The harbour community in Edinburgh, Leith, is cultivating a new breed of people.They get together and grow stuff and get excited about it. People are reconnecting to nature.  They call themselves “Crofters” and are finding secret spots in the densely populated city to grow their own food!  By Domi, Tellus Think Tank 2016-01-28

Beautiful Edinburgh

Most visitors love the Scottish capital Edinburgh and so do the inhabitants of Edinburgh! It is easy to see why!

The city, with its sandstone buildings, is just south of the mouth of the river Forth. It is built on, and between, breathtakingly beautiful rock formations like the rocks of Edinburgh Castle and Arthur’s Seat.

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The bustling city life in combination with the closeness to the sea and the magnificent nature of Scotland has, according to Wikipedia, an official population of almost 500 000 persons. All in all the South East Scotland City region holds a population of 1.3 million.

This is my third visit to Edinburgh, or “Din Eidyn” which was the city’s Brittonic Celtic name prior

to English and Germanic language influences! This time, weather-wise, is the worst ever! The rain is drizzling and sometimes pouring and it is hard to keep my city slicker shoes dry!

We reach Edinburgh, after an unexpectedly long two-hour bus trip, as traffic was disturbed due to the findings of a Second World War bomb on the development site of the new Queensferry Bridge!

Leith Community

I shouldn’t have worried, as our fantastic host and guide, Edna, gets us to the city and the harbour community of Leith in time for the interview! The densely populated Leith is located just North of Edinburgh city center.

Due to a severe economic decline in the shipping industry, around the Second World War, the area glided into poverty and deprivation and gained a reputation for roughness, drugs and prostitution.

However, in recent years the community of Leith has regenerated and the shore of the harbour is now a charming pub and restaurant area that attracts visits from both tourists and inhabitants of Edinburgh.

Leith Queens and Crops and Pots

Looking as far back as the 1500’s Leith was the home Mary of Guise, Regent of Scotland, and her daughter Mary, Queen of Scots.

Today we have the pleasure of meeting the Queen of the secret gardens of Leith, Evie Murray!

Evie is the founder of the urban gardening organisation, Leith

Community Crops in Pots. Crops in Pots encourages and supports the inhabitants of Leith to use urban spaces to grow their own vegetables for food and flowers for the well being of the bees! The organisation’s aim is to improve health and well being of individual lives and Community life in Leith.

Crops in Pots, the beginning!

Life piled up on Evie, being a single mother of four and also a foster mother of two traumatised children. She felt she was raising them in ways she didn’t like.

The available playing areas consisted of grey, dull, concrete backyards of the dense city. The available food was the normal plastic packaged mass-agriculture industry food, often shipped from far away. This, in combination with media reports on crisis in banking, pesticide poisoned food and the death of bees made Evie

wonder about the meaning of it all.

-Right, let’s do something healthy, Evie said and her counter-reaction was to start an urban farming site in her own backyard.

Evie’s teenage children offered to care of their younger siblings as she laid the foundation of their garden. She soon became totally smitten with the quality of the soil, setting the right crops, attracting bees and feeding her family with nutritious, home grown food from her hidden backyard.

Evie’s children loved being a part of the farming activities and the family started turning up at

school in boots and with the children riding in their wheelbarrow, with big smiles on their faces. This attracted attention from teachers and other parents, wondering how they could join in!

So, Evie started Crops in Pots as a charity and began growing food in the backyard of the Leith

Stanwell Nursery with the aim to connect the city children to the new beautiful and green habitats. A surprising amount of the children did not know where their food came from. Initially, a common answer to the question would be “from the supermarket” and the children considered the persons helping them to grow vegetables in their schoolyard to be magicians!

-The children were so disconnected from nature and farming, says Evie. Soon some of the parents

joined in to do the gardening at the nursery and the word spread.

Crops in Pots today

Today, Crops in Pots have several garden sites in backyards around the community of Leith. Passersby on the street would never guess that behind this sandstone wall or house lays a fantastic green garden filled with kale, carrots and flowers that feed the city families and even the bees!

Evie’s hobby has transformed into a full time job and

the organisation has received funding from Edinburgh City Council and is now employing four persons to keep the gardens and hold educational sessions on climate change and farming for children in the schools and nurseries of Leith.

The organisation was also recently appointed access to a two acre / 8000m² plot of land located centrally in the Leith Links Park. The large farming plot goes by the name “the Croft”!

Evie shows me the bundle of keys to all the gardening sites!

How big is the community engagement around Crops in Pots?

-Suddenly we had hundreds of people engaged in growing food in sporadic locations all over Leith, says Evie.

The Leith urban farmers all gathered for the same reasons; being a part of the community, providing healthy food for themselves and their children, growing flowers for bees, wanting their children to connect more to nature, having a healthy outdoor lifestyle and free play as opposed to the more supervised play that children tend to receive in the school and in cities in general.  

-After a gardening afternoon in the Croft parents have had time to meet and work side by side in the outdoors with their neighbours and kids leave, covered in mud, after a complete adventure and are having a life where they are not being heavily monitored by adults a 100% of the time, says Evie smiling.

The garden effect on the community of Leith

Evie talks about “a new breed” of people in Leith, they call themselves ”Crofters”. They get together and grow stuff and get excited about it. People are reconnecting to nature. The people of the United Kingdom waste 50% of their food, but in Leith

there has been a large change and they are now reducing the amount of food waste and also composting scraps.

Later Eric Swanepoel, Administration and Policy Officer at Crops in pots, takes me on a tour of the

secret gardens of Leith. On the way I learn that not only are people reconnecting to nature but also there has been a remarkable difference after having set up the community garden of the Croft.

Often people didn’t know their neighbours and they might have passed them on the street for years, still hardly knowing of each other’s existence. Gardening at the

Croft has connected people to become friends that might have a barbeque and are thinking of other fun things to do together!

Also, the children of Leith are connecting to nature, learning where their food comes from and living lives with free play outdoors!

What will Crops in Pots be in the future?

Crops in Pots are aiming to continue as a social enterprise and are hoping to start a cafe, a seed

hotel and a plant nursery to mention some ideas. They want to continue working, in a holistic way, for the benefit of Leith Community.

Crops in Pots often use the phrase: “Peas, Love and Bumble Bees” and on the question why, Evie smiles and answers:

-It’s not sustainable if it’s not fun! 

 

Next week: Tellus Think Tank meets a Swedish company, with a very strong connection to one of the North American tribes of native Indians,  aiming to feed city dwellers of the world with locally grown food, read more here!

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Urban Foresight is a “make-the-future happen” consultancy firm focusing on the transformation of cities towards sustainable transport systems and electrical vehicles. The company published “50 big ideas shaping the future on electric mobility”. Tellus Think Tank meets managing director David Beeton to learn more about the ideas that will form the transport systems of the future. By Domi, Tellus ThinkTank

Urban Foresight is one of the first company tenants in Science Central, the largest

regeneration project in the United Kingdom aiming to move the Newcastle region:

• Towards smart specialisation in business where the region can be comparatively strong.
• To mitigate effects of increased urbanisation, people continuing the move into cities.
• To mitigate effects of global warming, such as floods, storms.
  

Read further about Newcastle and Science Central in the earlier TellusThinkTank articles:
No007 – Introducing Newcastle upon Tyne – city of sustainability
No008 – The University of Newcastle upon Tyne – innovations hub for sustainability in the urban future
No009 – Science Central – Newcastle upon Tyne laying a golden stepping-stone to the future

What kind of a company is Urban Foresight?

David Beeton was alone when founding Urban Foresight in 2011 and today the team includes over

10 employees. It is not by chance that Urban Foresight is one of the first tenants in Science Central, as it seems to be a “make-the-future happen” consultancy firm.

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Urban Foresights main focus is on the sustainable transformation of cities, communities, businesses and industry and the company has partnered with a range of different bodies, from Governments, Businesses and NGOs (Non-Governmental Organisations). What I find exciting with Urban Foresight is that they might not be the organisation that gets the public or media credit for implemented changes but they could be very much at the heart of the change.

When asking about Urban Foresight’s mission statement, David explains:

-The urban part is recognising that we are all about communities and cities, the foresight part is that communities and cities can be made smarter and more sustainable through strategy, making the right investments and changing business models.

-The people working at Urban Foresight like ideas and looking into the future to try to understand what the transformational business models might be – and we develop strategies. It is first when we introduce the ideas to cities that we make the ideas happen, he says.

David continues to explain Urban Foresight by saying they are not traditional consultants but rather a “consultancy-think-tank”. Many of the projects that Urban Foresight is working with only happened because Urban Foresight have partnered with businesses, NGO’s and governmental agencies, and work a bit “beyond profit”, not expecting immediate income from a project.

Most of the projects aren’t the type that a city would procure because they wouldn’t know where to start. Urban Foresight works with them by supplying “big ideas” and then helping the cities further by building alliances, forming contacts and obtaining funding to turn these ideas into actions.

Cities are continuing to grow – what can be done to mitigate problems with growing cities?

Cities continue to grow as more people are living in urban areas. Today approximately half of the world population lives in cities and according to the WHO (World Health Organisation) 60% will be city dwellers by 2030, rising to 70% by 2050.

The rapid increase in the number of urban inhabitants will be among one of the most

important global health issues of the 21st century. The WHO foresees various problems as a result and declares that air pollutants in particular already are already a of major public health concern. Transport is a significant contributor to air pollution, accounting for nearly one-quarter of global energy-related CO2 emissions.

David tells me that even diesel fuel has been found to be highly dangerous and is now classed as carcinogenic, causing cancer, and placed in the same category as asbestos and mustard gas.

DIESEL IS PLACED IN THE SAME CATEGORY AS ASBESTOS AND MUSTARD GAS

-We cannot afford to not explore electric vehicles, or EV’s as David Beeton calls them.

The future of road transport is not fossil fuel based and there is a consensus in society that we should be transforming to EV’s. However, this transformation will not take place overnight and a lot of infrastructure is still needed for EV’s to work for the general public, he says.

According to David one could drive from Newcastle to London (280 miles / 450 kms) in an electrical vehicle today, and find EV-chargers all the way. The United Kingdom has one of the most extensive rapid charger networks in Europe at the moment only Norway is doing better.  

A rapid charger can load 80% of an EV-battery in 20 minutes and can be found at petrol stations along motorways and by shopping malls. People will usually charge their EV at home and 99% of the journeys, to and from work etc, do not need more charging than that!

David says that there is still a need to solve charging possibilities for residents of multi-unit buildings and also to encourage companies to provide chargers in the workplaces for their employees.

-The Science Central employee car park has a couple of chargers, he smiles!

When heading towards this interview I passed through the University of Newcastle area only to find several visible rapid EV-chargers in different locations. I even spotted a Phoenix taxi “charge-parked” by one of them. Phoenix Taxi’s run EV and hybrid vehicles and have the largest low carbon emission fleet in the UK.

Also, all transports to and from the University of Newcastle are channelled to an outskirt warehouse, reloaded to electrical transportation vehicles and then moved to the right location within the University. The University of Newcastle is “walking the talk”!

Check out the TellusThinkTank-article on the University of Newcastle 

-The car industry is doing a lot of research in the electrical vehicle area, including hydrogen cars – which is really just a type of electrical vehicle, it stores the energy in hydrogen instead of in a battery, says David.

…WHEN LOOKING AT SMART SYSTEMS FOR FUTURE TRANSPORTS AGENCIES CAN NOT WORK IN ISOLATION BUT NEED TO COOPERATE WITH OTHER PARTIES.

He explains that, one problem, when planning transportation of the future is that different city service agencies work in their own bubbles, “in silos”. When looking at smart systems for future transport agencies can not work in isolation but need to cooperate with other parties.

-The need for cooperation is very apparent when working to increase the use of electrical vehicles and smart transportation systems, says David.

He explains that electrical vehicles, or EV’s as he calls them, start many different conversations naming future transport, future energy, future of public service, behavioural change for travel around the city and the use of energy while doing so.

What kind of projects is Urban Foresight participating in to solve problems with high carbon emissions in cities?

Since a couple of years, Urban Foresight has an office in Belgium in favour of running the European Innovation Partnership on Smart Cities and Communities – organising the collaboration of the 50 organisational members from over 15 countries – that are actively promoting EV’s as an enabler of smart cities.  

“The Mill”, Mobility Integration Living Lab, is another interesting project that Urban

Foresight is involved in, based in the Scottish city of Dundee. Dundee is one of UK’s forerunners in the computer gaming industry residing 10% of UK’s digital studios.

“The Mill”-concept is looking at how to use gamification to encourage people to a more sustainable behaviour. By turning the city into a computer game, expectations are that people would be “incentivized” to act in a more sustainable way.  

Instead of banning cars in the city at times of high pollution the city game could incentivize people to take a better route by encouraging them to explore another part of the city. One way could be by rewarding change to the suggested route with local street acting – a concept invented by the National Theatre of Scotland and Abertay University in Dundee.

THE TEV-PROJECT….LOOKING INTO ELECTRICAL HIGHWAYS OF FUTURE TRANSPORT.

Urban Foresight is also in partnership with the TEV-project – looking into the area of electrical highways of future transportation. It is one of the most interesting ideas I have found so far, when it comes to mid distance future transport. When the driver enters her vehicle into the TEV-system the vehicle goes into central control, which enables convoying of vehicles and allows travel at much higher speeds and safety compared to our current car set-up. The system also has a greater passenger carrying capacity than the current cars-and-roads system.  Vehicles would be powered with electricity during the TEV-journey so there would be no limit to how far they can drive without recharging and vehicles will not burn any form of fossil fuel or produce any local emissions.

The TEV-project and partners foresee, pointing at OECD-findings, that passenger transport volume in developed economies will increase with 50% by 2050.

What is Urban Foresight foreseeing?

In daily life Urban Foresight collects inspiration from partners across the globe and pioneering cities that are early in adopting electric vehicles and the needed charging infrastructure, and promote these experiences by producing interesting reads on

electrical vehicles and electric mobility.

The latest publication, “50 big ideas shaping the future on electric mobility”, holds just what the title promises. Let me comment on the fact that it shows cities all over our globe plugged into the same sustainable song, to mention some ideas:

– Ultra low emission zones (nr 1) – 200 cities in 10 European countries have established Low Emission zones or are preparing to do so – London (UK) is mentioned as a forerunner, already having several schemes in place and more in the planning.

– Transport poverty (nr 4) – Lower fuel and maintenance costs of EV’s provide an opportunity to offer more affordable transport – in 2017 the city of Manila, capital of the Philippines, will be offering 100 000 electric three wheelers (e-trikes) to low paid taxi drivers with a very affordable financing model – reducing millions of tons of CO2 emissions annually.

– EV Vending Machines (nr 31) – Electrical vehicles don’t solve congestion and parking but new car sharing models are being developed. In Chinese Hangzhou users are offered to hire fully charged electrical vehicle’s, from vending machines. The car range is 75 miles / 120 km’s and it can be dropped off at another station close to the user destination.  

The other 47 ideas, that Urban Foresight are writing about, are also already bringing the world forward to lower emissions from transport. With so many interesting and impressive initiatives already on the roll, one could say that the world already is our living lab of the future!

This all brings me to wonder what my own city of Stockholm is doing on the electrical vehicle front. I am guessing you are asking the same question about your community?

I thank David Beeton and for taking his time with TellusThinkTank readers this beautiful sunny October morning and head out for a brisk walk through the lovely city of Newcastle upon Tyne!
Next week: We get the opportunity to visit the secret gardens in the densely populated community of Leight, Edinburgh! Join our newsletter and we will let you know when the article is available!

 

Newcastle upon Tyne is regenerating a large, central part of the city and making it a golden steppingstone towards a sustainable future, interlacing business, university research and inhabitants in a creative hub , a unique living laboratory. By Domi, TellusThinkTank 2016 Featuring photo: AnnVixen

QUICK FACTS: SCIENCE CENTRAL

• Science Central is the name of a plot of land in one of the most central parts of Newcastle upon Tyne, England, United Kingdom
• The size of the city center plot is 24-acre /100 000 square meters and it is currently the biggest regeneration project in the UK.
• The Science Central development is the result of a unique collaboration between Newcastle City Council and Newcastle University
• Science Central is aiming to be a creative hub for businesses, university research centers, students and inhabitants of Newcastle city to meet and jointly develop sustainable solutions for urban life of the future.

Having visited the North East of England in the United Kingdom many times before, this journey brings not only fun but also fun and interesting business! To get to my early morning meeting at the largest sustainable urban regeneration project in the UK I enter the city center and pass the empty, 50 000 spectator, Magpie football stadium, St James Park, imagining the bustling life around a game between Newcastle and neighbour city Sunderland!

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Just a block away I reach the 24-acre /100 000 square meter development site of Science Central.

Today, in October 2015, the majority of the site is at first site just a stony hill, wedged between older sandstone

blocks of workers quarters and a modern glass-high-rise area of office buildings.

The first building, The Core, is already on site. This morning it is brightly lit up by the rays of the sun and pulls me in. The phrase ”a golden stepping stone to the future” pops up to mind.

I meet Ann Bridges, Senior Specialist Communication and Policy, and Kit England, Policy and Communication Business Partner, of Newcastle City Council and we sit down in the lobby looking out over the stony field and the old sandstone houses of neighbouring Elswick.

The Tyne and Wear City Region holds 1.1 million inhabitants, and the capital of Newcastle itself contains about 280 000 persons. The city history dates way beyond 2000 years and its economy was built on, among other things, natural coal resources, engineering, the shipping industry and innovations in all.

Also read: Introducing Newcastle – city of Sustainability

The history of the site and an opportunity for Newcastle

Ann Bridges tells the Science Central site history – once starting off as the Elswick Colliery (coal mine) and later becoming the home of one of UK’s most famous breweries, the Scottish and Newcastle Brewery, who produced Newcastle Brown Ale!

I look, once again, at the stony field – now with a very impressed gaze and remind myself that first impressions never last: The history of these grounds! I can just imagine the olden days’ smell of the Newcastle coal fires mixed with a sweet, yeasty one from the brewery.

The colliery built long mining shafts underground, sometimes all the way down to the river. When the Newcastle City Council took over the site in 2005 old mine workings had to be cleaned out and over 40 000 tonnes of coal was removed and recycled. The mining shafts were filled to stabilise the site and make it suitable for development.

In the days of the colliery and brewery, the gigantic site was fenced in and closed off to the public. It divided parts of the city from each other, cutting off the densely populated and once very deprived Elswick from the city center.

The brewery moved out in 2005 and this huge piece of center-city land presented an opportunity – just a stone’s throw from the train station and the large Eldon Square shopping centre – Newcastle City Council must have wondered what to do with it? Maybe supply more housing, or let the city office area swell?

What path did Newcastle City Council choose? What will Science Central be?

The Science Central site brochure says that the site will be ‘an innovation hub where investors, businesses,

scientists and citizens collaborate to form solutions for tomorrow’s cities.‘

The site will constitute an innovative hub and builds on previous collaborations to create a “living laboratory”, meaning that in-real-life, real-time research can be performed here and that research findings can be demonstrated to the public.

The brochure is everything a great marketer can produce and uses words like “fantastic” or “nurturing ideal climates for business success” and even “places for children to play and explore” etc.

It hits me right in the chest – be it that I am a sucker for inspiring visions of our future!

Two driving organisations behind Science Central

Science Central is a development taken forward by collaboration between Newcastle City Council and Newcastle University. The two organisations have a very positive and mature relationship in taking forward developments in the region and this isn’t a new occurrence in their relationship. Newcastle University often works closely with the Council to support in the regional development and urban planning of greater Newcastle. What’s different this time is that both organisations are directly delivering the site.

–The University of Newcastle is world-renowned for its research excellence and wants to continue on this path by attracting more companies and research partners to expand their reputation and attract even more students, says Kit England.

Also read: University of Newcastle- UK innovations hub for sustainability for an urban future

-The partnership between the Council and the University works really well as they have complementary objectives and want the same thing, Ann continues. The interests of the City Council are in achieving sustainable economic growth, creating new and better jobs and retaining students in the Newcastle area.

Newcastle moving towards smart specialisation

“New and better jobs” are what runs a big part of larger Newcastle’s economy today, in areas such as digital,

gaming, energy, engineering, bio medicals etc. I feel a bit old school but follow my urge to ask:

-What will the working class do, what will workers from the brewery and collieries be working with in the future?

Ann is understanding and keen to address my concerns, and says that Newcastle has continued to diversify as the local industry always has had, and continuously has been nurturing, a strong culture of innovation. The region needs a balance between many different sectors Ann firmly conveys.

Newcastle’s economy is already moving into “smart specialisation”, looking to develop the economy based on an analysis of the regional strengths and weaknesses, emerging opportunities and market developments. This work has shown the region’s existing and potential competitive advantages and business areas in which the region can excel, compared to other regions.

The Council is working to build supply chains and get businesses within identified areas of competitive advantage to co-locate to larger Newcastle. Ann Bridges mentions offshore and subsea technologies, life sciences and biomedicine, digital and creative industries. The businesses within the regions smart specialisation will, in their turn, build a further demand for:

• Professional business services, such as legal and accounting.
• Professional services, such as leisure activities, hotels, restaurants and shops.
• Construction jobs.

The North East region of England already also holds a large manufacturing industry. Ann mentions the large Nissan assembly plant in Sunderland, which builds Nissan’s flagship electric vehicle, the Leaf.

-There will be a place for everyone, she summaries.

I understand that the Newcastle City Council is on a mission to take constructive and smart steps towards the future by adapting to the changing prerequisites of business and society.

How can we expect Science Central to enhance the region?

The Core, being the first building on site, opened at the end of 2014 and is already 100% occupied. It already houses science- and technology innovators and smart city consultancy services focusing on a sustainable future

-Read Tellus Think Tank’s next article about one of exciting organisations at Science Central. Sign-up for our newsletter to receive a notification! .

The next, but temporary building on the site, is a University building. It will be ready to move-in December 2015 and replaced in 2018 by the University’s Urban Science Building (USB).

The Urban Science Building will house both the Institute of Sustainability and the School of Computing Science with its unique cyber-physical laboratory – jointly the two organisations will aim to becoming leading in Urban Innovation.

Plans further include a public performance space, an urban observatory and decision theatre where real time data

from the city can be visualised, analysed and explored to improve understanding of the interaction between Newcastle city’s energy, water, transport, waste and digital control systems.

These tools will bring policy makers, companies and researchers together to explore possible scenarios of city development. Kit England gives some possible examples of urban planning that the Decision Theatre could look into effects of implementing:

• Setting roof-top gardens on all buildings in the city.
• Pedestrianising parts of the city or the whole city centre.

Ideas like these are explored with the help of data-models and show possible outcomes from an implementation on a community’s economy, sustainability and social life of the residents.

Also to be found in the USB will be an urban farm, a rooftop wild-flower meadow and an array of research disciplines all with the common focus of digitally enabled urban sustainability. The setup of the Urban Science Building aims to create prerequisites needed for a living laboratory – one can see it will take a very strong and inspiring leadership to get the lab started and running according to plan. 1,500 people will be working and studying here. The idea, it seems, is for all to work together to create sustainable solutions for the future, using every possible asset available from the city infrastructure and environment to even the building itself!

Financing

Just the Urban Sustainability Building is budgeted to £58 million and will be financed by the University.

Ann and Kit also tell me how the site was the first in the UK to use “Tax Increment Financing”, an approach that has been used in America and which has helped finance the first parts of the Science Central site. The approach lets the Science Central LLP, borrow money from the Central Government Treasury at a lower interest rate and hold future growth in business rate income as a guarantee.

This is based on the idea that Science Central will bring growth to business in the region and hence more taxes / business rates. Ann and Kit are both convinced that if this arrangement had not been made the site would not be planned in the dynamic and sustainability center form that is being built today. At one point it was put into jeopardy following the closure of One North East, the former governmental Regional Development Agencies that was taking forward the site as a tripartite partner of the Science Central LLP. When national government abolished the Regional Development Agency and its funding in 2010, it was only strength of the partnership between the Newcastle City Council and Newcastle University that allowed the development to proceed, through buying out the government’s stake.

The rest of the development on the Science Central is still in the planning phase and dependent on successful funding from different organisations, especially EU is mentioned. Looking at published plans the site will hold at least another 15 buildings for even more companies and housing developments. Ann also mentions that establishments from IBM or Microsoft or both would be welcome.

Walking the walk of sustainability

Science Central is not just talking but also already walking in a sustainable way – exploring possibilities of renewable energy by first trying a geothermal borehole, transporting natural ground heat into buildings with help of air pumps. Heat is not created, only transported and very “renewable”.

However a borehole was not technically possible on the site and so there are plans to deliver an energy centre to power District Heating, as well as a smart grid demonstration facility to test electricity storage and management.

District heating is a system for distributing heat generated in a centralised location and according to some research, district heating with combined heat and power is the cheapest method of cutting carbon emissions.

The Core building starts off in a good way with a rooftop garden and even a side of the building covered with the largest green wall of the UK. During my visit to Science Central earlier in the week Brett Cherry from the University of Newcastle and I gazed up the green wall and happily explored different kinds of plants that could be found there including baby strawberries and even the bumble-bee hotels! Also to be spotted was the self planted winding twig of a hazel tree – it is lovely to see natural life in action!

Aiming for the vision of Science Central

At the rate of carbon emissions growth of the world, the Science Central inhabitants will have their work cut out for them when planning low carbon urban developments and also when mitigating problems from a planet out of balance, caused by disasters such as floods or storms.

Read more: Is Earth doing alright? 

Science Central might just be one of those shining stepping-stones that are dearly needed to help form the sustainable future of urban cities.

Having built an organisation or two I can tell it will be challenging to build Science Central in a political sense (the university versus council and region versus government and EU etc.). To lead the site development in the right direction, not sliding from the original intent will need very strong women and men in the roles as Generals. If the challenge can be mastered, the rewards will be fantastic!

TellusThinkTank is excited by the idea of a creative hub in the midst of Newcastle, fully focusing on improving the sustainability of urban lives and societies. We especially believe that the collaboration between the University, the Newcastle City Council and Businesses in finding sustainable solutions for the future will show very interesting solutions indeed!

Next week: Tellus Think Tank meets Urban Foresight regarding transports of the future! Sign up for our weekly newsletter to get a notification on when the next Tellus Think Tank is available!

 

 

 

Childhood memories of Newcastle on Tyne, from two generations

Introducing Newcastle upon Tyne’s transformation from a traditional industrial region towards becoming a modern, successful and sustainable urban area. This is the first of four publications on the development, organisations and business in Newcastle upon Tyne, all with focus on a sustainable urban future. Text: Domi, TellusThinkTank 2015. Featuring photo: David Thomson.

As a child I would visit Newcastle where I have a dear family on my mother’s side. It was always like entering another, and very different world, compared to the rather quiet suburb of Stockholm that I grew up in.

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The first thing that would hit me was the smell of the coal fires; all houses were heated by coal in those days. The feeling it brought was an entangled one of love and fascination, of the soon familiar, coal dirt.  

Also read: The University of Newcastle upon Tyne – innovations hub for sustainability in the urban future

Newcastle and Wallsend upon Tyne and the surroundings were to me always myth stricken as my mother’s reality based bedtime stories covered the daily life in her childhood, Charlotte street, gathering shrapnel after the night’s bombing during the Second World War, the mothers running the household and keeping family culture alive.

The fathers were working in the shipyards and mines during the day and on duty as Air Raid Wardens at night. The dancing and happiness of the British people when the Second World War ended!

As I grew older I found that not only was my Mother’s childhood stories entertaining but that the north of England has a very diverse and

interesting history.

Introducing Newcastle upon Tyne’s urban area transformation

The history of the area runs all the way from a native population to the Romans (who built Hadrian’s wall), the French and the Vikings (the later mainly represented by the Danes) to mention a few.  

When I walk the streets of Northern England and Scotland I sometimes play a secret game of ”what-people-the-person-passing-me-on-the-street-might-be-descendant-of”. I could, probably in vain, point out a Roman descendant on Newcastle’s Northumberland Street any day of the year!

The people of Newcastle found, maybe as early as the 11th century, that they were living upon a huge amount of the natural resource of coal. “Kitchen-mines” might have been some of the earliest kind of mines where residents dug pits in their own kitchen floors to supply their homes with coal heat and cooking fires!

Later mining was expanded to the countryside and riverbanks and coal soon became Newcastle’s main export commodity. The need to move the coal combined with the closeness to the sea lead to the development of the Newcastle shipbuilding, which took off in an engineering sense and played an important role in Newcastle’s part of the Industrial Revolution at the beginning of the 1800s.

Shipbuilding, the engineering of freight ships, shipyards and repair dry docks were very important stepping-stones to the prosperity of Newcastle and the Tyne area.

Some claim that the Industrial Revolution began in English Manchester, and it might then have been the biggest city that helped spark the revolution with its 300 000 residents in the year of 1801. However, Newcastle was probably igniting simultaneously with its 30 000 residents in the year of 1801. Both cities had their large, natural coal depots in common.  

During 1970 – 1990, when I was still a child, and in awe by Newcastle’s bustling, friendly and canny ways, the industry started slowing down. The densely populated Newcastle and northeast bank of the river Tyne, Northern Teesside, were challenged with unemployment as the coal- and shipbuilding industries phased out.

The Newcastle’s Councils initially offered inhabitants employment in government and council schemes. However, this not being a sustainable business model they soon in parallel started cooperating with researchers at the University of Newcastle when developing the urban area and business.

During the years the bond between the greater Newcastle’s councils, jointly representing 1.7 million inhabitants, and the University of Newcastle has helped develop the area from an industrial region and commence the journey towards,  a hopefully, successful future urban region.

The cooperation between university, researchers, council and entrepreneurs seems at a first glance to be unique and will definitely give the North East of England a good chance of entering the future in a prosperous way. Read more about this is in Tellus Think Tank’s next three articles where we met with the University, the City and a company, all focusing strongly on sustainable futures in different ways.

Read Tellus Think Tanks first article about Newcastle upon Tyne: The University of Newcastle – UK innovations hub for sustainability in the urban future!

 

The University research at the University of Newcastle is strongly focused on sustainable future. Domi, Tellus Think Tank 2015

Not only does the United Kingdom and England, where I am this particular morning, live up to its reputation of being a rainy island but also I start my day with two pieces of lovely English toast and then get to take a double-decker-bus into the Hay Market City Centre of Newcastle together with my English cousin and neighbourhood friends. It all gives me the feeling that I am lucky to be able to try out the British way of life “for real” and not as a tourist this specific morning!

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Read Tellus Think Tanks introduction to Newcastle upon Tyne – city of sustainability!

The University of Newcastle upon Tyne

The morning commuter journey brings me to the University of Newcastle, established in 1834 and early recognised for its medical and surgery education. Starting out by providing lectures and surgery demonstrations to about 25 students it has grown and presently, annually, attracts 20 thousand students from over 100 countries.

Teaching, research and undergraduate degree programs are held in academic schools and research institutes spread across three faculties:

-the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences

-the Faculty of Medical Sciences

-the Faculty of Science, Agriculture and Engineering

Tellus Think Tank meets Brett Cherry, the Science Communications Manager at the University’s Institute for Sustainability. He greets me in the uniquely formed, modern looking steel frame of the Devonshire building in the University area and we soon sit down over a cup of English tea!

I learn that the Institute for Sustainability, within short, is moving to a greener pasture by the name “the Key”, now under development on the Science Central site (would you like to be notified when the next article in the Tellus Think Tank series on Newcastle upon Tyne is published, sign up for the weekly newsletter here. 

What does the Institute for Sustainability do, and what is its message to the world?

-There is a common understanding within the University of Newcastle and the Institute for Sustainability that the current level of climate force is taking place because of the amount of greenhouse gases that are generated primarily from the burning of fossil fuels, which is throwing the planet of balance, says Brett Cherry.

-We do sustainability because we want to find that balance again, Brett Cherry continues.

The Institute for Sustainability doesn’t hold educational sessions but funds researchers and works on driving the sustainability research forward within the University.

By gathering persons from multiple disciplines for research and projects of different kinds, the University solves problems with the purpose of creating a more sustainable future!

Brett Cherry smiles and likes the Institute for Sustainability to a science Pangaea, referring to where all the land-masses of the world once geographically lay together.

The institute works with “an holistic approach”, a necessity in the world of sustainability. Tellus Think Tank recently visited the sustainability center, CEMUS, at Swedish Uppsala University, also working with what they called an “interdisciplinary” approach (read article).

The Institute for Sustainability at the University of Newcastle is interested in both the science itself but also how the science can be used for practical solutions.

By taking a holistic approach, combining disciplines in research projects, ranging from engineering, social science, physical science, humanities etc, a project solution is not compartmented from a real world working solution.

So, what kind of research is the University of Newcastle up to?

Brett Cherry gives me the “intel” in a fast pace.

• Urban Sustainable Farming, Anaerobic digestion and more
  The University of Newcastle does Agricultural Urban Farming research and have two ecological research farms connect to it and they run research in areas such as:
  • Rural Energy, the making of energy on farming estates, winning methane gas from breaking down biodegradable material such as food scraps or animal and other organic wastes.’

• Comparisons between low-input, organic farming with traditional farming and investigating if pesticides are always needed when growing crops, how to avoid soil depletion and how to better care for farm animals.The research farms give students on all levels an understanding of how farming works in a go-see manor but also make interesting findings such as that the grass feed cows produce very good milk, high in omegas.Another finding is that when putting green waste back into the land it not only avoids soil depletion but restores soil and generates the soil’s water holding capacity which is important also to cities living down stream when looking at flood mitigation. This is a good example of a holistic view when mixing different disciplines in the world of academia!

• Ocean freight being one of Newcastle’s traditional strengths during its industrial era is still one important area of research at the University.
  

  

  Researchers work with reduction of transport time, leaner and cleaner power sources, the cleaning the hull of ships with help of energy-saving underwater cleaning robots and designing ships to use less fuel.
  
  Maybe it is in this area that “sustainable” is very clearly also linked to economic productivity. The connection being worded, brings both Brett Cherry and myself to nod in agreement.

• Flood mitigation & Water engineering is a threat towards communities in many urban areas on our globally heated planet (read the article Is Earth doing alright?)
  
  The University is in this area highly interlaced in urban developments of larger Newcastle and work together with the city in avoiding future flooding disasters by planning city developments and infrastructure of the city in a flood mitigating way.  
  
  As an example Newcastle was hit hard by the “Toon flooding” in 2012, causing a lot of physical damage and transportation problems, some people even brought out their canoes for transport down their home streets.  (See films on Youtube)

• Business models for sustainability. There is a need for business models to support sustainable ways of living and the faculty of Business Studies part in sustainability research often comes in forms of possible business models – one example could be how to incentivize people to consume electricity during low-usage hours or use alternative traffic routes to avoid congestion.

• Cyber Physical Systems is also known as the “internet-of-things” and is an area of growing importance according to Brett Cherry. He

  

  tells me that without them a smart sustainable future would be hard to achieve. The academic description isn’t that easy to grasp, but the examples are:

  • Smart buildings with automatic, monitored and optimise heating, humidity, security and energy consumption.
  • Environmental and Transportation monitoring systems
  • Industrial process control systems
  • Smart utilities, that is smart energy grids and water and waste monitoring of trash in a city.
  • Health & fitness systems, such as self-monitoring wearable’s such as Fitbit’s, Runkeeper’s and smart watches.
• Smart Grids & Energy Storage. At this point in time of Earth human life is emitting far more greenhouse gases into the atmosphere than the eco system of Earth can handle and hence we have “Global Warming” with extreme weather, drought, floods and storms. Learn more in the Tellus Think Tank article with sustainability expert Niclas Köhler.
  
  A lot of the carbon dioxide is emitted from heating and electrical systems, a sustainability problem that needs to be tended to promptly.

  

  One way of emitting less is to not produce more power than needed and using renewable energy sources, such as wind turbines, solar cells etc. to the furthest extent.
  
  The University of Newcastle have far developed research on Smart Grids and Electrical Storage and offers its own Smart Grid Lab to both researchers and enterprises for testing of their energy-storing devices.
  
  Energy storage possibilities, says Brett Cherry, will be important in the future so that low-carbon energy can be stored for peak-demand periods in the energy grid.

Tellus Think Tank feels highly inspired by the University of Newcastle’s large amount of research areas with focus on sustainability. This and the fact that the University is also involved with the urban planning of Newcastle makes us feel the need to return to Newcastle upon Tyne soon!

The Institute for Sustainability at the University of Newcastle’s view on sustainability is that “humans can act as stewards of sustainability rather than exploiting agents”, and those will be the last inspiring words that we will quote Brett Cherry on until next time!

Also read: Read about Newcastle upon Tynes development area “Science Central” – creating a living laboratory to enhance sustainability in urban societies.

Contact us: Tellus Think Tank is hoping to return to Newcastle during the year to come so if you may have any hints on interesting sites to visit or if you have any questions that would like to have answered – please let us know.

 

 

Tellus Think Tank meets Mathias Edstedt, chairman of the housing society of Understenshöjden in the Stockholm suburb of Björkhagen. Understenshöjden is one of Sweden’s first eco villages!
Domi, TellusThinkTank

It was a snowy winter day in 2012 when Mathias Edstedt and his family moved into the eco village in Björkhagen. They had decided to move out of Stockholm city center and the densely populated area of Södermalm. The family hoped to find the perfect compromise between the joys of city and nature!

The perfect compromise between city and nature is exactly what hits me when I step into the village. It is obvious that the green patches in the area, consisting of uncultivated woods, are generously laid out between the houses.

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The estheticly iron-vitriol painted houses with large windows, stand in harmony with their surroundings. I feel at peace when walking through the area.

Below the southern slope of the eco village one can also find Kärrtorps sports field and entrances to Nacka Nature Reserve.

Stockholm Central train station is reachable by a combination of a 10-minute walk to the subway and a 15-minute tube ride. It is also possible to reach the central station by bike within 30 minutes.

According to Mathias Edstedt, it is totally silent in the eco village at night. What else could you wish for when living in a city? It is understandable that an area like this is popular.

One of the area neighbours that I run into in the eco village playground reveals that it is currently is very popular to live here. Maybe it is because urbanisation daily feeds Stockholm with 55 new inhabitants.

The latest townhouse sold in the eco village, 158 square meters, changed owners for the price of eleven million Swedish krona (€1,17 million / $ 1,29 million). Mathias Edstedt estimates that about 125 persons live in the village and that there are seldom more than one or two townhouses for sale per year.    

Beautiful and ecological housing

The eco village was opened in 1995. A group of driving spirits formed a society in the beginning of the 90’s and joined forces with the Swedish building company HSB and the Swedish designer and builder of family houses, SMÅA. The trinity applied for, and was rewarded with, a building permit for the land.  

The society wanted to realise their joint vision of a beautiful, social and ecological form of living in the southern suburbs of Stockholm. A high level of resident influence was also a factor that the society strived for. Most of the society members lived in the suburb of Björkhagen and had architecture or sustainability as special interest. Many of Understenshöjdens initial inhabitants still live in the eco village!

The eco village of Understenshöjden was one of the first of its kind and the public interest has been high from the beginning. The eco village often receives delegations from near and far, one of the latest was from Japan!

What did an “eco village” mean in 1995?

Understenshöjden was originally intended to be an eco village that lived in harmony with the surrounding nature.

Every house was built to fit the geography of its placement and the same was done with the car-free transportation paths within the village.

The houses were built on stilts to minimise damage on the land and to give good ventilation pre-requisites under the buildings to avoid damage from damp. The airiness under the buildings doesn’t affect the heating as the floor insulation is thick enough.

Every building was built of the same environmentally friendly materials. The wooden facades have not yet needed repainting. Wood, according to Mathias Edstedt, is not maintenance-free. On the northern side of the townhouses the wood-facades still look new while the wood on the sunny side of the buildings is definitely more worn.

The outside of the window frames are also unevenly worn, also depending on what point of the compass they are facing and have in general more often needed repainting.

The walls on the inside of the houses have first been covered with plaster and then painted according to every townhouse owner’s preference with either linseed oil paint, egg tempera or glue paint.

The bathrooms are built in beautiful, red brick. Mathias Edstedt tells me about the fantastic breathing qualities of brick, avoiding damage caused by damp. The bathroom walls, if constituting outside walls, are insulated in several layers of insulating material – brick – light clinker marbles – brick.  

The eco village heating

The original 1995 heating setup of the eco village consisted of rooftop solar panels on the 44 townhouses combined with heating culverts leading heat to the townhouses from the eco village’s central pellets furnace.

Unfortunately the inhabitants of Understenshöjden had a freezing first winter as the pellets furnace was new, and at that point in time, also an untried technique and turned out to be not strong enough.

To solve the winter heating problem the eco village plugged into the City of Stockholm’s new district heating and also upgraded their pellet furnace. Problem solved!

Since then solar panels and district heating are used in warmer periods of the year and heating from the pellet furnace are added when needed during the winter.

The eco village still has 1995-year’s solar panels in use, however in 2011 a new solar panel system was added onto the

village community building. It became very obvious that solar panel techniques had developed a lot and the new solar panel system was totally maintenance-free, which has decreased work for the eco village inhabitants.

The inhabitants use a lot less energy today compared to 1995.  The incrementally built heating system, with its combined energy sources, is getting old, worn and far from maintenance-free.

The eco village inhabitants considered what kind of system they should change to and had an independent contractor investigate alternatives. The eco village has not yet decided to go ahead with the investigator’s recommendation of boring 22 holes in the hill of the eco village and an investment in a geothermal heating pump.

Mathias Edstedt debates different kind of energy sources, that could be considered the most environmentally friendly and which decision criteria should be taken in consideration:

• Pellet furnaces need more tending to from the eco village inhabitants, as they constantly need to be filled with more pellets.
• The geothermal borehole and pump solution demands a rather large initial investment and the heat energy carriers uses a lot of artificial substances.
• Wind turbines are still a pretty noisy alternative, not yet suitable to be built close to residential areas.
• Does the eco village prefer heat compressors inside the residential buildings or outside, causing noise in the otherwise quiet village?
• Would it be sufficient to only build a solar panel solution?

Mathias Edstedt tells me that the eco village society, according to its tradition of high inhabitant influence, will continue to investigate several alternatives. Discussions will be held and decisions made in the eco village housing society meetings, open for all of the eco villages inhabitants – which is Understenshöjdens decision model and one of the founding ideas of this particular eco village society.

Sewer and drainage in the eco village

Stockholm, and other densely populated areas in Sweden, have high demands on water purification, so as not to risk polluting the land and the village had to be connected to the city sewerage system. Understenshöjdens eco village was initially granted a unique exception from the rule and allowed to build its own sewer system. The system included a cleaning system by Bioclere connected with a streamlet to several small ponds for the purpose of cleaning the water in several steps before the water was led out into the nature surrounding the eco village.

The village still cares for its surface and stormwater in this way but the residential water outlet had too high levels of nutrients for the dam-system to clean, risking pollution of the land around the village. If there had been more room to add a couple of cleaning dams in the system it could have been possible to manage the cleaning of household sewer water with the eco villages own system, but there was not. Consequently the eco village connected their housing sewer to the Stockholm city central sewerage system.

Cooperation of the residents of Understenshöjden

The eco village housing cooperative at Understenshöjden have had a very strong influence on how the area was built, later developed and run. A collective decision-making has always been the reigning decision model and is always performed in large resident meetings. Mathias Edstedt says that the eco village attracts a lot of idea-borne persons and that strong matters of opinion are often shared at the lively meetings.

The eco village housing cooperative is in many ways just like any other Swedish housing cooperative, being one of the most normal types of housing societies in Sweden. It organises annual meetings, communal cleaning days and owns a communal building containing the communal heating system furnace, washhouse and meeting facilities. The meeting facilities are used for the annual meetings but are also let out to members for individual celebrations or activities such as dance classes.

Apart from two small allotments, the eco village doesn’t have any urban farming possibilities.

-I am sure that there is an interest in growing one’s own crops, says Mathias Edstedt, however he believes that a lot of residents handle this urge at their summer houses. Further, he doesn’t believe that urban farming automatically needs to be a function in an eco village. I note that this at least is not the case at Understenshöjden.

The self-management of the eco village

The eco village inhabitants run most of the ground management including maintenance of nature areas, roads, bridges and fences. The eco village also owns a tractor so that members can clean walkways from snow. Mostly the inhabitants also run the electrical and heating systems.

What lesson can be learnt from a 20 year old eco village?

Mathias Edstedt summarises some lesson learnt:

1. Technical heating- and sewerage systems should be built as simple as possible. The combination of, for instance, different heating systems are far from maintenance-free and should be avoided.
2. New housing areas should be built not only for families but also for old and young people. Old people want fewer staircases and young people want cheaper and smaller housing possibilities.
3. Understenshöjden eco village was built to be effective from a resource perspective and many townhouses were built with many rooms. The inhabitants now prefer larger living space and fewer rooms, consequently there has been a lot of rebuilding of the interior structure during the years.  
4. The planning and building of the eco village has been positive and successful from a geographical and in-harmony-with nature perspective, even the heating- and sewer culverts have been placed not to disturb the eye.
5. By building the townhouses on different levels throughout the hilly woodsy eco village the Stockholm’s natural wildlife feels welcome including hares, deer, woodpeckers, nuthatch, tits, jays, bullfinches, salamanders and even sometimes frogs!

What will the eco village look like in 10-15 years?

Mathias Edstedt believes the eco village will look similar to today as the facades of the townhouses won’t change that much. Most of the technical systems will have been replaced with more modern solutions. He also mentions that the eco village has discussed the possibility of adding houses within their boundaries. Time will tell if the adding of further houses will be possible to realise, however the rapidly growing city of Stockholm does need more living quarters!

Also this week: Do It Yourself, save the planet!

Next week: Tellus Think Tank is taking the seasonal mid-winter holidays off to contemplate on improvements.

We are back again in January, with a serie of articles about an European city that is laying the foundation for a sustainable future. String along and meet Newcastle upon Tyne!

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