Tag: Bristol Green Capital

Cities’ contributions to the global SDGs: A Bristol view

Posted on by janet.crompton

Earlier this month, people from around the globe gathered in New York for the annual review of the world’s progress towards achieving the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), an event known as the ‘High Level Political Forum’ (HLPF). These globally-agreed goals were developed in 2015, providing a vision for what the world should look like in 2030. Covering all three dimensions of sustainability through 17 Goals, 169 targets and 244 indicators, the SDGs have been called ‘the closest thing the world has to a strategy’.

This year the HLPF focused on 6 of these Goals, including sustainable cities and communities, SDG 11. The inclusion of cities as a specific goal is a success, and it is the first time that a subnational unit has been included in a UN statistical reporting framework.

But cities have an important role to play in meeting all of the Goals, beyond just SDG11. Urbanisation is increasingly seen as a key cross cutting element in almost every aspect of sustainable development. Forecasts suggest that by 2050 almost 70% of the world’s people will live in cities. The concentration of people living and working in urban areas creates acute sustainable development challenges in cities. And what happens within individual cities can have far-reaching environmental impacts on resource use, pollution and carbon emissions in far-away places. Because local sustainable development challenges have national and even international implications, cities have the power and the opportunity to make progress towards the global SDGs, by tackling city-level challenges through innovative technical and organisational solutions.

Indeed, the 2017 HLPF declaration highlighted “the need to take appropriate action towards localizing and communicating the [SDGs] at all levels, from the national to the community and grassroots level […] Efforts should be made to reach out to all stakeholders, including subnational and local authorities.” (para 28)

So, to achieve the ambitious SDGs by 2030, cities must be fully engaged with all the goals, and can work with each other to share learnings, as well as interact at national and global policy levels. For example, New York City presented the first-ever official city-level review of progress towards the SDGs at the HLPF 2018 linked with their OneNYC approach – and invited other cities to work with them.

Despite Bristol’s many successes, we continue to face important challenges. Prominent among these is intense inequality across economic, social and environmental domains: such as income inequality, poor air quality and persistent gaps in health and education outcomes across the city. The SDGs offer a framework for taking on these challenges in an integrated way to achieve sustainable and inclusive prosperity that leaves no-one and nowhere – including nature – behind.

For the last few years, Bristol has been grappling with how it can best engage with the SDGs through an alliance of stakeholders from across the city. This work and their views have informed our ‘Driving the SDGs agenda at a city level in Bristol’ report, released during this year’s HLPF, where UK Stakeholders for Sustainable Development and partners launched an initial review of UK progress ‘Measuring Up’.

This tells the story of the Bristol SDG Alliance, formed in 2016 to advocate for the practical use of the SDGs in Bristol – to ‘localise’ the Goals to the city – and shares key learnings.

Hosted by Bristol Green Capital Partnership, in part because the SDG agenda integrates the environmental, social and economic dimensions of sustainability, the Alliance has submitted evidence to a parliamentary inquiry, commissioned an SDGs & Bristol report, and facilitated an innovative academic role to link SDG research and engagement in Bristol.

In this role, I have been able to work collaboratively with Bristol City Council on behalf of the Alliance to integrate the SDGs into the emerging One City Plan. In addition, many businesses and other organisations in the city appreciate the relevance of the SDGs to their work, such as Airbus and Triodos Bank, among others.

As we move forward, we will be grappling with some of the challenges facing other cities working to localise the SDGs. For example, how best to monitor progress.

This is a challenge even at the national level, with the UK’s national statistics office still working hard to assess and collect the data to report on the SDGs nearly 3 years after they were agreed – see the national reporting platform. Such monitoring challenges are more acute at a city level, with extra complexities and fewer resources available to address them.

For the SDGs to be achieved by 2030, challenges such as these will need to be overcome by cities. The theme for 2019’s SDG review is ‘inclusiveness and equality’, where the UK will also undertake its first official national review. Bristol is well-placed to contribute in 2019. Collectively the city may wish to follow New York’s initiative and report alongside the UK on our city’s progress next year.

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This blog is written by Allan Macleod, SDG research and engagement associate working across Bristol Green Capital Partnership, Bristol City Council and the University of Bristol.  It has been reposted with kind permission from the Bristol Green Capital blog.  View the original blog.

Allan Macleod

COP21 reflections: What next for the University of Bristol?

Posted on by janet.crompton

If you have read my previous blogs on my COP21 reflections (see links at bottom of this blog), that brings us to the University of Bristol and the Cabot Institute.  I hope that this year we also have made some steps towards being a trusted participant in shaping our city’s future. I have lived here over 15 years and so I know that has not always been the case.

We must contribute via our role as a business.  With the NHS, we are the largest employer in the city and our behaviour should lead by example.  This is why we have developed a district energy strategy with BCC and the NHS.  This is why we are planting trees all over the city.  That is why we collaborate with Bristol City Council and fund community initiatives. But we do need to do more.  We will be judged on how we build our next buildings.  We will be judged on how we procure our goods. We will be judged on how we engage with the other citizens of Bristol.

We must contribute via our role as an educational institution.  We are already committed to pan-University Education for Sustainable Development (and thanks again to Chris Willmore for championing that). Now we are exploring a new initiative to build sustainability, enterprise and global citizenship across the student experience; those of us in the Cabot Institute are very excited to have been asked to play a role in translating our ambitions for multidisciplinary, challenge-driven, environmental research to our Undergraduates.

Students working with a local organisation in Bedminster, Bristol.

Of course, those students are driving us as often as we are leading them!  In the words of Hannah Tweddell of Bristol’s Student Union:

‘Our students and young people are the future. We’ve seen the amazing work they’ve done in partnership, helping Bristol Green Capital transition towards a more sustainable inclusive city. We’re committed to getting 100,000 hours of student engagement with the city to help make our city more sustainable every year – real action on the ground to tackle climate change, inequality and sustainability.’

And finally, the Cabot Institute will continue to conduct ambitious research in this area. Being at COP21 with Bristol City Council showed me the power of academic contributions.  Our Mini-Stern review and the STEEP Project sit at the foundation of Bristol’s Climate Change and Energy Security Framework.  Bristol is Open was repeatedly cited as an exemplar in Future Cities thinking. These partnerships were embedded in the argument by ICLEI and others that cities must be taken seriously as partners in this endeavour. Our climate change research was also on display and invoked at key stages as ambitions were raised.

It is not all about the Cabot Institute.  Sustainability policy is increasingly linked to health issues, whether it be the benefits of cycling and walking or of cleaner air; as such, the Elizabeth Blackwell Institute is also a central part of this conversation. The Brigstow Institute will explore the role of self, identity and community in the 21st century, issues that will be central to the social transformations that the Paris Agreement requires.  And there is no doubt that Big Data will be key to understanding, managing and navigating the future city; our new Institute (currently the Bristol Institute for Data Intensive Research) is poised to make major contributions.

Our research must continue and become more ambitious because we do not have all of the solutions – yet. So we will continue to innovate, whether it be exciting new functional nanomaterials to underpin the next generation of renewable technology or the mathematical expertise that will help us best extract tidal power from the Severn. We will have to help explore new financing tools to fund a new kind of global development; and there is a role for Bristol in shaping the emerging new forms of governance and economy. But new solutions require an engaged and interested public – and we do not intend to develop them in isolation or in our old disciplinary silos.

As our train pulled into Temple Meads, Alex Minshull told me that what he took from the Conference was a renewed awareness of what he already knew – do not get ‘locked in’ to the future you do not want. We must make the right choices today, choices that do not pile future carbon debt onto the future.  We must invest in our young people today so that they are prepared to lead tomorrow.  We must invest in new technology today so that it is ready when we need it.

It starts today.

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Prof Rich Pancost

This blog is by Prof Rich Pancost, Director of the Cabot Institute at the University of Bristol.  

For more information about the University of Bristol at COP21, please visitbristol.ac.uk/green-capital

Other blogs in this COP21 reflections series include:

What have we achieved and how do we go forward?
What next for our planet?
What next for Bristol?
What next for the University of Bristol?

This blog is part of a COP21 daily report series. View other blogs in the series below:

COP21 reflections: What next for Bristol?

Posted on by janet.crompton

As you might imagine, especially given the focus on cities, it was an exciting two weeks for Bristol.  The City was everywhere.  In Paris with Anne Hidalgo; with its resilient partners in the Rockefeller 100 Resilient Cites group; representing smart city investment on behalf of Eurocities; hosting a Bristol Green Capital display in the Green Zone; and also sponsoring the linked Cities and Regions Pavilion nearby. Our city is going global in reputation, stature and visibility . This is a great achievement for our city and a great opportunity.  We are viewed as ambitious, eager to embrace the new economy, and supportive of technology and creativity.  We also had hundreds of people come to our stand and ask about moving to Bristol – the best and the brightest of the next generation also see Bristol as a place to bring their talents.

We cannot be complacent, however.  A corollary to the message of ambition was that a new race to lead in the global energy transformation has already begun; the cities, regions and nations that drive the agenda will prosper and those that do not will be left behind.  Those that move slowly will eventually benefit from new innovations, but the skills, businesses and IP will have moved elsewhere. Bristol is one of the leaders but it will have to fight to remain so.

In this sense, it is exciting to see the European Green Capital year ending with some exciting consolidation around major themes. Among these are partnership, resilience and health and well-being.  Here, however, I want to focus on three others; two where our efforts are consolidating into deeply impressive and globally distinctive initiatives and a third where we need to do better.

One of the major themes of this year has been energy use, and Bristol’s Transformative Action Plan, The Bristol Billion, will dramatically accelerate residential energy efficiency. This TAP, by virtue of its concrete targets, themselves underpinned by the University of Bristol Mini-Stern Study and the STEEP Project, was a foundation to the ICLEI and Mayors’ argument that cities do have the appropriate ambition.  The Bristol Billion will work in tandem with the new City Council-owned Energy Company, launched on 1 November 2015. The company will initially focus on using its profits to improve energy efficiency and tackling fuel poverty, and it will eventually offer a renewable tariff. Crucially, the Company intends to complement rather than compete with existing and emerging community energy initiatives, such as that explored on 14 December 2015: Towards a Smart Energy City: mapping a path for Bristol.

Another emerging theme is the role of the Smart City, whether it be Bristol is Open or the Bristol Brain (Bristol’s other Transformative Action Plan). I have written about these extensively and won’t repeat that here!  Ultimately, however, I do not think these will be about techy solutions to our cities’ problems – although that will certainly be part of the smart, future city.  I think and I hope that smart city technology will yield ‘smarter’ citizens and ‘smarter’ leaders allowing us to make much harder – and smarter – decisions. What I mean by that is that smart technology can empower people to make their own observations, to be directly involved in the exploration and learning journey of their home and city.  We will be able to monitor electricity usage and heat loss in our own homes; urban planners will be able experiment in a virtual world to fully explore the implications of their decisions.  Ultimately, this technology could provide a place where many people can come together and discuss their future city. This is Colin Taylor’s vision for the UKCRIC-funded Collaboratory.

There are many opportunities that will come from addressing climate change; but the full road to decarbonisation will be challenging, requiring hard choices and compromises.  In Bristol, home improvements will create jobs, fight fuel poverty, save money, improve health and reduce emissions – a win win win win win proposition! A Bristol transportation system that produces no carbon dioxide will be much harder to achieve.

To me, finding the pathway to that political consensus – and the inclusion that demands – is probably the third major theme of 2015.  And not because we did it terribly well.  Some successes include the fantastic new Sustainable Education Programme.  And I think we did okay in the Cabot Institute by putting on many events and getting out into the city to educate or inform, often with artists or other groups. Local initiatives have also raised awareness.

Rich Pancost at Hamilton House for a Cabot Institute Uncertain World public event this year

But we have not truly entrained new and diverse groups in a new dialogue; instead it feels as if the old dialogue has just had the volume turned up.  That’s fine but we can do more. This issue was the focus of the meeting I alluded to in the first blog and the subject of Helly’s blog on behalf of Ujima Radio.  Convened by Policy Bristol, the Green Capital Partnership, Ujima and ourselves, the meeting explored some of the challenges we face.  I’ll revisit this in the New Year, but I’d like to share a few initial thoughts.

We listen to each other but often do we understand. That is perhaps inevitable as we come from different backgrounds; nonetheless, we have to invest the time to really understand the wants, needs and (most of all!) capabilities of the many groups in Bristol.

Minority groups are invited to events but rarely given the opportunity to set the agenda. This must change.

Different groups have their own suggestions and ideas, often arising from our diverse cultures.  We need to pivot from preaching about solutions to sharing ideas.

Building mutual trust in one another – trust in our fellow citizens and our leaders – must be a focus of 2016 as we build on our Green Capital legacy and look to the future.  I do not have an easy answer to that; no one does.  But perhaps some small, positive steps together can help to build that trust.

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Prof Rich Pancost

 

This blog is by Prof Rich Pancost, Director of the Cabot Institute at the University of Bristol. For more information about the University of Bristol at COP21, please visit bristol.ac.uk/green-capital

Other blogs in this COP21 reflections series include:
What have we achieved and how do we go forward?
What next for our planet?
What next for Bristol?
What next for the University of Bristol?

 
 
COP21 Daily Reports

COP21 daily report: Be brave, work together and involve the next generation

Posted on by janet.crompton
Cabot Institute Director Professor Rich Pancost will be attending COP21 in Paris as part of the Bristol city-wide team, including the Mayor of Bristol, representatives from Bristol City Council and the Bristol Green Capital Partnership. He and others Cabot Institute members will be writing blogs during COP21, reflecting on what is happening in Paris, especially in the Paris and Bristol co-hosted Cities and Regions Pavilion, and also on the conclusion to Bristol’s year as the European Green Capital.  Follow #UoBGreen and #COP21 for live updates from the University of Bristol.  All blogs in the series are linked to at the bottom of this blog.
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Scene from COP21

The first several days of COP21 have seen a flurry of announcements, propositions and commitments.  Just within the Bristol/Paris/ICLEI tent, numerous new ideas have emerged as city after city has stepped forward and proposed its Transformative Action Plans. Despite the diversity of propositions, the key themes are emerging: Leaders must be brave and adventurous; we must all work together in new and innovative partnerships built on trust; and engagement with the next generation is crucial.

These are not terribly surprising!

The challenge for leaders to be brave was the key message from the Mayors of the past and future European Green Capitals. Speaking after the panel, Katarina Luhr, Vice Mayor from Stockholm, said:

“My message to the politicians negotiating at COP21 is to look to the future and be brave.”

I could not agree with this more.  Going ahead, as we face increasingly difficult challenges, navigate contentious compromise, or try something new and unknown, this bravery will become even more important… and more complicated.  Populations will have to empower leaders to be bold and leaders will have to earn that right by building trust.

The Cabot Institute has been discussing this with our colleagues and partners (including the University’s new Brigstowe Institute) over the past year – and we are certainly not alone in this. We will report more on these issues in the coming months, but one emerging theme is how trust can be built through partnership. (See my blogs on the importance of University of Bristol partnerships here and here).

Few challenges, whether it be tackling climate change, resolving inequality or building a sustainable health service as our population ages, can be solved by a single agent acting alone.  Appropriately, George Ferguson and Cllr Daniella Radice, Assistant Mayor for Neighbourhoods, including Environment, emphasised partnership as they opened the discussion on the first day of the Cities and Regions Pavilion. And of course, the Pavilion itself is the product of partnership between Bristol, Paris and ICLEI, itself a partnership of >1000 local and sub-national organisations.

Partnership is necessary.  Diverse contributors with diverse perspectives and expertise must work together to solve the climate change crisis.

And partnership is hard. It requires a deep and long-term commitment and a willingness to share, compromise and trust. It is at the heart of the University of Bristol’s ambitions , including how we work with our city, but we also recognise that that requires long term commitment. We’re trying but we’re not going to pretend we have it cracked.

One great example of successful partnership is Bristol is Open, a joint venture between the University of Bristol and Bristol City Council but designed in a way to be open to a variety of new partners from business and civil society. BIO is a combination of state-of-the-art, publicly owned fibre-optic infrastructure, environmental sensors, 5G wireless technology, the university’s high performance computing and programmable city models.  It could enable a new type of smart city in which traffic, flood, emergency, and energy services are managed in real time to achieve efficiency, sustainability and resilience.

But that is the future of BIO.  What it is now is a city-wide laboratory that will be open for experimentation and innovation.  It is an invitation to partnership.  And one of the first steps in that invitation was the 18 November Festival of the Future City launch of the Data Dome, the UK’s first 3D, interactive dome for data visualisation at At-Bristol. The purpose and value of the smart, programmable city can be difficult to grasp – it was for me!  The Data Dome, similar to the Playable City initiative, is a way to share and explore the potential of this technology while learning about our city. [And the Bristol Brain, one of Bristol’s Transformative Action Plan propositions discussed on Tuesday, will also be central to this.]

Another truly exciting arena for partnership is the recently announced UKCRIC programme, led in Bristol by Professor Colin Taylor, also the theme leader for the Cabot Institute’s Future cities and communities research theme.  We will be discussing this much more in the future, especially as we launch the Collaboratory component of it, which will bring investment to the centre of Bristol to support even further collaboration and innovation.

Of course, one of the most exciting and successful examples of partnership that I have seen in Bristol or any other city is the Bristol Green Capital Partnership (BGCP), which was key to winning the European Green Capital award and remains dedicated to building momentum for climate action. Gary Topp, Development Director for the Partnership and Honorary Fellow in the University of Bristol, was part of the team showcasing Bristol’s ambition on Tuesday in Paris, where he outlined its work involving over 850 organisations committed to creating ‘a low carbon city with a high quality of life for all’. For other Green Capitals, creating a partnership was a major success; we started with one. And it is now the largest of its kind in the world.

One of the things I am most proud of in the Cabot Institute has been our support of and work with the BGCP (which predates my current role by several years).  Our Manager Philippa Bayley was the directly elected co-Director of the Partnership in 2014 (with the amazing Liz Zeidler of Happy City, about which I could write a whole extra blog!), and we have several ongoing projects. The Partnership is now gearing up to be a central and sustainable part of the 2015 legacy, serving as a uniting, empowering and vocal participant in the future of our city. On 26 November 2015, working with Crowdfunder UK, they launched their most recent initiative, the Better Bristol campaign to find new ways to support exciting and potentially transformative projects.  The largest such partnership in the world, the BGCP will play an essential role in ensuring that Bristol continues to be a place where grass roots projects thrive.

Mayor George Ferguson emphasised this principle in his concluding comments, noting that while targets and technology were important, the European Green Capital award was about people and partnerships among civil society, with schools, businesses and other cities. “Recognising that we cannot work in isolation,” he added, “is absolutely vital. We need to shape our cities in partnership, finding common links to suit everybody, provide confidence to deal with the unknown and take control of our destinies.”

A final example of this Partnership came later in the day, when our former Cabot Institute colleague Professor Andy Gouldson (now at Leeds) shared his research in investment in a sustainable future for Bristol. It revealed that over the next decade, such investment could save Bristol up to £300 million on its energy bills and create up to 10,000 jobs.  The report ‘The Economics of Low Carbon Cities: a Mini-Stern Review for the City of Bristol, was commissioned by the Cabot Institute and funded by the University, and uses a robust model to assess the costs and benefits of low carbon projects to accelerate Bristol’s progress.  A similar initiative, STEEP, involving Cabot Institute academic Mike Yearworth, showed how Systems approaches could also bring about city-scale energy efficiencies.  Both are underpinning Bristol’s consultation around its Climate and Energy Security.

So enough patting ourselves on the back.  These are some nice emerging success stories.  But we can do better.

Partnerships work best when everyone benefits, but we must put more effort into building deeper and more powerful trust so that partnerships create room for compromise.  Or even temporary sacrifice. Perhaps more importantly, we recognise that many people do not feel included in these ‘partnerships’. This requires more thought and reflection than a few paragraphs in a single blog.  Therefore, allow me to simply note this challenge and trust me to return to it; and I will finish by focussing on one of our most important partners.

The youth of our city and our planet

As an educational institution, we must make a strong commitment to prepare the next generation. Our offer should be imaginative, distinctive and innovative – and it should prepare our students to be global citizens, committed to a sustainable and just future, and inspired to be creative and enterprising.  These concepts are intrinsic to our ongoing Strategic Review, being led by our new Vice-Chancellor Hugh Brady.

They are also being embedded at an earlier age through one of Bristol 2015’s flagship successes. On 24 Nov, the city launched the Sustainable Learning programme, shared with thousands of Bristol children and  underpinned by the award-winning Shaun the Sheep app.

We must prepare the next generation to live in a more volatile and unpredictable world.  The University of Bristol is committed to that.

We must also prepare the world for them.  This is not about solving all the problems for them; nor is it just about giving them the education to solve problems.  It is also about creating the social, economic, legal and infrastructure framework that leaves room for them and their ideas and their creativity.  I think all policies, regulations and treaties (or their removal) should be tested against a central rule: does this create options for future generations or take them away.   The next generation must inherit a world where creativity and innovation are allowed to thrive. The Cabot Institute is committed to that.

But we must be equally committed to working with them now.

Young people at the Bristol Climate March this year.

George Ferguson emphasised this in Paris: “We all recognised the importance of putting our young people first and foremost; involving them in how we plan for their future… those young people often come up with ideas and solutions that are better than those of their older counterparts. Building cities for the future cannot just be for youth, it has to be with them”.

I have written (and tweeted) about how deeply impressed I am by our Youth Council and our Youth Mayors, several of whom were just nominated by RIFE Magazine as 24 Influential People under 24. They are brave!  And smart and informed and passionate.  They have ambition for themselves and ambition to make the world a better place and we would be fools to simply wait for them to become future leaders. They have much to offer now.

But that involves more than just inviting them to the meeting; it means letting them set the agenda.

Are we brave enough to do that?



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This blog is by Prof Rich Pancost, Director of the Cabot Institute at the University of Bristol.  For more information about the University of Bristol at COP21, please visit bristol.ac.uk/green-capital
Prof Rich Pancost

 

This blog is part of a COP21 daily report series. View other blogs in the series below:
 
Monday 30 November: COP21 daily report
Tuesday 1 December: Setting a more ambitious agenda – Bristol’s Transformative Action Plans
Wednesday 2 December: Reflecting on the science of climate change
Thursday 3 December: The politics and culture of climate change

Crowdfunding: A new mix of innovation, public support, entrepreneurism, politics & energy

Posted on by janet.crompton

Gary Topp, Development Director for Bristol Green Capital Partnership CIC, writes in this guest blog about the Better Bristol campaign and this approach to fundraising…

Roll for the Soul: community-focused bike cafe in Bristol

The more that we thought about these issues the more important it was to look at a city scale crowdfunding platform to support the sector. Over the last few months we have been working with Crowdfunder UK – the fastest growing crowdfunding platform in the world- to develop and launch the “Better Bristol’ campaign.

The Better Bristol campaign is now online and you can register your interest by filling in the online form.

Want to know more about the campaign and how you can benefit from it?

“Bristol is a city of projects, ideas and activities. They just keep happening as motivated people and engaging organisations generate new thoughts and new connections. It’s part of the city’s DNA.

Over the past year the Partnership has been working with, and talking to, partners about how it can best support the continual stream of good ideas generated in the city in this new and more difficult environment.  As you will know this is as much a challenge for the Partnership itself, as it is for many projects it seeks to support and collaborate with.Any project and idea needs resources and a set of ‘capacities’ to succeed – people, space, materials, permissions, etc. And whilst many things are often achieved on the basis of energy, commitment and determination … sometimes ‘cash’ is required.  As we know in recent years, cash has been harder to find as the old models of investment, public sector support and grants from trusts and foundations has become more challenging. Sometimes we call this ‘austerity’.

In the new funding landscape the biggest new ‘player’ in these changed circumstances has been the global uptake of crowdfunding. Crowdfunding is a new mix of innovation, politics, public support, entrepreneurism and energy. It is open to all for success or otherwise. We all know the global stories.

The Partnership is about city scale interventions and it is about the increasing importance of cities as the appropriate ‘unit’ to address the climate challenge. At city scale projects and ideas can have real impact. They can be both locally empowering and part of a global movement of positive action and change. Right now cities matter more than ever before.
This exciting relationship brings together the world’s biggest city scale Partnership,  the expertise of Crowdfunder and an ambition to generate and support  £1million of grassroots projects. This is a different kind of approach to funding – we all have to support the work that we care about. This can happen at individual giving level (a few pounds ….) or it can be a great way for business and grant-funders to match their resources directly with those projects that the ‘crowd’ endorse. It’s a perfect match.  Let’s help Bristol become even better.”
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This blog has been reposted with kind permission from the Bristol Green Capital Partnership.  View the original blog post.

 

COP21 daily report: Setting a more ambitious agenda – Bristol’s Transformative Action Plans

Posted on by janet.crompton
Cabot Institute Director Professor Rich Pancost will be attending COP21 in Paris as part of the Bristol city-wide team, including the Mayor of Bristol, representatives from Bristol City Council and the Bristol Green Capital Partnership. He will be writing blogs during COP21, reflecting on what is happening in Paris, especially in the Paris and Bristol co-hosted Cities and Regions Pavilion, and also on the conclusion to Bristol’s year as the European Green Capital.  Follow #UoBGreen and #COP21 for live updates from the University of Bristol.

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On Monday, the Bristol Team arrived in Paris for the 2015 UN Climate Change Conference (COP21).  The Bristol cohort includes not just the Mayor and Bristol City Council, but also representatives from the Green Capital Partnership and an independent group from Love the Future (15 stalwarts who cycled from Bristol to Paris through typically British November weather). I’ll be joining them on Sunday… but some of the most exciting activity will happen today.

Bristol’s primary engagement with COP21 will be via the Cities and Regions Pavilion, hosted by Paris and Bristol and facilitated by ICLEI – Local Governments for Sustainability, with support from over 40 partners.  It is testimony to the stature of Bristol as 2015 Green Capital that it is able to share this venue with Paris. Moreover, the Pavilion is a fantastic opportunity for Bristol to share, connect with and learn from hundreds of cities from across the globe.

Bristol is one of 88 cities and regions in 42 countries to present innovative projects aimed at placing local and regional governments at the heart of positive and long-term climate action.  These Transformative Action Plans (TAPs) represent a 10-year initiative that aims to transform the lives of their citizens.  They arise from ICLEI’s recognition that local entities must take the lead in delivering but also extending the commitments emerging from the national-scale negotiations.  Bristol is pitching two projects, one on energy efficiency and one on smarter future planning of cities. The University of Bristol, including its Cabot Institute, has been closely involved with the development of both and former Bristol Professor Andy Gouldson will be sharing the stage with Mayor George Ferguson today.

George Ferguson, Mayor of Bristol, said: 

“Bristol’s innovative plans, boosted by our year as European Green Capital, have been rated amongst the very best across cities and regions around the world thanks to their potential to transform the lives of our citizens. We’re proud to be among the world’s pioneering sustainable thinkers at COP21 and we look forward to bridging the gap ahead of the expected 2020 agreement with immediate actions that help reduce emissions, tackle poverty, improve lives and create new jobs through investment in low carbon projects.”

The first proposal, entitled ‘Energy efficiency for everyone’ (or Bristol Billion), is for a $1B (or £700m) investment to make Bristol’s buildings more energy efficient, thereby achieving significant carbon, energy, economic and even health savings. It will involve refurbishing 56,000 homes in Bristol – 30% of the city – and crucially it will not only make our city more sustainable but it will lift these homes out of fuel poverty and reduce health costs.  This proposal is based in part on a Cabot Institute-commissioned report that has also been released to the public today: The Economics of Low Carbon Cities: A mini-Stern Review for Bristol. This research shows that Bristol can achieve marked reductions in its emissions while saving money; in fact, the whole project could pay for itself in under a decade.  However, such a bold endeavour requires bold financing and hence the Bristol Billion proposition.

The Economics of Low Carbon Cities – report commissioned by the Cabot Institute

The Bristol Billion should achieve the energy efficiency gains necessary for the city to meet its 2015 to 2025 emissions reductions targets, but Bristol must also establish a foundation for the more challenging emission reductions to occur beyond 2025 and especially 2030.  Whether it be transforming the South West energy supply chain via the Bristol Energy Company or transforming its transport system, these changes will be more challenging and controversial. And that is the basis for the second project, the ‘Bristol Brain’, which seeks to reimagine how citizens and planners can work together to shape a sustainable future for the city. The Bristol Brain is ‘a physical and digital city model, on top of which, real-time data and sophisticated analytics can be projected and visualised, creating environments that can be explored through virtual and augmented reality. This will allow different scenarios for future developments to be explored as if they are real, and for the impact on energy, transport, air quality and other factors, to be fully understood.’

The Bristol Brain could facilitate city-scale planning decisions ranging from emergency services, road maintenance, and new public works. It could allow the social and economic impacts of major investments to be assessed and justified. Most importantly, it is a tool for testing and thereby empowering the radical reimagining of Bristol. It is the type of tool that citizens can use to justify maintenance of the M32… or its conversion into a bus-exclusive route… or even closing it and turning it into a city-scale garden.
This type of creative imagining is vital. Professor Colin Taylor, the head of the Cabot Institute’s Future Cities research theme, has argued that robust future city planning requires a city emulator so that we can truly explore the potential costs and benefits of truly transformative change. Crucially, the Bristol Brain would also support the more real-time interactive experiments that will be enabled by Bristol is Open and ensure that Bristol remains at the cutting edge of creative technology.
There remain challenges.  According to Bristol City Council, ‘The critical next step is to ensure these projects receive adequate financial resources to address urgent and evolving local needs to create a sustainable future.’ 

Another challenge is ensuring that such projects, especially the Bristol Brain, create an open and inclusive conversation about Bristol’s future. The University is committed to supporting these efforts.  If the Bristol Brain were to be made available to the public, perhaps via an allotment of the University’s High Performance Computing facility, then it becomes not just a resource for planning and consultation but for citizen-led propositions and inclusive innovation. 

The COP21 ambition, expressed by national governments via their Intended Nationally Determined Contributions (INDCs), is very likely to fall short of the global target of 2 degrees C warming. As such, it is crucial that other actors, including cities, take the lead in driving a more ambitious emissions reduction agenda. Moreover, they must work with universities, industry and civil society to stimulate, incubate and test new innovations. 

Bristol recognises that it can do more than follow an emissions path set by others. It can be a Laboratory for Change.
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Note: This blog is based partly on and includes text from a Bristol City Council press release.

This blog is by Prof Rich Pancost, Director of the Cabot Institute at the University of Bristol.  For more information about the University of Bristol at COP21, please visit bristol.ac.uk/green-capital
Prof Rich Pancost
This blog is part of a COP21 daily report series. View other blogs in the series:
 

COP21 daily report: Monday 30 November

Posted on by janet.crompton
Cabot Institute Director Professor Rich Pancost will be attending COP21 in Paris as part of the Bristol city-wide team, including the Mayor of Bristol, representatives from Bristol City Council and the Bristol Green Capital Partnership. He will be writing blogs during COP21, reflecting on what is happening in Paris, especially in the Paris and Bristol co-hosted Cities and Regions Pavilion, and also on the conclusion to Bristol’s year as the European Green Capital.  Follow #UoBGreen and #COP21 for live updates from the University of Bristol.
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I started pondering this opening blog, the first in our Bristol at COP21 series, on Friday morning, while walking from the St Werburgh’s Community Centre back to the University.

It was a reflective walk. The  previous evening, Bristol’s COP21 team met at Brunel House to talk logistics, covering everything from travel, to security, to the main messages Bristol would want to share with the rest of the world.  All of this had come at the end of a whirlwind month of events and announcements.  In November, we had already hosted George Marshall and Jonathan Porritt (with the National Union of Journalists and Festival of Ideas), celebrated our fifth birthday, and discussed what we will achieve in the next five years with our new VC and in a rapidly transforming university.  The previous week had seen the Festival of the Future City, at which we presented some of our findings from the year on Bristol’s climate challenges, its future resiliency, its nature and connection to the countryside, and the new governance and financial structures needed to achieve transformative change.

The interactive Bristol Data Dome had opened on 18 Nov, the first in the UK and part of the rollout of Bristol Is Open.  The City’s Sustainable Education programme launched, and the Shaun the Sheep app that underpins it won the ‘App with a Purpose’ prize.  Bristol City Council launched its own Energy Company, only the second in the UK.  George Ferguson gave his annual lecture in the Wills Memorial Building, at which he announced his ambition for an up to £1 billion investment in a citywide urban retrofit to increase energy efficiency and tackle fuel poverty (a plan partially based on our mini-Stern review of Bristol as a Low Carbon City).  And of course, we are headed to COP21, where Bristol will co-host the Cities and Regions Pavilion with Paris.

And despite all of these announcements and achievements, the year feels incomplete.  The meeting in St Werburgh’s, co-sponsored by ourselves and some great partners, thoughtfully examined whether the Green Capital project had really engaged all of our citizens, from all perspectives and all walks of life. The answer to that was complex and we will be exploring that more during 2016 as the conversation continues.  But there was an overall consensus that much had been achieved but much more could have been achieved.  It seems a common opinion as 2015 races towards its conclusion in Paris.

I’ve seen this tension between satisfaction and ambition exemplified on a large scale by Andrew Garrad, co-founder of Garrad Hassan now part of DNV-GL, Chair of the Bristol 2015 Company and member of the Cabot Institute’s Advisory Board. He has spent 35 years in the wind industry; in one sentence he can celebrate the success of UK renewables, which in 20 years have become central to the UK’s energy mix, and then pivot to regret that he has not been able to push even further.

This is something that sometimes frustrates me about my adopted city but that ultimately I love – and is perhaps what I love most about it. No matter how much we achieve, we argue about how we could have done better.  Or more.  Or faster.

Bristol is the least complacent place I have ever lived, sometimes exhausting but always exhilarating.

I am concluding this first blog on Sunday night, having just returned from the Climate March, which drew thousands of people on a cold, wet and windy day.  And at which people sang songs, chanted, cheered – but also debated and argued and demanded more innovation and more action.  My abiding memory of the Climate March will be listening to the smart, informed and passionate debates among members of the Bristol Youth Council about the future of their party. 

That edginess and ambition is exactly what the whole planet needs as we tackle the profound challenges not just of climate change but the sustainable use of the resources on which we depend. No matter what happens in Paris, complacency must not be accepted and it will not be accepted in Bristol.

Bristol was awarded the European Green Capital in part because we are ‘the City with a sense of fun’.  And Bristol is fun – and quirky and odd and artistic and brilliant. But it is also edgy and passionate and often proudly unsatisfied. We do not have all of the solutions, but we will never stop looking. That is the Bristol I will be taking with me to Paris.

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This blog is by Prof Rich Pancost, Director of the Cabot Institute at the University of Bristol.  For more information about the University of Bristol at COP21, please visit bristol.ac.uk/green-capital
Prof Rich Pancost

This blog is part of a COP21 daily report series. View other blogs in the series below:

The Uncertain World: Question Time

Posted on by janet.crompton
This week we are focussing on our Uncertain World, with a host of events and interactions to meet with new communities, think around new ideas and establish new solutions for what’s in store for us in the future.  We will be posting blogs every day this week on ‘Our Uncertain World’. Join the conversation with us on Twitter using the hashtag #UncertainWorld and contribute your thoughts and concerns to our (virtual) graffiti wall.  
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The current rate of environmental change is unprecedented in Earth’s history and many aspects of climate change are understood. Yet, others are not. Scientists can say with a high confidence that temperatures and sea level rise – but continue to remain uncertain on the scale and speed of such processes. Policy makers are now challenged to make decisions that possess long term repercussions on the basis of information that is deemed uncertain. However, it is not just the science that may appear incomplete – social, economic and regulatory trends also remain unpredictable.
The Question Time panel, left to right: Neha Mehta (Bristol Youth Mayor); Ann Cousins (ARUP);
Peter Macfadyen (Ex-Comic Relief & Frome Mayor); Leo Hickman (Carbon Brief);
George Ferguson (Bristol Mayor); Andrew Kelly (Bristol Festival of Ideas).
It is this relationship between policy and an uncertain environment that was the focus of the Cabot Institute’s Uncertain World: Question Time event on the 21 October 2015. Chaired by Andrew Kelly of the Festival of Ideas, the panel included: Bristol Mayor George Ferguson; Bristol Youth Mayor Neha Mehta; Leo Hickman of the Carbon Brief; Peter Macfadyen, formerly Mayor of Frome and a leader in the Transition Town movement; and Ann Cousins, a Sustainability Consultant at Arup. 
This Question Time event forms part of a wider ongoing dialogue between the Cabot Institute and the Bristol public,  based on making climate-based uncertainty real, relevant and personal for all – whilst exploring what climate change means for this city and its inhabitants.
As George Ferguson said in his opening statement, 

“the stars do seem aligned for Bristol”.  

This is true – the city is European Green Capital, one of the Rockefeller 100 Resilient Cities, and possesses a vibrant sense of community that previous conversations have drawn upon. Recent surveys have shown that over two thirds of the city’s population are concerned with the effects of climate change – as a local and a global issue. This provides a clear mandate for this city, and its leaders to act. 
Yet, as Ann Cousins and Leo Hickman argued – it is not just the traditional decision makers who must make these changes. The inspiration of figureheads cannot occur in a vacuum. We are all leaders – be it via changing our own behaviour or by engaging with others to change theirs. 
What became particularly evident in discussions at the public dialogue event was the focus on the local community to meet uncertainty. It is this pooling of risk that resulted in some of our most innovative, and important, social institutions – with the NHS providing just one example. In the face of increased social uncertainty today, many have independently set up food banks and swap-shops – resulting in cooperative ventures and the circular economy becoming more commonplace. It is no secret that the effects of climate change will be first felt at the local level – and it is this pooling of risk that provides an important route to adaptation.
As Frome has shown – and Peter Macfadyen voiced – the answer lies at the community level. For meaningful change, policy must move beyond mere nudge theory and towards tipping points. Change can only occur by giving people agency – by inspiring them to embrace individual mitigation and adaptation strategies. From decreased wastage to selling the car and waiting at the bus stop. This cannot occur in isolation – it must embrace the complexity of climate change as a social issue and link it directly to the lives we live. Radical change will be necessary but it will be a quiet revolution, based on information and engagement.
 
Peter Mcfadyen (centre) tells the room that the answer to climate change lies
at the community level.
Although there may be wide agreement that climate change is occurring – there is often a popular disconnect between the phenomena and its consequences for us as societies and individuals. When the media talk about climate change scepticism, they are usually referring to people who are uncertain about the reality or seriousness of climate change. Psychologists at the University of Illinois have found an important discrepancy between how the term ‘uncertainty’ is meant in scientific reports and how it is interpreted by others [1]. This is a problem when the 2013 report of the Intergovernmental Panel for Climate Change used the term over 2200 times – approximately 1.5 times per page of the report of the working group alone [2].
A number of the event’s questions focused on the need for radical change in Bristol – including the pedestrianisation of the M32, Oslo’s ban on cars, and a policies on inter-community recycling and reuse. This struck me – the desire for radical change was near-unanimous. But, how representative of this is Bristol as a whole? Many still posses a tunnelled vision and a drawbridge mentality in their understanding of shifting climates – “it’s not affecting me, why should I care?” Priorities lie elsewhere: securing basic needs, prosperity, health, etc. Sadly, climate change doesn’t possess the minds of many.
Seoul – pedestrianised one of its motorways. Is this on the cards for Bristol’s M32?
Image credit Better Nation.
Climate change continues to feel distant. A question for science, rather than society. We have seen the images of Hurricane Sandy and of sea level rise – but these are from a different world, a great distance from our front doors. The biggest question of the night for me will continue to plague me for a while longer: Has Bristol felt climate change enough to cause this behavioural change on an individual level? And, if not what will it take?

References

[1] David V. Budescu, Stephen Broomell & Han-Hui Poor (2009). Improving the uncertainty in the report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Psychological Science, 20(3): 299-308
[2] Stephan Lewandowsky, Timotyhy Ballard, & Richard D. Pancost (2015). Uncertainty as Knowledge, Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society A: Mathematical, Physical and Engineering Sciences, 373(2055).
 
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This blog is written by Cabot Institute member Ed Atkins, a PhD student at the University of Bristol who studies water scarcity and environmental conflict.

Ed Atkins

Other blogs in the Uncertain World series:

The Uncertain World: A public dialogue

 

Delivering the ‘Future City’: collaborating with or colluding in austerity?

Posted on by janet.crompton

In Bristol’s European Green Capital year, the University of Bristol and its Cabot Institute have been working with the Bristol Green Capital Partnership and its members to convene a series of four conversations between Bristol academics and city ‘thinkers’ from across public, private and civil society exploring how Bristol delivers the ‘future city’ –  what capacities it needs to be resilient, sustainable and successful and how it can start to develop these in times of changing governance and tightened finances. The conversations will be reflected in a series of four blogs (the second below) and then brought together as a policy report for the Festival of the Future City in November.  You can read other blogs from this series at the bottom of this blog.

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The University of Bristol and the Green Capital Partnership have convened a series of conversations between Bristol academics and city ‘thinkers’ to discuss Bristol’s capacities as a future city. The second of our conversations discussed ‘austerity and service delivery’, building on the ideas emerging from the first workshop which was on governance. ‘Austerity’ impacts on the public sector and the city in many ways and it impacts unevenly on different places, sectors and social groups. It can also be used as a (short term) excuse for sidelining environmental obligations – resulting in even greater problems further into the future. It was interesting to see, in the Netherlands recently, civil society taking their government to court to demand stronger carbon cutting targets despite tight finances. The court ordered the government to cut emissions by 25% within five years rather than the planned 14-17% in order to protect citizens from climate change. What could a city like Bristol do to lead the way in challenging government?

Below are some of the ideas and thoughts emerging from our big conversation on austerity.

Words that came out of our conversation on austerity.

Our debate questioned how much of what we are seeing in austerity is really about political values and choosing not to spend money that is there or to spend it in a particular way. In the current political climate, arguably the poorest feel the effects disproportionately, exacerbating inequalities that already exist. So is austerity necessary? If we’ve been living beyond our means then something needs to change, but maybe it’s something fundamental about the system rather than under-resourcing a flawed system and hoping to manage. It was suggested that we need to ‘hospice out the old system and birth in a new one’, questioning the assumptions that underpin the apparent need for austerity and creating different narratives and cultural norms.

Whatever we think about the austerity agenda, there is a need to survive and be resilient in the face of it and to find ways of looking after the poorest communities so that they don’t suffer even more.  Solutions are starting to emerge at a local level but, as one participant said, “we can’t forget the underpinning politics; we can’t let these solutions be escape clauses for the politics that are creating bad situations”. So alternative solutions should be pursued in a way that recognises that they can be empowering, whilst also acknowledging that they are less ideal alternatives to a non-austerity agenda.

Public sector

In the public sector, many would argue that much of the scope for efficiency gains has already been used up. The further cuts that seem likely will impact not only on the ways in which the public sector provides public services but also on whether it provides some services at all.  It is under enormous pressure to maintain services despite increasingly constrained resources and staff are feeling the strain. What is the opportunity to do things differently? In some places, the ideas of ‘entrepreneurial municipalism’ and ‘municipal entrepreneurialism’ are gaining traction. How can the council be more entrepreneurial, and how can the entrepreneurs in the city be enabled to provide municipal wellbeing (services to support the wellbeing of citizens in the city) in different forms? Or how do these come together – the public sector being more entrepreneurial, the private and civic sectors being more municipal?

Bristol City Council was criticized in some areas for taking a monolithic and closed approach and for not sharing and using the expertise that exists in the city to everyone’s benefit. It was suggested that a collaborative, open and co-produced approach might have more and wider support. By contrast, in other areas as we observed in our last debate, it has maintained a hands-off approach which has allowed external innovation to flourish.

Taken from parliament.uk

The impacts of recent changes to the benefits system (such as capping benefits, restricting who can access them and delaying payment) were described as devastating, especially on families and young people. New ways of distributing benefits and other services which rely on digital access also impacts on those who need them most. A particular problem is in housing where private rents are rising and the caps on social rents will result in substantial deficits and a reduced ability to build more stock just at a time when, with new rights to buy, there needs to be more investment from both local authorities and housing associations.

Beneficial ‘collaboration’ with austerity

How do we collaborate in or co-opt the austerity agenda without colluding in it? In other words, how can we make the best of something that will happen without saying that we accept the need for it? Austerity might force new ways of doing things and if we grasp the challenge we might actually discover something new and better in the process by questioning some of the old systems and assumptions about how and by whom services are provided. In this way, a new and better system might be created in spite of the government, rather than because of it.

Communities and organisations across the country are seeking to solve the problems caused by austerity and there are many examples where a really exciting idea develops in a particular place and time. We need to both learn quickly enough to enable those successes to carry on, but also to identify why they happen and how they can be transplanted, nurtured and scaled up and out into other areas, creating something that’s bigger than the sum of its parts. Potentially this is “playing to a Conservative agenda around self-reliance”, but if we change the language to make it more about community empowerment and reconfiguring to bring all the assets that we’ve got in the city together in new ways, it feels much more positive. This is important not just for people who are desperate now but in order to construct a new vision and build capacity for future resilience:

“So much is not exclusive between surviving the space we’re in and articulating a new narrative and a new way of thinking and working.”

Power, short termism and rethinking

But first, there is a need to better understand the current direction of travel and powers held by different players in the city in order to gain clarity over what will happen if we just continue on the present path.  What social and environmental services will be lost and with what results? Once those implications are clear, a new vision can take form, one that reflects what is needed for the long term and not just to solve immediate problems, a vision that says ‘what do we do about this in a more proactive way?’  Some of the cuts made now will be false economies, a short term approach leaving bigger problems to solve in the long term. It was suggested that the impacts of the Thatcher government in ‘decimating’ the North of England took perhaps 30 years to regenerate and create a new future for those communities.

This agenda could be an opportunity to rethink ‘prosperity’ and to challenge the GDP growth paradigm to bring long term planetary and social justice benefits. We can see in so many ways that the current economic system isn’t working, so what are the opportunities for change? In the past, ambitions to get people to consume less have failed where people have resisted any infringing on their personal freedoms but, in the interests of their own communities and if, as one participant contributed, it is framed as a way of avoiding ‘stuffocation’ to lead more fulfilled lives, could it be better received?

Who has the power in the city or neighbourhood to make changes, who can authorize something being done differently? At a local level, are there low hanging fruit that could be grasped to start making smaller changes leading to bigger new systems in the long term? Is this the ‘big disruption’ that we need to force beneficial change to a more sustainable future?

Mechanisms

What are the mechanisms available to make changes? For example how can we raise financing locally? At the moment, we have little control or revenue raising powers locally because of the centralised way that budgets are controlled. But there are opportunities such as the Social Value Act which could be used to benefit local communities through the supply chain. Or are there ways to harness the resources of the businesses in the city to deliver social benefit? It is in their interest to invest in a more equal, cohesive city where their employees will want to live and where they can do business.

There could also be a role for the major institutions in the city too – for example the NHS through the Bristol Royal Infirmary and Southmead complexes account for about 10% of all travel in the city through staff, patients and visitors. It also has a civic function in addressing the ‘wellness’ of its patients and citizens more widely – developing links with communities to address chronic health problems – but can we / should we seek to change the rules on health spending to address causes before they become illnesses and if so, how do we account for the lag that will result whilst historical ill health works its way through the system? What is within local powers and what should be if we want to take a longer term view?

One of the car parks at Southmead Hospital (6763761). Image taken from
Gazetteseries.co.uk

Devolution is also an opportunity – can the power to raise finance for particular things be devolved? Could we manage NHS spending locally, allowing a more holistic view to be taken? Or does devolution just mean that the same decisions will be taken at a more local level? Although Bristol’s politics is left-leaning, the surrounding areas are blue and more likely to reflect the politics and values of central government.

Another way, within the city, is for all employers to commit to the living wage or to have a city that was “proud to have a maximum wage”, with voluntary contributions to a city-wide fund.

Where to now?

Our austerity debate talked about ‘solidarity’ across the city and collaborating or co-opting rather than colluding in an austerity agenda to get the least worst outcome. The phrase ‘being ahead of the curve’ came up but it needs to be the right curve or we need to ‘create a different curve’ or new system. Communities are developing resilience through new partnerships and new ways of doing things, sharing their experiences and learning, to start to develop a new narrative and a more equitable, sustainable and resilient locally owned system. These new partnerships are reframing the debates; for example to tackle transport issues through reducing obesity, tackling air pollution and changing the way people think about moving around the city. Universities have a role too in supporting the sharing of learning and new systems, finding good examples from elsewhere and producing collaborative research into what works and why.

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This blog is written by Caroline Bird, Future Cities and Communities Knowledge Exchange Manager at the Cabot Institute.
Caroline Bird
 
Other blogs in this series

Blog 1: Delivering the ‘Future City’: does Bristol have the governance capacities it needs?

 

Delivering the ‘Future City’: does Bristol have the governance capacities it needs?

Posted on by janet.crompton

In Bristol’s European Green Capital year, the University of Bristol and its Cabot Institute have been working with the Bristol Green Capital Partnership and its members to convene a series of four conversations between Bristol academics and city ‘thinkers’ from across public, private and civil society exploring how Bristol delivers the ‘future city’ –  what capacities it needs to be resilient, sustainable and successful and how it can start to develop these in times of changing governance and tightened finances. The conversations will be reflected in a series of four blogs (the first below) and then brought together as a policy report for the Festival of the Future City in November. You can read other blogs from this series at the bottom of this blog. 

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In Bristol’s European Green Capital year, the University of Bristol and its Cabot Institute have been exploring new ways of engaging more widely with the city and the range of organisations that make up city life and, in particular, with the Green Capital Partnership and its members. One of these forms of engagement has been to convene a series of conversations between Bristol academics and city ‘thinkers’ from across public, private and civil society, to try to move the discussion about Bristol’s future beyond what we already know to what it really means to be a future sustainable city and what capacities Bristol needs for the future – and how it can start to develop these in times of changing governance and tightened finances.

Our first debate took the theme of ‘Devolution and new forms of governance’ on a beautiful sunny Bristol evening when an invited group of some 30 city people came together for the first of 4 conversations on the (sustainable) future of Bristol – its capacity, opportunities, needs and blockages. What follows are some of the big issues identified and the start of what we can do to address them.

We acknowledged that Bristol is, on the whole, a successful city, with a thriving economy, judged to be one of the best places to live, culturally vibrant and with a reputation for doing things differently – including being the only UK city to vote for a directly elected mayor in 2012. Bristol’s leadership is more visible locally, nationally and internationally now, it is a member of the UK ‘Core Cities Group’, and business finds it easier to work with – although not all parts of the city value these changes. Bristol also has another darker side, with high levels of child poverty, lower school achievement and a lack of investment in infrastructure.

Working together

First and perhaps inevitably, the conversation was about Bristol and its neighbouring local authority areas – the ‘Counties that used to be Avon’ (or CUBA for short). There is resistance from the other unitary areas to (re-) forming something akin to Avon with Bristol’s perceived dominance – a ‘mutual loathing and distrust’ between the authorities is surely something to be addressed. The authorities involved could choose not to ‘indulge in the loathing behaviour’ but re-approach one another in a spirit of mutual collaboration and partnership – which we are now starting to see as they consider the potential of the government’s offer for devolution to metro areas.

For Bristol in particular, the current authority boundaries are a real problem with ‘stupid red lines’ cutting across the urban area, particularly to the north and east, dividing parts of the city out into other local authority’s control and creating arguments about the positioning and ownership of services. The various local government boundary changes have, over time, seen an evolution to the current four unitaries with boundaries that are historical but make little sense in 2015. We have an overall population of about a million, with people travelling to work, shop and play across the boundaries and now there is an opportunity and a need for more effective working together, that, in one participant’s words, it ‘makes total sense to be one entity’ with more devolved powers and budgets (as the Manchester metro-region is doing) which will allow longer term fiscal planning. At the moment, layers of bureaucracy get in the way of getting things done. If Bristol is the ‘capital’, it needs to show that it is working for the whole region, that it can be supportive and empowering of all the urban and rural parts. The question now is how to create mechanisms that facilitate enduring collaboration in a locally relevant way and which can withstand the buffeting of national policy changes

Moral purpose and the ‘dark side’

So, how do we set up these enduring partnerships? We think it starts with finding a common moral purpose, something that everyone thinks we should be doing to help the city (and region) work better. This could be something to do with addressing the ‘dark side’ of the city and the inequalities that persist – for example there is a 10 year life expectancy gap between the richer and poorer parts of the city and that’s not ok. There’s 25% child poverty, a lack of real representation of different communities in the power and governance of the city and a segregation between and within communities (especially generationally) so that only certain voices are heard. So it’s not a very equal or well represented city, in fact less so than at the time of the St Paul’s Riots in the 1980s and this causes tensions. We need to set up governance structures locally that can address inequalities – because it’s not happening nationally – and we’re concerned with issues of social and environmental justice not just because it’s right but also because reducing inequalities will actually improve everyone’s lives.
Police facing rioters in City Road, St Pauls. Source: Wikipedia.

Finding out what stops action and who has the power

In developing new forms of governance, the city first needs to acknowledge where the current power and blockages are. We see that there are lots of visionary people coming up with amazing ideas which then don’t make it into reality – why is that? Who blocks innovation and why? Is it mostly to do with the short term nature of government policy and funding or is there something more fundamental going on that we could work to address and allow brave ideas to flourish better and at a bigger scale? We talked about the central initiatives that have come and gone over the years and acknowledge that we need to draw on and learn from history, taking the best from the local council and encouraging risk taking in order to flourish.

The low electoral turnouts show that people don’t currently connect well with their elected representatives and that more could be done to open those lines of communication and trust and improve the democratic process – meanwhile, so much interesting stuff is going on that isn’t done by the council at all but by other people.

Innovation in spite of rules

Bristol is an innovative city and lots of the best things have happened in spite of the rules, when communities and citizens have taken the initiative and made things happen. There has always been grassroots activity in the city, taking place without waiting for permission, and the council has allowed this – there’s no big municipalism compared with some cities in the north, so the city hasn’t crowded out initiative, but rather it has ceded power and allowed initiatives to emerge. The question then is whether formalising devolution within the city might kill the thing we’re trying to grow – how do we govern so that things happen because of policy rather than despite it? And how do we provide an environment where good ideas grow beyond the ‘bubbles of innovation’ that have flourished in this permissive environment? Now that the council is expected to let go of more areas of control because it has little budget, we are actually ahead of the curve and doing it – people in the city have the experience of making things happen in interesting ways.

A visible and much publicized example of local action is in the Stokes Croft area but it’s not the only place. The Stokes Croft ‘anti-Tesco riots’ showed that people will get up and protest against what they don’t want but, in another part of the city, a Tesco Metro would be a welcome source of decent food. So we have to acknowledge that locally relevant approaches are needed and that means community led responses – as we are now seeing in Redcliffe, Barton Hill, Southmead, Lawrence Weston and other places around the city. But not all communities currently have the capacity to take the lead, so helping to develop ‘collective action’ at different levels is key. Neighbourhood partnerships are at best a partial success, working best where there are active communities, but the potential to engage and use the resources of local business to support communities is untapped.

What next?

The people participating in these debates do not represent the spectrum of thought within Bristol but if we can start to untangle how the city is managed now and for the future then further conversation might involve different people from across the city. We might be a ‘leftie liberal’ group as one participant suggested but we’ve got lots of connections across the city which can be drawn on to take responsibility for doing something, whilst also recognizing that we can’t change everything all at once!

One idea was that we should start with an issue or sector of concern such as transport or housing and explore it at all the different levels, working together to see how a new governance model would play out in reality. For example, take transport, this impacts on everyone’s quality of life and has a disproportionately high impact on the poorest people and their ability to move around the city and hence has a direct impact on equalities.

So, where does all this get us? We’ve talked about the relationship between communities and the city, the relationship between the city and its neighbouring councils and the relationship between that collective and central government – all of which need to be negotiated in the terms of possible devolutionary structures. We’ve recognized the flourishing of community innovation that will stand us in good stead as we move into a new city-region future whilst also needing to understand the powers and blockages that enhance or impede risk taking.

There are three more debates and through them we aim to develop and strengthen the relationship between the university and civil society in the city so that we can collaborate in the long term for the benefit of the city. It is also about a real concern for our city, taking advantage of the year’s Green Capital status to look at how Bristol (and other cities) can develop into the future – drawing on the knowledge and expertise galvanized in 2015 and trying to create a legacy that will live long after this year of activity and debate.

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This blog is written by Caroline Bird, Future Cities and Communities Knowledge Exchange Manager at the Cabot Institute.
Caroline Bird
Read more from this blog series
Blog 2 – Delivering the ‘Future City’: collaborating with or colluding in austerity?
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