EU awards reveal grassroots energy of fight against climate change

From making waste collection attractive to reinvigorating #urban water fountains, winners of a European Union design award show how connecting people to place is vital for creating #sustainable #cities.

For the last four years the European Union has given a platform to innovative projects and concepts by citizens from the EU and beyond that connect the goals of the European Green Deal with delivering benefits to local communities.

On 12 April, a dozen of some 50 projects that had been shortlisted based on almost 30,000 public votes were recognised in the 2024 New European Bauhaus Prizes for contributing to a “more sustainable, inclusive and beautiful future”.

Not all were city-based but, as this this is a blog about sustainable cities, it will focus on the projects that aimed to unlock transformation in an urban environment. The projects encompassed everything from waste collection to rooftop gardens. But a common theme among many was a desire to engage local residents in the solution — in other words, the energy came from the ground up rather than from the top down.

A good example is the project that won the prize awarded by a public vote. Map4Water in the once war-torn capital of Bosnia and Herzegovina, Sarajevo, maps public drinking water fountains and engages groups to share the upgrading and supervision of those undervalued public utilities.

It uses a pilot digital platform to show residents and visitors where drinking water was still available. It provided the basis for the creation of a partnership of stakeholders between citizens, visitors and public authorities to take charge of caring for and maintaining the water quality and ensuring public access.

In the Bulgarian capital Sofia, locals, experts and artists have collaborated to turn an office complex into an active community space. Concrete to Culture, the runner-up in its category (Regaining a Sense of Belonging), is a long-term initiative to turn an office complex into an active community space through a collective design process that brings together locals, experts, and artists.

It transformed a bare, underused 3,000m2 concrete rooftop of a business office complex that was previously closed to the public, into active space for recreation, work, play, and culture. Design and cultural programming were geared towards local needs, especially families in the adjacent residential area. More than 10,000 visitors came to the events marking the new spaces’ opening.

Breadth and depth

Re-sourcing Commons by Social Design Vienna, another runner-up, refurbished a public park in the Austrian capital that was located in an area with many social housing units and an above-average number of young and old people, but which was underused because its care was overlooked and had little to offer local people.

Building on a participatory process that the project leaders said revealed a strong desire for a park offering “quality for everyone”, residents were invited to contribute ideas, criticism, comments or requests. The park — that previously did not work as a social space and fuelled xenophobic resentments —is now a functioning small micro-centre for neighbours from different communities, nations and generations.

One final project that did not win a prize is worth mentioning. In Tallinn, Estonia, The Invisible Visible looks at how correct sorting of waste can mitigate a key part of urban pollution. Waste containers are an essential part of every city, yet they have developed a reputation of being an unattractive feature, mostly due to their unpleasant contents.

The project used technology developed by an SME, WasteLocker. Residents of the Nõmme municipality used their smartphones to photograph waste, feeding into WasteLocker's image detection system. By involving citizens directly in data collection, the data gathering fosters both community engagement and awareness about waste management.

The breadth and depth of the entrants, in terms of their ambitions, their innovation and geographical spread, show there is huge energy at a grassroots level. It also acts as a reminder of the lacklustre performance of some who have their hands on the levers of power and decision-making. The full list of winners and runners-up is here.

Concrete: brutally beautiful but in need of a climate reboot

#Concrete has proved to be a very versatile material for constructing buildings that can last for several decades. But its environmental impact has led to pressure to find more eco-friendly versions for truly #sustainable #cities.

For many of us concrete buildings are things of beauty. Thanks to its versatility and adaptability, concrete can be used to create a limitless number of shapes and acute angles. One of the most famous forms is brutalism known to Londoners via the Barbican Centre and the Trellick Tower among hundreds of other examples.

An exhibition of the winners of a photographic competition, Concrete in Life, based on a shortlist of some 21,000 images from around the world taken in 2023 ends this week (13 April) after being extended due to popular demand. Luckily the winning and shortlisted images will be available on the sponsor’s website.

The winning image in the Urban Concrete category is of the Armstrong Rubber Building in New Haven, Connecticut, which photographer Owen Davies describes as having “striking geometry and sheer mass” with a  “wonderfully sculpted concrete façade”. The overall winner was a captivating image of children playing with kites on a large, stepped concrete ramp at Mexico’s Teopanzolco Cultural Center.

It is no secret, however, that the production of concrete has a major environmental impact. Each year, more than 4 billion tonnes of cement are produced, accounting for around 8 per cent of global CO2 emissions. According to research, to bring the cement sector in line with the Paris Agreement on climate change, its annual emissions will need to fall by at least 16 per cent by 2030.

Filling in solutions

The industry is understood to be keen to make their product more eco efficient and ideas abound. One is the use of green concrete that contains fewer natural resources and more inputs known as supplementary cementitious materials such as fly ash, slag cement, and silica fume.

Another important innovation is permeable concrete, which can mitigate the impact that traditional concrete has during heavy rainfalls of allowing the water to run off into drains, compounding the impact of rising river levels that can cause floods. Concrete can also contribute to climate change by adding to the “urban heat island” effect that sees temperatures peak higher in built-up areas. This can be countered by so-called cool concrete that includes materials that shine solar energy back into the atmosphere.

One study identified a host of innovative designs and practices. These include self-healing concrete that can autonomously carry out repairs, 3D-printed concrete that can save energy and waste by applying the exact quantity needed to any surface, photocatalytic concrete that contains compounds that can break down pollutants in the air, and insulated concrete forms that include a foam to provide temperature insulation.

There are also practices and construction methods that can reduce the environmental impact. One that is common to all polluting activity is carbon capture, usage and storage (CCUS) whereby the emissions generated are captured and then either used or stored, usually underground to prevent its release into the atmosphere. Another is electrification of building vehicles and operations, reducing the need for fossil fuels: this YouTube video in Oslo (at 2’15”) shows how it can be done.

But the land development industry, architects and planners can also make a contribution by looking to find ways to retrofit and upgrade buildings rather than demolishing existing structures, which releases carbon locked into the building itself. The Greater London Authority’s London Plan supports that, and the City of London has adopted a “retrofit first policy. The latter cites the example of the proposed One Exchange Square redevelopment that it says will retain 90% of the existing structure including foundations, leading to a 62.2% reduction in carbon emissions.

The demand for buildings and infrastructure is set to continue, matched by a growing desire that they be delivered in as least an environmentally damaging way as possible. The hope will be that innovative advances in both building materials and construction techniques combine with tougher industry standards and tighter planning policies to reduce the climate impact and lock in sustainability.

If so, entrants into future Concrete in Life awards will show safe, durable and resilient structures that underpin the goals of minimising waste and energy and embracing concepts of renewability and circularity.

Global food systems cities depend on harm the climate, but ‘local’ may not always mean that

Given the immense impact that #food production has on climate change, it is no surprise that #localism is seen as a key ingredient in a #sustainable city. But the line between what can be perceived as local and #global can get blurred.

The global system of food production has increased production and brought new products and tastes to cities around the world. But looking at the impacts of the food system globally, agriculture and fisheries drive significant environmental change, which undermines the UN's sustainable development goals (SDGs).

The industrialised food systems have led to around 60% of global biodiversity loss on land while 33% of commercial fish populations are over exploited. They are also responsible for 30% of greenhouse gas emissions. Yes at the same time, a third of all food is not eaten, instead going to waste between the points of production and consumption.

Projections by the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization show that feeding a likely world population of 9.1 billion people in 2050 will require raising overall food production by some 70% compared with output in 2007. Another way of looking at it is that urban expansion in many parts of the world is taking place more rapidly than the food system may be able to cope with.

This is why international arenas such as the UN’s New Urban Agenda have highlighted the need to support urban agriculture and farming and to encourage responsible, local and sustainable consumption and production. One of the responses to the desire for urban sustainability is the idea of localised urban food systems and their potential for providing climate resilience, community building, knowledge sharing, as well as just providing food. The idea is to create an alternative to the existing food system by moving production and delivery nearer to the point of consumption that is economically viable, environmentally sound and socially just.

Blurred lines

One example is the farmers’ market, which is ubiquitous across London and in other UK cities, where producers bring their fruit, veg, breaks and meat products directly to consumers. However, their small scale and high quality mean the prices can be higher than in the shops, leading to them being dismissed as accessible only for wealthier parts of the local community, not all.

The veggie box is another response to a desire for more local supplies as well as finding an outlet for products that are rejected by supermarkets for being imperfect in some way and thus ending up in landfill. They often come with details of the origin of the fruit and vegetables, which indicates the absence of “air miles” in their delivery and also provides a connection between the consumer and the farmer.

However, the issue of the environmental impact of the supply of food is tricky. Some consumers feel understandably uncomfortable with the ideas of buying produce airlifted from faraway countries to provide out-of-season options in the supermarket. However local suppliers might indeed be using more intensive and less efficient systems of production or transport.closer to atives “depending on how and where they were grown”.

A long read by the philosopher Julian Baggini in the Financial Times gave a useful insight into the complexity of these calculations. He cites studies showing how imported foods, such as lettuces grown in Spanish fields during the British winter, have a lower carbon footprint than local alternatives "depending ion where and how they were grown".

Local is therefore not always sustainable. Baggini points to nitrogen storage technology that enables British suppliers to deliver locally produced items later, but which may lead to greater greenhouse gas emissions than fruit flown in from South America in the off season.

Another hazard is in the meaning of local. The same article talks to the owner of an independent Bristol delicatessen and tapas bar, El Comado (which the FT named in 2021 as one of the top 50 food stores in the world). Owner David Pavon says that in his view local means benefitting the local economy. However the owner of a nearby veggie box delivery service says shoppers should ask local businesses “how local really are you? What does that mean?”

The line between what can be perceived as local and global will inevitably become blurred and may sometimes be non-existent. Shoppers can be forgiven for struggling to work out what a local urban food system looks like.