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#WILDCITIES : urban agriculture report by creative.union
The document discusses the growing importance of integrating green spaces into urban environments as cities face increasing urbanization and the loss of natural areas. It highlights various innovative projects, such as London's Garden Bridge and the National Park City campaign, which aim to enhance access to nature and promote well-being among city dwellers. The content emphasizes sustainability, eco-innovation, and the necessity for planners and developers to create meaningful, green urban experiences that benefit both communities and the environment.
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#WILDCITIES : urban agriculture report by creative.union
- 1. #WILDCITIES VOLUME TWO |JANUARY 2016#WILDCITIES#WILDCITIES As more of our city space disappears under concrete, glass & steel, our needs for nature express themselves in more and more aspects of how we live today.
- 2. CONTENTS#WI CHAPTERS Conceived and editedby Karl Aussis. Written and co-edited by Rupert Mellor Rupert Mellor freelance commissions newspapers includ Financial Times, The Guardian, Daily Telegraph, Wall Street Journal and Sydney Morning Herald and magazines around the world. INTRODUCTION I A NEW GENERATION OF GREEN METROPOLITAN ICONS II FOR BUSINESS, PLEASURE, LEISURE & WELL-BEING, IT’S GREAT OUTDOORS III HOW PLACEMAKING PLANNERS & ENTREPRENEURS ARE KICKSTARTING ACCESS TO NATURE IV TODAY, PROGRESSIVE DEVELOPERS & BRANDS MAXIMISE THE VALUE OF OUTDOOR SPACES V GROUND-BREAKING CROSS-SECTOR CONNECTIVITY THAT POWERS ECO INNOVATION VI NEW POLICY’S GAME-CHANGING OPPORTUNITIES FOR CONSTRUCTION & INFRASTRUCTURE VII SUSTAINABILITY AS DISRUPTIVE INNOVATION — BOOSTING BOTH START-UPS & BUSINESS GIANTS VIII EATING OUR WAY BACK TO NATURE, & THE RISE OF THE INDEPENDENTS IX PUTTING THE MARKET BACK IN SUPERMARKET — A HOLISTIC NEW ROLE FOR THE HIGH-STREET GIANTS? X DIGGING FOR VICTORY — A SOPHISTICATED, 21ST -CENTURY REINVENTION OF URBAN FARMING XI PEOPLE, PLACES, IDEAS 3 4 7 9 11 13 15 17 19 21 23 24 2
- 3. #WILDCITIES AS MORE CITYSPACE DISAPPEARS DAILY BENEATH CONCRETE, GLASS & STEEL, CONTACT WITH NATURE BECOMES MORE THAN EVER A LONGED- FOR LUXURY. HOW THEN CAN PLANNERS, DEVELOPERS, MANUFACTURERS & BRANDS MOST MEANINGFULLY INTEGRATE GREEN PLACES, EXPERIENCES & VALUES INTO OUR LIVES? INTRODUCTION 3
- 4. #WI A NEW GENERATION OF GREEN METROPOLITAN ICONS OnOctober 12, London’s Tate Modern, Europe’s most visited contemporary art museum, unveiled the latest exhibit to occupy its hallowed Turbine Hall. Titled Empty Lot, the sculpture installation by Abraham Cruzvillegas presented 240 large wooden planters set in a geometric structure, each filled with bare earth from a different London park. Unplanted, and bathed in the glow of horticultural lights, the planters will, over the piece’s six-month duration, gradually reveal the dormant plant life of each sample of the city’s soil. Describing the piece as ‘a non-figurative map of London’, the Mexican artist taps into a question people all over the capital, and all the world’s urban centres, are now asking more intently than ever – what is the nature of my city? With urbanisation at unprecedented levels, green city spaces are today prized as never before. Trophy landscape projects are capturing imaginations around the world and showing the communities that create them in intriguing new light. CHAPTER I 4
- 5. #WI Opening its firstsection in 2009, New York’s High Line park has become a byword for progressive interventions that raise cities’ quality of life with smart integration of natural landscapes into the urban fabric. Singapore has added a twist of forward-looking innovation to its business-like, steady-as-she-goes reputation with the 2012 opening of Gardens by the Bay, a 250-acre collection of futuristic structures and fantastical landscapes on reclaimed land powered by solar energy and green tech. It now looks certain that London will follow suit, with the £170 million infrastructure/ leisure hybrid the Garden Bridge on ‘More than ever, I think people crave outdoor space’ BEE EMMOTT, EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR, GARDEN BRIDGE TRUST course to open in 2018. ‘More than ever, I think people crave outdoor space,’ says Bee Emmott, Executive Director of the Garden Bridge Trust. ‘You can’t buy a house with a garden in central London any more, development has become so intense, and with projections for London’s population to keep growing at pace, we are really understanding how precious its green spaces are. The Garden Bridge will be a beautiful new park where people can relax and learn about nature, as well as being an important transport link, and its design by Thomas Heatherwick and landscape by Dan Pearson Studio will make it an icon that sends a clear message about London’s world-class innovation. It will also be an important contribution to the city’s ecology, especially for pollinating insects, boost tourism and catalyse major redevelopment of the Northbank area, which has huge untapped potential.’ CHAPTER I 5
- 6. WASHINGTON GRASSLANDS, AERIAL VIEWOF THE HIGH LINE OVER LITTLE WEST 12TH STREET IWAN BAAN © 2009 #WILDCITIES CHAPTER I 6
- 7. #WI FOR BUSINESS, PLEASURE, LEISURE &WELL-BEING, IT’S GREAT OUTDOORS For all its voracious development and crowding skyline, London is in fact considered the third greenest major city on Earth, with some 60 per cent of its surface made up of green space or water. ‘Public parks were a British innovation,’ says Peter Beardsley, a freelance landscape designer who worked on the Garden Bridge’s planting schemes during his seven years with Dan Pearson Studio. ‘In Victorian It is well-documented that contact with nature enhances a sense of well-being times they were a state investment in community health when most people were living in quite toxic, industrial conditions. They are still getting lots of use as such – there have never been so much outdoor sports equipment and exercise classes in London’s parks, and you can even make gardening your workout of choice, with programmes like The Conservation Volunteers’ Green Gym, which promises to make you sweat while you help beautify one of London’s green spaces.’ It is well-documented too that contact with nature enhances a sense of well-being, and can even help to relieve depression and trauma, which like the physical benefits of time spent outdoors can significantly lighten demands on medical services, CHAPTER II 7
- 8. #WILDCITIES and associated costs.In her thorough investigation of all the advantages the Garden Bridge’s new parkland might bring the city, Emmott came to know some individual stories that have made her an enthusiastic advocate of the restorative powers of contact with nature. ‘We reached out to a lot of quite small local initiatives that help people with mental-health difficulties, or learning difficulties, and have developed green initiatives to work with these groups of people,’ she explains. ‘One organisation called Grounded Ecotherapy works with a number of homeless people, people who have had drug problems, people who have been on the street. And they have an absolutely beautiful garden on the top of Queen Elizabeth Hall in the Southbank Centre, not just green space but really expertly conceived and maintained planting, designed by the Eden Project in Cornwall. The head gardener is in his 50s. He had been homeless for about 30 years, and had serious drug problems. Grounded Ecotherapy has turned his life around. He has a full-time job, he’s so proud of the space and he works with about 12 people a day who, as he has done, are feeling the benefits of working outdoors, and with their hands. We’re really keen to make the Garden Bridge a hub for that kind of activity, to incorporate volunteering programmes and help getting people off the streets and back into work through nature and gardening.’ CHAPTER III 8
- 9. #WI HOW PLACEMAKING PLANNERS & ENTREPRENEURS AREKICKSTARTING ACCESS TO NATURE Right now, perhaps the highest expression of London’s love for its green spaces is the National Park City campaign, a fledgling bid to make London the first city in the world with a status akin to that of Yosemite, the Serengeti and the Great Barrier Reef, albeit in a new, urban definition. The Garden Bridge and the spectacular brownfield rehabilitation that is Stratford’s Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park will certainly help that ambition, as will plans for a bold new interface with the largest single green space in the capital, the River Thames. Designed by the architectural practice Studio Octopi in response to the Architecture Foundation’s 2013 open- call ideas project London As It Could Be Now, the Thames Baths proposes a floating, pontoon-like pool in the river itself. A celebration of the dramatic improvements over recent years of the quality of water now rich in salmon, sea trout and freshwater shrimp, and environmentally sensitive filtration and energy technologies, the Kickstarter-funded project has evolved to become a prototype that the architects hope will open up urban waterways everywhere to new use. ‘We want to get people to reengage with the Thames’ CHRIS ROMER-LEE, CO-FOUNDER, STUDIO OCTOPI It’s an ambition that a massive rise in the numbers of outdoor ‘wild swimmers’ in the last few years suggest has legs. ‘We want to get people to reengage with the Thames,’ says Studio Octopi’s co-founder Chris Romer-Lee. CHAPTER III 9
- 10. #WILDCITIES ‘It’s London’s largestpublic space, people used to swim in it in Victorian times, when there were several floating pools on it, and in that way it brought people together. We want to claim a tiny part of it back for people to enjoy, and have it contribute to boosting people’s health and well-being. And this won’t be another high-priced tourist theme ride for the Thames. This is no London Eye. Our aim is to solve the problem of there being no access to the waters of the Thames for the community. The structure will be free to visit, and the swimming price-matched to the nearest local- authority pool, so kids could even learn to swim in the same waters their great- grandparents swam in.’ The same firm is also working on plans to build a new, rustically styled lido on Peckham Rye park, and that borough may also get its own mini High Line if plans by local residents for The Peckham Coal Line, an elevated park that will transform disused railway coal sidings and link the area’s two main streets, come to fruition. Mayor Boris Johnson’s plan to give the city 100 new ‘Pocket Parks’, which recently came to a successful conclusion, is yet another symptom of a desire to maximise any available open space which is characteristic of our times. It’s a first-world manifestation of what Marco Casagrande, an award-hoarding Finnish architect, urban philosopher and environmental artist for whom the word ‘maverick’ could have been invented, calls ‘urban acupuncture’. Guided by the mantra ‘nature is the only reality’, Casagrande has achieved remarkable success, most notably in highly congested, intensely urbanised Asian cities, in improving living standards and social cohesion by chipping small chinks into cities’ concrete armour and establishing modest built interventions shaped by grass-roots local knowledge and human-scale needs. These include the rehabilitation of an illegal slum in Taipei into a thriving, low-impact community that went on to reintroduce sustainable farming to the city. There, as here, it seems that hands-on access to a small patch of nature can ward off the alienation that can be a side effect of intensely urbanised and industrial environments, as well as seeding far broader benefits. CHAPTER III 10
- 11. #WILDCITIES TODAY, PROGRESSIVE DEVELOPERS &BRANDS MAXIMISE THE VALUE OF OUTDOOR SPACES ‘As with built spaces, the inflated cost of London land means that people are eking out every last ounce of value from the green spaces available to them,’ says Beardsley. ‘And that brings a tension, too, between those two imperatives. I’ve been asked several times by developers to design a roof terrace with a height allowance of 100mm, which means there’s no way to have a railing that would make it safe, because they know they can get an extra £100,000 for the penthouse if they add an extra 15cm of ceiling height and so have used up all their allowance. Or they may just be adding the green space to get credits against the Section 106 fees they have to pay local authorities. Outdoor space is often a bit of an afterthought.’ That is starting to change, Beardsley says, at least at the higher end of development, citing Argent’s More London and King’s Cross projects as good examples of integrated thinking that allow users of the spaces meaningful interaction with them during and after works – in the case of King’s Cross even extending to the temporary installation of a naturalistic, reed- and lily-lined outdoor swimming pond. It’s a trend whose widespread growth would serve the city well, ‘People are eking out every last ounce of value from green spaces’ PETER BEARDSLEY, FREELANCE LANDSCAPE DESIGNER CHAPTER IV 11
- 12. #WI especially as traditionalurban planning becomes more and more outsourced to large-scale developers, who rather than buildings now frequently deliver micro-cities with carefully planned shared spaces and features designed to foster a sense of community. Might tapping into green spaces’ restorative potential, potentially partnering with charities to offer challenged individuals work opportunities, sow some authentic community spirit into these new- builds and represent a progressive new practice for developers? Could it even help with the perceived stereotype of developers as the exclusively profit-driven foes of established communities? Of course, there’s much more to green cities than plant life. While cities occupy just two per cent of the planet’s surface, they consume 75 per cent of its resources, and the pressure is very much on to find more sustainable ways to live, an imperative which is both requiring rethinking of age-old commercial practices, and driving massive amounts of innovation. More than 100 cities worldwide have now announced programmes that will make them carbon-neutral, one of many eco ambitions which, while presenting substantial challenges to planners, are powering ground-breaking new technologies in construction, energy and manufacture. CHAPTER IV 12
- 13. #WI GROUND-BREAKING CROSS-SECTOR CONNECTIVITY THAT POWERS ECO INNOVATION ‘Idon’t think this government is as committed to energy-saving and green issues as one would like,’ says Peter Murray, Chairman of New London Architecture and the communications consultancy Wordsearch. ‘I understand why – they make housing more expensive and slow things down – but generally the thinking is not integrated enough. If more work had been done on introducing sustainable urban drainage ten years ago I doubt there would be the need for the major infrastructure project of the Thames Tideway Tunnel. If lots of people were prepared to break up the concrete they’ve paved over their gardens, that would make a big difference,’ he says, recommending another form of urban acupuncture, ‘but I don’t hear that conversation going on nearly enough. ‘A big problem we have in London is what I call siloitis. Because we have 33 separate boroughs with almost total power over what happens in their areas, it’s very hard to drive joined-up progress. So for example Hounslow has ‘A big problem we have in London is what I call siloitis’ PETER MURRAY, CHAIRMAN, NEW LONDON ARCHITECTURE CHAPTER V 13
- 14. #WI signed a 25-yearPFI contract with a highways contractor, and nobody knows whether that specifies impermeable repaving every time a repair is needed, which will exacerbate draining issues, or if sustainable elements can be built into repairs. Those conversations just don’t take place. You’d imagine the Environment Agency would be pushing this agenda, but they seem a bit behind the curve on some of the impacts of climate change.’ While cities including Copenhagen, Bristol, Amsterdam, Oslo and New York push committed unilateral green agendas, traditional models of procurement at local-government level remain responsible for much of the frustration Murray expresses. But, driven by imaginative and entrepreneurial new kinds of collaboration, there is progress. Based in New York, Citymart is an organisation set up by London- trained architect Sascha Haselmayer which revolutionises traditional tendering models for cities’ large- scale procurements, with outstanding results. More than 50 cities worldwide have enlisted Citymart’s help, publishing their civic challenges to unprecedentedly broad networks of potential suppliers, accelerating schemes by up to three times, discovering innovative solutions from providers who are overwhelmingly small and medium-sized enterprises, and, through energetic networking eliminating the 40-year waits it commonly takes a successful solution to spread from one city to another. CHAPTER V 14
- 15. #WI NEW POLICY’S GAME-CHANGING OPPORTUNITIES FOR CONSTRUCTION& INFRASTRUCTURE ‘We worked with San Francisco when they wanted to upgrade all their urban lighting as part of a $20-million tender process,’ says Haselmayer. ‘They run lots of infrastructure services, like electric vehicle charging, smart meters and traffic lights through wireless technology, and we realised that rather than buy a traditional lighting supplier’s proprietary closed wireless system and be tied into it for 25 years, there was an opportunity to source an open system and save tens of millions by not rolling out parallel networks that all do the same thing. It turned out that the traditional lighting industry didn’t have a product that could do that, so we put this out to the broader market through our network and were offered 59 solutions. San Francisco chose a small, 20-person company from Switzerland called Paradox Engineering, whose solution was based on oil-field technology, and a successful pilot was up and running within three months, setting a liberating precedent for all cities with similar challenges. Which is pretty much all of them.’ Environmental construction requirements in the UK are, says Murray, reasonably rigorous, but exemplar projects around the world show there is much, much further we could go, at both government and commercial levels. France, for example, passed a law earlier this year requiring all new buildings’ rooftops to be either partially covered in plants or solar panels, echoing a mandate introduced by the Canadian city Toronto in 2009. CHAPTER VI 15
- 16. #WILDCITIES With the UK’smassive current need for new housing, opportunities abound. While our politicians and planners debate eco towns, a new generation of garden cities and the future of the green belt/tourniquet, bold developers might wish to mull on some of the lessons successfully learned elsewhere in the world. Freiburg in Germany for example has an impressive collection of passive houses — homes whose insulation and ventilation systems are designed to make heating unnecessary— universally reduced energy wastage, and because of its planning, little need for cars. Denmark’s capital Copenhagen has a network of bicycle superhighways estimated to have saved $12 million in medical costs because of associated health benefits. Cochin in India has the world’s first fully solar-powered airport building, while two thirds of Singapore’s land surface is now a water-catchment area feeding 17 reservoirs. Helsinki has soothed away its citizens’ dependence on private cars with ride-sharing apps, car pools and smart travel plans. In Milan, the extraordinary Bosco Verticale (Vertical Forest) apartment building embodies architect Stefano Boeri’s visionary take on green living, incorporating some 700 trees and 16,000 plants, the equivalent of a hectare of natural forest, into a façade that helped it win first place for Europe in the prestigious Council of Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat award given by the Illinois Institute of Technology in Chicago this year. Even Georgetown in oil-happy Texas has this year opted to use 100 per cent renewable energy, although city manager Jim Briggs was quick to dispel any suggestion of tree- hugging proclivities – ‘I’m probably the furthest thing from an Al Gore clone you could find. We didn’t do this to save the world – we did this to get a competitive rate and reduce the risk for our consumers.’ And while each has suffered scaling down of its ambition during development, brand-new eco cities including Masdar in the United Arab Emirates, Dongtan in China and Iskandar Malaysia just across the Johor Strait from Singapore all edge our planners, engineers and builders closer to game-changing sustainable practices. Bold developers might wish to mull on some of the lessons successfully learned elsewhere in the world CHAPTER VI 16
- 17. #WI SUSTAINABILITY AS DISRUPTIVE INNOVATION — BOOSTINGBOTH START-UPS & BUSINESS GIANTS It’s notable that wind power has now been deemed the cheapest electricity in both the UK and Germany, a first for any G7 economy, by Bloomberg New Energy Finance (BNEF). Meanwhile the think tank Cambridge Econometrics goes so far as to say that the UK economy would be £20 billion a year better off by 2030 if it favoured offshore wind power over gas-fired generation. But even as leaders hesitate to wean their populations off fossil fuels, new green industries and sustainable solutions continue to stimulate entrepreneurial minds and spark ideas with the power to help forge a cleaner future. Inspired by the rapid rise of coffee-shop culture in the UK, Benjamin Harriman and Arthur Kay last year established Bio-bean, a London-based energy company that recycles used coffee grounds into advanced biofuels which can then power buildings and transport. The Californian company View makes intelligent window glass which regulates light and temperature, generating energy savings – one of an unending series of products entering the market which raise the bar for low-impact construction ever higher. PowWow, meanwhile, harnesses city-honed tech to improve rural operations with an app that detects leaks in irrigation systems, saving resources and reducing repairs. And Ooho, an edible, biodegradable, seaweed-based membrane may soon replace plastic water bottles in shops, denting the mountain of discarded bottles that stacks up to 38 million a year in the US alone, and heralding a new generation of packaging in which recyclability will be superseded by compostability. CHAPTER VII 17
- 18. #WILDCITIES Nor is thisforward-looking thinking the exclusive domain of young, agile start-ups. Green Giants is a book by Freya Williams, US CEO of the specialist sustainability communications agency Futerra, which identifies some of the major brands which have seen sustainability not as a constraint but as a way to drive disruptive innovation and boost profits, each going on to make $1 billion a year from a business line with sustainability at its core. These include Toyota, Chipotle, Unilever, Nike and GE. Thanks to the efforts of environmental campaigners over the last decades, ecological awareness is now widespread, and the public takes the issues very seriously, as the recent scandal over Volkswagen’s emissions test-dodging software clearly showed with, for the brand, near-catastrophic consequences. Consumers who want to tread more gently on the Earth have meanwhile never been better served with ethically sourced and sustainably made products and services. And while the positioning and packaging of Some major brands have seen sustainability as a way to drive disruptive innovation and boost profits early eco-friendly goods often had something of the hairshirt about them, many planet-kind products increasingly leverage a more upbeat celebration of voluptuous nature. Wholesome toiletries are a case in point, and while Neal’s Yard Remedies’ old-school apothecary aesthetic, launched in 1981, has proved a prescient classic, the Rhode Island-based runaway success Farmaesthetics goes for a full-on kitchen table pharmacy look for its Sustainable Beauty® range, with ‘hand-written’ product names, fuss-free packaging and ingredients sourced from ‘American family farms’. Based on ingredients from the walled garden of bucolic Somerset country-house hotel Babington House, Cowshed meanwhile achieves standout with a sassier tone of voice and funky graphics, a smart marriage of apple-cheeked pastoral salubriousness with urbane wit. CHAPTER VII 18
- 19. #WILDCITIES EATING OUR WAY BACKTO NATURE, & THE RISE OF THE INDEPENDENTS Audiences’ eco awareness has grown in parallel with the revolution that has turned UK food culture from the butt of a million French jokes into an eclectic and accomplished gastronomic player, with London’s restaurant scene holding its own among the world’s leading cities for fine dining. And while the rise and rise of the supermarket behemoths seemed for some years unassailable – 2010, declared think tank New Economics Foundation, marked ‘the death of small shops’ – the last few years have seen a remarkable resurgence in independent suppliers, with increases between 2012 and 2013 of 28 per cent in fishmongers, 31 per cent in bakeries and 65 per cent in independent supermarkets. Contributing factors include our education by TV chefs, trust-sapping setbacks such as 2013’s horsemeat scandal, and the introduction by small businesses of enhanced customer services from online ordering to home deliveries to gourmet ready meals, more often than not wrapped up in savvy brand marketing that communicates the businesses’ passion for their specialisms and human-scale appeal. Brothers Simon and Nick Mellin, for example, set up the butcher Roaming Roosters in Pendle, Lancashire, in 1999, selling sustainably produced chicken 28% Fishmongers 31% Bakeries 65% Supermarkets INCREASES IN INDEPENDENT SUPPLIERS 2012-3 CHAPTER VIII 19
- 20. #WI Ginger Pig, whichgrew from the Borough Market stall of North Yorkshire farmer Tim Wilson to a London micro-empire of seven shops, is a comparable success story. It’s also one of more than 100 businesses which work with Hubbub.co.uk, a specialist groceries delivery service that neatly taps into both the growing interest in unprocessed, independently produced food and city workers’ increasingly time-poor routines. ‘For the shops we work with, there’s a great network effect,’ says Founder and Co-CEO Marisa Leaf. ‘Customers might check us out online to order some meat from Ginger Pig, then see a wine recommendation that catches their eye from Bottle Apostle, or one of the divine breads produced in a Hackney railway arch by E5 Bakehouse. Typically our customers buy from five different shops, so the cross-sales are fantastic. It’s just one of the ways being part of our family can start to level the playing field a bit for small suppliers whose rivals are the huge supermarkets. Plus our service lets both customers and vendors leave notes, so you can ask the butcher to throw in some bones for stock, or the fishmonger might want to give you a recipe tip for what you’re buying. It really adds value for people who love their food.’ High-quality, small-batch foods served with a smile by the people who grew, reared and/or prepared them have also found another vibrant forum of late in the pop-up street food markets around the city which are so popular they seem never to pop down. These, Leaf’s whip-smart service, and the new success of independent gourmet suppliers are all neat illustrations of how, with the right shift in thinking, even the most potentially dehumanizing challenges of accelerated urbanisation – in these cases population density and busy schedules – can be harnessed to bring new life to the more rustic-rooted and personable traditions city living can threaten to erode. and pork reared on the family farm. Now their expanded site encompasses a farm shop, bistro and café, and they plan to open five new shops across the north of England next year. Last year they turned over £1.2 million, this year they are expecting the figure to reach £10 million. CHAPTER VIII ‘Typically our customers buy from five different shops, so the cross- sales are fantastic’ MARISA LEAF, FOUNDER AND C-CEO, HUBBUB.CO.UK 20
- 21. #WI PUTTING THE MARKET BACK INSUPERMARKET — A HOLISTIC NEW ROLE FOR THE HIGH- STREET GIANTS? Given that the supermarket giants’ generally falling profits might suggest that the success of their stack-‘em’- high ethos has peaked – and at its most extreme level been co-opted by the rock-bottom discounters – is it now time for them to heal the rift between them and small suppliers? To put the market back into supermarket? Fixtures as they are of handy high- street and out-of-town mall sites the length and breadth of the country, is there now scope for them to leverage their vast power and position their services as complementary rather than all-conquering, to even support independents with dedicated space in their temples of convenience? And with Amazon Fresh poised to make what will certainly be a muscular move into their territory, albeit one whose format is as yet unclear, is there not more than ever incentive to evolve? Efforts by the megabrands to take a more touchy-feely approach are rare, but not unheard of. Last year, in response to the news that EU countries throw away 300 million tons of food every year, the French chain Intermarché launched an anti- waste campaign, ‘Inglorious fruits & vegetables’ whose wit and warmth threw into sharp relief just how aloof and anonymous such shops generally seem. Beautifully photographed ‘ugly’ vegetables, of the kind routinely thrown away by producers used to having them rejected by supermarkets for not looking appealing enough, graced posters with CHAPTER IX 21
- 22. #WILDCITIES smart slogans suchas ‘A HIDEOUS ORANGE – makes beautiful juice’ in a dedicated aisle whose lumpen fruit and veg was marked down by 30 per cent. The result? All stocks sold out, a 300 per cent increase in social-media mentions of the chain in the campaign’s first week, and a rise in overall footfall of 24 per cent. In London, Budgen’s supermarket in Crouch End agreed to host a temporary, volunteer-run food growing project Food From The Sky on its rooftop, selling its produce in the shop. Meanwhile the initiative ran educational workshops for schoolchildren and amateur growers, even attracting Boris Johnson for a photo opportunity that powered the Mayor’s highly successful exhortations to citizens to form community growing co-ops. Food production, both artisanal and technologically alternative, also has a growing profile in London, from the new cheeses created in a Bermondsey railway arch by Kappacasein Dairy to the Growing Underground salad leaves produced in disused underground World War II bomb shelter tunnels 33 metres below Clapham by Zero Carbon Foods. ‘The UK has a real energy of people trying things and not being afraid of failing’ Growing hydroponically under low-energy LED lights, without need for pesticide, these leaves impressed Michelin-starred chef Michel Roux Jnr so much he joined the company as a director. PIERRE-LOUIS PHELIPOT, FOUNDER, LONDON JAM FACTORY A surge of interest in beekeeping in the city has produced at least six brands of honey, and Pierre-Louis Phelipot, a French ex-pat set up shop as the London Jam Factory last year after friends repeatedly told him the fruit-rich preserves he was making in a traditional copper pot passed on to him by his mother were outstanding. ‘Interestingly, everyone in the UK urged me to go for it,’ Phelipot says on his website. ‘But my French friends all told me I was crazy. I am in the UK for exactly that reason. There is a real energy of people trying things and not being afraid of failing.’ CHAPTER IX 22
- 23. #WILDCITIES With huge numbersof the population inspired by cookery and gardening programmes, and the messages about the impacts of food miles and intensive farming loud, clear and frequent, the scope and incentives for scaled-up urban agriculture in UK cities are emphatically in place. The Cuban capital Havana is an exemplary model, producing almost 90 per cent of the food its natives eat within the city. Government might do well to keep a close eye too on China, where city leadership in for example Beijing and Shanghai is systematically planning and monitoring new ways of coordinating food production with small plots of land alongside the cities’ rampant construction programmes, to harness the farming skills of the millions moving to the cities in the greatest urban growth spurt in history. Then there’s Japan, where the world’s biggest indoor farm, in a former Sony DIGGING FOR VICTORY – A SOPHISTICATED, 21ST - CENTURY REINVENTION OF URBAN FARMING Corporation semi-conductor factory in Miyagi Prefecture, is producing up to 10,000 heads of lettuce a day, and growing them 150 per cent faster than an outdoor farm could. And while the to-capacity development of most land within London and the UK’s other very built- up cities may not be equipped to host some of the larger-scale projects China’s army of migrant farmers can sustain, those urban centres are rich in small, overlooked, odd-shaped, underground, rooftop and ex- industrial spaces that for the likes of London-based brands and enterprises Capital Bee honey, Cultivate London, the tank-based tilapia farm GrowUp Box and many, many more, are already more than up to the job. Urban agripuncture, anyone? CHAPTER X 23
- 24. #WI PEOPLE Architect Chris Romer-Leeof Studio Octopi, the man behind the proposed floating, freshwater swimming pool Thames Baths, describes the unusual team structure currently fast-tracking his idea with forward-thinking strategy. ‘One of the great reality checks of this project has been accepting that architects don’t, in fact, know everything, and collaborating in new ways. We were approached at an early stage by an ad agency strategist, Matt Bamford-Bowes of RKCR, asking if he could help out. He brought some really fresh thinking to the table, challenging us to see the Baths as not just a one-off project, but a model that could also work on Leicester’s River Soar, and in Leeds – and why not then internationally? ‘It was his idea also to seek crowdfunding through Kickstarter, and that has been a great eye-opener, and really moved the project up a gear. Matt wrote all the Kickstarter copy, which brought the idea to life for a broad audience – another area where architects tend not to excel! – and so far we have raised more than £140,000, which will enable us to do our next design development and planning stages much sooner than would otherwise have been possible. But beyond that, it has been amazing to see the profile this has given us, all the way up to global press coverage, and the network of fans and friends that forms around a Kickstarter project. ‘In another move that is completely alien to how our world usually works, we’re working with a commercial manager who procured sponsorship for London 2012 in a role for LOCOG. He’s tirelessly opening doors for us to talk to commercial organisations who may support us. We’re keen to avoid loud, logo-based branding, and think that by tackling these activities proactively, rather than trying to bolt them to the finished project, we can achieve a much more integrated, harmonious result we’ll all be happy with.’ thamesbaths.com CHAPTER XI 24
- 25. #WI PLACES Executive Director ofthe Garden Bridge Trust Bee Emmott talks about the regenerative ripples London’s new green icon will send through the capital. ‘The Garden Bridge is all about connection. Connecting the heart of the city with nature, bringing together disciplines from engineering and design to technology and landscaping, joining up London’s patchwork of ecological habitats and providing a convenient transport link for thousands of commuters every day that happens to be spectacularly beautiful. But its impacts will extend far beyond the finished asset itself, as is always true of the best innovative infrastructure projects. ‘We have been working with all kinds of organisations to make sure the bridge is not only as good as it can be but also feeds into as many other aspirations as possible for improving the areas where it lands. In Lambeth, an area without too many large-scale green spaces, we’ve connected with lots of amazing green initiatives and schools who we will help to enhance their offers on ecology, and the Waterloo Opportunity Area, which the Mayor’s London Plan earmarks for major regeneration. ‘Then there’s the Northbank BID. There is a huge will to transform the area around the Aldwych, an area of beautiful architecture, broad streets and hidden squares and gardens that has never achieved its potential as a destination because of traffic and other factors. The BID is seeing the Garden Bridge as a great catalyst, and there are plans to rethink the traffic flows, and pedestrianize areas, making it a lovely place to visit, and joining up substantial walking routes that stretch north as far as Bloomsbury and King’s Cross to the Thames. All in all, economic benefits through employment, investment and tourism will be close to £500 million over 60 years.’ gardenbridge.london CHAPTER XI 25
- 26. #WI IDEAS Marisa Leaf isFounder and Co-CEO of Hubbub.co.uk, a London-based specialist online shopping service delivering high-quality groceries from independent local suppliers. She explains her trailblazing business model. ‘After eight years working ridiculous hours as a human rights lawyer, I was really frustrated by neither being able to buy as good-quality food as I wanted, nor support the small local fishmongers, butchers and greengrocers I loved, as they had always closed by the time I finished work. Putting my disposable income straight into the pockets of Tesco shareholders really grated, so I had the idea of an Ocado-type service that would work with small independent shops, producers and market stalls. I piloted it in 2008, borrowing my boyfriend’s Mini and starting with just two Islington shops, and I haven’t looked back. Hubbub.co.uk now works with more than a hundred of London’s best suppliers, including Borough and Portobello Markets, butchers, delis, fantastic wine merchants, craft breweries, bakeries and more, and serves five large areas of the city. On average we’ve generated 10 per cent more sales for the suppliers we work with – and we’re only just starting to do weekend deliveries now. ‘It’s fantastic to know that much more money is now staying in some of London’s local economies’ The suppliers also benefit from our powerful tech platform, which gives them bespoke customer and sales data – another huge advantage big supermarkets have always had over them – so they can improve their service and profits, and it’s fantastic to know that much more money is now staying in some of London’s local economies, helping create employment and circulating that money again and again in the area. Spend £1 in a local butcher and it’s worth around £1.70 to the local economy, versus about 10p if it’s spent in a supermarket. Plus thriving independent businesses create desirable local high streets, which become destinations for socialising and raise property values – it’s a lovely virtuous circle.’ hubbub.co.uk CHAPTER XI 26
- 27. #WI A BIG THANKYOU TO ALL THE CONTRIBUTORS FEATURED IN THIS INSIGHT REPORT 5 IMAGE COURTESEY OF THE GARDEN BRIDGE LONDON - WWW.GARDENBRIDGE.LONDON 6 WASHINGTON GRASSLANDS, AERIAL VIEW OF THE HIGH LINE OVER LITTLE WEST 12TH STREET IWAN BAAN © 2009 8 ECKEL, O — WWW.OSCARECKEL.FORMAT.COM 10,12 PHOTOS BY LUKE MASSEY FOR THE GREATER LONDON NATIONAL PARK CITY INITIATIVE 14 HIGH LINE AT THE RAIL YARDS PHOTO BY IWAN BAAN: VIEW LOOKING WEST ALONG ONE OF THE RAIL TRACK WALKS. © IWAN BAAN, 2014 22 IMAGE COURTESY OF GROWING UNDERGROUND SW4 — WWW.GROWING-UNDERGROUND.COM Published by creative.union (London) Ltd Publication date 15th January 2016. Reproduction in whole or in part is strictly prohibited unless permission is provided. You may not, except with Evolve Agency’s written permission or, if appropriate, any of our affiliates permission, distribute or commercially exploit the content. Nor may you transmit it or store it in any other website or other form of electronic retrieval system. You may not copy, reverse engineer, modify or use this document. You may not remove the copyright or trade mark notice from any copies of creative.union document. Any use of creative.union content not specifically permitted above is expressly prohibited. Requests for permission for use maybe sent to creaive.union [email protected], and may be subject to a fee. All photography used in this document remains the property of the content/image contributor unless otherwise agreed by Evolve Agency. It is the responsibility of the content/image owner to obtain relevant releases and permission for distributuion. All rights reserved. All credits are correct at time of going to print, we have attempted to represent total accuracy wherever possible. 27
- 28. #WI a ur mission isto help people and organisations come together and thrive as part of our increasingly diverse yet interdependent urban experience. 28