Sustainable Bristol

Retrofitting cities to be more sustainable

Posted on 11 February 2011

Queens Square, Bristol, reclaimed for public use after the removal of the main road

The task of retrofitting our cities is set to become an important part of managing our transition to a low carbon future.

Over half of the world’s population now live in and around cities, and this will arguably provide us with an opportunity for more efficient living. At present many of our urban areas are sprawling and inefficient, and short of tearing them down and starting anew, they present huge barriers to reducing our overall environmental impact.

So how can we improve the cities that we’ve already got? The answer lies in city scale urban retrofitting.

Engineers and urban planners have begun looking into new and innovative ways to retrofit our existing cities, in an attempt to improve their efficiency, reduce their environmental impact, and improve their quality of life for urban residents.

For many years we have focused our attention on improving our cities’ dysfunctional automobile and oil based infrastructures, but in light of an increasing depletion of global resources, we will need to move away from this urban model and encourage a design that is based upon densely populated city-hubs, transit corridors and clean renewable energy sources.

As well as building up hub areas, this implies rolling back urban sprawl elsewhere to create the new green infrastructure required.

One inspirational example of this model can be seen near the US city of Minneapolis. Here, a sprawling inner-city shopping centre earmarked for re-development was instead restored to its original state, a large wetland ecosystem. In time, the site became the centre-piece of a transportation orientated mixed-use development, which focused on improving the local economy, reducing car dependence through the integration of an efficient transit system, and encouraging environmental protection.

There are other examples of retrofit developments in Portland and Madrid. And, if you are wondering how innovative design could be utilised in Bristol, there is already a great example located within the heart of our city.

Today, Queen Square is an attractive pedestrianised urban green space used for events and festivals, but until only recently, it housed one of the city’s busiest dual carriageways, dramatically dividing the historical square in two.

During this period the square’s green space was inaccessible to the public and a large number of the surrounding office buildings became vacant. The square’s potential as a positive public space had been lost.

But with the closure of the dual carriageway in 1993, the square became the focus of an exciting proposal to reclaim the land and return the historic square to its former glory. The restoration has led to an environmental, economic and social revival of the surrounding area and has improved the access for pedestrians and cyclists within the city centre.

We can learn an important lesson from these examples. Although a road, or a shopping centre, may have dominated an area for many years; these structures do not need to stay in place forever. Through creative design, cities can be retrofitted to incorporate efficient design systems that will improve the way we live our lives, and help to reduce our collective impact on the global environment.