perspective
Yvonne Rydin
Learning to change
We may not know exactly what a sustainable city
will look like; right now we have only a partial
window onto this utopian future. But it is clear that
it will be very different to the way we live now,
radically different. Some of our buildings and public
spaces will be quite strange by present-day
expectations. We will change our travel patterns,
using some familiar but underused modes and
some quite unexpected ones. We will buy new
goods in new locations and using new methods.
Our relationship to urban nature will be transformed.
And we will interface with the water and energy
systems that underpin our urban lifestyles in quite
different ways. Urban life will be a mixture of the
recognisable and the strange.
All this means that we will have to plan, design and build our cities
differently. This is an important challenge for built environment
professionals. It will involve a change in priorities and value sets.
It will involve a creative challenge to imagine new built forms and
public environments. But above all it will involve a learning process.
Central to this is an understanding of how urban living relates to a
variety of natural systems, notably water, energy, biodiversity and
climate systems. We need to understand these systems, their support
for how we live and our impact on their processes.
Then we need to know how contemporary technological systems can
be used and developed in order to change these inter-relationships in
order to reduce our impacts on natural systems. This is not a purely
technological question though. The application and development of
technologies is always dependent on economic, social and political
frameworks. So we need to understand these dependencies,
otherwise new technologies will not deliver the anticipated benefits.
We also need to think about both the social and economic
impacts of following particular technological routes and whether
implementation options can be identified that avoid the downsides
of harm to specific economic sectors and social groups.
If we want to consider how renewable energy systems can be integrated
into the built environment of cities, we need to understand how they
can be made financially viable, both for installation and continued
operation. We need to ensure that the skills are available for installation,
maintenance and operation within specialist labour markets but also
that the users of such systems – the firms and households that occupy
buildings and ultimately use the energy generated – appreciate these
new ways of generating and consuming energy without unexpected
and perverse effects. We need to think about the cost implications for
households and firms and how that might impact on fuel poverty and
the viability of SMEs. We need to think about innovative social and
economic delivery mechanisms for renewable energy such as
community-based biomass Combined Heat and Power plants or wind
turbine schemes, with ownership and management based in the
community group. Or, again, how new forms of institutional
arrangements between energy suppliers, building owners and building
occupiers – such as green leases and local Energy Service Companies
(ESCOs) – could ensure that technological applications go alongside
behavioural change to deliver desired outcomes.
Taken from the Summer 2009 edition of ‘palette’, UCL’s journal of sustainable cities
www.ucl.ac.uk/sustainable-cities
So the learning that is involved in delivering sustainable cities is much
more than knowledge of the right equipment to buy and the right bit
of kit to invest in. Just as sustainability is a holistic concept, so the
learning challenge is also holistic and will place demands on all
disciplines. More importantly it will require the different disciplines
to engage with each other so that the economic incentives work with
social and cultural change, so that all such change supports the
desired technological developments, and so that new technologies
impact on natural systems as expected.
This begs the question of how such learning can best be fostered,
an important question for any university. There are several different
dimensions to learning for sustainable development.
First, it is clear that individuals need new types of knowledge and
understanding. Sustainability needs to be incorporated into all the
courses that educate professionals who contribute to how cities work
and change. Work is already underway to achieve this, with the
backing of disciplinary and professional bodies and the Higher
Education Funding Councils. It is not without difficulties though.
There are the problems of overloading the curriculum, pushing
against established ways of doing things and creating turf-wars
within academe.
Second, it could be argued that we need a new type of professional,
a sustainability professional who has a multidisciplinary education
and is able to see a problem from many different perspectives – social,
economic, technological and political. It would be unrealistic to
imagine that any single professional could encompass all the
knowledge needed to deliver sustainable cities, so perhaps what is
needed is a range of new sustainability professionals – sustainable
energy professionals, sustainable design professionals, etc. Again,
movement is happening towards multi-disciplinary cooperation to
deliver new programmes along these lines.
Third, we need to think about how existing professions engage with
each other and with newly educated professionals. The literature on
learning and knowledge within the social sciences has been
emphasising the importance of knowledge networks in which people
engage with each other and exchange information and understanding,
fostering learning by individuals and within the network as a whole.
In particular, communities of practice have been highlighted as a way
of generating change. Such communities are groups of actors focused
on a specific shared problem; they are identified by agreement on the
nature of that problem and repeated, ongoing exchanges on how to
tackle that problem. The essence of such communities is that
members learn from each other and, importantly, that they come to
change their view of themselves and their work through such
exchanges. Engagement in a community of practice based on a
sustainable cities issues will create a group of people who align
themselves with the sustainability goal and define themselves as
sustainability practitioners.
But, fourth, learning needs to extend beyond the individual to the
myriad organisations that are involved in creating and managing
cities. Knowledge networks and communities of practice can help to
transform the organisations they are based in. But learning by
organisations raises other issues. These include questions as to how far
learning is prioritised within an organisation as opposed to routine
business-as-usual. And does the organisation have clear lines for
disseminating knowledge within the organisation? Are there rewards
Hotel/casino, Macau
– Hang Kei Ho (UCL Geography)
“We don’t know what will actually turn out to be
sustainable in terms of urban living and how to
get there. We need to experiment and to innovate.
That means we need to be allowed to fail”
for learning and using new knowledge? Is there someone
– a knowledge node or knowledge entrepreneur – who can act as
a focal point for the flows of new information, knowledge requests
and learning activities within the organisation?
Perhaps though the most important aspect of learning is –
paradoxically – failing. In universities failure is regarded negatively.
Students are supposed to pass their courses. Research projects are
supposed to achieve their objectives and deliver outputs. Knowledge
generation and acquisition is a journey on an escalator travelling
upwards. But on the journey towards the sustainable city there can be
no such certainty. To return to the start, we don’t know what will
actually turn out to be sustainable in terms of urban living and how
to get there. We need to experiment and to innovate. That means we
need to be allowed to fail. Only by trying out new ways of creating
and changing built environments and new ways of living within cities
can we be sure what will deliver the future that will turn out to be
sustainable. In learning to be sustainable we need some space for
failure as well as success and we need to ensure that organisations are
not so tightly managed that such space is crowded out.
The journey to the sustainable city is not yet mapped and the
exploration will have its ups and down. Without doubt though it
will be an exciting journey, one that we can travel hopefully in the
spirit of learning.
Profile / Professor Yvonne Rydin
Yvonne’s research is within an institutionalist
paradigm looking at the networks and discourses of
local planning. She has studied housing land policy,
urban redevelopment, transport management, local
air quality policy, countryside protection and water
management. Particular interests are processes of
strategy development, public participation, the role of
social capital in planning, and the analysis of policy
discourses.
She has also worked on urban sustainability and its
relationship to urban governance in a multi-level
context. Here there has been a particular focus on
sustainability indicators and on the promotion of
sustainable construction. Learning how to be
sustainable within organisations and governance
structures is a current emphasis, looking across the
public and private sectors. This includes consideration
of the response of the property sector to the climate
change agenda, including adaptation to climate risks.
Yvonne researches planning and development, urban
sustainability and governance for sustainable
development. The current focus of her work is
sustainable construction and progressing towards
zero-carbon built environments. She is the Chair of
the Lead Expert Group for the government’s Foresight
Project on Sustainable Energy Management and the
Built Environment.
Contact
Professor Yvonne Rydin
Professor of Planning, Environment & Public Policy
and Director of Learning & Teaching
UCL Bartlett School of Planning
Co-Director (Cities)
UCL Environment Institute
+44 (0)20 7679 4805
y.rydin@ucl.ac.uk
Taken from the Summer 2009 edition of ‘palette’, UCL’s journal of sustainable cities
www.ucl.ac.uk/sustainable-cities