Four trends in sustainable cities for Twenty Twenty-Four

The new year got off to a rough start for #sustainable #cities with floods hitting conurbations in the UK and other countries. But the journey towards #sustainability is one of long-term progress and, in that light, I highlight four positive trends for #2024.

The global shift towards urban centres and away from rural areas is set to continue. The city population share doubled from 25 per cent in 1950 to about 50 per cent in 2020, and it is projected to slowly increase to 58 per cent over the next 50 years, according to UN-Habitat. With that greater population comes a louder collective voice that city leaders can project within the global geopolitical arena. Expect them to push their agenda for action in key areas such as the COP29 climate summit towards the end of the year.

The second trend will be the continued exploration by both tech firms and policymakers into ways to develop so-called smart cities that improve urban liveability for all residents. One focus will be making Wi-Fi accessible to all citizens irrespective of wealth. The turn of the year saw Baltimore City unveil plans for FreeBmoreWiFi, a free public Wi-Fi network that will encompass all recreation centres by the end of the year with ambition for citywide access. London mayor Sadiq Khan has allocated funds to investigate technology such as an OpenRoaming network, which could allow users to seamlessly connect to Wi-Fi networks. But that is just one aspect of digitalisation that could impact with other potential areas including city lighting, Internet of Things (IoT) and building design.

Improving transport and making it more environmentally efficient is the third area to look to for progress. The Paris city government is pushing ahead with plans to discourage SUVs by raising parking changes while London’s Khan is pushing ahead with the ULEZ charge for high emitting vehicles, which he says has led to a reduction in those vehicles on the road. But making life hard for drivers is only a small part of the agenda: this must be matched by significant investment in alternative energy vehicles, such as hydrogen and battery-electric, sustainable public transport and in infrastructure for cyclists and pedestrians. The omens are positive: IoT analysis firm Berg Insight estimates that the number of deployed vehicles in bikesharing schemes will grow at an annual rate of 8.2 per cent from 23.7 million at the end of 2022 to 35.2 million by 2027.

Last but not least, and perhaps most controversial is a hope that the move towards the concept of the 15-minute city will regain momentum this year. The idea, which was proposed by a Paris-based urbanist, Carlos Moreno, is that inhabitants can access the services they need to live, learn and thrive within a quarter-hour walk without the need for a car trip. However, towards the end of last year the UK Conservative government pushed back against the idea and appeared to borrow from conspiracy theories that local councils were deciding how and when people would go to the shops. This has tied in with opposition to local traffic neighbourhoods that aim to make certain streets car-free. But the UK is only one jurisdiction and the idea has caught the attention of communities across the world.

New year, New events

This year will also be a lively one for sustainable city events. The new Norman Foster Foundation will hold its first public event on 22 January in Madrid where the eponymous architect will introduce a debate on lessons learned from research into building and maintaining self-contained habitats beyond our planet for cities back on Earth. March will see Sustainable Cities in Action, a new annual forum with a particular focus on the MEASA region (Middle East, Africa and South Asia) at Expo City Dubai.

Livable Cities, an initiative between the City University of London, AMPS (Architecture. Media, Politics, Society) and City Tech – City College of New York, will hold a conference in June. The interdisciplinary event will include discussion of design and planning, resilience and sustainability, urban development and city economies and many other issues. There are doubtless countless other events at a global, national, regional and local level. So despite the rocky start, 2024 promises to be a year of further exploration and discovery for proponents of sustainable cities.

Digital tools can manage ‘overtourism’ but some places may just get too hot

Urban tourism is a massive global industry that supports economic growth and employment but can bring environmental harm to popular cities. Seville in Spain is looking at “smart” solutions to reduce the negative impacts of having so many tourists and move it towards being a sustainable city. However, at some point the city could just become too hot.

The southern Spanish city of Seville (Sevilla in Spanish) is a magnet for tourists. Its history as kingdoms under both Christian and Muslim rule, its three UNESCO world heritage sites and its outdoor culture, sunshine and dry heat  make it a go-to destination. As a result, an estimated 3 million visitors come every year to a city of around 750,000 residents.

As well as bringing wealth — almost a fifth of its annual economic output comes from tourism — and employment, this tourist influx poses the risk of adding to congestion and pollution in a city. Rather than try to limit the numbers of visitors through restrictions or higher tourist taxes, Seville has focused on the use of technology to boost the social, economic and environmental urban development of Seville through a set of innovative projects.

The city authorities have included tourism sustainability plans within their ambition to become a climate neutral city in 2030. It is working on state-of-the-art solutions to deal with high temperatures, in both public spaces and public buildings. The former includes the redevelopment of three streets in the La Macarena district as part of the Life Watercool project, which saw the pedestrianisation of the roads in September 2022.

The use of technology is ubiquitous. The city authority is creating an accessibility app to track and analyse data on movements and use that to design accessible routes between neighbourhoods. The city’s Smart Tourist System, combines, analyses, publishes, and extracts significant information from the tourist destinations and generates predictive analysis for visitors’ decision making. The city is investing in low-emission transport systems and high-capacity bus lines.

This is all impressive, likely to make a positive contribution, and indeed has won the city a share of the title of 2023 European Capital of Smart Tourism. Nevertheless, a visitor over the Christmas/ New Year period would have found the narrow streets of the pedestrianised centre crammed to bursting and queues of pre-ticketed visitors to the historic cathedral and Real Alcazar winding round the corners.

Gentrification concerns

It is unlikely these innovations will offset the impact on the resident population that mass tourism can bring as has been recorded in cities such as Venice and Amsterdam. Seville has certainly not been exempt and one research project found that residents felt they had lost the “right to everyday life” in the historic centre and become alienated from their local spaces.

There was a general a feeling of “forced displacement” as a result of gentrification among all participants that took part in interviews. Many cited “overtourism” and highlighted the practice of landlords terminating rent contracts in order to sell their properties to real estate businesses or to refurbish them to rent in the short-term tourist market.

This digital investment is also expensive. Another research project that looked at six destinations — but not Seville — found that becoming a sustainable tourism destination (STD) required a significant financial investment, which would only be feasible for large destinations with sufficient resources. By implication, this challenge is not within the reach of every city or only very few.

Too hot for tourists?

None of this is to criticise the well-intended actions and investments of policymakers in Seville, the Andalusian region, Spain and the EU for finding ways to make more sense of such a large influx of people. One project actually borrows from 1,000-year knowledge that water in underground tunnels cools the air around it. Called CartujaQanat, the system uses solar-powered pumps to draw the water through small pipes that run in front of fans to generate cold air, delivering a 10°C reduction of the temperature in open spaces.

But the harsh logic of the likely worsening impacts of climate change is that whatever adaptation measures in out in place, Seville could soon become too hot for visitors. It is already the victim of hazardous heatwaves such as Yago that saw temperatures peak at 42°C in June 2023. If the city and its region become too hot for visitors that will have a major impact on the economy. Given the importance of tourism to the economy, the authorities will soon have to look for more radical solutions.

Photos: Christmas auction at Smithfield's ahead of market’s move East

As Christmas beckons and attention spans shorten, this is a short piece mainly aimed at hosting pictures from Saturday’s (23 Dec 2023) meat auction at London’s #Smithfield #market — one of the last such annual events before it heads to the outer East End in 2027 or 2028.

Moving city centre markets that rely on road transport for both incoming deliveries and restaurateurs leaving with purchased goods make sense in terms of contributing towards #sustainability. It is hard to find figures, but the volume of deliveries would likely mean significant air pollution in a largely residential area close to both the Barbican and St Bartholemew’s Hospital.

As Nicholas Saphir, chair of the Agriculture and Horticulture Development Board, told MPs at an inquiry into London’s wholesale markets some20 years ago, vans at Smithfields at 10am had likely already been to New Billingsgate fish market and New Covent Garden fruit and flower markets. “It does not work in terms of congestion; we have wasted journeys,” he said.

Covent Garden moved decades ago to Battersea, while Billingsgate and New Spitalfields relocated from their inner London locations of Covent Garden and Lower Thames Street and Whitechapel to the Docklands and Leyton, respectively. But these two need to move again due to rising traffic volumes and land values, and in three or four years’ time, the three will share a home of a new 42-acre facility at the former coal port of Dagenham Dock.

While it makes evident environmental sense, there will inevitably be a general but unquantifiable feeling of sadness and loss that an iconic institution that has been part of the city and its same location for 800 years will move. The fact that similar markets in London and other cities — with the exception of Covent Garden — have tended to become anonymous retail or business areas.

This has been the case in other towns such as in New York City when the  Meatpacking District became an upmarket designer emporium while Tsukiji fish market, which relocated in October 2018 is likely to become a convention centre, hotels, and other facilities by the 2040s.

Paris’s Les Halles Market stopped being a popular all-night pit stop — as Smithfield still is with its pubs with early house licences — becoming another generic retail mall. The exodus of the fruit and veg traders was captured by the sculptor Raymond Mason in the late 1960s in a piece of artwork that now lives in the Tate Gallery.

The good news is that Smithfield will not become a retail park but instead one half will become the new home to the Museum of London, whose rather rundown home on the other side of the Barbican will become offices, and the other a food hall cum conference centre cum shared working space.

But enough about urban sustainability. As the clock ticks down to the mass sale of sides of beef, lamb, pigs heads and whole festive turkeys, here are a few photos of the Christmas Auction of 23 December 2023.

Eager shoppers gathered around the pallet "walkway" in Grand Avenue, the open road within the market, with some wearing animal-related hats. The butchers running the show received a big cheer before the meat went on show — lamb, beef and turkeys with prices from £10 to £50. Despite its name, it is not an auction as the butchers set the price. Bidders wave their cash in the air to get the traders' attention — and it has to be cash; no credit cards. Once sated the shoppers have to carry away their meat anyway they can.