systems) based on existing topographical sub-catchments for surface water drainage.  The Environment Agency has been helpful in terms of supporting Beyond Green’s ambition as the planning process evolves.  We hope for continued support as we turn these ambitious ideas into reality.

 

Posted 5 October 2011 by Joshua

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Jonathan Smales to take part in sustainable place making debate

smales speaking

Beyond Green executive chairman Jonathan Smales has been invited to sit on the panel of an upcoming discussion focused on sustainable place making.  Put on by Hermes Real Estate group and held at Kings Cross Central on the 2nd of November, the event looks to provide a platform for an engaging dialogue on current and future trends in urban development.  With experience working on ambitious sustainable developments of significant scale, Smales has established himself as one of the UK’s premier voices in producing places that feature high qualities of life with minimal ecological footprints.  His insights and recommendations will be featured during this panel discussion.

If interested in attending this event, please RSVP to Maggie Agememnonos at m.agamemnonos@hermes.co.uk.  Doors are at 4:30PM with a 5:00 start time.

The discussion will take place The German Gymnasium, Kings Cross Central, 26 Pancras Road, London N1C 4TB.  An RPI awards ceremony and drinks reception will follow.

Posted 16 September 2011 by Joshua

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Beyond Green director joins ambitious 10:10 campaign

AB001

10:10, the inspirational global climate campaign founded by Franny Armstrong, has just announced big new plans to tackle carbon emissions from individuals, businesses and countries in the months and years to come. Fortunately, we think they’ll be in safe hands, since we’ve also just learnt that Angela Bryant, a former director of Beyond Green, is to take up the position of new executive director and help them achieve these goals!

Angela Bryant joins the 10:10 team with over 12 years’ experience in brand and marketing from the corporate world. Most recently in Beyond Green she has spent her time project managing some of Beyond Green Strategies bigger consulting projects, and she’s already got exciting plans to take this ambitious campaign to the next level. She’ll also be among brilliant company, since she’ll be taking up the executive director position alongside a new chair of the campaign and one of the country’s best-known environmentalists, Tony Juniper.

We’re really excited about Angela’s new job and wish her very well.

Posted 22 April 2011 by Admin

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