Urban sustainability must not forget social issues such as housing justice

The debate about #urban #sustainability often focuses on environmental issues. But falling school rolls and a dire shortage of #affordable housing in cities such as London are ringing alarms bells that the city will soon be socially #unsustainable.

There is something worrying going on with London’s population especially in the inner-city boroughs. This is not new news, as many government agencies, councils and the media have been tracking it. But there has been little discussion about how this affects the city’s sustainability as a functioning economic social and cultural unit.

A report by London Councils, which represents the capital’s boroughs, summarised the extent of the issue in January. It said London boroughs were forecasting a drop in demand of 7,904 places across reception and Year 7 — the primary school period — between 2023/24 and 2027/28

In particular, it forecast a drop of 3,864 children to fill reception classes (the first year of primary school), which it said was roughly equivalent to a drop of 128 reception classes. This creates a financial challenge for a council as a reduction in pupils is having an impact on the amount of funding it receives, forcing it to make harsh decisions such as reducing staff numbers, ending extra services or even deciding to close or merge schools. Local newspapers in London are full of stories about school mergers.

But this is not a blog about education issues; it is relevant because of the concern it raises about a shrinking workforce. The state system has traditionally provided many key workers such as nurses teachers and public transport drivers.  Workers are already commuting increasingly long distances but, at some point, employers will find that unsustainable. This will apply to migrant workers who will increasingly take on this roles.

These demographic and economic trends have been in place for some time so it is unlikely that a change of political control will change much in the short term. And even if city leaders wanted to start their policy initiatives tomorrow, the system of local government in the UK leaves them with little power or resource.

Affordable homes

So change would be have to be achieved over the long term. What would its ingredients be? The first is to invest in the construction of more homes, and particularly ones prices at an affordable level.

But the countryside outside cities like London is protected by a Green Belt. We can create more homes but building upwards, but that is expensive. The logical step is to relax restrictions on the Green Belt and allow for densification around the existing transport stations in the Green Belt. The relaxation should also include handing over land that is in the belt but is industrial wasteland.

The second is to use the tax system to extract more of the value that accrues when land is handed over for residential development. If councils could levy a property tax that would enable them to fund local services such as transport and education.

Third, we could replace the current development control system that requires any change of use to be granted planning permission with one that sets out the types of development allowed in a certain area — and reduces the need for planning decisions to be made, and therefore room for opposition to grow. There are other ideas such as imposing private sector rent controls and ending the right to buy council homes, but both would likely become time-consuming political football matches.

But in the immediate term there are signs of hope. The London Community Land Trust last year opened Citizens House, an 11-home, genuinely and permanently affordable housing project in Sydenham, Lewisham, south London — its first. After years of campaigning, the Mayor of London told Lewisham council to work with the CLT to find unused land. The family homes built on that sliver of land cost £215,000 and £272,500, far below the open market rates.

On the edge of the North Circular road, a 0.58 hectare plot owned by Transport for London was developed as part of the Mayor of London’s Small Sites, Small Builders programme. The eye-catching development, Edgewood Mews, designed by award-winning architect Peter Barber, now hosts more than 100 homes of which more than half are affordable.

But these are drops in the ocean. A radical reform of the urban housing market will be needed eventually, and hopefully before cities like London turn into childless deserts.

Cities show they are climate change ‘doers’ while nations sit on their hands

Cities have consistently shown more drive to achieve climate goals than their national overlords, as exemplified by the US cities’ Chicago Charter to hit the key targets even as ex-President Trump pulled out the Paris Agreement. A new report by UN Habitat shows that just a quarter of national commitments included strong urban contributions confirms this.

Research by UN Habitat unveiled during the opening of the UNEA-6 Cities and Regions Summit on Friday 23 February revealed evidence of a lack of city-focused content in the nationally determined contributions (NDC) that governments must make as part of the Paris Agreement process.

Just 27 per cent of commitments included what UN Habitat called “strong” urban elements, which would indicate an ambition to leverage the potential of cities to achieve national decarbonisation targets. Two-thirds registered either low or no urban content, showing that their cities’ potential was being overlooked by the majority of countries.

Interestingly the governments that were at the high end included low- and middle-income countries such as Colombia, Jordan, Morocco, Sierra Leone and Rwanda. However national governments that fell short included high-income economies such as Australia, Canada, European Union member states, Japan and the United States. The old proverb, “do as I say, not as I do” comes to mind.

Commitments came from around a third of the 72 nations that endorsed the Coalition for High Ambition Multilevel Partnerships for Climate Action (CHAMP) at the COP28 climate summit in Dubai late last year agreeing to include cities and towns in their action plans and to foster collaboration between national and subnational levels.

Clearly more focus is needed: cities are home to over 50 per cent of the world’s population and are responsible for 70 per cent of greenhouse gas emissions. Indeed, the 50 largest urban emitting areas account for almost 40 per cent of all urban greenhouse gas emissions.

UN Habitat says there is now a clear opportunity for governments to integrate urban priorities, such as mitigation and adaptation measures tailored to urban areas, in the next NDC revision cycle in 2025, which will culminate at the COP30 summit in Belém, Brazil in November of that year.

The C40 Cities group of urban majors and governors was quick to seize on the report, saying that the findings demonstrated the need for many nations to go further and seize the opportunity that cities offer to achieve decarbonisation targets. Multi-level partnerships between local and national levels could help to close the gap between current commitments and global climate goals, they said.

As Yvonne Aki-Sawyerr, the C40 Co-Chair and Mayor of Freetown, Sierra Leone, puts it, mayors and governors are “doers” when it comes to climate action, pointing to areas such as decarbonising public transport systems and combating emissions from waste.

But while city leaders are nimble, progressive and responsive, national governments appear to be sitting on their hands even as the climate emergency worsens. Let us hope that country leaders take a leaf from their urban equivalents ahead of the next round of NDC commitments.

Climate gentrification will be the latest plague for poorer urban households

Plans to #redevelop a rundown #neighbourhood that has for years occupied now much-sought after higher land in Miami highlights the risk that #climate #gentrification leads to poorer families being displaced. A documentary focused on one regeneration scheme that may point the way for other wealthy cities.

Miami in Florida, US, is in the crosshairs of the current climate emergency. According to the city’s government, by 2060 the sea level is projected to rise 14 to 34 inches — or as much as 0.9 metres — above the 1992 mean sea level. “Residents may experience flooding in their daily lives due to heavy rainfall, sometimes referred to as rain bombs, and seasonal high tides”. But those estimates were made in 2015 so the current outlook will doubtless be worse.

As coastal cities read the runes of climate change, households and property investors will start eying up land that will give them immunity from the rising water levels. One such site is Liberty Square, a historically Black neighbourhood in the north-west of the city three metres above sea level. In 2015, officials at Miami-Dade County unveiled a $74 million plans to raze and rebuild the estate of 709 housing units that then housed some 600 families or 2,000 people. None would be displaced and would be part of the new 1,900-home community.

Nine years on and just a third, or 200 families, have been housed in the new buildings while a chunk of the new leases have been taken by newcomers prepared to pay the market-level rates, according to a feature-length documentary that has aired by PBS in the US (although may not be watchable outside the US, sadly). More than 200, often low-income, Black families left after receiving housing vouchers to use on flats in the private market. As one resident tells the filmmakers: “When I was a child, my grandfather always was saying they're going to come take Liberty City because we don't flood.”

This is a human form of a phenomenon that academics and the media have called climate gentrification, the idea that climate change make some zones or streets more desirable and thus more valuable because of their relative immunity to its negative impacts. This might be because of its geographic qualities — higher ground, in plain English — or the resilience of the buildings. The rise in value will encourage developments that will be too expensive for the current residents.

An academic study into Miami-Dade county that likely coined climate gentrificationforecast (but which did not specifically look at Liberty Square) found that since 2000, prices had risen for areas with higher elevations and a faster rate than those closer to sea level. Another found that new green resilient infrastructure such as rain gardens, green roofs, and climate-proof parks tended to be concentrated in the wealthier and gentrified neighbourhoods and near to others that were in the process of gentrifying.

Finally, a study into post-Katrina New Orleans found a significant positive association between ground elevation and gentrification. Crucially the authors concluded that “high elevation, low-income, demographically transitional areas” were at highest risk for future climate gentrification, which would become key given the vulnerability of coastal cities to forecast likely flooding thanks to intense rainfall, coastal storms and rising sea levels.

The latter point is likely to be more relevant in European cities that may be less prone to flooding but have been more likely to embark on low-carbon development programmes. Here, urban planners target areas for redevelopment that have a low environmental performance and therefore also are more likely to be home to poorer households. The gentrification happens as either some households are forced to relocate because their home is demolished, while others will see their rents rise as owners of the renovated dwellings are able to charge higher rents or sales prices.

The potential for rising urban inequality and what academics call climate injustice, is immense.

The lesson for policymakers who care about such things is to make sure they take account of the relative wealthy and economic power of those affected and ensure they the community’s capacity of adapt is strengthened. That way they can address local climate risks, while supporting urban sustainability and curbing the risk of social inequalities as a result.