Fundamental focus on social inclusion vital to future of sustainable cities, says new report

Equality and social inclusion must go hand in hand with climate protection and economic growth to ensure the long-term success of sustainable cities and a green recovery post-pandemic, says a new report published today (09 March 2021).

The new report now explores what’s necessary to ensure the long-term success of sustainable cities.

 

The Rethinking Sustainable Cities report highlights how the pandemic has resulted in a greater imperative to unify efforts and change our cities for the better, so they not only protect our planet but people, too.

Lockdown and social distancing measures have exposed limitations to our existing urban design. The inability to work and socialise safely has rendered many city centres empty. While a lack of access to green spaces in residential zones has caused a sense of claustrophobia.

In response, the report highlights that cutting carbon emissions is only one important piece of the puzzle when it comes to creating sustainable cities. Success also hinges on social inclusion and the wellbeing of residents being prioritised alongside both climate protection and economic growth.

The report explores the opportunities and challenges to achieving this balance and encourages governments, city planners, policymakers and businesses to seize this opportunity to fundamentally rethink how our cities work for people now and in the future.

It recommends the creation of a new unified blueprint for inclusive and environmentally sustainable city design which can be localised or replicated at scale. To deliver maximum value across all the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals, this will not only require rethinking the design of transport, infrastructure, housing and development projects, but also how impact and success is evaluated.

The Rethinking Sustainable Cities report is produced by leading technical and professional services firm Jacobs and London Transport Museum, in partnership with the international law firm Gowling WLG, global transportation company Thales,and mobility and logistics software solutions business PTV Group.

It draws on digital roundtable discussions with industry leaders, policymakers and academics throughout 2020 as part of Interchange, London Transport Museum’s thought leadership programme.

The report’s recommendations for establishing a blueprint for inclusive, sustainable cities include:

  • Redefining value to prioritise wellbeing and inclusion – For a green recovery to be successful, public and private sectors must commit to building inclusively. This is essential to ensure developments in technology and infrastructure do not unintentionally widen the wealth gap. Investing in less ‘desirable’ and often overlooked areas would improve value perception and promise fair and sustainable growth long-term. But to achieve this, a shift in how we evaluate projects is needed. Success can no longer be measured by immediate cost-benefit. Instead, value must be looked at through multiple lenses. These include social inclusion, reduced congestion, better air quality, improved health and environmental change.
  • Educating and empowering individuals to change their behaviours – Community engagement is essential to the long-term viability of sustainable cities and ensuring residents are not left behind. It must start early in the development process and focus on educating and empowering people to understand the long-term benefits of sustainable infrastructure projects, verses short term disruption. If individuals are personally contributing to positive change, they should personally profit from it, too. At a consumer level, new social digital currencies and tools that allow people to understand and change their behaviour - and reward them for doing so - should be embraced as powerful drivers for change.
  • Overhauling institutional governance to encourage new ways of working - Policy decisions have the power to change behaviour at every level. But more urgency is needed to drive us rapidly away from business as usual. The success of the plastic bag tax proves people are willing to make changes when it is made easy for them. By offering clearer taxation and pricing incentives, policymakers can make inclusive and sustainable options more attractive and widely available. In the UK, for example, reducing stamp duty for low-carbon homes could help to drive new market demand for existing housing stock to be retrofitted much more rapidly to reduce carbon emissions.
  • Repurposing existing urban infrastructure for multi-purpose use – To increase social value for residents and reduce waste, city planners should invest in adapting and building flexible multipurpose spaces. One suggestion is to build around a platform model, whereby work, leisure and residential spaces are connected digitally to optimise their usage and value. All new and retrofitted developments will need to be built with sustainability standards in mind, whether public or private, small or large-scale. For this to be successful, market demand and commercial expectations need to be aligned to new, unknown architectural models. City-makers will need to be trained to design differently. Individuals will need to have their minds changed about what a home or office looks like, too.
  • Harnessing the power of natural infrastructure – The pandemic has revealed how rigid our current city plans are, with distinct work, leisure and residential areas. Harnessing natural infrastructure within sustainable urban design offers an enormous opportunity to address this. Hardworking urban green spaces minimize pollution. They also control temperature and regulate air and water quality. But they can also be designed to deliver community cohesion, reduce crime rates and better mental health. For investment in natural infrastructure to take off though, a shift in mindset is needed. A shared and accepted language for the value of green infrastructure is essential. New funding must also be redirected to pilot projects to prove and quantify the added long-term value of holistic social, health and wellbeing.

Donald Morrison, Jacobs People & Places Solutions Senior Vice President Europe and Digital Strategies said, “The pandemic brought into sharp focus the importance of collaboratively designing bolder city infrastructure solutions that reinvent tomorrow and maximise long-term benefit and value to all of us socially, environmentally and economically. If we are to truly level up our society and build back better and more inclusively, we need to apply past learnings quickly and think carefully about the actions needed now to add tangible, long-term value to our cities and the people who live in them.”

Sam Mullins OBE, Director of London Transport Museum said, “The pandemic has been a defining moment in modern history, exposing limitations to the way we currently create and use our city spaces. Coupled with an impending climate emergency, it is clear we need to act quickly to rethink our vision of sustainable cities. Now is the time to take these learnings and apply them to transport, infrastructure and city-making projects before it is too late, creating value for the people who live in our cities now and in the future.”

Giles Clifford, Partner at Gowling WLG said, "Achieving sustainability is no longer optional for mankind, but essential.  Doing that effectively and rapidly in the city environment, where individual needs and collective actions have such a complex relationship, is a massive and intensely practical challenge. Just as in deploying the COVID vaccines, we need to move fast from abstract policy targets to the nuts and bolts of delivery. It is about individual and collective priorities and motivation, removing barriers and aligning objectives to a common goal. Dry-sounding concepts such as law, taxation, governance and subsidy can become the tools to forge the future – or if misused can thwart, confuse and hinder progress. It has been fascinating to be involved in the debates that have formed this report – these are issues that we must all engage with, hands-on and not just in theory."

Mark Garrity, Director of Strategy, Sales & Marketing for Thales in the UK said, “2020 was a year that many of us will want to forget, forcing changes to our everyday lives that will likely leave a permanent impact on us all. It is now in our hands to make sure that good can be grasped from this situation to create a more sustainable and inclusive future for London and other cities around the country. The challenge is how to harness the opportunities that change brings whilst putting people and their welfare at the centre of how we restore our thriving cities in an inclusive and sustainable manner. Technology definitely has a part to play in the sustainable development of cities. Using technology to enable a better quality of life, as well as inform better decisions and choices in a manner that closes the gaps between our communities, rather than widening them, is a challenge we must take on together.”

Paul Speirs, Director of Global Pre-Sales at PTV Group, said: “Mobility is at the heart of every successful city and defines how well connected its population are. History shows the resilience of organically grown cities, beginning as trading hubs and enlarged by increasing commerce, the industrial revolution and the advent of the railways. The car centric dominance has in some way ripped through our cities, but peeling back the layers, the framework for the ‘15-minute city’ remains. People need to meet, mix and trade. It’s in our genes. For many, the pandemic gave a glimpse of the lost neighbourhoods and posed a reminder that the presence and free movement of people create vibrancy and vitality. With a careful blend of mobility and land use planning, a sprawling city can be reimagined and reconnected as a collection of thriving and sustainable urban villages.”

Download the full report: www.ltmuseum.co.uk/interchange

Ends

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Notes to editors

  • Rethinking Sustainable Cities is the latest report to be published as part of Interchange, London Transport Museum’s thought leadership programme, which is produced in collaboration with Gowling WLG and Thales. Interchange provokes discussion and debate about the future of transport in the UK (United Kingdom) and internationally.
  • Speakers at the Rethinking Sustainable Cities Interchange events included Carlo Castelli, Head of Cities Solutions Europe – Cities and Places, Jacobs, Huw Merriman MP (Member of Parliament), Chair, Transport Select Committee, Rhys Campbell, Senior Advisor, Behavioural Insights Team, Dr Diana Ivanova, Research Fellow, School of Earth and Environment, University of Leeds, James Alexander, Director of City Finance Programme and Claire Haigh, CEO, Greener Journeys.
  • The Rethinking Sustainable Cities report included data from a survey conducted for London Transport Museum by PTV Group. The analysis draws on 528 anonymous responses. The survey was conducted via Survey Monkey and publicised through the Museum’s e-newsletter database and on social media. The initial analysis was compiled by the SurveyMonkey analysis engines. Subsequent cross-tabbing and detailed breakdowns were prepared by PTV UK Holding.

 

About Jacobs

At Jacobs, we're challenging today to reinvent tomorrow by solving the world's most critical problems for thriving cities, resilient environments, mission-critical outcomes, operational advancement, scientific discovery and cutting-edge manufacturing, turning abstract ideas into realities that transform the world for good. With $14 billion in revenue and a talent force of more than 55,000, Jacobs provides a full spectrum of professional services including consulting, technical, scientific and project delivery for the government and private sector. Visit jacobs.com and connect with Jacobs on Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn and Twitter.

About London Transport Museum

London Transport Museum is the world’s leading museum of urban transport. It is thought leadership programme, Interchange, offers a line-up of thought-provoking and informed discussions, debates and publications for leading thinkers and decision-makers to consider the challenges and opportunities facing cities, transport and infrastructure, today and tomorrow. www.ltmuseum.co.uk

About Gowling WLG

Gowling WLG is a major international law firm with more than 1,500 legal professionals in global offices. We provide our clients with in-depth expertise in key global sectors and a suite of legal services at home and abroad, including leading expertise in all aspects of the law relating to transport, technology, public services and the built environment. We see the world through our clients’ eyes, and collaborate across countries, offices, service areas and sectors to help them find the way forward to success, no matter how challenging the circumstances. https://gowlingwlg.com/en/

About Thales

Transport networks around the world rely on Thales technologies and expertise to ensure safer and more efficient passenger journeys. Thales is a global leader in rail, road and urban transport solutions that meet the infrastructure needs of tomorrow. The Thales in the UK team consists of more than 7,000 experts, including 4,500 highly skilled engineers, based across nine key UK sites. Whether it is optimising the performance of a network, improving the safety of passenger journeys or helping operators to save costs, we work as a trusted partner to solve our customers’ biggest challenges.

 www.thalesgroup.com/en

 

 

 

Press contact
Stefanie Schmidt

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About PTV Group

PTV. Empowering Mobility as part of Umovity.

PTV Group is a leading global software company for traffic planning, simulation, and real-time management. With more than 40 years of experience in the fields of mobility, the Germany-based company provides software products based on proprietary algorithms ranging from microscopic and macroscopic modeling and simulation of traffic to real-time traffic management, benefiting more than 2,500 cities and municipalities. Bridgepoint acquired a majority stake in the company in January 2022 in order to further accelerate its growth together with shareholder Porsche Automobil Holding SE. Since 2023 PTV Group and Econolite are united under the brand Umovity.


Umovity (PTV Group & Econolite). Mobility for Humanity.

Umovity is a global market leader for end-to-end traffic management and transportation technology that takes a holistic approach to provide safer, smarter, and more sustainable Mobility for Humanity. Uniting the best-in-class solutions for intelligent traffic management systems, cloud-based adaptive traffic control, real-time traffic management software, controllers, cabinets, and sensor products by Econolite, and simulation and predictive modelling software by PTV, Umovity enables innovators and decision makers in politics, municipalities, and industry to shape smart and livable communities, multimodal mobility, as well as Connected and Autonomous Vehicles (CAV). For more information, visit www.umovity.com .

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