Research Ideas - Urban Resource Indices

Closer ties between practice and good research are critical to advancing sustainability in the built environment. The professions have, for too long, been divorced from cutting edge thinking and urban research (social and technical) has typically been distant from those practicing in design and implementation fields.

Professionals (and sustainability consultants in particular) have too often promised “research” and delivered internet search results and conference presentation summaries – the quality of research in this field is often poor.

In a March 2012 post (here) I proposed two gaps in our urban analysis processes, relating to urban infrastructure and ecology, which could provide a valuable insight into urban design and urban infrastructure decision-making. I have subsequently given some thought to more specific areas of research - the development of useful indices against which to measure urban- and infrastructure design.

In many fields (in economics is perhaps it is most evident), there are a myriad of different indices against which to try and measure performance – so many in fact that their impact is often diminished. However economists in particular bring a highly analytical approach to complex systems – something lacking in the built environment. In fact, in the built environment we have very few measures aside from the financial performance of property funds and, in the case of sustainability, green building rating tools (which are not especially useful in dealing with the urban scale).

One of the reasons for this, I believe, is that the researchers responsible for developing indices are often unfamiliar with the design thinking that shapes cities. The complexity of cities means that useful urban research is unlikely to fall within a single field or discipline and the on-the-ground realities of development (where more emphasis is placed on buildability than theory) means that it must be framed by practice. So we need a trans-disciplinary approach (a post on trans-disciplinary design here) with collaboration from practitioners.

The indices I would like to access in my role as a designer respond to the key urban systems of energy, water, waste, smart cities, mobility, ecology and food security (I explored some of the connections between water, sewer, power and food in a TEDx talk here). These could potentially be drawn together in an integrated urban resource index for sustainable design. I would also like to see an urban resilience index, which might be linked in many ways to the food security and resource scarcity, as well as social and economic factors.

The Siemens Green Cities Index - here – is an excellent example and was developed in collaboration with The Economist Intelligence Unit; however it is aimed at measuring current cities against each other and is not (yet) a design tools for new cities or precincts. We need indices that facilitate design decision-making – informing choices for urban infrastructure and land-use planning.

I’ve shared some brief ideas on factors which I believe would be useful in framing urban indices for design purposes; however I would like to explore the collaborative potential for urban research units and future cities designers to develop something far more robust.

1.    Distance

In each of the main resource sectors, we take global (food), national (energy) or regional (water) grids for granted. The distance between infrastructure and users is seldom counted, yet it has a profound effect on the ability to optimise waste streams and build resilience.

For example, local energy generation provides opportunities for waste-heat recovery and improved resilience in the face of central systemic failures (as evidenced in New York during Hurricane Sandy). Local water-treatment provides opportunities for water re-use and the development of ecological hotspots in urban centres. Local food production provides the opportunity to close nutrient loops, especially when combined with waste-water treatment. The distance between nodes is one of the key factors in the success of multi-modal mobility systems.

Distance in urban infrastructure is one of the critical factors that must be researched in far greater detail to build meaningful indices for urban infrastructure. We need to know what the relationships are between decentralised urban infrastructure and resource use/urban resilience. How do wide, central grids perform against mesh-like local girds under different urban growth and climate change scenarios?

2. Resource Intensity

Rather obviously, the resource intensity of urban spaces (amount of resources per capita, per unit area of per unit economic production) is a critical element of urban sustainability. This has typically been quite well addressed by analysts for buildings and has been the focus of most urban-scale analysis to date.

However it is closely linked to density, and there remain key issues in how density is addressed as a driver of urban form.

3. Density

Densification is a hot topic for new urbanists – sold as the key to breaking our reliance on personal motor vehicles and changing the form of our cities to allow more sustainable, low-carbon growth.  But just how much density, and by what measure...?

Population density (ppl/ha) seems to be the preferred metric, but when considering commercial development (particularly in CBD’s), where rental is per square meter and residential rates are low, the floor area ratio (FAR) dominates. Furthermore, when looking at socio-economic issues, the area per person becomes a core consideration.

These are three different metrics for density, which each tell different stories. They have different relevance when considering resource intensity – where the floor area of commercial buildings is more important than the number of occupants – while population density is critical when assessing the viability of mass transit systems.

Urban indices must provide a more nuanced approach to density, with key research into the different measures and descriptions for densification and its relevance to each key resource sector.

Good urban designers have an intuitive feel for this relationship between distance, density and resource intensity, but there is a need for better, high quality research to provide a more robust framework to these from a design perspective. Design thinking and a willingness to engage across both professional/academic and conventional disciplinary boundaries are important elements in answering some of these questions. 

Responsible Journalism and Climate Change

Over the past few weeks, I have engaged in a number of debates on Twitter relating to the views of Ivo Vegter, an author and columnist for the Daily Maverick online newspaper. Mr Vegter, author of Extreme Environment, is a self-proclaimed sceptic of the environmental movement and a denier of anthropogenic climate change in particular.

I must disclose at this point that I have not yet read Extreme Environment, and I am increasingly ill-disposed to contribute financially to Mr Vegter's pockets, but I will endeavour to get my hands on a copy at some stage. I am, however, familiar with a host of the enviro-sceptic arguments, and from his interactions it would appear Mr Vegter shares the majority of his opinions with this community.

My engagement on Twitter, which has included a range of writers, editors and opinionistas (including Leonie Joubert and Jacque Rousseau among others), has focused on two things:

- Firstly, the basis for the challenge on climate science; and

- Secondly, on the journalistic/editorial ethics of not balancing these opinion pieces with a description of the scientific consensus.

While I am neither a journalist nor a climate scientist, I am technically trained and have read widely on the topic. My wife completed her peace studies masters thesis on climate change as portrayed by the media, and for her insight into these matters I thank her (a summary of her dissertation, based on Australian media but relevant to SA, can be found here). In my professional life as an engineering consultant considering climate mitigation and adaptation, I also have a broad understanding of many of the issues.

I take it as fact that climate change is happening, that it is caused by human activity and that by substantially reducing our greenhouse gas emissions we can avoid some of the direst consequences of a rapidly changing climate. This position is supported by the global scientific community, where there is now broad consensus of these core issues. 

This post is not a detailed defence of the climate science. Wikipedia notes that thirty four leading science academies globally have publicly endorsed the findings of the UN Inter Governmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). Their endorsement counts far more than my opinion (or that of Mr Vegter for that matter). The G8+5 Academies’ joint statement can be viewed here. For more analysis and research I can recommend NASA, NOAA and Nature Geoscience.

And so for better or worse, we must accept that the scientific community are unequivocal in their assessment of anthropogenic climate change.

This means that any opinion piece taking a sceptical/denialist approach must tackle the science to be legitimate. And yet none appear to.

To seriously contest this space, a climate denialist must provide peer reviewed research which is accepted on a scale to sway global scientific consensus. The appropriate places to contend the science are journals like Nature, not the opinion sections of the mainstream media (online or print).

Which brings me to the second issue - the representation of these views in the mainstream media.

Let's start by acknowledging the role of columnists and opinion pieces in media. As pointed out to me by Jacques Rousseau, opinion pieces are not journalism, but opinion (clearly). As such, they are not subject to editorial control, nor are they bound by consensus. I do not contest this, nor do I advocate editorial censorship of opinion pieces.

However, I do advocate contextual framing of opinion pieces by editors where the external balance of scientific consensus is clearly in conflict with the expressed opinion. And this is especially so where the topic content is of a sufficiently specialist nature that the majority of readers would be ill-equipped to contextualise the opinion themselves.

Mr Rousseau noted the role of rebuttals and comments in challenging opinion pieces in the absence of editorial control. I take note of that, but it is flawed.  An opinion-rebuttal frame puts the two arguments on the same footing, implying the differences are just a matter of opinion rather than one being grounded in scientific consensus and the other backed primarily by vested interests and largely discredited in the scientific community (thanks Leonie Joubert). By virtue of the original being an opinion piece, it draws all further discussion on the topic down to that level. It also opens the door for substantial trolling, which makes reasoned discussion difficult to fathom for readers (a topic discussed at some length my Mr Rousseau in other posts of his).

Mail and Guardian editor, Nic Dawes, brought up the role of reputational damage in providing this motivation to editors.  I'm afraid I do not buy the line that the reputation of publications will be called into question due to a discerning public. On issues as technical as climate science, few members of the public are equipped to make a call. I believe it is very unlikely for the public to provide these checks and balances on topics requiring relatively detailed scientific understanding. Mr Dawes also brought up the topic of AIDS denialism as a point of comparison, and I think it is a good example (except perhaps that the impacts of climate change have the potential to far outstrip the human cost of AIDS denialism).

Equally, I do not buy the implied assertion that editors do not have control over opinion contributors. It may be a journalistic norm not to, but ultimately editors have the authority to provide comment on opinion expressed on their platforms. A number of the M&G editors (including Mr Dawes) did this with recently over the 'Spear' cartoons by cartoonist Zapiro (a commentator of a different sort). There was extensive comment over whether or not to publish, and the degree to which the views of the cartoonist were consistent with the views of the publication. As editor, you have control, therefore you have responsibility.

Finally, I was questioned by Mr Rousseau on whether I would react like this to other opinions I felt were not founded on scientific consensus. Well, my track record would show not... However, climate change is the first where I feel sufficiently angry over the mis-representation and sufficiently informed to make my case. That being said, there is a trend by opinionistas of Mr Vegter's ilk to dismiss the science on many issues perceived to be environmental: nutrition and hydraulic fracturing among others. This is a worrying trend as it breeds a culture of picking and choosing the bits of science that support your view - confirmation bias if ever I encountered it.

In essence, climate change (and in particular climate denialism) is an issue of sufficient import to the public good that editors have a responsibility to balance sceptical content on their platforms with some reference to the scientific consensus. And in this case, there is no serious debate within the scientific community on whether anthropogenic climate change is happening, consensus has been reached. The only debate is how to mitigate it as far as possible and then how to adapt.

Denialist views are deliberately contrarian, in the face of evidence and scientific consensus, and if not framed as such, can have damaging consequences. I am disappointed that our editors appear not to agree.

I have represented the arguments here as I understood them, which is not to say how they were intended. I would welcome debate and engagement on these issues; or correction if I have misrepresented any of the people mentioned above.

* At the time of the discussion, I did not know who the editor of the Daily Maverick was and could not find their details on the website, hence my engagement of other local editors. I have subsequently been informed that Branko Brkic is the man in question. Apologies to Mr Brkic for subtweeting him (I had to look that up, so thanks Mr Dawes for the lesson on Twitter etiquette). I hope the Daily Maverick editorial team feel free to engage...

Next Steps - Moving Onward

Last week I accepted a transfer back to the WSP business in Australia, via New Zealand - I will be wrapping up in Cape Town over the course of November, moving during December and starting in Auckland in January 2013. I will be taking on a role with WSP Asia Pacific in the Built Ecology team, with a focus on Future Cities, business development and project delivery.

During the course of the second quarter of 2013, Lyn, Riley, Kai, Kura, Pixie, Pucca and I will move back across to Sydney to settle for the next season of our lives. Two adults, a baby, two cats and two dogs will be making the trek across the Indian Ocean and then back across the Tasman Sea.

Needless to say; this decision has taken a huge amount of thought and processing, weighing of pros and cons, and planning. The move may come as something of a surprise to some of you, and perhaps less so to others. Some have already expressed their disappointment at our departure, while others have asked "What took you so long?"

I would like to take this opportunity to share our motivations for the move, our hopes for this next season and some reflections on our three years back on this crazy continent, Africa.

As I write this, I am sitting staring out over False Bay as dusk becomes night, enthralled at the scale and beauty of the setting we have been fortunate to live in these last three years. Life on the cape peninsular is of an aesthetic quality unmatched anywhere I have ever been. It is taking a force of will to pull myself from this view and consider a new stage of life in perhaps less majestic surroundings.

We are saying goodbye, for now, to family - grandparents (and great-grandparents) to Riley, cousins and friends - in the knowledge that the world is a smaller place than it once was and we will live near you again one day; but knowing that these goodbyes are gut-wrenchingly difficult none-the-less.

I am leaving colleagues and clients in a market where green buildings have become more established than when I arrived in 2009, the Green Building Council of South Africa has matured and many businesses are in a state of transition to bring 'sustainability' closer to the main-stream. I have been most fortunate to have had the chance to work with each of you, and the learning curve has been huge. I hope that you have benefited during this season even half of what I have.

I am certainly planning to retain strong ties with the African business, so please do stay in touch - I will post updated contact details once I'm settled on that side, although you can find me on LinkedIn and Twitter (@richpalmeris) in the meantime.

There are a wide range of factors pulling us back to Australia - personal and professional. In short, Lyn and I have a vision for our lives and for Riley's childhood, and at present, the next step of that vision looks most doable in Australia (not forgetting the sojourn in NZ on the way). A combination of culture, support networks, friends in the same life season as us and the ability to live a 'connected' urban life-style are what we're looking for in this new season. The new professional opportunities that have recently come onto the table have also tipped the scales towards a move.

Following the launch of Future Cities Africa next month, I will be looking to do the same in the Asia Pacific region - Asia is already seeing the first wave of 'future' cities, and it will be an exciting market to be a part of. It is also where my journey on urban sustainability started, and it will be exciting to return.

It would be a lie to say that everything has been easy over here: market, culture and circumstance have each played a role in shaping some of the biggest challenges of my career in these last three years. For those taking the sustainable design agenda forward on this continent, I'd like to share a few things observations (or lessons learned) from my time here...

■      Shift to integrated design processes as soon as possible - the compartmentalising of professional disciplines is deeply entrenched in this market and runs counter to foundational principles of sustainable design.

■      Consider alternative fee arrangements to the ECSA fee scales as they provide substantial disincentives for passive design. Spec-ing the same expensive kit as last time from a catalogue is not in clients' best interests, the environment's best interests and it is not engineering. Viva passive design, Viva!!!

■      Support the Green Building Council of South Africa! Green Star will only get better with your collective input. Keep it as simple and focused on design as possible.

This continent desperately needs people to tell a new story - a story of peace, poverty alleviation and equitable and efficient resource use. The built environment can tell this new story, but you're going to have to transform our industry to aim higher than it has before.

Finally, to friends, colleagues (old and new) and clients in Australia and New Zealand: I am incredibly excited to be coming back, and pushing new boundaries in urban sustainability with you all. Watch this space for Biomimicry, Future Cities and Living Buildings; it promises to be another awesome journey...

-RP

Future Cities Africa - "The Story"

In a month, we will be officially launching WSP Future Cities Africa, our integrated engineering and environmental design service for designing new cities and renewing existing ones. The story behind Future Cities Africa is primarily one of opportunity, complexity and design.

Before the story though, let's unpack why future cities are so important to us...

There is an emerging global meme relating to new urbanism driven in part by the broadly dawning realization that we, humanity, are a largely urban species and that the faces of our greatest global challenges as well as our greatest human achievements, are our cities. In short, if we are to get this whole living thing right (and in evolutionary terms that broadly means survival), we are going to have to get cities right.

So we see future cities as one of the principal leverage points for addressing climate change, human development, education and resilience - something summed up beautifully in the TEDPrize2012 winner video (here):

I am the crucible of the future.

I am where humanity will either flourish or fade.

I am being built and rebuilt every day.

I am inevitable. But I am not yet determined.

I am the City 2.0. Dream me. Build me. Make me real.

- TEDPrize 2012: The City 2.0

At WSP, we have the capacity to impact and shape the guts of cities - urban infrastructure - from transport, energy, water and waste to environmental regulation, green buildings and smart city control systems. We have a global network of designers, technical specialists and collaborative partners and expertise on every continent...

So, in rising to the challenge of urban humanity and realising the vision of The City 2.0, if not us, then who?

And if not in Africa, then where?

The Opportunity

There are a few key projections that it would do well to put on the table at this stage:

- By 2030, it is expected that 85% of the world’s population will be in developing countries, with 15% in LDCs. 

 - The population in urban areas in less developed countries will grow from 1.9 billion in 2000 to 3.9 billion in 2030.

 - Though Africa is predominantly rural, with only 37.3 % living in urban areas in 1999, with a growth rate of 4.87%, Africa is the continent with the fastest rate of urbanisation.

 - By 2030, Asia and Africa will both have higher numbers of urban dwellers than any other major area of the world. 

- UN Habitat

What this means is that in Asia, Latin America and Africa, there is likely to be an explosion of new cities and urban precincts whose form is still to be given. These new cities are perhaps our biggest opportunity - environmentally, socially and economically - to leapfrog the extractive legacy of the 20th century and link urban form, urban infrastructure and urban ecology in a way that addresses our urgent environmental and social challenges.

And we're seeing it - new urban models are the language of some our most innovative design minds. New Songdo City in Korea, at $35 billion the biggest private real estate investment ever, is building the concept of the aerotropolis (check out the book by Greg Lindsay and John Kasarda here) with airports being the hubs of a new urban form. Paul Romer is describing 'Charter Cities' where new cities are built from scratch with new rules and innovative governance structures (see his TED talk here). Fund managers are looking specifically to Kenya's new cities - Thika Rd and Tatu City near Nairobi as the first wave of Africa's new urbanism.

The very scale of the opportunity is something in itself; however it is the degree to which these new cities are able to address humanity's big challenges that may ultimately determine their staying power...

The Challenge

Cities are a wicked problem - complex systems of continually changing variables where any attempt to address one specific element ultimately has un-intended consequences on all the other elements. Wicked problems cannot be solved, they can only be managed, with relative success... Increasingly, design thinking is being proposed as a particularly useful tool in the management of wicked problems broadly, and cities in particular.

And cities are a wicked problem within the context of a whole suite of wicked problems: climate change, biodiversity loss and food security - each linked intricately to the other, and each posing its own set of conundrums.

Briefly, among a myriad of others:

- our changing climate is impacting global grain supplies as I write, and the resultant spikes in the food price index have previously been linked to the severe social unrest that ignited the Arab Spring (see the graph here) - all developing countries will be tested on the climate impacts on food security

- the planetary boundaries research on resilience indicate that we have overshot key biophysical boundaries on climate change, biodiversity loss and phosphorus - each of these have a severe impacts on the socio-ecological systems on which humanity relies;

- the carbon bubble: keeping the climate to an average 2 deg C rise will require $20 trillion of proven fossil fuel reserves, factored into the words stock market, to be written off (the Carbon Tracker report can be found here).

In Africa we are faced with a human development challenge - education, healthcare, gender equity, governance and peace. Our current urbanisation models result in slums, and tackling the informal sector poses a huge challenge to our built environment professionals.

The intensity of our resource consumption and growth-based economic model leave us limited options within the status quo to address these challenges in a meaningful way.

The Status Quo

In previous posts (e.g. here), I have bemoaned the nature of the infrastructure status quo for cities: linear, siloed and extractive. Our systems are founded on the myth of economies of scale and lack resilience at every level. They often have single points of failure - centralised systems with little capacity for scenario-planning and adaptive response to changing conditions.

Our financial models are inflexible; unable to take account of true costs, real balance sheets (natural, social and financial capital) and the benefits of a higher quality of life - livability. Our urban rivers are squeezed into concrete culverts and our urban ecology forced to the margins. Our governance structures mirror our 20th century infrastructure - inflexible and centralised.

And yet the opportunities to do better are so huge, perhaps because we're building off such a low base...

Future Cities - The Business

Given these three contextual considerations: wide opportunity, huge challenges and a status quo unable to address either, our business is to manage all three.

Through a combination of integrated design, trans-disciplinary processes (see posts on design here) and a core delivery capacity, WSP provides our clients with the tools to leverage the opportunities, while addressing the challenges by offering engineered alternatives to the status quo.

Our Future Cities Africa business is founded on three principles: integrated design, trans-disciplinarity and delivery.

Design: integrated design provides us with the opportunity to manage critical resource intensity of urban design across the historical professional boundaries. It provides an opportunity to address real systems, rather than the constructs of one set of professional skills.

Trans-disciplinary input: WSP is at heart and engineering business. On the one hand, we have the core design capacity to break down the traditional silos of professional disciplines, leading to a breadth of experience on urban issues through design. We are able to address the spatial elements of the city capably through our integrated design process. On the other hand, we are not specialists when it comes to the social, ecological and economic systems of cities, which have a critical role to play in Future Cities. As such, we have formed strategic partnerships with governance, economic and research specialists to provide our clients with a service that can truly transcend the status quo.

Delivery: for all the best intentions, any business aiming to have an impact on cities in a real sense must have delivery capacity. And that is where a long-standing track record of projects on the ground across the continent comes to the fore. We have the technical design and documentation skills, the relationships with suppliers and tech developers and the site management experience to bring the dreams of our clients to reality.

Design, for its own sake, is self-absorbed.

Delivery without design is blind.

Each core principle alone has no hope of changing the face of our continent, or our planet, for the better. But in combination, they have the chance to realise the City 2.0 - dream it, build it, make it real...

Things to Come - an exercise in preferred futures

At the urging of my insightful better half, I recently indulged in a bit of back-casting, the particularly useful preferred futures tool I have recently been exposed to. In essence, it involves describing a the place you want to end up, then working backwards to now, with the goal to build a path that might get you to that destination in time.

So far I've had a go at the first bit, which I'm sharing in the hope of working through the second bit. It is framed from a career perspective; however the vision I have for my work life is a fractal of a bigger picture I believe is important to meet some of the challenges we face in our urban environment.

The picture is tri-partite - a three-legged stool of sorts - each 'leg' a theme which has typically stood alone, but which could/should be integrated for a more holistic approach to cities, and a more satisfying work life.

These three 'legs' are: Design, Education and Research.

Of these, the weakest link in the context of future cities is the one between design and education - which is where I'd like to make a professional home for myself. Both also need to be underpinned by research though, asking new questions of urban infrastructure and the built form.

I have explored many of details of the three legs in previous posts: trans-disciplinary design (here), thresholds of critical mass for urban density (here) and alternative infrastructure for African cities (here) among others.

When I look at the things that bring me the most joy in work, there can be no question that they are interactive design in a team of specialists responding to a resilience brief; and teaching people about sustainability and design. In both, the joy of telling a new story, of creating a new path and bringing people along on the journey is paramount.

I want to spend the majority of my work time either teaching or designing. Where possible, I would like to teach and design in an environment where the experience contributes to a transformation in the way we all look at the world and our place in it - experiential design.

And all of this must be partnered by strong ties into research... The challenges for our urban spaces are changing and growing at a rate that our conventional knowledge transfer mechanisms are insufficient. We must have new institutions that allow us to nimbly adapt design and education to relevant research... Eudaimonic institutions (economist and blogger Umair Haque has written extensively on institutional reform to support lives ‘lived meaningfully well’, or ‘Eudaimonic’ institutions – an excellent post is here, and I’d recommend reading his book “betterness” too).

So what do these new institutions look like?

My immediate response was to look for the cities research institutes at leading universities (UCT African Centre for Cities is my local example) and find a teaching/research post with the freedom to provide design advice too. Another might be to work within the consulting engineering sector and partner with research and education institutions. Yet another might be a start-up offering new approaches to design such as Biomimicry? I've considered all of these at one time or another, but they all seem to be locked into our existing, failing institutions...

And now I prefer to think that the answer is a combination of each of them: pulling together the best of our design consulting, research and teaching institutions, and packaging something more agile, useful, resilient... meaningful. I'd like to start some crowd-sourcing on what this institution might look like in more detail and who might want to come along for the ride.

Please share specific questions or lead-in points to the discussion in the comments.

The Question to Ask

Before going further, please read Bill McKibben's article in Rolling Stone from last month: http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/global-warmings-terrifying-new-math-20120719

Good.

Now, let's talk 

In summary: to keep climate change to a (debatably 'safe') 2°C rise, we must leave $20 trillion worth of fossil fuel in the ground.

This makes a complete mockery of emissions reductions, energy efficiency and responsible behaviour. We must leave that carbon in the ground, end of story (burning it slower will not help). This means a wholesale shift to renewables and, more importantly, a boycott of fossil fuel energy companies - products, services, profits.

Most companies and institutions have some form of public stance on climate change. For many 'sustainability' is a core value. Some even claim to be carbon neutral. However all organistions rely on some degree on the fossil fuel energy system - either directly by providing services to a lucrative sector or simply through the purchase of their products.

And nearly all climate change strategies, for public and private institutions are based on emissions reductions and offsets, which do not address the basic fact of writing off those $20tn of assets in current circulation.

It's relatively easy to be 'for' something like emissions reduction. The real test then, is not a stance on emissions, but a stance leaving fuel in the ground.

So, the question to ask of CEOs, chair(wo)men, presidents and prime ministers is no longer whether or not they have an opinion or policy on climate change or emissions reduction.

The question to ask is what role they will play in keeping those $20tn worth of carbon in the ground.

Sustainability is like Teenage Sex...

A recent tweet I saw made me laugh: "Sustainability is like teenage sex. Everyone says they're doing it. Most aren't. And those that are, are doing it badly." But then I stopped laughing and did a bit of introspection on the darker side of my industry.

Sure, most businesses who are reporting on sustainability metrics try to make themselves look better than they are. Disclosure is rewarded more than performance and many companies include 'sustainability' as a core value, with little executive buy-in or understanding of what it means.

However in many cases, corporate sustainability is far more insidious than securing bragging rights; it is often a front for the corporations whose very existence is founded on extracting value from human and natural systems to give their existence a green sheen. The green sheen of pond scum on a dead river perhaps?

The other morning I read the proud claims that the first McDonalds restaurant had been certified with a bespoke Green Star rating in Australia. That's right folks, McDonalds. And they led with the tag line "Would you like sustainability with that?"

So, by sponsoring a bespoke green building tool, installing some efficient building services, a company can effectively erase in the minds of its customers, the fact that it nearly single-handedly shifted an entire agricultural industry towards intensive, beef-led agri-business (ok, there were other big players, but please forgive me for being dramatic).

The fast food behemoth appears to imagine that targeting the 'Topsoil Preservation' credit on a restaurant could undo countless millions of tons of topsoil destroyed by extractive agriculture. It's as though they believe that by increasing the fresh air rates in their restaurant they would counter the atmospheric impact of cleared forests for beef production – the very lungs of our planet.

The ecological and health impacts of the corporation are so huge – the fast-food-fueled obesity epidemic afflicting western cultures among others – yet our attention is focused on the small steps in restaurant design that green buildings offer them.

It's a bit like mining houses claiming 'sustainability' credentials for their green buildings (e.g. The 6 star Rio Tinto Tower in Brisbane)... Does including recycled steel in your building say anything about the strip-mined forests of conflict-ridden West Papua?

Or banks - will the superior economic performance of green buildings fill the hole left in the actual savings of real people when the bubble finally bursts for good, and the house of cards comes crashing down?

For many corporates, it is not just a case of green-washing - making themselves appear greener than they are - but rather Orwellian doublespeak. Peace is war, truth is lies, 'green' fast food is healthy (in the words of my wife) and extractive mining is the panacea to the development of our communities.

And it is not that green buildings are bad, quite the opposite. The built environment is a huge contributor to humanity's resource consumption - and addressing their impact through design is critical.

I'm glad McDonalds built a green restaurant and that they pioneered the use of bespoke Green Star tools, I'm glad that Rio Tinto have helped increase demand for green buildings. But I cannot stomach the self-congratulatory attitude as though these decisions of theirs outweigh their deeper, darker impacts.

Brief Thoughts on Cape Town Stadium

The City of Cape Town has a problem - a nearly new, barely used, international quality stadium slap bang in the centre of a precinct screaming to be developed into an urban node. The business case for the stadium hinged on attracting the local rugby union team Western Province (or The Stormers when playing in the Super Rugby tournament) as anchor tenants as the stadium is too big and inconveniently located for the two professional soccer teams based in the city. The costs of maintaining the stadium require 16 full house events (55,000 bums on seats) annually (noted by Guy Lundy, Twitter), which can only realistically be achieved if it hosts regular rugby games.

However, the Western Province Rugby Football Union (WPRFU) own their current stadium, Newlands, and are loathe to forego the benefits of being owners of an old stadium for the benefits of being tenants at a new one. And understandably so - the WPRFU are in a strong negotiating position to get a good deal from the City, so a move that makes financial sense to the City is looking less and less likely.

Compounding this issue for City is a vocal, NIMBY, residents association covering the new stadium precinct, which viciously opposes any alternative uses of the stadium precinct for restaurants, clubs and other night-life venues.

This seemingly intractable situation has led to a few alarming, or at least surprising suggestions... The most extreme is to 'simply' demolish the new stadium - although I don't know if the proponents of that path have given any thoughts how to use the land better... In my humble opinion, demolishing R4.5 billion of nearly new infrastructure, no matter how misplaced the spending may have been is an indication of a severe lack of imagination.

Not lacking in imagination, but perhaps in practicality is the plan to turn the stadium into low-cost housing. I'm not sure how this would work architecturally, but the first thing to spring to mind is that low-cost housing should probably be low-cost (which the stadium certainly isn't). The other is that the modifications necessary to change a stadium into apartments are likely to cost more than demolishing and then building genuine low-cost housing in its place... So we're back to the point above.

Further to that, new urban models show the need for mixed income housing along with other space uses to create liveable urban spaces. Putting high density housing where the stadium would have to be thoroughly tested on urban design grounds before taking any steps in that direction.

I'd like to throw another thought into the mix... If the key issue is land ownership of Newlands (for WPRFU) and the operating costs of the new stadium (for the City), why not just exchange assets?

The City could swap the new stadium in Greenpoint for the old one in Newlands. WPRFU would get a brand new, world class stadium instead of an old one, without having to give up the land ownership of ‘their’ stadium. The City would get an albatross off from around their necks and secure a prime piece of land for place-making in Newlands.

The fact that there is already a project underway for creating a public zone adjacent to Newlands strengthens the case further...

If I have overlooked something here, please comment...

Hope: Where not to look

I was privileged to attend a side event at COP17 in Durban last year and I have explored some of the disappointment and hope from the international climate negotiations in a previous post. At the time I was looking forward to Rio+20 as a more relevant event for progress on cities and our built environment. And on some fronts it seems to be so, at least as far as cities are concerned.

However the final text contains few, if any, firm commitments. The commentary coming out of Rio was downbeat, with the hash-tag #riominus20 getting airtime on Twitter - and Greenpeace adopting what CEO, Kumi Naidoo, has termed a 'war footing' of civil disobedience. The USA and Russia appear to be the major blockers of strong action, perhaps with a view to exploiting arctic energy resources?

Guardian columnist George Monbiot wrote an excellent piece on how global leaders are using the rhetoric of hope to string the public along with these global negotiations. I too have allowed myself to dare to hope that leaders will announce some big breakthrough at these conferences, something more than is needed, not less - and each time I have been bitterly disappointed.

And yet why are we disappointed? There has been so much written on the relationship between corporations and governments: embracing partners in a dance of power and wealth, at any cost it would seem. Is it not naive to believe that this very system will somehow transcend its own inherently selfish nature?

So the inevitable failure of Rio hurts, but does not surprise... And yet, despite my best efforts (a few brief minutes of fantasy about being a John Gant of sorts and dismantling the industrial machine, although for wildly different reasons to those described in Atlas Shrugged), I cannot give up hope. But I cannot hope in the pomp and ego of the global sustainability summits any more. They have been sold to us on the basis of 'last chances' but negotiators have failed us too many times now.

Instead I must hope in individuals working to do things better tomorrow than they did them yesterday. Simple things. Because we seem to find our humanity at the local scale and that is where my hope lies, in finding our humanity. And even in the midst of massive institutional failure, and the potential humanitarian and environmental disasters that might follow, I can still hope in community and the simple, everyday human interactions that build it.

So for my part, my efforts will be directed at designing spaces that best allow community to engage with environmental and humanitarian challenges at their own scale, in their own context.

Ten Points

1. Integrated design.

 2. Whole systems.

 3. Purpose and function.

 4. Participation.

 5. Restorative.

 6. Decentralised.

 7. Cyclical.

 8. Non-toxic (benign).

 9. Optimised across a system.

 10. Stewardship.

Multi-, Inter-, and Trans-Disciplinary Approaches

When I first started thinking about designing future cities, I had no idea that there was so much contention over the different terms for how a group of people with different expertise can work together. But there is. So let's start with a disclaimer: I am not an expert in the theory of how teams work, so the ideas in this post are simply my own interpretations.

This post is just an exploration of how I believe we can shift our shared understanding of complex design challenges (like cities) by reframing the rules of engagement between design team members, from multi-, through inter- and towards trans-disciplinary design.

The shortfalls of specialists working in isolation have become increasingly apparent in the design of complex systems. It seems that even the most conservative of design spaces - old school engineering - have begun to recognise this. There are few remaining proponents of the 'my-way-or-the-highway' engineering, who simply demand that all other systems meet their requirements...

While the bluster of self importance often remains, I have witnessed a shift in professional attitudes - to be more accommodating and understanding of the importance of other disciplines in complex design challenges.

Multi: many. Many disciplines. Multi-disciplinary approaches recognise the importance of having a range of specialists on a team, and that the communication lines between team members need to be transparent and clear. This distinction from conventional 'specialists-in-isolation' approaches allows design challenges to be informed by the needs of all the specialists.

In my (short) career I have seen the rise of multi-disciplinary teams as the preferred model for the built environment (although it is still an emerging trend in the local industry). The idea that the free flow of information and design concepts between mechanical, electrical, civil and structural engineers may improve the quality of the design, while novel, is not outside the realms of mainstream understanding. Green building tools such as Green Star have also made multi-disciplinary design (sometimes called integrated design) a critical part of new buildings.

But multi-disciplinary approaches only take you so far. Having clear communication between disciplines is important, but it does little to break down the discipline silos. Multi-disciplinary design solutions avoid some of the obvious pitfalls of experts working in isolation, but are not able to really take advantage of the diversity of expertise and understanding in a team.

The first step in getting more from a team of specialists is the concept of inter-disciplinary design. My understanding of inter-disciplinary work is that it implies a sharing of methodology between disciplines. In many cases, it can be using quantified analysis where previously only qualitative tools had been used, or vice versa.

For example, urban designers have made huge steps in the qualities of successful urban spaces (bulk, look and feel, mixed use, massing etc). However adding a layer of quantified analysis, in terms of resource intensity or density thresholds for different technical systems, provides a level of insight  that can really inform the design and optimise urban systems.

Similarly, bringing qualitative assessments such as building community or social justice to technical fields - like the provision of infrastructure for basic services, can assist in making the interventions appropriate to the end users. Many of the failures of technical urban interventions are due to the lack of consideration given to social systems.

This 'borrowing' of methods for advancing design appropriately, while not limited by any means to quantitative/qualitative assessments, is at the core of inter-disciplinary thinking. It recognises the value of different approaches and paradigms in delivering design that is more sensitive to its context.

And yet even inter-disciplinary processes still largely rely on individual specialists, each working in their area of expertise - taking inspiration from other fields for sure, but still operating in a specialist paradigm.

Which brings us to trans-disciplinary thinking...

Trans: across. Across disciplines... An approach where specialists are not confined to their fields; options and insights from non-specialists inform design; methods are shared, debated, dissected - from all sources. Human experience informs process, and the patterns of interaction begin to inform the details.

While 'multi' acknowledges the importance of communication between silos and 'inter' builds real bridges between them, 'trans' dissolves the silo walls completely and opens the debate on design to all participants.

By virtue of having walked down a street, the structural engineer can comment on public space and aesthetics. Crossing a road qualifies a QS to engage on traffic. Governance specialists, artists, mothers and teachers all have something to contribute to inform the development of technical systems. Engineers must be able to deliver their specialist knowledge, but not be limited to it. Above all, every design decision becomes rooted in context.

Trans-disciplinary approaches are critical in the assessment of complex systems because they allow broad patterns to be considered concurrently during design. While ivory-tower specialists typically isolate elements and work from details to wholes to make progress, trans-disciplinary teams work from the whole, and fill in the details in time.

In observing, analysing and designing cities, trans-disciplinarity allows us to see the whole picture: the lives lived; the children playing safely in the park; the community; the jobs; the amenity; the commerce; the built form; the climate resilience; the return on investment; the food security; and the green spaces - in one multi-coloured, multi-layered picture. And the picture is informed and held by the team, not just an individual.

Trans-disciplinary approaches bring us into the world of 'both/and', not 'either/or', demanding awareness and humility. But its rewards are resilient and relevant systems in a world where reality is complex.