Cabe - Climate change must reinvent our cities
Leading lights of the design and construction industries will gather
in Bristol this week with English city representatives to rethink
the way cities are designed and managed. This event, known as ‘the
Hothouse’, has been organised by CABE, the government’s design
watchdog.
CABE believes that the global environmental crisis is largely a
planning and design crisis. It is calling for radical new thinking
if cities are to reach the Government’s carbon reduction target of a
minimum 60 per cent cut by 2050.
Experts from around the world will come to challenge and encourage
leadership teams put forward by 11 organisations from both public
and private sectors at this two day masterclass.
Gary Lawrence, who led the world’s first sustainable city plan in
Seattle, Sir Crispin Tickell, an international climate change
authority, and Jonathon Porritt, one of Britain’s foremost
environmental thinkers will work alongside luminaries such as Ken
Shuttleworth, the architect behind the Gherkin, Nick Johnson of
developers Urban Splash, and Jason Prior who has led the design of
London’s Olympic masterplan. Working together with teams from eight
English cities, they will debate and refine design-led, city-wide
solutions to climate change.
The Hothouse will be opened by Ellen MacArthur, the youngest person
to sail around the world alone, whose experience has led her to
become a sustainability champion. The city regions involved are
adjacent to major rivers, flood plains and the sea: areas especially
vulnerable to climate change.
England’s eight core cities will work with three private sector
businesses at the Hothouse to debate and peer review their climate
action strategies. These are Birmingham, Bristol, Leeds, Newcastle,
Nottingham, Manchester, Liverpool and Sheffield, and Hammerson,
Crest Nicholson and E.ON.
The Hothouse kick-starts a new ‘sustainable cities’ initiative by
CABE, which includes the development of a Manual for sustainable
cities. This online climate action resource will help towns and
cities prioritise effective spatial policies and activity. Amid the
morass of information available on climate change, it will give
practitioners a reliable way to know what to use and what to ignore,
and offer solutions backed up with evidence which proves the case to
others. The Manual will be developed privately by CABE and these 11
organisations over the next nine months, before a global launch in
the summer of 2008.
John Sorrell, chair of CABE, said:
“We need a radically different built environment. There is still a
piecemeal approach to sustainability in many places, and things are
rarely being done on a big enough scale to make a critical
difference. We need to show more leadership and we have to get the
message across that tackling climate change will actually improve
our quality of life.”
Email:
JCox@cabe.org.uk
Arundel Jones Associates Ltd
Hill Farm, Linton Hill, Maidstone, Kent ME17 4AL
Tel : 01622 745333
news@buildingdesign.co.uk
Registered in England and Wales No. 07334149
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