How the Climate Change Problem Affects London

Housing Crisis vs. Climate Crisis

Introduction

This paper focuses on London, UK, as a case study in its imminent conflict between addressing the housing crisis vs. the climate crisis. The city is increasingly giving developers the green light to construct in areas that are dangerously close to or on flood areas. This situation of greed and profiting will soon be met by nature’s wrath. The aim of this paper is to provide evidence of historical, spatial, and theoretical awareness of the concepts and paradigms shaping urban agendas. It will discuss current approaches to challenges in the field of urbanism, integrate a clear perspective showing how the climate crisis will come to bear on strategies for urban change, and relate the question of scale to critical urban arguments. The main argument of this paper is that “nature is inevitable” and urban strategies must be reconciled to this fact.

Background

The housing crisis in London is the result of economic growth and overcrowding due to too little housing development. Yet because developers are seeking first to build without asking questions about sustainability, they are not really addressing the issue of the housing crisis in a strategic way. Particular to this problem is the problem of climate change. Formerly known as global warming, climate change is understood today as the unnatural or manmade cause of the increase of temperature of the planet. Usually the main cause of this rise in temperature is viewed as carbon emissions, which is why the Paris Accords and several green policies around the world have targeted reduction of carbon emissions in the coming years. Since the era of industrialization, carbon emissions have risen, and scientists and activists are concerned that the polar ice caps will melt and cause sea levels to rise above current levels, inducing flooding of any area in its plane.[footnoteRef:1] [1: L. Meyer and D. Roser, “Distributive Justice and Climate Change,” Analyse and Kritik: Journal of Philosophy and Social Theory, 28.2, 224.]

Solutions that have been put forward to address the problem of climate change require additional urban planning because they essentially involve a total re-ordering of society. It is one reason a “Great Reset” has been called for by the World Economic Forum in recent years. A societal shift to electric vehicles has been promoted, but the power for these batteries still must come from somewhere and currently the infrastructure for an all-green energy society is not in place. Nonetheless, planning for this change would focus on the need to:

· Promote solar power, wind power and non-fossil fuel burning energy solutions

· Promote less meat-eating and more vegetarianism

· Issue a carbon tax

These steps would involve urban planning due to the fact that energy solutions would have to be considered, carbon emissions would need to be eliminated, and how people are fed would have to be changed. The question of where people will live follows, but at the slow pace of transformation currently being experienced it is likely that the flood levels will rise to destroy current building projects that will put future homes in future flood planes.

Historical, Spatial, and Theoretical Awareness

BlackRock has promoted investment in sustainability in recent years and states that “the transition to a net zero world is the shared responsibility of every citizen, corporation, and government.”[footnoteRef:2] However, as other researchers have pointed out, urbanization continues at a rapid pace all over the world including densely populated areas like London. These areas are typically close to the sea or to rivers, and when flood levels rise these cities will be underwater—yet development continues anyway, and it is expected that by 2050 approximately more than two-thirds of the world’s population will live in a city like that of London.[footnoteRef:3] These cities like London have to “effectively manage their natural resources and reduce their greenhouse gas emissions while improving quality of life.”[footnoteRef:4] However, that is not happening, as Morris points out. Morris notes that “climate vulnerability should be understood as part of the constellation of social ills that are attendant with the housing crisis and offers a critique of the narrative around managed retreat as a solution to climate risk.”[footnoteRef:5] The idea that individuals affected by climate change simply need to accept being displaced is the end result of poor governance and planning. Yet that is exactly what will happen in London, if urban development in future flood planes continues unabated. And the reason it continues unabated is greed: investors and financiers rely upon the continued expansion of the urban area in order to reap economic rewards—but what is not being seen is any type of planning, accountability, responsibility, or understanding of what will happen to these areas when climate change’s toll finally comes due. Wills notes that “urban space is increasingly shaped by private finance, the tactics and breadth of housing movements are also integral to the shape of our cities.”[footnoteRef:6] Unfortunately, the “shape of our cities” like that of London is viewed through the lens of financialization—not through the more appropriate lens of vulnerability. [2: BlackRock, “From Ambition to Action,” https://www.blackrock.com/us/individual/about-us/road-to-net-zero] [3: A. Dasgupta, WRI Ross Center for Sustainable Cities, http://www.wri.org/our-work/topics/sustainable-cities] [4: A. Dasgupta, WRI Ross Center for Sustainable Cities, http://www.wri.org/our-work/topics/sustainable-cities] [5: Deborah Helaine Morris, "The climate crisis is a housing crisis: Without growth we cannot retreat." In Global Views on Climate Relocation and Social Justice, pp. 142-151. Routledge, 2021.] [6: Jacob Wills, "Building urban power from housing crisis: London's Radical Housing Network." City 20, no. 2 (2016), 292.]

Vulnerability is the key lens that needs to be applied to this problem, which is also a problem of sustainability. Morris explains that urban planning and urban strategies have to be rooted in care for the vulnerable populations because they will be the ones displaced when nature strikes back. Yet planners and strategists ignore this population because the key focus in urban planning is to support the financial rewarding of investors and developers—of the top 1% in other words. The bottom 99% are not figured into the planning of urban environments. London shows all too well that when it comes to strategy the only thing that matters is how much money is to be made on a project—everything else is a footnote. The end result will be displacement and forced mirgration, and this should represent a moral issue for strategists and planners: “By placing the burden on the most vulnerable households to leave areas of high flood risk, proponents of managed retreat often replicate the narrative of moral crisis that is used to blame vulnerable communities for the social ills they endure, and simply relocates populations without reducing their total vulnerability.”[footnoteRef:7] The solution to this problem is to put the challenge of planning into the hands of the community so that proper development can be undertaken that will not put lives and homes at risk. [7: Deborah Helaine Morris, "The climate crisis is a housing crisis: Without growth we cannot retreat." In Global Views on Climate Relocation and Social Justice, pp. 142-151. Routledge, 2021.]

Yet even beyond this problem of climate change is the problem of sustainable design not being included into development planning. Edwards and Hyett point out that “the techniques and technologies of green design are now generally understood—what is still lacking is an architecture profession which gives priority to ecological issues.”[footnoteRef:8] Part of the problem is a spatial one, and part of it is historical and theoretical. Since the arrival of the shared space movement, with AirBnB serving as a good platform for tenants to make money on their dwelling by sub-renting it out to travelers for a stay, a new economy of space has emerged—but regulators and hoteliers are opposed to this shift in spatial thinking because it cuts into profits for established corporations. Yet the shift is one that can benefit developers seeking to mitigate the risk of climate change. As Wheeler notes, the housing crisis like the one in London has to be met with “a philosophical reconsideration of relationality” in terms of generating a “sustainable built environment.”[footnoteRef:9] To achieve sustainable design, planners must work with architects and strategists with climate change in mind so that the housing crisis in London does not turn into a refugee crisis when the flood levels inevitably rise. This can be achieved by applying sustainable design, which “forges a fundamental connection between design for sustainability and design for social impact.”[footnoteRef:10] Otherwise, at the current pace of planning in London, it will be inevitable that a refugee issue will arise, displacing hundreds of thousands. In fact, not only does the planning of new buildings near the water’s edge need to be addressed, but strategists have to couple urban planning with a plan for fighting climate change—because the possibility of total annihilation of the earth is there if not, as Peters warns: “Scientists have predicted that if we maintain our product culture and our current rates of consumption, as soon as 2030 we would need the equivalent of two planet Earths to meet our needs.”[footnoteRef:11] [8: Edwards, B., Hyett, P. 2010. Rough Guide to Sustainability. UK: RIBA, 5.] [9: A. Wheeler, “Building a shared world as a definition of sustainable architecture,” 13th Nording Environmental Social Sciences Conference, 2015.] [10: Schwarz, M., Krabbendam, D. 2013. Sustainist Design Guide: How sharing, localism, connectedness and proportionality are creating a new agenda for social design. NY: BISPublishers, 25.] [11: Peters, S. 2014. Material Revolution 2: New Sustainable and Multi-Purpose Materials for Architecture. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 6.]

Challenges in the Field of Urbanism

Space, drainage, respect for ecology, greening the urban environment, crime, pollution, displacement—all of these are challenges in the field of urbanism today. Yet the biggest challenge of all is the fact that urban development is still undermined by the greed of developers, investors, and financiers who use urbanism as a means of enriching themselves while demonstrating little to no care about the environment or the way that people’s lives are going to be affected by reckless construction near water like that seen in London.

Similarly, the physical environment has to be considered. For architects, global consciousness and earth consciousness are two aspects of urbanism that should be part of their approach to assisting in urbanism studies. Organizations and corporations have to be more earth consciousness, as BlackRock suggests, so that cities like London will have a better opportunity to address the issues of sustainability. Urbanism brings into the light the very threat of climate change, because urban areas are typically going to feel this change the strongest. London is especially vulnerable because of where it sits on the river, which will flood as sea levels rise. An city that cares about the planet is an city that cares about its people, and when it comes to building and architectural design, the structures that are erected—and where they are erected—has to show that this care is real and intelligent. As Falzon explains, environments and people have to have a symbiotic relationship in order to be healthy: they have to work together to benefit one another because that is how nature operates—when one exploits the other it leads to catastrophe as is seen now with climate change.[footnoteRef:12] The external environment must be part of the planning in a work of architecture, so it is important to consider all the forces of nature that will affect it in the future. [12: Falzon, P. 2015. Enabling environments, enabling organizations, enabling interventions: a constructive ergonomics viewpoint. In, Proceedings of the European Conference on Cognitive Ergonomics, Article 3. NY: ACM. ]

However, there is also another issue—another challenge, which is the challenge of illusion. As HBNY points out, “the density of today’s urban environment is deceptive: while physically substantial, cities can be quite vacant in terms of actual occupancy.”[footnoteRef:13] In other words, urban areas like London may seem quite populous but there is decay within, empty spaces that are not being used so that the city is not maximizing its potential in terms of spatial understanding and resilience. It is instead letting space go to waste while moving closer and closer to the water’s edge where climate change will wreak havoc. Yet it does not have to be this way. [13: HBNY, 2006, http://www.ssdarchitecture.com/works/residential/hbny-parenthetical-space/]

The Question of Scale in the Urban Argument

Can a city like London scale properly so as to avoid catastrophe in the face of climate change? One answer is that the Digital Age has so transformed the way the modern world operates, that scale itself has to be reconsidered in the light of technological solutions. For instance, by seeing how the Digital Age has enabled people in urban areas to develop “a nomadic residency that not only contributes to material, space, and energy waste but also to the spiraling cost of housing as stock is artificially diminished,” one can begin to see the solution to the challenge.[footnoteRef:14] Indeed, HBNY explains the answer in no uncertain terms with its idea of “operable parenthesis-like divisions” that give every space the ability to transform from one thing into another without any problem from day to day: “on-the-go” habitats within spaces that can be changed to suit the needs of a person or group on any given day at any given time.[footnoteRef:15] Unlike the modern conception of scale in which a new dwelling is constructed at risk to its inhabitants, the solution of HBNY is to put nothing in stone but rather to enable and empower the resident or organization to shape its space as it sees fit. [14: HBNY, 2006, http://www.ssdarchitecture.com/works/residential/hbny-parenthetical-space/] [15: HBNY, 2006, http://www.ssdarchitecture.com/works/residential/hbny-parenthetical-space/]

And so to rethink scale is crucial to helping London’s urban planners and strategists confront the issue of climate change while simultaneously addressing the housing crisis. A system of residential sharing can make sense in a city like London because there is an opportunity for change that is fluid. It guarantees “less material and energy waste” and in turn actually benefits the city in terms of not wasting resources or wealth on materials that can be used elsewhere to help answer the problem of housing—in more suitable areas where flooding will not be a problem.[footnoteRef:16] Thinking of space in terms of how it can be scaled through multi-use repurposing brings all sorts of new solutions to housing problems. It can bring the commercial space into the shared economy and it can integrate the commercial and the residential now that remote working and the Digital Age are here, and in turn this integration can allow for the elimination of new construction in dangerous flood zones where climate change will make itself felt first and foremost in the coming years. It also rids the city of the illusion of density and makes proper use of space so that there are more opportunities for maintaining truly green spaces, which London itself is in dire need of as a result of so much new construction. [16: HBNY, 2006, http://www.ssdarchitecture.com/works/residential/hbny-parenthetical-space/]

In short, innovation is needed now more than ever, and in London the solution to the challenges it faces is to be found in innovative planning and design: “a space is usually designated for one program—we have living spaces, working spaces, entertainment spaces…worship spaces. We would like to suggest a different way of looking at space. Space can be one thing during the day and another thing at night. Or one thing during the week and another thing during weekends. It’s a solution that can take place in many large cities, where people already find themselves sharing spaces.”[footnoteRef:17] Through innovative planning and design, the housing crisis and the climate crisis are met as one crisis and solved as one crisis—because the solution of creative design addresses both; it takes both seriously, and rethinks the concept of scale. [17: Busta, H. 2105. Splacer brings commercial space into the sharing economy. Architect Magazine. Retrieved from http://www.architectmagazine.com/technology/architects-launch-airbnb-for-event-spaces_o]

By eliminating green spaces and building near the water’s edge, London planners are not thinking ahead but are putting financial interests first, and these are short term at best. Bovill states most clearly that the ecological footprint of design has to be considered now more than ever, and it can be considered most effectively by “creating a complex nonlinear response to sustainability issues” and by applying a “broad understanding of multiple solution paths.”[footnoteRef:18] The simplest way to approach these challenges is to remember the basic and fundamental processes of life: “Plants breathe in carbon dioxide and exhale oxygen. Animals breathe in oxygen and exhale carbon dioxide.”[footnoteRef:19] Bioclimatic design can be incorporated in London housing so as to provide a framework for the development of the “orientation and the shape of buildings” and to ensure that everything is properly insulated.[footnoteRef:20] Builders, developers, strategists, and urban planners should remember that ventilation, how energy is consumed, how the city approaches the problem of storage, and how scale by way of sharing space are viewed are all essential aspects of urban planning and residential and commercial design that the city can use to follow the philosophy or view of nature serving as the guide. With climate change now set to make building near water a real risk, communities have to utilize the share space idea in urban planning and stop leaving so many empty structures in place that do nothing to help answer the problems of the housing crisis. Collaborative consumption and sharing spaces are the ways forward for London. [18: Bovill, C. 2014. Sustainability in Architecture and Urban Design. NY: Routledge, 1.] [19: Bovill, C. 2014. Sustainability in Architecture and Urban Design. NY: Routledge, 2] [20: Bovill, C. 2014. Sustainability in Architecture and Urban Design. NY: Routledge, 2.]