This article is part of Climate Solutions, a special report on our commitment to making a difference. New York Times Climate Forward meeting and Climate Week NYC.
In the park behind Elephant and Castle, one of the biggest and ugliest road crossings in London, just south of the River Thames in central London, the dings and hammers of construction work and children playing in the park Our laughter is mixed.
this is Fountains, swings, slides, Elephant Park, a three-acre lot at the center of a major redevelopment, will transform the ghoulish architecture of a 1,200-unit public housing complex that will house about 2,924 people into a new neighborhood by 2026. Replaced. Apartments and townhouses.
With about 2,000 homes already occupied, residents walking their dogs and watching their children play in the parks will learn more about the fate of former residents and whether gentrification will drive them away. He seems happy to talk about the usual issues surrounding the project. Noisy young people hanging around the park even after dark.
A dog-walking resident recently complained that rent was becoming unaffordable, but the one-bedroom apartment has a supermarket and gym in the same building, and is right next to the railroad. I immediately added that I was pleased that there is a metro station, shops, bars. , yoga studios, libraries and medical facilities.
However, another discussion is focused on Elephant Park in particular. The role of such large-scale urban regeneration projects in the fight against climate change.
Kate Meyrick, a British-born urban consultant based in Brisbane, Australia, said: A person who studies urban development.
“The developers were mostly just trying to create great places for people to live, and they achieved that with a very interesting mix of spaces and services,” she said. , they also generated real climate benefits.”
In April, the latest report of the United Nations Intergovernmental Report The panel on climate change said one of the most effective ways to reduce a city’s carbon footprint is to carefully plan for underutilized parts of cities to reduce and improve their dependence on cars. He said the aim was to stop the sprawl of cities by promoting infill housing, which creates extra housing. Efficiency of infrastructure and energy use.
Meyrick asserts that the biggest benefit of infill housing is in neighborhood-scale developments like the Elephant Park project built by developer Lendlease, rather than sprawling new homes and units across backyards and vacant lots. increase.
Large-scale infill developments have revitalized cities from New York to Milan over the past two decades, says Meyrick. climate change. “
Hélène Chartier, Paris-based director of urban planning and design for C40, a network of 96 major cities in the world, agreed that infill housing’s greatest climate benefits come at a neighborhood scale. . She said there is an urgent need for public investment and revision of planning rules to support such development.
“This is a hot topic in all major cities as people realize that well-planned infill housing can help reduce emissions from all kinds of sources, from transportation to construction to heating. I will,” she said.
Chartier said the University of California, Berkeley’s CoolClimate Network recently surveyed the emissions of 700 communities in California, found “Infill housing is probably the single most impactful step cities can take to reduce emissions.”
“The question now is how to do it, and there is a growing realization that the broadest benefits will come from operating at the neighborhood level,” Chartier said.
Bek Seeley, LendLease’s managing director of elephant parks, said a small infill project “could make for some great homes,” but it’s all about public transport and building facilities. Only large-scale developments can fully reap the benefits of securing combinations and reducing the movement of people. .
Planners from Melbourne, Australia and Auckland, New Zealand to Paris have focused on the concept of a 5-minute neighborhood or a 15-minute city. Separate out where you sleep, where you work, and where you shop.
Peter Newman, a professor of sustainability at Australia’s Curtin University who has taught at universities in eight countries, including the University of Pennsylvania and the University of Virginia, says many cities are willing to allow property owners to build buildings. says they are trying to stop urban sprawl. “But he doesn’t do well tackling one block of land at a time.”
“Even if you knock down a tree in your backyard and build it, you end up relying heavily on your car,” he said. “In the past, the only way to avoid depleting greenfields around cities was to develop large urban sites like brownfields or ex-factories, but we would eventually run out of them. .”
According to Newman, the answer is “grayfields,” or district-level redevelopment in suburbs with low density of aging homes, innovation to encourage 30 to 40 property owners to work together. It is a process that requires significant planning reform and incentives.
“We need a whole new process of active government intervention to make that happen,” Neumann said. In Australia, we found that state governments might be interested, but local councils control the planning rules and have absolutely no interest in being innovative, so they have stopped everything. increase.
“The hard truth is that we cannot afford to waste any more time when making the necessary changes to reach net zero,” he said, referring to emissions targets. they are needed. ”
It was after local government resistance that the California legislature passed a bill in August to encourage the development of infill housing on commercial land. With the state’s dire housing crisis, local governments turned against the state, and legislators, Gov. Gavin Newsom, and other officials called for homeowners’ so-called NIMBY doctrine – “not my backyard” – to be addressed. We are starting a wide range of initiatives. entire communities and municipalities to block more condensed development.
“No matter how important it is to stop urban sprawl, there will always be those who don’t stop it,” said Dan Silver, Ph. We need a landfill housing bill because there are so many. They don’t want their own neighborhood to change. ”
“This is controversial because the state has taken away some of the powers of local governments, but we need local voices, but too much local control means we are trying to save the planet. It means you can’t deal with macro issues, Silver said.
“We need to reframe our planning to see the big picture,” he added. “California continues to build homes so far from cities that the fire hazard alone is staggering.”
At a time when many are rethinking their lifestyles and the wisdom of long commutes, the Covid pandemic has increased the number of underutilized offices, shopping malls and parking lots available for housing, according to the report. Dr. Silver said.
“Oregon is an exception because there are plans to manage growth and make cities denser and more transit-oriented. I’m late,” he said.
“What we call ‘urban planning’, which is done in response to developers and speculators, is really a whole that can respond to something as important as climate change. “And what is the point of making international agreements and national decisions if the necessary action is blocked at the local level?”
Careful urban planning is so important, according to the C40 network, that problems plaguing many cities around the world, especially smaller communities, are under the resources of urban planning agencies.
a Research on climate planning policy Lack of resources and urban planning expertise is why 170 communities in California, led by the University of California, Santa Cruz, often tackle the relatively easy challenges of reforestation and waste management rather than the thornier problems of cities. was found in February to be one of Density, housing, infrastructure.
Vanessa Castane Brot, professor of climate urbanism at the University of Sheffield, UK, says that increasing urban density can easily fail if it is not developed in partnership with local communities, and many local governments around the world stated that they lacked the ability to properly coordinate that process. .
The planning departments of many UK local councils have been devastated over the past decade, said Richard Bryce, policy director at Britain’s Royal Institute of Urban Planning.
“Planning agencies will be less able to adapt to big challenges like lifestyle changes and climate change. They are losing too many resources and struggling to function at all,” he said. said.