Hosting ‘Future of Cities’ Sessions at the Blue Earth Summit
The Blue Earth Summit is an incredibly energetic and enjoyable event focussing on battling climate change from a mainly ‘product’ perspective.
It is a cathedral to the green economy, with the ‘Merthyr Mermaid’, ice swimmer Cath Pendleton, to Supermarket Hero and MD of Iceland Richard Walker.
It was born from surfing and outdoors culture and you can feel it in the air - you’re more likely to bump into someone from Newquay than London. There’s a whole day dedicated to outdoor pursuits. It’s massively refreshing.
Duncan was invited to host two panels under the banner of ‘Future of Cities’ and it was interesting that there weren’t more on the line up or that there weren’t more urban leaders and practitioners in attendance (people to invite for next year!).
He interviewed Camilla ter Haar from the Klosters Forum - who bring together 100 specialists from a range of backgrounds, all working in way towards decarbonising the planet - and they held a ‘mini’ Klosters getting ideas from the assembled people about the innovative things they’ve seen - we spoke about Bangladeshi floating homes and tree growing project Sponge City in China.
On another day Duncan moderated a panel about what we can learn from Cities and in particular host city Bristol and the West.
He was joined by Matthew Pencharz from Voi Technology, who was formerly Deputy Mayor of London for the Environment (under Boris Johnson), Jon Burke, formerly Cabinet Member for Transport and Environment at the London borough of Hackney and currently leading on Climate Change at Gloucester City Council and Stephen Bashford, Director of Skills and Economy at the West of England Combined Authority. Lizzi Testani the CEO of the Bristol Green Capital Partnership was due to join us but couldn’t make it but passed on her valuable insights (see below).
Five insights that arose
1. Secrets to Success
Voi have been running an eScooter trial with Bristol, which has been one of the most successful in the UK, with 4,000 scooters across the city.
What has been the reason for the success? That the city and Voi have worked together to make it convenient, not just as a supplier and client but as partners. Together they asked, where would people need scooters, where would they want to travel, and then designed the service accordingly.
2. How do you get people out of cars?
How do you get people to change from petrol cars to other forms of transport?
Jon Burke put it well that you could do every ‘supply side’ thing imaginable - build cycle lanes across every city - but people would still want to drive. So the change has to be on the demand side: policies to make other forms of transport more attractive (aka sticks beat carrots!).
3. Making the changes
How do you go about making these changes?
Politicians have to be brave - but the key thing is to remember you are doing this for the majority in the future. Matthew made the point that the majority of people will want to keep it once it’s there - or better put, no one will want to go back to the traffic, the air quality.
There are issues around the implementation of LTNs where this is debatable and fierce discussions rage on about these partly because we don’t have anything like the infrastructure and transport mix to replace what a car can give you in most areas of the UK. (So carrots are still important!)
4. Importance of tying in skills development
Steven Bashford highlighted how the West of England Combined Authority had been looking at these green industries carefully - job role by job role - to be able to develop skills locally to give West of England people opportunities to be part of this growth. They have also used their Green Recovery Fund of £50m to make systemic long term changes to support new types of green jobs that previously didn’t exist.
It’s the forensic, detailed approach that Stephen is taking that really surprised us.
5. What is underpinning Bristol’s success
Lizzi was unable to make it but sent through some thoughts on Bristol and what makes it such a unique place and success story, that we shared at the session.
Bristol is a good size: a city, but still quite small – making it easy to collaborate. It is home to a large partnership - Bristol Green Capital Partnership that Lizzi runs - with over 1,000 members from across all sectors.
Public concern on climate is high, which influences our politics – Bristol also has a notable history of dissent and willingness to protest. The progressive combined authorities and local authorities work well together.
Being European Green Capital in 2015 was also a big catalyst (ref: the 2012 Olympics for east London).
Working with Remarkable City
We at Remarkable City would love to work with the Bristol ecosystem further and other areas of the country on this exciting and important area of work. Going further, we think that Bristol institutions such as the Bristol Green Capital Partnership and the Future Leap are completely applicable elsewhere.
We helped establish the Zero Emissions Network in East London and there are parallels, but in Bristol it is the non-governmental ecoystem that seems to be innovating at a faster pace.
We can’t wait for next year’s Blue Earth Summit. Thanks to Christine and the team for putting on an inspiring event. We would love to come back next year with an even larger ‘Cities’ presence.