Musings on Design

When we come across the term "design", the first things that spring to mind are often fashion, the "egg chair" or those really strange looking lamps that my best man has in his apartment; mostly beautiful items to fill our houses or clothe ourselves. Occasionally concept cars will occur to us and once in a while beautiful buildings. But seldom gears, ductwork, concrete slabs or steel beams. Yet it is these behind-the-scenes elements of engineering design underpin our experience of the world - every day, in every way.

At university, my degree - mechanical engineering - included a core major of mechanical design; gears and the like. In many ways it was a very dry (and extremely technical) subject. No left-of-field characters, no champagne and to be honest, not much beauty. Having worked in a consulting engineering environment for a number of years now, I have seen the same trends professionally. Other design professionals are passionate, "creative" types, but many (not all) engineers seem to be turning the handle on a design sausage machine - producing technical systems that meet the clients requirements at the lowest cost, but seldom anything more. Further to this, many are stuck reproducing designs that have been done before, without questioning alternative paths.

I can hear the screams now: "but meeting the clients brief at the lowest cost is precisely what being a professional engineer means!!!". Well, I challenge that - as professionals we must meet our clients brief, we must do it responsibly in terms of cost (it's not our money after all); but we must also add to the world - beauty, heart, functionality - helping our clients to a new brief if necessary.

This blog is about how that lack of spark in engineering design is because we only get taught the last step: the design process, but never the preceding two: purpose and function.

But back to design.

The technical design process is the sausage machine; a set of rules and thinking patterns that match theory to a particular problem. It's a powerful machine and is why engineers are often referred to as problem solvers. It goes something like this:

Step 1: briefing - establish/clarify/inform the design brief

Step 2: concept design - identify and screen a range of early design concepts

Step 3: design development - refine the design concept selected during the concept design stage and establish the operating parameters

Step 4: detailed design - refine the design details and produce drawings for manufacture

Once this process has been undertaken a number of times for the same type of system, the early stages can be neglected as the experienced engineer already knows the answer, so all that remains is the detailed design - matching the already-decided design response to the local situation. Only very occasionally do the assumptions that inform the brief at the outset get challenged or revisited. And that is my main challenge with how we're taught the design process- all the effort goes into getting the details right, but so little goes into challenging the underlying inputs into the design process. Fortunately, the sustainable design evolution (we're still far too mainstream to consider ourselves revolutionary) is one process which is starting to question those underlying assumptions. And the first of those is unpacking the function we're striving for through design.

Function.

The first insight I had into the importance of function was a course I did on Biomimicry in September 2010. At the heart of the biomimetic design process is identifying function. This skill is something drilled into zoologists from very early in their careers, and was even drilled into me in high school biology classes: when studying an organism, it looks the way it does because it does a certain thing. Form fits function. If you want to interrogate the form, then you must understand the function.

The Biomimicry Guild have produced a taxonomy of functions to guide the process of design by Biomimicry. This is an excellent tool for beginning to look at any design problems from a functional perspective; some specific functions from the taxonomy are:

- to attach permanently,

- to protect from thermal shock,

- to capture energy.

The full list is far more comprehensive and forms the basis for the brilliant online resource www.asknature.org. Similar briefs in a conventional engineering approach would be to require the use of a particular glue or rivets (instead of the function of attaching something permanently); insulation (instead of protecting from thermal shock) or a solar PV system (instead of capturing energy). We have become so bound by the precedent of our professions, that many engineers have lost the ability to identify function in the first place. A common design brief in my field where function is often ignored, is the design an air-conditioning system instead of a system to maintain occupant comfort, or a system to provide fresh air to occupants.

Another reason why identifying function is important is that multi-functional systems are becoming increasingly important in sustainable design. It is no longer good enough for a water treatment system to simply reduce the impact of effluent that is expelled. To work in the cities of the future, it must now provide a source of energy, a source of fertilizer, a source of recycled water and become a node of biodiversity. We cannot hope to get multi-functional design right until we are well practiced in the art of identifying function.

Function must come before design. If design answers the how? then function must answer the what?. But there is something that must come before function. And that is the why? The purpose for which we are designing.

Purpose.

Again quoting a man who has given me a glimpse of the way forward for my profession - Bill Reed at the Green Building Council of South Africa conference 2010: "All systems have a purpose". When you look at a bicycle, it is clear what the purpose is; the purpose informs the function and the function informs the design.

Unfortunately, most of the modern commercial building projects that shape our cities are founded on the purpose of financial return. The purpose of the building is to generate revenue for the listed funds which invest in them. Not to foster innovation or build a functioning city; but to make money. Whereas in most of the truly inspirational buildings of our time the purpose was broader - to set a benchmark, to be a landmark, to build trust in institutions or to heal a nation. In comparison, the purpose of making money seems an awfully shallow one on which to base the cities in which we live, work and play.

And so, I believe we need to start championing a new purpose. A purpose that comes more from the heart and less from the pocket. A purpose that might allow us to actually create true value and prosperity, not just for the rich. While the generation of wealth won't ever come of the agenda, we must start designing our buildings with the purpose of healing our communities and regenerating the natural systems which keep us alive.

If developers and financiers are too locked into their status quo to see the need for this, then it is our responsibility as professionals to begin to do it anyway. We can start with the purpose of our business - is it to simply create shareholder value, or can we aim a little higher. Do we exist to add value to communities to end poverty? We can challenge the purpose of our projects, or at least approach them with (true) purpose. We can stop seeing the complexities of community and ecology as in convenient extras to report on at year-end and start to build them into the very fabric of what we do.

Ultimately, the purpose of our businesses, our buildings, our cities, our communities and our own role is of a metaphysical nature. The big question of why we are here. Far be it from me to answer that - there are far better qualified people to do so than I - but I do tend to agree with Bill's answer to the question: our purpose is to love. And how do we, as engineers, love? Well, in the immortal words of Theodore Roosevelt; "do what you can, with what you have, where you are".

We can impact the technical systems of the world’s cities such that they do not entrench the status quo of exploitation, inequality and environmental degradation. We can do it with our skills, our training, our systems and the influence that comes from being professionals.

Pattern Recognition: Decision-making and Cost Management

Patterns and pattern recognition are, for me, one of the areas of least expertise and greatest importance in sustainability. And so this post has two functions: my attempts to practice pattern recognition, and then perhaps to offer some insight into patterns I have observed in successful green building projects over my (relatively short) career. The key areas where I'll try and identify patterns are decision-making and cost management.

I am incredibly fortunate to have begun my career just as the revolution of green buildings was starting to sweep Australia, and then to transfer to SA again, just as it was taking off here. I have worked through two intense learning curves, both my own and two industries', and this experience has allowed me to engage with the design process of close to 100 urban development and building projects with a sustainability agenda in over 15 countries. I would like to explore some of the patterns; both good and bad; that I have observed on these projects.

Decision-making

Decision-making is, for me, one of the most interesting and important topics when it comes to sustainable design. On any project, there comes a point in time around the design table when the direction of the project is on a knife-edge; the client must weigh up the options put in front of her (or him), judge the advice of her professional team (architects, engineers, quantity surveyors etc) and make a clear decision on the direction of the project from that moment forward. The earlier in the process that these moments occur, typically the bigger the impact that they have - for good or ill.

These points are also revealing as they often show which decisions are taken for granted, and which require careful deliberation. A common decision early on projects is whether or not to "go green". This is a pattern which defines the progress of a project from the outset - even when the decision is 'yes', it frames any consideration of environmental or social initiatives as add-ons. Conversely, if that decision is never taken, and ESG (environmental, social and governance) issues are considered core project attributes, then it builds a base for future design decision-making on more solid ground in terms of sustainability.

In most cases, external drivers are to thank for sustainability being an assumption, not a decision. The biggest project I worked on in Australia, in the Melbourne Docklands, had a planning requirement for design, as-built and operational energy and green building certification. There was never a decision, but rather an assumption that these were core requirements. However, the most exciting projects are those where the assumption of sustainability is in the heart of the client and team - where they internalise the need to build functional communities in the same way that the priority of profit is internalised on most commercial projects.

The projects I have encountered with a core purpose of social, environmental and financial performance have typically been those which have run the smoothest; much more so than those who have added sustainability onto a conventional development structure.

Clients who start projects with an integrated sustainability vision entrenched from the start allow effective decision-making with respect to sustainability. Clients who view sustainability as an overhead, bolted onto a conventional design paradigm have difficulty making effective decisions with respect to sustainability.

One of the dominant patterns in sustainable design decision-making is the question: "How much is it going to cost?" - this question usually follows closely on the decision of whether or not to "go green". The question of capital cost (capex) is important, money is our dominant assessment of value, and a bird in the hand is always worth two in the bush: cash is typically king.

However, in my experience, this is only half the story as most property is seen as an investment, not just a cost. An investment view of buildings introduces a life-cycle element into the value proposition which should also be reflected in decision-making.

Projects that that are driven by purely capex-focused decision-making often lose many of the attributes that would contribute to value over the life of the asset resulting in a race to the bottom; while projects that start with a picture of life-cycle value typically achieve that value within the confines of their (better-defined) cost plans.

Another dominant pattern that I have seen drive decision-making is the balance between regulation and aspiration, or how much carrot and how much stick?

Whether the stick is felt as minimum regulatory compliance or minimum Green Star points is largely irrelevant. Projects which seek to do the minimum to get a label seldom excel, while projects aiming to maximise value can always show how the minimum has been achieved and exceeded.

Examples of the carrot often involve performance-based incentives, either intrinsic to the project (improved value) or external (rebates or performance targets). Good carrots respond to the performance of the whole, and allow multiple paths to achieving it.

This difference between designing to checklists and designing to performance is particularly noticeable in the building design process, where multiple complex design decisions all affect environmental performance. Unfortunately, most green building certification tools (including Green Star) are premised on checklists, not broad performance.

Complex decision-making is severely hampered in a compliance mindset as the individual impact of each element must be assessed and compared; but is relatively easy in a value-seeking mindset, where the outcome of the whole is paramount.

Cost control

While cost control is an important contributor to decision-making, as noted above, it is also an area where successful patterns have been established in its own right. All successful projects (conventional and "green") rely on excellent cost control, but projects which deliver real value require a deep understanding of how costs, investment and value are linked over the life of a project.

The status quo on building projects for cost control (as I understand it - and welcome an further clarity or discussion) is that a quantity surveyor undertakes a feasibility study on the basis of the market rules of thumb and produces a cost plan for a building that will deliver a particular yield. Unfortunately, a dominant pattern in commercial projects, is that once the original feasibility has been established the cost plan becomes law and no further investment in quality (beyond the original assumptions) can be motivated.

This reframes the idea of investment as simply an idea of cost reduction on many projects, which in turn results in a race to the bottom - a concept borne out by many buildings that populate our cities. Moving to life-cycle costing (taking operational performance into account) is a good first step, and ultimately life-cycle value management (taking the whole of life impacts of the project into account) offers a possible alternative to current cost management processes.

Further to these, the value of sustainability is currently poorly understood, as are the external long-term costs of environmental degradation. Moving away from simple cost management (which ignores many externalities) to value management (which should take these external, but real costs into account) may improve our understanding, our buildings and the sustainability of our cities.

Good cost control does not simply mean matching a design to a budget. Rather, it implies a live assessment of project value and projected performance that allows flexibility in design and, more importantly, is flexible itself to best reflect the value that is brought forward through design.

One of the terms that has emerged on projects, especially those that view Green Star certification as an important, but non-core initiative is the Green Budget - the extra-over spend to achieve a green certification. While this appears, in most circumstances, to be inevitable, it is rather in conflict with the assertion that sustainable design is tran-disciplinary in nature, and real environmental performance comes from the combination of building systems, not any single initiative.

The discretising of cost premiums may be useful to clients in one sense for allowing the cost-benefit of any single system to be established. It also lends itself to the tick-box approach driven by green building certification tools like Green Star. In fact the capital premium for certified buildings has formed the basis of most of the discussion on Green Star, not the improvement in environmental performance. Most consultants, myself included, have adopted this approach based on how closely it works with the green building certification tools that underpin much of our business.

So, for the most part, green budgets will form a core part of sustainable design. However, if our decision-making tools can be developed to reference real value from multiple systems, could our cost control of those systems not also develop holistic strategies to match. When Bill Reed speaks of integrative design (see http://www.integrativedesign.net/), he talks of projects which have moved beyond discrete green budgets and into a realm where holistic, whole system design is partnered with cost savings and improved value. I believe that our pursuit of green budgets is not a result of sustainability being considered expensive, but rather one of the causes.

A holistic approach to cost control in partnership with design can deliver better value than a discretised green budget.

Finally, on the topic of cost control, is an approach to value engineering. You may have detected a critical tone towards green building certification tools like Green Star, however it is in the process of value engineering that they do play an important role.

The thresholds of different levels of certification (4 star, 5 star etc) change the dynamic of marginal value and marginal cost for initiatives intended to improve the environmental performance of a building - the initiative which takes you from 44 to 45 points may ordinarily have been excluded during VE on the basis of its discrete cost, but is now retained as it is critical to realising the marketing value of certification. While this is still in the context of viewing sustainability as an overhead, it is still an important acknowledgment of the progress that green building have made.

Current building assessment tools are designed effectively for the current property industry culture of value engineering. New tools may be necessary as value is more broadly (accurately) defined.

Summary

So, where does this leave us? A brief recap of the italicised points:

Projects that that are driven by purely capex-focused decision-making often lose many of the attributes that would contribute to value over the life of the asset resulting in a race to the bottom; while projects that start with a picture of life-cycle value typically achieve that value within the confines of their (better-defined) cost plans.

Complex decision-making is severely hampered in a compliance mindset as the individual impact of each element must be assessed and compared; but is relatively easy in a value-seeking mindset, where the outcome of the whole is paramount.

Good cost control does not simply mean matching a design to a budget. Rather, it implies a live assessment of project value and projected performance that allows flexibility in design and, more importantly, is flexible itself to best reflect the value that is brought forward through design.

A holistic approach to cost control in partnership with design can deliver better value than a discretised green budget.

Current building assessment tools are designed effectively for the current property industry culture of value engineering. New tools may be necessary as value is more broadly (accurately) defined.

For me, the core patterns that begin to emerge relate primarily to three things:

1. How a project is envisioned from its earliest stages, dtermines the outlook on all future decisions.

2. Our current definition of value in the context of sustainability could do with some work; to move beyond cash and into a broader understanding of value to society.

3. Looking at whole systems, and not just at the parts, allows more effective decision-making and provides better value projects.

So, where to next?

Well, I'd like to see a concerted effort to extract deep patterns from green buildings globally. Projects that have excelled and exceeded expectations as well as those that haven't.

I also want to explore how inspiration affects project teams as a driver for value.

But more on that in later posts.

Tale of an African City

Introduction

Cities. So much of our modern mythology is tied up in them - Gotham, Metropolis, The City of Angels, dark and dire Glasgow, sinking Venice, catacombs in Paris or sailing in Sydney; hell, London and New York probably set the scene for more than half our modern literature. So why, then, are cities strangely absent from our current discourse on sustainability in Africa - a topic very much a part of our immediate story? What is it that puts land and agriculture, large capital projects like dams and power stations (renewable or otherwise) and conservation (as important as they are) at the forefront of our efforts when so many of the drivers of the consumerist urge that turns the handles on the machine are in our cities? How did we miss them, these hungry beasts, growing daily and showcasing the best, and the worst, of humanity?

Well, the why's and wherefores aren't really the topic here, but rather, a discussion of how African cities are the pointy end of sustainability, the places in which either we will get it "right"; or we won't. "It" being our species' ability to shift from small communities that have worked before to large ones (that typically haven't). And when I say work, I mean work in the sense of resources, of human connections, of creativity, of experience, of spirit, of lifestyles, of beautiful, functional and present ecosystems and real upliftment from poverty.

I'm going to discuss some of the reasons our cities don't currently work; from how they are planned to keep people in boxes (little boxes, made of ticky tacky), to how they make people reliant on motor vehicles and the oil industry to how they are underpinned by centrally controlled services. These things: planning, transport and service infrastructure are at the heart of my approach to Africa's cities.

And why Africa? Well, most developed cities have sunk so much into the current models for service infrastructure, transport and planning that to re-imagine them represents an insurmountable waste of capital expense, and furthermore and admission of failure in design. Our modern cities are predicated on linear resource flows and some have even perfected them. How difficult then to shut down expensive, working systems (no matter how mis-guided) in preference for the unknown - decentralised systems without the hand of big brother controlling from above.

On the other hand, Africa's cities have not yet chosen a path. The old (in years and thinking) infrastructure is broken and there now exists the chance to re-imagine our cities without the huge opportunity cost of abandoning old ways faced by our rich global neighbors. It is the very fact of our disfunction that I believe gives us the opportunity to get it right here; at the pointy end of sustainability.

This discussion will run in three sections: service infrastructure and resource efficiency, transport and mobility, and finally planning and community. I hope you will engage with me and help develop these ideas further.

1. Service Infrastructure and Resource Efficiency

So, first infrastructure. African cities are critically hobbled by current infrastructure along the European model - started by Rome and perfected over the millennia. Poor maintenance, poor investment and lack of skills and accountability in government have all assisted in our basic services not reaching the majority of citizens and even those that do being woefully inadequate. In my home country, South Africa, this very lack of service delivery has resulted in extensive civil unrest as the expectations of political freedom leading to into economic freedom have not been achieved. Equally, one of the major backlogs in delivering low-cost housing, another political bug-bear, is the difficulty in rolling out water, power and sewer infrastructure fast enough - we can build houses faster than we can service them.

Further to failing these social servicing requirements, our cities are resource black holes: transported with oil, tons of material and food flow in to build and feed; millions of joules of energy are sucked through grids from dirty power stations to keep the lights on and millions of litres of fresh water are pumped from ever larger dams to keep us clean, cool and hydrated.

In some ways our cities appear to be designed specifically to take nutrients out of the earth, fresh water out of our rivers and deposit them into our lakes and oceans using vast amounts of fossilized sunlight while all the time degrading the very systems which provide these things in the first place. This seems to be a system ill-suited to realizing our dreams for the places we create.

One of the core responses to the resources dilemma is to mimic one of the complex systems that we do know works: ecological systems. Two of the principles which typify functioning ecological systems are to use cyclical systems with feedback loops and to decentralise core functions for resilience. The design response to these challenges lies in scaling infrastructure such that the nested systems which they can support are enabled in such a way that waste products are eliminated and there is no single point of failure. Key to this is the analysis of whole systems; in the words of Bill Reed "If it's smaller than a watershed (catchment area), then you can't talk about 'sustainability'".

So, where do the opportunities start to show themselves. Firstly on the water front: our cities do not have to deplete or pollute fresh water resources. We have the technology to collect, treat and re-use all our waste water. By decentralising water treatment, we open opportunities for nutrient recovery, which can in turn be used for biogas energy production or local agriculture (thus reducing some of the demand for centrally produced food). Localised agriculture thus becomes a water treatment question as well as one of health, eco-system functionality and poverty alleviation when community gardens provide both a dietary and income alternative to communities. Wetlands are another waste-water treatment mechanism with multiple benefits - treatment of storm water run-off and grey-water from buildings coupled with the introduction on biodiversity hotspots into our urban spaces. Sewerage treatment can be done through high-tech packaged treatment plants or low-tech composting toilets. All in all, by re-thinking our approach to water, energy, sewage treatment and food, and recognizing that they are in fact a single complex system, we can start to re-imagine our cities' water cycles.

Another key system for re-imagination is our approach to energy: currently a case of distant fossil fuel combustion for local electricity consumption. With the agreed end-game being a solar society based on an integrated renewable energy grid, there are many steps along the way.

The first of these recognises that large scale power generation is only about 20% efficient - 80% of all the thermal energy is lost as waste heat. This is criminal, especially as a significant at portion of that 20% is then used to generate thermal energy down the track for heating and cooling. One mechanism for capturing this is to decentralise power generation through combustion using clean burning fuels (natural gas, bio-diesel, biogas or biomass) and capturing the waste heat for use in hot water generation, space heating or cooling (via an absorption chiller). This allows us to re-imagine our energy loops from single purpose electricity systems to multipurpose electricity, heating and cooling mixes which optimise the nested thermal opportunities of power generation. When these systems are linked with biogas and biomass from local water treatment or agricultural by-products, the cross-links get closer and the resilience improves. Just like natural systems.

Of course the development of smart energy grids, which can balance thermal and electrical loads and storage requirements across an urban space will also be critical in balancing diversified renewable energy sources when we get closer to being fully reliant on them. At that stage we may find that a combination of solar thermal and solar electrical systems still fits our resource demands better than simply using large grid-connected RE power stations.

Further to these, when we decentralise all these systems, we lower the barriers to entry; so then private sector now have an opportunity to engage with the provision of basic services by-passing the often-inefficient government bureaucracy that typifies so many African cities. It also allows smaller scale business to work in the field; something to be further enhanced through at active financing options.

And so we start to see a city where the water, power, waste and food systems are all intricately linked, using each other's waste products and building value at every scale. We see green space and wetlands move into our cities, food production and a city which cleans up the mess made so far instead of adding to it.

Further to fixing our infrastructure, we must also fix our buildings; after all, it is ultimately the buildings in a city and their inhabitants which provide the demand for the resources we've just discussed. Sound design at a building level is a critical ingredient in creating beautiful, livable, sustainable cities. Designing for resource efficiency through passive design, meshing seamlessly with re-imagined infrastructure and building communities as well structures will all contribute to our new African cities.

It into this context that the Australian-born Green Star rating system is introduced; a rating tool based on the USA and UK tools and primarily focused on creating a market for 'green' buildings. It has been adapted to South African conditions, and recently permission has been given for certification in Ghana, but there remain some huge questions on it's ability to meet the challenges of Africa's cities, most particularly on the social and conservation fronts. However that must not detract from it's importance in delivering the resource-efficient buildings on which our re-imagined infrastructure true will rely. The wide-spread adoption of green building design is going to be critical to the success of our new cities, and the willingness of the Green Building Councils of Australia and South Africa to "let go" of their tools to be made relevant and accessible across the continent is also of vital importance.

2. Transport and Mobility

This is not a section on public transport, as important as it is. This is a discussion on moving people, and allowing them access to the resources they need in a manner that does not require moving thousands of tons of steel around our cities on congealed oil residue. Our African cities seem to have lost the art of moving people effectively - crowded taxis, impossible traffic, absence of options and high cost all typify the realities of navigating African cities.
So, what to do...

One option is move places of work closer to places of residence. Through the exploding cellular communications technology in Africa, the potential for remote work must be championed in all quarters. As the African middle class emerges, and services replace labour as the primary activity, so too do the options for moving information more than people.

From a design perspective, one of the principal focus points must be safety for non-vehicular commuters. Providing safe pedestrian and cycle spaces should accompany the public transport initiatives which have proven successful in most modern cities. The road infrastructure in Africa currently requires such enormous investment that the viability of alternatives become better in comparison. I would suggest that reducing road infrastructure in favor of diversified light rail, pedestrian and cycle paths with excellent communications technology will open a less congested road for Africa in the future.

Further to this, where roads are necessary, they must again be multi-functional: smart kerbs must assist in the treatment and management of urban storm water, green strips alongside must link intra-city parks and green spaces, creating a green web through our cities. Speed limits reduced, security improved and mixed zones encouraged where pedestrians have priority, not cars.

This may seem like a pipe dream to most inhabitants of modern African cities, but as oil prices soar, alternatives to cars will become meow mainstream and cities that are placed to offer alternatives will be in a position to fly.

3. Planning, Communities and Civil Society

Again, looking at my homeland where the Apartheid system institutionalized racism, the relationship of city communities and sustainability is clear. Among their varied instruments, the racial segregation through the physical layout of our cities has endured long after the legislation governing behaviour has been repealed; nowhere more than my current city: Cape Town. And while it is particularly evident here, planning along racial, economic or class lines is evident in most cities to a greater or lesser degree.

The segregation of rich and poor, black, white and coloured, privileged and forgotten is enshrined in the layout of our suburbs, roads, railways and services. These in turn break down our efforts at community building, peace, reconciliation, education and health. Our schools miss the crucial peer to peer learning as all peers in under-developed schools are equally lost, while the privileged shine and immigrate. Our clinics are burdened to the point of breaking with no local business or community leader with the resources to fight for better services. Our artists are unable to write or paint, as begging for food takes the day away and crushes the spirit. The story is told over and over in our cities across the continent.

Investment breeds surrounding slums as the poor flock to be exploited. Massive urbanisation pulls people into the threatening maw, with no services to support them. It is in these places that we have the opportunity to meet the needs of people in ways never yet imagined. To provide opportunities for economic freedom without the linear consumption models of our current city paradigm. These initiatives will by necessity deal with the provision of resources and services. However it is only by choice that they will also address our wide and varied challenges of nested systems, ecological health, community building and the lasting prosperity that is the hope of sustainability professionals globally. Without mixing rich and poor, our cities have no hope. Without opening eyes and hearts, our best efforts at transport and infrastructure will fail. Without encouraging genuine participation from all corners, we cannot expect to represent the people who inhabit our cities.

And so through design, how do we address these things? My thoughts are by no means definitive, certainly not sufficient, but none-the-less present.

As Africa urbanises, we can plan new communities that cross class and cultural boundaries. We can design for the surrounding communities that will be affected by new urban investment in such a way that they are included as participants, not silently exploited. We can design systems which open up new opportunities for entrepreneurship while improving resource efficiency and providing new services; especially if the public sector is failing in this regard. We can widen the net of stakeholders, voluntarily extending our design teams to include community leaders. We can ask for input and listen to the answers. We can start to design for value - value to people, value to natural systems - and not just cost mitigation in a short-sighted financial model. We can seek real prosperity.

These things are all within our reach as we re-imagine cities at the pointy end of sustainability; Africa's new cities. Shining.