Leicester: the second greenest city in the UK

Apparently, Leicester is the second greenest city after Newcastle, with the lowest ecological foot print. Read this document and see what you think: http://www.forumforthefuture.org/files/Sustainable_Cities_Index_2010_FINAL_15-10-10.pdf and the BBC link: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-11563325. Read particularly the 'future proofing' section, it covers the issues that we discussed in the creative thinking section. It a good read to see how cities have tried to make themselves sustainable, but economic issues are at the heart of the debate and it will be really interesting to see how cities will be affected by public sector cuts such as Hull, despite improvements in education, in attempts to be sustainable.

Milton Keynes: A case study of urban sustainability?

Milton Keynes is often an over used case study in geography but I feel it highlights some of the issues in the sustainability debate. Milton Keynes was part of the British New Towns Programme, located between London and Birmingham to accommodate urban sprawl. Both green field and brownfield sites were used, and it became a success in demographic and economic terms and has become a major employment node.

Key features:

• All economic and social activities such as jobs and leisure opportunities are deliberately dispersed throughout the town.
• Housing is deliberately mixed to encourage social interaction.
• Car orientated city, US style grid road system to reduce congestion.
• Nearly a quarter of Milton Keynes is parkland.

These are just some of the key features of the town, sustainability was not the intention behind this project but raised some issues when planning sustainable cities and towns.

There is a heavy ecological footprint in terms of energy consumption. The strategy to disperse activities meant that there was an overall low development density, but as a result public transport is not a viable option. Future expansion will consume 1800 hectares of green land but will be built to higher energy standards. Promotion of biodiversity is a key part of parks and watercourse management. Parks drain run off into a system of 13 balancing lakes, designed to hold rain water and to release later into the river system to reduce flood risk. Rising house prices, Milton Keynes is one of the most expensive areas in  the UK outside of London, demands for affordable homes have been neglected by developers. There is also a growing degree of exclusion as a result. More information can be found at: http://www.geographyteachingtoday.org.uk/images/text/FW_LL_Milton_Keynes_article.pdf

This document illustrates how the ecological footprint can be taught in school.

I'll do the Chattanooga case study tomorrow, so not to overload you with information but think about what the inputs and outputs of Milton Keynes' ecological footprint are?

Urban sustainability - ecological footprints

With over 50% of the world's population living in cities, creating or making cities sustainable is crucial to the whole sustainability agenda- making human activities tolerable, fair and viable, while reducing our contribution to climate change. An ecological footprint is a way of conceptualizing the processes that contribute to sustainability as shown in the context of the city below, an ecological footprint in a city is the result of inputs, outputs and internal actions. I purposely missed out some actions and outputs, can you think of any more that could be added to this diagram?

                                                            Figure 1. Making cities more sustainable

A recent investigation of London revealed that each resident required 6.63 global hectares (equivalent to 8 football pitches) to provide for their current levels of consumption and to absorb their waste. If one compares this to what the global sustainable footprint should be, 2.18 global hectares, Londoners consume more than three times their fair share of the Earth's resources. Would you like to know your own ecological footprint? There are several questionnaires on-line such as http://www.ecologicalfootprint.com, that you can use, my ecological footprint (global hectares) is 4.6, so I definitely can do more to improve it. Next time I will be looking at case studies of Milton Keynes and Chattannooga.

Introduction

Identified as one of the key concepts/ideas in the geography national curriculum, environmental interaction and  sustainable development:

• Understanding that the physical and human dimensions of the environment are interrelated and together influence environmental change.
• Exploring sustainable development and its impact on environmental interaction and climate change.

We shall be looking at a variety of topics: climate change, growing economies such as China and how they place pressure on sustainability and use of resources, global patterns of population growth and resource use within the context of globalization and consider the challenge of sustainable development at national and international scales and to a more of a local level such as neighbourhood environmental quality and the ethical turn.

Defining sustainable development

Figure 1. Sustainable development diagram

There are various definitions of sustainable development, a common definition is 'development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs' (WCED, 1987).  Figure 1 shows what we will be discussing in greater detail  in each blog but the idea of sustainable development is fraught with contradictions (Redclift, 1997) and for Sywngedouw (2007) sustainability is an idea, everybody generally agrees with it- but it is fundamentally a political question and it is difficult to put into practice and the idea is not debated in a democratic sense (post-political). We will hopefully flesh these ideas out, in the examples given earlier, in the next posts.