Climate change must reinvent our cities

The Hothouse event brought design, construction and sustainability experts together with representatives from England's core cities, to rethink the way our cities are designed and managed.

Design, construction and sustainability experts have been meeting representatives from England's core cities to rethink the way cities are designed and managed.

The event, known as 'the Hothouse', has been taking place in Bristol, organised by CABE, the government's design watchdog, in partnership with the cities and private companies.

CABE believes that the global environmental crisis is largely a planning and design crisis. It is calling for radical new thinking if cities are to reach the government's carbon reduction target of a minimum 60 per cent cut by 2050. Experts from around the world will come to challenge and encourage leadership teams put forward by 11 organisations from both public and private sectors at this two-day masterclass.

Gary Lawrence, who led the world's first sustainable city plan in Seattle, Sir Crispin Tickell, an international climate change authority, and Jonathon Porritt, one of Britain's foremost environmental thinkers, worked alongside luminaries such as Ken Shuttleworth, the architect behind the Gherkin, Nick Johnson of developers Urban Splash, and Jason Prior, who has led the design of London's Olympic masterplan. Working together with teams from eight English cities, they debated and refined design-led, city-wide solutions to climate change.

The Hothouse was opened by Dame Ellen MacArthur, the fastest solo non-stop round the world sailor, whose experience has led her to become a sustainability champion. The city regions involved are adjacent to major rivers, flood plains and the sea: areas especially vulnerable to climate change.

Eight English cities - known as the Core Cities Group - have been working with three private sector businesses at the Hothouse to debate and peer review their climate action strategies. These are the cities of Birmingham, Bristol, Leeds, Newcastle, Nottingham, Manchester, Liverpool and Sheffield; and Hammerson, Crest Nicholson and E.ON.

The Hothouse has kick-started a new 'sustainable cities' initiative by CABE, which includes the development of a manual for sustainable cities. This online climate action resource will help towns and cities prioritise effective spatial policies and activity. Amid the morass of information available on climate change, it will give practitioners a reliable way to know what to use and what to ignore, and offer solutions backed up with evidence which proves the case to others. The manual will be developed privately by CABE and these 11 organisations over the next nine months, before a global launch in the summer of 2008.

John Sorrell, chair of CABE, believes we need a radically different built environment:"There is still a piecemeal approach to sustainability in many places, and things are rarely being done on a big enough scale to make a critical difference. We need to show more leadership and we have to get the message across that tackling climate change will actually improve our quality of life."