Sustainable Cities Index 2008
Helen Clarkson, 10th November 2008, Cities, Metrics
Forum for the Future has published its 2nd annual Sustainable Cities Index. The easy headlines are that Bristol has leapfrogged Brighton and Hove to take first place, Newcastle has risen up the rankings to become the only northern city in the top five, and three of the bottom four places are still held by Birmingham, Liverpool and Hull.
It gets more interesting when you look behind the rankings. The exercise ranks the cities against one another and is designed to help city leaders benchmark themselves against meaningful indicators which they can do something about, like recycling rates and readiness for climate change.
But it doesn’t mean that Bristol is a genuinely sustainable city, it’s just faring better across the board than others in the UK. Furthermore, Britain’s cities lag behind international rivals on sustainability and we lack the shining examples that others can come and learn from.
Looking at those international cities that are raising the bar on sustainability – such as Portland, Oregon, and San Francisco, we can see that their success now is due to far-sighted policies in the 70s and 80s, which are coming to fruition now.
Back in the 70s when the rest of the US was embracing shopping malls, Portland enacted strong land-use policies, which set the city boundary and encouraged housing density. This means that now it can aspire to be a “20 minute city” where citizens will spend no more than 20 minutes travelling to work, shop, or play. They are currently in the process of updating the Portland Plan which aims to take the lead on “sustainable, equitable, and economically viable long-range planning”.
As part of the work for the Index, we interviewed nine UK city leaders (both elected Leaders and Chief Executives of the city councils) and got their views on leadership in cities. They shared the view that good leaders will have a vision which they can articulate, be passionate about and motivate people to follow. Looking at those international examples we think it needs to go further than this. If a uniting vision isn’t sustainable in itself then trying to graft sustainability onto it results in a strategy full of compromises and trade-offs. A strategy, like Portland’s, which is driven by questions such as “How can we design a city which thrives whilst minimizing carbon emissions?”, is more likely to lead to long-term success than one where sustainability is an after-thought.
We’ve seen a similar shift with companies. As we noted in our Leader Business Strategies report back in January, companies we work with have moved from asking us "What should our sustainability strategy be for our business?", to "What should our business strategy be, in the light of sustainability?" Substitute the word ‘cities’ for ‘business’ and this is how we need our city leaders to be thinking.
Leicester City has recently released just such a plan “One Leicester", which includes ambitions such as “Planning for People Not Cars”. We believe visions like this, which are driven by the principles of sustainability, will lead to real change for British cities, and we hope that increasingly city leaders look to sustainability for the answers to the pressing questions they are dealing with, rather than seeing it as one more agenda to addressed alongside all the others.
This blog entry has been amended to reflect revisions to the Index. City rankings have changed slightly after corrections to an error in the air quality data.
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Sustainability
We have to take such scaling with a grain of sand no matter how we see it. Larger cities would likely be considered as unsustainable is we look purely at mathematics, which is often not the case in real life, as other factors (e.g. qualitative) would have to be taken into account. Still, a good summary with a serious study made on the topic! Eva Moly
Future Planning means Better Living for your Kids
Future planning, vision and organized thinking always pays. No wonder Portland, Oregon, and San Francisco lead the pack of sustainable cities which had stronger land-use policies, better rules on reducing carbon emissions, etc. than all the other US cities, in the 70s and 80s.Bottom line: Far-sightedness leads to better living for future generations.
The bus service is random
The bus service is random and the last bus into the city centre from where I live is 7pm! Very often buses can't pull in to bus stops because of people parking at them and very little parking enforcement happens as the promised deregulation hasn't happened.
Bristol v Malmo
Hi,
I was a student in Bristol many years ago and now live in Malmo. Both are beautiful cities, although I think Malmo is a long way ahead on sustainablilty with, for example, a 100% renewable energy district in the Western Harbour. I've written about the Western Harbour on my website Cities for People.
It's great that Bristol is doing so much now - maybe you could look at Scandinavian cities for more inspiration?
RE:
definitely There are next generation telecommunications developments coming on stream in early 2009 that will enable a wide range of intrinsically green businesses to inwardly invest into the city.
Any ideas when the corrected
Any ideas when the corrected data will be back online? I need it for a uni report I'm meant to be writing...
Cheers!
Laura
Cardiff is an environmental disaster zone
I am amazed that Cardiff has scored so highly This award is seriously unbalanced and flawed!
The bus service is random and the last bus into the city centre from where I live is 7pm! Very often buses can't pull in to bus stops because of people parking at them and very little parking enforcement happens as the promised deregulation hasn't happened.
Presently the council is promoting Project Green or rather planning to build an incinerator at Cardiff Bay - Over-sized – 2.5 times the amount of residual waste Cardiff produces and will have to bring rubbish in from all over South Wales in a 100 trucks a day! 120,000 tonnes of waste ash per year to be transported to a hazardous waste site in Cheltenham.
http://cardiffincinerator.blogspot.com/
We are also campaigning against a new bridge and road for articulated lorries into city centre grade 1 listed Bute Park! Commercialisation of parks is not a sustainable strategy.
This award makes our campaign against this and an incinerator more difficult.
There has also been concern about the new food waste collection being taken all the way to Derby.
There is way too much parking capacity and the council gave into the motoring lobby and reduced higher parking charges. Congestion is appalling. Cars come first. Pedestrians have to put up with 70s style traffic pens in the middle of the road, or lengthy underground tunnels and crossings on one or 2 sides of a crossroads. There are cars parked on cycle lanes everywhere and on pavements. See the pictures here
http://inconsiderateparking.blogspot.com/
The traffic noise is high as the road surfaces are rough. Traffic thunders through built up areas at 40mph. Street clutter is everywhere.
Cardiff is far from a shining example. The built environment is a shambles! This does not come out in the survey.
A five minute walk around Cardiff would tell you that. I invite you to join me for a street audit walk from the station to the castle and then to city hall .
The figures are skewed by the quality of education and 'green' businesses! You are misleading potential visitors and making life so difficult for those of us trying to improve the environment when we are told that Cardiff is one of the most sustainable cities in UK.
Shining examples?
Hi Anne
Thanks a lot for your comment, the points you raise are really interesting.
With the Index you have to remember that all these positions are relative to one another, so we're not saying that any of these cities are doing fantastically well, just which cities are doing better than others. As I said in my blog post "it doesn’t mean that Bristol is a genuinely sustainable city, it’s just faring better across the board than others in the UK", and in some of the press we've done, our chief executive is quoted as saying that we desperately need shining examples in the UK as we really lack them.
All the best examples of sustainable cities are outside the UK: San Francisco & Portland in the US, Curitiba in Brazil, Vaxjo in Sweden are the best places to look for what can be achieved. We don't think that anywhere in the UK is up to those standards.
So rest assured this isn't an award, it's a report on how cities are currently faring in relation to one another and hopefully a prompt and a reminder that we've got a long way to go.
Good luck with your campaign!
Do get in touch for the 2009 report
As someone born, raised and based in Hull this outcome makes a useful point and presents a challenging target for the city in the coming year.
There are next generation telecommunications developments coming on stream in early 2009 that will enable a wide range of intrinsically green businesses to inwardly invest into the city.
There are similar transformations underway as regards telehealth from the Hull NHS Teaching PCT and education within the BSF initiative.
Hopefully when next year's results are scored then Hull will be propping up the table no longer!