Happier Cities

Cities are incredible things - perhaps humanity's crowning achievement on this planet; they contain some of the very best (and the very worst) of us, condensed. I am a sustainable urbanist - I believe cities offer our best shot at a sustainable future. They create the conditions for culture, innovation and interaction that are so core to our society.

For some, cities are a necessary evil to achieve the financial and career goals that deliver the fulfillment we've been conditioned to aspire to. Commuting. Traffic. Crowds. Ugly buildings. Concrete. Highways. Fly-overs. Slums. Crime. Fear. All tolerated for the cash.

For others, cities contain what makes life worth living. Culture. Architecture. Bars. Restaurants. Exciting opportunities. Serendipitous encounters. Education. Wealth. Anonymity. And People, People, People - the sheer human delight, need, craving for connection to other people.

And for others still, cities represent a pathway out of rural poverty entrapment. A chance at a better life. Jobs. Education. Services. Opportunity. For them and their families. Billions of rural poor swelling the emerging mega-cities of our future.

So obviously, creating happier cities exists at many levels. To increase happiness broadly, cities should cater to each of these and more.

But how?

I think most fundamentally, creating happier cities is about improving access to them. Housing affordability. Security and mobility. Rules that allow for informal engagement with society; trading, living, playing and learning. Making life in cities as accessible as possible to those who wish to live in them would be the biggest thing I can think of to make cities happier en masse. Critical to this is how we provide core services to slums; security, utilities and sanitation. Allowing people to light their homes and cook their food without threat of fire or asphyxiation, to shit with dignity and drink the water without fear.

At a more personally familiar level - that of the young(ish) professional with a family: access to world class work opportunities balanced with liveability (such as effective public transit, high quality green space and walkability). In short, providing the benefits of places like New York and Tokyo while mitigating some of the lifestyle impacts that often go with them. [Aside: There's a good post on assessing balanced city performance here.]

And then there's a level of cultural engagement and aesthetic appreciation of ones surroundings that lifts the spirit and connects us to other people.

Excellent design - architecture, open space and public art.

Opera, music and support for the performing arts.

Awesome neighborhoods, retaining some edginess (Woodstock or Muizenberg in Cape Town or Braamfontein in Joburg or what I understand Camden and Brixton once were in London), but also allowing for renewal and growth. Honoring history and community without stagnation.

Somewhere beautiful to think, to play, to share, to run, to eat, to drink, to love and to party.

So my happier city?

To know that everyone has safe lighting and heat, access to clean water and a toilet with privacy; affordable public transport and walkable neighborhoods; flexible rules; awesome, edgy, creative neighborhoods; beautiful buildings and parks; kick-ass jobs; a global reputation and a climate that lets me make my London-based friends jealous. 

Future Workplace | Best Employers

What does it take to be a preferred employer; a workplace of choice in the ever more competitive quest for talent. What do you need to do to keep your top talent on board in the knowledge industries?

Perhaps a funky office fit-out, free lunch, pool tables or an x-box in the on-floor coffee bar? Corporate discounts, the newest smart phone, a seat in the corporate box at the football?

There are already so many think pieces on this in the business media from better thinkers than me, so rather than theorize, I'm just going to share. These are the things that I look for in a workplace, and which would help convince me to work for you.

In my view, strap-on benefits (gadgets, discounts and games) can help, but they can't make up for getting the fundamentals right: pay, time and culture. And I think, importantly, the communication of pay, time and culture...

Remuneration

When it comes to remuneration, I want to know that you, my prospective employers are not taking the piss.

It never ceases to amaze me how wrong companies can get it when it comes to remuneration and how the framework for performance and remuneration is managed. It is the one criticism that has recurred in every workplace I've ever been... And it is seldom just a question of how much people earn, but an understanding that they are being looked after.

Let's be clear: I am not interested in working for a company that does not pay competitively, does not provide transparency of how pay is addressed and does not conduct itself with integrity in how remuneration is managed with employees.

What remuneration transparency means to me is:

- a quantitative industry assessment of pay at my grade;

- company data for pay at each grade (not individuals, but useful statistical data, including level, gender and location);

- a high level breakdown of company costs; salaries, cost of doing business, other costs and profit target.

It must be clear that what I earn is commensurate with the industry, the broader company and that the balance of the business is such that the fruit of my labour is not wasted.

And when putting in place performance management processes, the link between performance assessment and remuneration must be crystal clear. There must be no 'black box' where some assessment of performance goes in, and out comes a remuneration outcome that cannot be explained.

With pay, context makes up for a lot. To be considered a preferred employer, you must show me how my remuneration is competitive; in the industry and the company.

Time

When it comes to time, I want to know that you value my time.

Time really, truly, is limited - it is the one thing that you can never get back. So a company that does not value my time, does not value me.

In the creative industries, overtime is a fact of life - we are not a strict 9-5 industry... Project workloads are not smooth, so there is an inevitable need for some time of pushing the edges to meet the requirements of the business. But if this is not balanced by an equivalent flexibility, then I remain unconvinced of a company's 'preferred employer' credentials.

A business that structurally requires extensive overtime to be profitable is not a business I want to work for. It is evidence of poor management that it is only profitable by extracting value from employees.

To show a respect for my time, an employer of choice would:

- avoid a culture of showing face - where assessment is based on how late employees stay, or proxy metrics like 'after hours pizza orders'; and

- seek to build a culture of delivery-based performance and assessment.

In many respects, efficiency and profitability run directly counter to excessive time at the office. A business that communicates its focus on delivery rather than time is on the path to preferred employer status.  

Culture

Culture is perhaps the biggest contributor to being a preferred employer as it encompasses both pay and time, but it is much broader than that. There are a few other key indicators that your company has the culture of a preferred employer:

-   diversity; you must disclose your employee breakdown along gender and minority representation lines (company-wide, within your executive suite and the gender current pay gap at each level);

-   sustainability; you must disclose your position on key sustainability issues and show how you address those issues in your operations;

If you do not have a progressive attitude to women, minority groups and the environment you cannot be considered a preferred employer. And woe betide you if your executives make racist or sexist jokes assuming I'm in on it - culture is always easier to spot than to describe, always easier to break than to make.

Once you have these core things in place - transparent remuneration processes, delivery-focused time management and an office culture that celebrates diversity - the other things can have their turn in the sun.

That being said, a few things to be wary of:

-   don't dress cross-corporate advertising up as benefits; marginal special offers on other corporate products (gym membership, insurance etc) is not a benefit, it's just a marketing gimmick. We all have enough of those. Benefits must have real value and no hidden agendas.

-   don't link benefits to charity events and other initiatives to enhance your corporate reputation. If we want to give, we will do so of our own accord. Corporate social responsibility is your responsibility, and while it's important, it is not a direct employee incentive.

-   make sure you have decent to coffee - there's really no excuse not to.

All this really just boils down to a creating and communicating culture of shared values and authenticity. These are things that are valuable to me and I value a transparent, authentic approach to them...

Pretending

In his recent UN speech (here) Leonardo Di Caprio spoke about pretending and acting; how it is his job, but not that of the people entrusted with charting our way through this godawful mess we've made of the global climate.

Many of us 'sustainability' professionals spend a great deal of time pretending too. Pretending to be corporate, pretending that economic success is a pre-requisite for sustainability rather than a happy outcome of it, pretending that we're property people or banking people or IT people... Constantly trying to dress the good up as the bad - always making 'the business case' for something that should be challenging the status quo, not reinforcing it.

The price we pay for some small action, I suppose. 

And at an individual level, the price of ingratiating ourselves to corporate decision-makers for having a modern career that at least ticks some of the boxes for a life that matters. And the ever-present hope for more.

But it does us no justice. Constantly couching our message in terms that will not offend or invite criticism leaves its emotional power at the door - our dreams and aspirations for a better world, but also the gnawing fear of a reality very different from this.

I leave you with this.

And the challenge to build some of the emotion, some of the vision and some of the core reality of our message into our working lives.      

Emergent Infrastructure

So, Pollinate Energy is basically awesome; for a whole bunch of reasons. If you're into renewable energy, sustainable development, poverty alleviation or any other change-the-world-fetish, go and check them out.

The model is an innovative combination of micro-finance (a la the Grameen Bank), small-scale renewable energy generation and LED lighting. Tent dwellers, outside of the formal economy, get the opportunity for clean, free light with a micro-finance loan over 5 weeks. Light allows study, cooking and family activity after dark, without the health impacts and ongoing costs of burning kerosene. Furthermore, Pollinate is set up to support the emerging business of providing micro-finance solutions for clean energy products (rather than simply retailing the products itself), showing good potential scalability and support for local micro enterprise.

A good news story all round.

That's enough of a plug... The theme of this post is rather around some thoughts that the Pollinate approach has sparked for me: models for delivering basic infrastructure services in informal settlements; because I believe that is one of the keys to effective future urban systems.

I was fortunate to get the opportunity to mentor one of Pollinate's interns, Glenda Yiu (@glendayiu), and the presentation of her experience in Bangalore got me thinking about flexible, informal infrastructure in ballooning emerging market cities.

There is a stat I discovered while developing the WSP Future Cities programme in Africa that floored me - less than 2% of the world's structures are designed by architects... Wow. That probably means that less than 2% of the world's structures include modern engineering, and that less than 2% of the world's structures are connected to conventional urban infrastructure. Many of those structures are in unplanned areas, outside the formal economy and knowledge sector.

The global urban world is predominantly informal. The global urban world emerges, it isn't planned.

This has profound implications for the formal property sector - from finance to design, construction and leasing. Our industry requires stable governance structures, private land ownership and high finance to function. Some, or all of these things are typically absent in the development model likely to dominate the engines of global growth for the next two decades - emerging market cities (McKinsey and BCG both estimate in excess of 40% of global GDP to come from these cities).

Most of the urban world is informal. Out of the reach of the design professionals who depend on it - engineers, architects, urban designers and planners. True, as emerging cities grow, many will broaden the areas well suited to conventional property investment, but there remains a large untapped opportunity in the informal sector for innovation in the delivery of formal services - either conventional 'property' services (like offices, markets, places for entertainment) or infrastructure services (energy, water, sanitation).

Listed property funds dominate the commercial property sector, while governments and large investment banks typically fund infrastructure. All of them have failed the informal sector to a greater or lesser degree and none have developed models for services that seem able to deal with the scale and pace of urbanisation in emerging markets.

Which brings me back to Pollinate - not just a renewable energy company, but a model for delivering basic infrastructure services to an entire socio-economic category currently unserviced by the formal economy. And a class which represents one of the engines of global growth and prosperity.

One of the big challenges that I foresee is the difficulty of applying the Pollinate model to other utility services - water and sanitation. The complexity of sanitation systems makes micro-finance more difficult and/or inaccessible, but the potential benefits are extraordinary. Clean drinking water and safe sanitation are two of the keys to unlocking the growth potential of informal cities. It is here that project like The Future of the Toilet (Gates foundation) and corporate innovation in decentralised infrastructure could have a huge role to play.

As the major global drinks retailers have learned, from Coca Cola to South African Breweries , there is money in the informal sector. But it is thinly spread and a challenge to access, requiring extraordinary distribution and logistics networks to function profitably. Combining emerging tech with micro-finance is revolutionary, but I have think there are real opportunities for refinement. Another sector with some lessons that I think may be relevant is the mobile phone sector, and particularly the M-PESA banking service that has engaged the informal sector in Kenya (nearly everyone has a mobile phone, not everyone has a bank account).

I would not be surprised to see mobile phone/data companies providing the framework for broader decentralised infrastructure services.

We have seen the rise of multi-utility service companies - MUSCos -  operating at the precinct scale (examples at Marina Bay in Singapore, Elephant and Castle in London and now Central Park in Sydney), supplying integrated municipal services to large urban infill developments: energy, water, sanitation and data. The mobile phone companies have already made the leap to decentralised infrastructure models and micro-finance, so it's not too far a step to develop energy and sanitation solutions to match.

If the McKinseys and BCGs are right, and emerging market cities prove to be the hub of future growth, then innovative solutions for informal, decentralised infrastructure could be the critical component to unlock that growth; for governments, corporates and service providers. And professional services businesses that rely on formal property models will have to adapt very quickly to the 'informal' to take full advantage of this next wave of global prosperity. 

2012 Essays | Exploring Values

This is the second of two essays I wrote in 2012, shortly before deciding to return to Australia.

Please provide a short personal statement (1-2 pages) describing the evolution of your personal values and professional aspirations. What steps have you taken in your career to actualise your values in your work? If you haven’t been able to do so, what has held you back?

My professional aspirations have shifted far more then my values over the course of my career. My values have remained relatively constant (even since childhood), if somewhat cliched: honesty, integrity, fairness, generosity, courage, patience... all underpinned by love. Some have really only found their face since I met my wife and my personal journey has been an interesting and sometimes bumpy one (as would anyone's I think), but the values I profess have remained relatively constant.

When I first left university, my career aspirations were quite low (in retrospect). I wanted to earn a good salary and work in a field that included both the environment and engineering. Beyond those attributes, I did not have a clear picture of where I wanted to go or the type of organisation I wanted to work in. As I had a bursary from SABMiller, I started my career making lots and lots of beer - something that achieved the engineering, and some, but not all of the environmental aspirations I had at the time.

In the autumn of 2005, shortly after realising that perhaps a career in brewing was not for me, I had a fortuitous Easter weekend with an old school friend. Over a bottle of wine, we unpacked what we wanted from life - well, work actually. And it turned out that I didn't want to work for a corporation, and I didn't want to make beer anymore. I still wanted to earn a good salary and mesh engineering and ecology, but the 'how' was clearing up a bit. By August 2005, I had resigned and moved to Australia and by October I was working for a sustainable design business looking at green buildings.

And so my career aspirations took a bit of a step up - I now wanted to work on the most awesome buildings in the world and help reduce their environmental impact. The aspiration was still predominantly self-centred, typified by a once-stated life goal to be published in The Economist. During my four years at Advanced Environmental, I managed to achieve many of these goals (although not The Economist one), and slowly came to realise that it wasn't the whole picture. I had the good salary, the engineering/environmental mix and was working for a smallish private firm... But there was a lot of resistance to broadening our offering to explore the social impacts of our designs and also to really engaging with the complexity of ecological systems. We liked our 'environment' in easily packaged energy, water and waste bites and no further complexity was necessary.

So when the opportunity to return to South Africa came about, I jumped at it (even though through the acquisition of Advanced Environmental by WSP I was now in a big corporation again). The chance to engage in a new green building industry in a country with pressing social needs meant that my aspirations took another step up - I now wanted to play a role in shaping an industry to more closely reflect my values.

This latest part of the journey has given me the chance to work on some incredible projects across Africa and to work closely with the Green Building Council of South Africa in shaping their green building tool. I have had the chance to do non-profit work informing the technical elements of the Green Star SA rating tool, to write a green lease guide, to work with a Nobel Peace Laureate on her new Centre for Peace and Environmental Studies in Nairobi and to speak at national and international conferences. My thinking has been broadened to include Biomimicry, Integral Thinking and Regenerative Design. I have wakened to the importance of resource equity, governance and peace in underpinning sustainable development. The latest chapter has seen a focus on The Future City, and the levels of complex design, trans-disciplinary thinking and technical excellence required to see it built.

As my vision and aspirations have broadened, so have I changed the place and nature of my work. Moving companies, moving countries, changing roles and building new service offerings... Each plateau in engagement/interest has led to a change and another learning curve. My biggest challenges have been finding mentors who are willing and able to shape both my technical expertise (the easy part) and give form to my values (the hard part).

And now my aspirations have shifted once again. I now want to work with and learn from the global thought leaders who are re-imagining how our built environment will be designed and constructed to best meet the needs of current and future generations. I want to work on world-leading projects, taking urban sustainability in all its breadth into account, looking to the future and understanding the past. My time back in South Africa has been focused on sharing my knowledge and experience with our African business and the local industry via the Green Building Council. Now I aspire to take a new step and find global mentors who can guide me on this continuing journey.

2012 Essays | Finding Meaning in Work

This is the first of two essays I wrote in 2012, shortly before deciding to return to Australia.

As of June 2010, 55% of Americans were “unsatisfied” or “very unsatisfied” with their jobs. And in 2011, a study of 5,000 millennials between the ages of 16 and 24 found that young people aren't focused on becoming famous or creating enormous wealth. On the contrary, their hopes for the future revolve around making a contribution to society and staying in close touch with family and friends.

Why are so few people fulfilled by what they do for a living? Why are young people today less inspired by a traditional career path? How can this situation be improved?

Modern (western) society - and especially so the USA - has emerged as a culture of individualism and 'meritoracy' where the pursuit of personal financial wealth (and lifestyle security) has dominated our cultural discourse, often at the expense of higher order values. While both individual accountability, and personal reward for expertise and endeavour are important attributes, without the broader societal values such as the collective good, environmental health, the arts (for their own sake, not just for fame and fortune) and the broadening of our understanding of the world, they have driven our society to be incredibly extractive. My experience is that being self-centred, extracting from those around you, does not lead to an especially fulfilled outcome without a hefty dose of self-delusion.

In your question, when you say 'what they do for a living', I gather what you mean is 'what they do to earn money'; and I think perhaps part of the problem is this fundamental association of 'money' with 'living'. Having the means (money) to do the things that you want to do in life is important, however many young people entering the workforce today are beginning to realise that securing the means to living well is less important than actually living well, so we are seeing a global readjustment in values and what we mean by 'living well'.

So, briefly, I think so few people are fulfilled by their careers because our culture rewards a very narrow set of values; and people, when they're honest with themselves, actually have a much broader set of values.

With respect to the 'traditional' career path, its major draw card was always long-term job security. That, and the naive belief that one's work was beneficial in helping to 'build the economy'. People would put up with an unfulfilling job because it allowed them to picture a future - educated kids, a nice house, a comfortable retirement. The global financial shock of 2007 pulled the security rug from under the feet of many people entering the workforce. Traditional careers didn't offer the security they once did, and they were soul-destroying to boot. This has been partnered by a global realisation that the institutional status quo does not serve us especially well, and has not for some time - corporations have proven themselves untrustworthy and profit has proven itself unprofitable. It's hardly surprising that people are uninspired by most of the options that are on the table.

So, what to do? Well, my first thought is to bring the 'living' back into 'earning a living'. The workplace must begin to reflect the values that most real people have (honesty, generosity, integrity etc) and not just their vices (greed and fear). When one's career feels like an extension of life, and not one's life becoming just a bit-part of a career, then we may see people get broadly more satisfied with their places of work. A work place that adds many layers and types of value - health, well being, understanding, wealth and allows others to benefit too, now that may be a place which inspires.

Another step to improvement would be to start to assess success on the basis of higher order wealth. If companies are assessed on their performance in terms of health, education, research, art and music as much as they are on financial profit, then I can almost guarantee that they would become more fulfilling places to work.

So, I believe there are some institutional changes required.

1.    To push wider reporting than simply financial (so-called triple-bottom-line accounting);

2.    To create a global balance sheet for higher order capital (social, environmental, human etc)  and make it an industry standard; and more importantly,

3.    A value shift within organisations to begin to reflect actual value rather than just financial value.