Date: Tue 29th September, 2009
Venue:
Number of Guests Attended: 110
We can make our cities greener, but only if words and policies are backed up with action and new ways of thinking, guests at Insider’s Sustainable Cities breakfast heard.
Government and local authorities must kick start a process by actually implementing worthy policies, said Richard O’Neil, director of HLM Architects. “If you take it to individual levels you are just looking at micro issues.
"There is a three-tier pyramid – the top tier is Government policy, the middle is about implementation of that policy and the third is the impact. We have got to ask whether government and local government are actually doing enough. If they became shapers we could deal with the macro issues.”
Robert Shepherd, director of planning and design consultancy Barton Willmore, thought there was a danger that a lot of discussion on sustainability ended up being about issues such as transport when it was important to consider it in its widest sense.
“We need to be looking at environmental and community elements. Whether a development is sustainable or not is if it sustains itself. It needs to be all-embracing, and the same criteria should apply to all areas.”
For Chris Tweed, director of the Centre for Sustainable Design of the Built Environment at Cardiff University, the definition of a sustainable city was simply somewhere that people wanted to be. “It must be a mixture of voluntary and mandatory measures because it is about quality of life. We have got to stop talking about sustainability and talk about a way of life that is sustainable. It is a tough challenge,” he said.
There was concern from all the experts that not only would over-regulation not help the drive to develop sustainable cities but was likely to damage its prospects. “How do we make sustainability attractive to people?” asked Tweed “Not by regulating everything. It is about using our imagination to create something that happens to be less resource hungry. There are deep rooted cultural reasons for people’s behaviour.”
David Harris, divisional managing director of Cowlin Construction and chairman of the Welsh Built Environment Forum, saw a problem looming as regulation was increasing in a way that the market did not necessarily support. “It should be about education right through the system.”
He added: “You need leadership – people who pioneer. It must be a balance of legislation and market forces. Decisions must be made on a broader concept.”
The event was sponsored by HLM Architects, the Welsh Built Environment Forum and the Celtic Manor Resort.
