The Impact of Clean Air

Is Clean Air the goal, or are we missing the broader benefits it triggers for society?

Does recognising and unlocking the additional cross-cutting benefits of achieving Clean Air require a whole-systems change? How do silo-based specialists instead start developing the whole? How does the scale of contribution from each policy area get locked-in to allow other policy areas to also deliver their contributions? Does demonstrating the wider benefits of the greater whole help to incentivise the contributions and delivery of the individual parts?

Context

Polluted air has been the trigger for a multitude of urban issues, from the loss of outdoors as a basic amenity, loss of vegetation benefits, expectations for sealed gas-guzzling buildings, to our heavy car dependency, to serious human health impacts. Yet the way we formulate single-issue city policies tends to miss the linkages that provide benefits far beyond individual policy silos. It also misses the mutual support that single-issue policies can provide to each other if combined for their cross-cutting benefits, including the slip-back on implementation so often seen with individual policies.

What could be delivered?

As just a few examples:

• Electric vehicles that deliver cleaner air also reduce noise levels and pollution, which in turn allow buildings to be naturally ventilated.
• Natural ventilation halves energy use and heat emissions of our most energy intensive building types, while electric vehicles also reduce vehicle heat emissions by 75%.
• Further reductions in local temperatures are delivered by scaling up vegetation fed by SUDs, which also promotes clean air.
• Considered collectively there is the added potential to reduce existing Urban Heat Island effects by the same order of future climate change temperatures.

This virtuous circle also brings benefits by avoiding future expansion of gas-guzzling mechanical cooling. It better allows the grid to switch to zero-carbon electricity, allowing outdoor spaces to remain hospitable and adaptable to the impacts of our warming climate while contributing to improved health and wellbeing.

Looking Ahead to 2040

The key is the appreciation that individual policies and the scale of their contributions reach far wider and become essential contributors to enabling broader benefits. The opportunities for cities in 2040 are thus significantly greater than suggested by single-issue topics like ‘clean air’. Grasping these opportunities needs to begin today.

Chair: Erin Walsh, Director of Built Environment, Connected Places Catapult

Speakers:

Nick Grayson, Green City Manager, Birmingham City Council

Dr. Emma Ferranti, Environmental Change Research Fellow, University of Birmingham

Sophie Sheil, Deputy Coordinator, GrowGreen, Manchester City Council

Helen Grimshaw, Senior Consultant – Sustainability, Urbed

David Sim, Partner and Creative Director, Gehl

Online: Zoom

Timing: Tuesday 8th December 2020, 16.00 – 17.30