“The biggest challenge our cities face at the moment is indifference,” says Phil Allmendinger, professor of land economy at the University of Cambridge. “We’re not paying enough attention to cities, to the importance of cities in tackling existential threats to humanity like climate change.”
Indifference: a lack of interest, concern or sympathy. It is a powerful word to use as the world continues to suffer from the impact of the coronavirus pandemic, but it may well be the perfect word to explain what needs to be challenged if the UK is to find a way to thrive off the back of the current crisis and those existential crises it faces in the future.
Has indifference and the distraction caused by Covid-19 made us lose interest in the big issues facing our towns and cities and left us instead mulling the future of offices, pondering the growth of the suburbs and fiddling – again – with planning in the hope that some grand reforms and technological advancement will enable the country to build, build, build itself out of a recession?
Allmendinger, an expert on all things planning with a library of books to his name, certainly seems to think so. He says that the “radical” planning reforms announced by government earlier this year are just a rehash of reforms that are periodically announced by different governments. To him they offer no solution to the real problems that cities face. He cites his experience as a board member of the Greater Cambridge Partnership.
“For the past four years or so, we’ve been planning and implementing major changes in the city, around transport, around affordable housing, around energy and around traffic congestion,” says Allmendinger. “We’ve come across a lot of challenges and a lot of issues that we’ve had to address. None of them have been related to planning. The acceleration of growth in Cambridge has not been held up by planning. It’s been held up by governance congestion.”
A classic case, perhaps, of too many cooks spoiling the broth – and potentially all working from the wrong recipe book.
“The kind of challenges that cities are facing right now are around things like affordable housing, air pollution, around an aging population,” says Allmendinger. “Some are facing massive problems around opioid addiction. Those are the kind of challenges cities are facing and we don’t really seem to have a handle on any of those.
“Trying to blame the planning system for the lack of housing delivery is just a very narrow perspective on what it is we need to do to start to address some of the challenges that cities face,” he adds. “The challenges that cities face are really wicked. They’re complex and they require investment of time and energy. And at the moment, what we’re trying to do is look for simple solutions.”
Wicked problems
Those wicked, complex problems are the big societal and environmental issues that are becoming more and more pronounced in cities around the world.
“Cities are absolutely critical to how we address things like the climate emergency,” says Allmendinger. “The majority of the energy we use, the majority of the food resources and water resources etc, are concentrated in our cities. If you’re going to address these questions and issues, you have do it through cities.”
While the economic prowess of Silicon Valley may be hailed as an example of how successful a city San Francisco is, says Allmendinger, it is struggling to find teachers and nurses and people to work in essential services because they cannot afford to live anywhere nearby.
“That, to me, isn’t a successful city,” he says. “You need to look at what a successful city is. Successful for who? You can focus on inward investment and GDP, etc. But at the end of the day, they have to be successful for a broad range of people and communities.”
A city like Cambridge, he says, where there is a life expectancy difference of 10 years between the wealthy part and the poorest part, cannot be labelled as successful regardless of its economic success.
“If you want to have the economically successful with the social and the environmental, you have to get involved and seek to manage the future of the city. You need to look right across the economic, social and environmental and the social in particular. That to me is the bit you should be looking at to judge whether or not your city is successful and liveable – not just the economic and the aesthetic of the built environment.”
And it is here, with these wicked, complex and very human problems that Allmendinger has an issue with technology being hailed as a potential solution.
Tech issues
“The challenge to me isn’t necessarily digital technology,” he explains, “because there are huge benefits that come from digital technology. We are better connected, we are more open and transparent, etc. The challenge, and what is threatening the future of cities, is that we’re rushing into this idea that the smart city is the answer. That the smart city is how are we going to address all of these problems. It is how we’re going to address some of these problems, but the issue for me is that not all of the challenges that cities face are easily addressed by digital technology.
“Smart cities, digital technology, etc are all promising that we can have everything,” says Allmendinger. “That you can you can go on a website, you can you can click on something and it’s delivered tomorrow. That doesn’t translate into the complex problems that cities face and will build up an expectation that we can have these kind of easy decisions that are costless and are quick.”
But, like planning not being the issue slowing down the growth of our cities, being “smart” is not the key to speeding it up. For Allmendinger, the solution lies in collaboration, focus and a clear definition of where responsibility for today’s problems and the bigger existential problems humanity faces lies.
This interview formed part of EG’s Future of Cambridge event. To listen to the interview in full, download “Future of Cambridge: Why indifference is our biggest challenge” from the EG Property Podcast channel, available on all major podcast players, including Podbean, Spotify and Apple Podcasts
To send feedback, e-mail samantha.mcclary@egi.co.uk or tweet @samanthamcclary or @estatesgazette
