In tackling the effects of climate change on communities, there is often a tension between sustainability policies that are focused on buildings and the need for cohesive, well-designed neighbourhoods.
Our neighbourhood design session explored how the built environment sector can design inclusive and climate-resilient neighbourhoods whilst emphasizing community involvement and local trust.
Speakers
- Hilary Satchwell Managing Director, Tibbalds (Chair)
- Mellis Haward Director, Archio
- Farrah Hussain Head of Development, Countryside Partnerships
- Jen Peters Assistant Director Planning, Design & Sustainability, Ealing Council
Hilary Satchwell, Tibbalds
Hilary is managing director of the planning and urban design consultancy Tibbalds. She introduced the session by setting out the main question the session would aim to tackle ‘How can we design neighborhoods that not only respond to climate impacts but also prioritize inclusivity?’ She added several points to help answer this question.
- There is a tension between the many sustainability toolkits, policies and guidance documents that focus on the building, site and city scales but tend to miss the neighbourhood scale where climate impacts are most strongly felt.
- In London much development is happening within or next to existing communities, so a mindset shift is needed to think beyond the red lines of projects and to incorporate wider measures into place plans e.g. retrofit across nearby homes may be a more effective use of money and resources than 100% net zero on only new homes.
- Neighbourhood scale ideas for more inclusive climate resilience including shading, flood resilience, greening and infrastructure sit across a variety of local, city and national government departments and often need to be delivered as part of the way we meet other community needs, such as the creation of more affordable housing.
Mellis Haward, Archio
Mellis is director of Archio, an architecture company that specialises in housing and public buildings and sees community involvement as a crucial part of the process.
She began by talking about how local authority policymakers can engage with communities on large scale issues, especially those issues to do with climate change.
- Community involvement and genuinely real lived experiences are particularly important. Likewise, it is an issue that breaches the red line boundary. All of these spaces in between buildings have a wider impact on neighborhoods than perhaps site-specific projects.
- Mellis then introduced their experience co-developing a retrofit design guide with residents on the Becontree Estate in Dagenham, the largest housing estate in Europe with 27,000 homes, of a similar age and with just a handful of house-types.
- Key to the project’s success was involving a resident panel from the outset. The panel included people from all housing types and ages. They were engaged, informed of what was happening throughout the process and recompensed for their time. It led to a genuine sharing of knowledge and lived experiences which drove the outcomes of the project.
- It became clear it wasn’t a technology led project but about building trust and understanding of how people live in their homes and what their concerns are. The team created designs that were adaptable and appropriate to people’s price points, appropriate to different tenures, and importantly, aligned to work residents might be interested in doing to their houses anyway, such as installing new kitchens.
- This process also helped to inform Dagenham’s planning policy and is aligned to a larger vision of greening the neighbourhood. “It’s a first step to bringing the residents on the journey of that larger infrastructural neighbourhood conversation,” said Mellis.
Farrah Hussain, Countryside Partnerships
Farrah is head of development at major housing developer Countryside Partnerships, a Vistry company. She shared why she thinks climate resilience is a crucial topic for the industry and about their work to create lasting communities, to create sustainable developments and to bring communities along on the project journey.
- A key to this is always thinking about the future residents for their homes. Moving beyond the capital and operational expenditure conversations to considering the cost to run homes; how homes will be manageable and sustainable for residents in 10- 15- and 20-years’ time.
- Farrah introduced their work on Beam Park, a 4000 home, 72-acre site bordering Barking and Dagenham and Havering boroughs. Over a third of the site will be public open space and the masterplan design has scored 350% for biodiversity net gain.
- Vistry’s sustainability principles are all integrated from the beginning of the design process. They include building Net Zero homes, delivering flood risk solutions such as wetlands and public open space and also involve modular building approaches and making sure that we are recycling and reducing waste within our schemes.
- She concluded by touching on a few topics that are pertinent to the discussion, how to include young people in the development process, how to link climate resilience actions to social value and how to ensure the industry is bringing people along on the journey.
Jen Peters, Ealing Council
Jen is assistant director of planning, design and sustainability at Ealing Council and did a similar role at Tower Hamlets before so has had an ongoing interest in how climate policies can be achieved. She introduced Ealing’s greater focus in this area by describing it as kind of at the beginning of a journey, they’re doing a lot of thinking which will be implemented over time.
- Ealing is a big borough geographically; it’s got a lot of green space but also has high housing targets. As a borough they want to champion economic and housing growth and ensure its the kind of growth that meets resident’s needs.
- One part of their work is to develop the 20 minute neighbourhood concept, making sure that when we’ve got developments coming in, that those areas have everything that communities need, and that includes green space. The borough is has set a target to develop 10 new parks, new green spaces that provide equitable tree coverage across the borough. They’ve also just completed a biodiversity competition to help residents start to grow more in their gardens or on their balconies.
- Jen talked about working with a wide range of grass roots and community organisations and also involving organisations who are not currently thinking about climate resilience. She described it as the aim being the whole community coming together. One example is to explore the idea of cool spaces, those spaces that you can go to in hot weather and relax. Can Ealing be the coolest borough?
- Jen also suggested everyone visit Southall to see some really interesting work they are doing there, not just the old, tried and tested methods but really working with that community to find initiatives. The focus there is on active travel, but the broader approach is also important to help answer questions such as How do you understand the communities properly? How do you understand their issues, and how you can help communities address those?
- Jen concluded by saying they have a local plan in process at the moment and already have a climate emergency and ecological emergency strategy, but they’re now looking at creating their own resilience strategy and making sure there’s an action plan in place.
“This work is helping us understand is that there’s a huge amount going on, helps us understand the different perspectives and to pick up on the London Climate Resilient Review” – Jen Peters
Future of London’s takeaways
This important session highlighted the importance of considering spaces between buildings and beyond red lines of projects. It emphasised the need to coordinate policy agendas and standards across different scales to effectively accelerate and coordinate climate resilience activities. There were some key discussion points arising from this session:
- The importance of involving communities in planning and design processes to ensure long-term sustainability and resilience.
- The need for a balance between top-down and bottom-up approaches to community engagement.
- The need to push for a more inclusive and equitable approach to valuing social and climate impacts in development projects.
Thank you to our conference sponsors
