Neighbourhood Futures: Tackling climate resilience and health equity

In this session, Impact on Urban Health and Ramboll launched Neighbourhood Futures. This is a framework that identifies pathways to resilience by reduce community vulnerability and shape more inclusive and health-driven decision-making.

Following the introduction to Neighbourhood Futures, a panel shared their experiences of working to understand and achieve climate resilience and health equity in neighbourhoods.

Speakers

• James Shearman, Portfolio Manager, Impact on Urban Health (Chair)
• Shira de Bourbon Parme, Urban Wellbeing and Innovation Lead, Regenerative Cities, Ramboll
• Amanda Chan, Senior Consultant, Regenerative Cities, Ramboll
• Paul Eccles, Global Health Impact Producer, The Bureau of Investigative Journalists
• Cassidy Travis, Head of Climate Change & Sustainability, Lambeth Council
• Hannah Yu-Pearson, Ecological Justice Programme Organiser, Centric Lab

James Shearman, Impact on Urban Health

James is a Portfolio Manager for Impact on Urban Health – an urban health foundation that works to address health inequalities by focusing on issues that disproportionately impact people living in cities.

Where we grow up, live and work affects our health he said. However, this also causes health inequities. There is a difference of 17 years life expectancy for women born in Herne Hill compared with those born in Tulse Hill.

James outlined some of the important building blocks of a good life including economic opportunity, education, access to health services, the built environment and social community. Inequitable access to these are the factors that drive  the social and commercial determinants of health.

He concluded by telling the audience that the health effects of climate change risk are exacerbating these inequities, but they can also act as a catalytic opportunity for change.  “Cross-sector collaborations like these have the potential to turn those risks into opportunities to create healthier environments, especially for those most in need.”

 Shira de Bourbon Parme (pictured) and Amanda Chan, Ramboll

Shira and Amanda work in the regenerative cities team at Ramboll – a foundation-owned multidisciplinary design and engineering consultancy. They gave a presentation to introduce the Neighbourhood Futures framework, which was created collaboratively with Impact on Urban Health.

The presentation started with the challenge that this collaboration was aiming to address “How can we support cities in reducing climate vulnerability and health inequalities related to extreme weather events?

They started the project by running some models to explore human thermal comfort range and how that changes over the year, the time of day, and with certain materials. The study found that the most thermal discomfort is during winter, and that most resilience models focus on either heat or cold.

While resilience is often planned in siloes, there needs to be a more holistic approach that enables transdisciplinary collaboration. They also found that generally thermal comfort modelling overlooks the most vulnerable in society as it uses data for a healthy man in his 30’s standing still, wearing clothing appropriate to the weather. Which poses the questions How can we create integrated and inclusive strategies of resilience? How can we unpack resilience differently?

Shira and Amanda then introduced the five resilience capacities framework which consists of threshold, coping, recovery, adaptive, transformative.

• Threshold: understanding local vulnerabilities. Who within the community and what spaces and structures are most vulnerable to temperature extremes? At what temperature levels do they experience thermal stress?
• Coping capacity: streamlining emergency responses and resources. How is the neighbourhood prepared for extreme weather when temperatures exceed threshold levels? Who will require immediate attention, where and how? A case study in Melbourne shows this strategy for heatwaves and storms and flooding.
• Recover: preparing to restore liveability and wellbeing. How is it best to assess negative impacts and allocate resources to the people and places that have suffered most from extreme weather events. A case study in US using a GIS platform for multiple stakeholders on the ground to coordinate efforts.
• Adaptative: making small changes for protection. How can we best protect people and places form extreme heat and cold waves when they occur. A need was identified to create more flexibility that reduce vulnerabilities and slowly improve the threshold capacity. A program in Paris called the Oasis School project where school yards are opened outside of school hours as a place for the community to go to shelter from extreme weather.
• Transformative capacity: reimaging and overhauling the system. What massive change would transform the neighbourhood to make it more resilient and equitable? This dimension looks at big changes to really enhance threshold capacities in neighbourhoods. The example of the Cloudburst Masterplan in Copenhagen was shared where a water strategy and water resilience masterplan identified and addressed 300 sites through stewardship and co-creation.

The session then moved to a panel discussion with starting with remarks from the following three panellists.

Paul Eccles, The Bureau of Investigative Journalists

Paul described a hot homes investigation in collaboration with the university of Glasgow that ran through the summer of 2023. They used heat monitors in 40 homes. The temperature in every home rose above 25 degrees C, which is the World Health Organisation’s recommended maximum indoor air temperature, some homes even rose above 30 degrees C.

One person in the study described their home as a sanctuary but feared it in the summer. They have three young children who would sleep downstairs but frantically trying to find places they could stay during the day to keep them cool. They would go to the cinema and stay for back-to-back films in the day to keep cool. The only place recommended with stable temperatures was the local council building.

Some participants said their homes felt like saunas and were stifling.  Some would leave their home during the summer and stay with family outside of London. Two participants had to go A and E during the study.

Hannah Yu-Pearson, Centric Lab

Hannah, an Ecological Justice Programme Organiser at Centric Lab, a neuroscience lab researching indicators for health introduced some insights from their community-driven work on ecological justice.

• Health equity is an ecological justice issue
• Data as raw information helps provide accountability. Often community engagement is conducted at the end of a development rather than with the baseline of health data from the existing community.
• Developers need to use data that is ethical and representative of the communities within which they are working
• Centric Lab has been working with 12 organisations and community groups to create their own equity and health impact assessments through their Community Health Impact Assessment Toolkit programme.
• It is important to expand knowledge and data so communities can engage in the transformative and threshold resilience perspectives which will have a great impact on health equity.

Cassidy Travis, Lambeth Council

Cassidy, who is Head of Climate Change & Sustainability at Lambeth Council, discussed the practical challenges and opportunities of implementing climate initiatives in Lambeth.

• Lambeth suffers from the urban heat island effect as it is the fifth densest borough in London.
• Their climate action plan 2022 puts addressing inequalities at the core of climate action. The plan contains 5 themes and 20 goals to address the climate crisis, including targets for emissions reduction and improving biodiversity and environmental quality.
• The climate action plan is overseen by a coalition of organisations that are creating the space for more interdisciplinary collaboration, bringing schools, businesses, hospitals and other stakeholders together.
• The council is seeking to embed considerations of climate justice in how it targets and rolls out its interventions. For example, the council’s tree planting strategy focusses on areas where there is the less canopy cover and considers areas where people are more vulnerable such as schools, care homes and hospitals.
• Similarly, the council is also using its retrofit program as an opportunity to open wider conversations about climate resilience and equity measures and to enable ‘bottom up’ discussions as part of the consultation process.

Cassidy concluded by saying they are exploring how to link social infrastructure support with elements of their climate action plan, for example focusing on building resilience to heat risk.

Future of London’s takeaways

This session’s frank explorations of lived experiences of health equity, together with the introduction of the five resilience capacities frameworks provided a rich learning experience. Key takeaways included:

• Creating capacity for meaningful engagement with communities is paramount. Short term funding doesn’t cut it as it’s important to build and maintain trust to have open conversations around climate and health impacts on communities.
• This genuine engagement with ’lived expertise’ can open spaces for people to share their stories, to discuss the issues across generations and to share health impacts from their own experiences.
• Our memories of covid presents an opportunity as people experienced a great deal of behaviour change. It shows people are willing to have difficult conversations and can draw on experiences to face future challenges together.
• Health and ecology should be considered together, and a stewardship approach can help to ensure longer term benefits. So, considering how newly planted trees will be looked after so they can continue to provide benefits to communities.

Conference session write-ups

Keynotes: Mete Coban (Deputy Mayor), Emma Howard Boyd (London Climate Resilience Review), Indy Johar (Dark Matter Labs)

Fresh Perspectives – Young people-led panel discussion

Fresh Perspectives – Two US projects using art and culture to explore climate resilience

Including All Voices – ensuring communities are fully involved

Neighbourhood Futures – Tackling climate resilience and health equity

Homes and Buildings – Designing inclusive climate approaches

Council-led Housing Network – climate resilience through council development

Fresh Perspectives – Alumni ideas on climate resilience, plus domestic retrofit and infrastructure innovation in Arnhem

Inclusive Finance – Financial models for equitable climate resilience

Neighbourhoods – Designing inclusive climate approaches

Health and Racial Equity – Developing community-led action for ethnic minority communities

Make It Happen – Closing plenary with conference takeaways, including governance, finance and partnerships

Strand Aldwych Walking Tour – how a striking new landscape was created in the historic London

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The conference is part of our major Knowledge programme for 2024/25, with a final report in Spring 2025. Find out more about our Climate Resilience and Equity programme.

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