Sustainable Bristol

Sustainable Bristol programme

The future of the world is urban. So the global battle for sustainability will be won or lost in our cities. We clearly have to find different ways to live, and city regions are places of opportunity to shape a sustainable future. 

Bristol city-region, in the West of England, is a striving to be a pioneer in urban sustainable living. Bristol is the UK’s green capital, with the largest number of environmental organisations outside London, including Sustrans, the transport charity responsible for the UK’s National Cycle Network, the Soil Association, promoting sustainable and organic farming in the UK, and the Centre for Sustainable Energy which has 30 years of experience providing energy and climate change advice. 

In 2008, Bristol was the only UK city shortlisted for the EU Green Capital award, and was commended for its parks and green space strategy, air quality plans and environmental management. It came top of the UK’s Sustainable Cities Index in 2008, in recognition of the cities’ impressive increase in recycling and composting rates and its consistently high scores on water quality, waste collection and green spaces. 

A more sustainable Bristol city region

In March 2008, Forum for the Future, the UK’s sustainable development organisation, launched a 10 year programme to help make the greater Bristol area the most sustainable city-region in the UK. Working with partner organisations and local networks the programme encompasses a variety of projects to tackle key sustainability challenges such as making homes energy efficient and helping organisations cut their carbon emissions. 

The progamme’s goals also include reducing dependency on private cars; encouraging local food; and raising awareness of sustainability. 

Current projects include Refit West, a project aiming to tackle the energy efficiency of homes and the West of England Carbon Challenge, for businesses in the West of England committing to monitor and reduce their carbon emissions. 

Peter Madden, chief executive of Forum for the Future explains; 

“Forum for the Future have been working on innovation and sustainable cities for a number of years, helping city authorities, for example, innovate new low carbon services for their citizens. We have found that there are particular issues when you are designing for cities. It is relatively easy to build new developments more sustainably, starting with a blank sheet of paper. Places such as Masdar – a new ‘sustainable city’ being constructed in desert outside Abu Dhabi in the desert– is being built from scratch using the newest technologies.” 

Sustainable Bristol vision

This Sustainable Bristol site describes the research streams and projects that are now underway. In addition, we are capturing ideas from organisations and communities to catalyse change and provoke discussion of ideas and actions that will transform the Bristol area into the most sustainable city region. 

“We want to create a common understanding of what it means to be a sustainable city, deliver world-class projects in key areas, and share our experience. In Australia, the Victorian Eco Innovation Lab is taking a very similar ‘catalytic’ approach.” Peter Madden 

Sustainability challenges and projects in Bristol

Travel and transport

Car dependency in the Bristol city region is higher than average. We want to enable mobility for reaching jobs and services within the region whilst reducing the overall environmental impact of transport systems and services. We are looking at projects that increase walking and cycling, promote bus use and use ICT to reduce the need to travel. 

Forum the Future is working with Bristol City Council and the West of England Partnership to introduce pre-payment smart cards for local transport. Traffic congestion in the centre of the city has already been reduced by some 10% in recent years, with the walking website – Walkit.com – helping take at least 22,000 short car journeys off local roads each year. In 2008 Bristol was named the UK’s first Cycling City, an accolade reflecting the city’s vibrant bike culture. The city region is also investing £70m in a  Bus Rapid Transit network. 

Local food systems

Programme activities include promotion of the local food economy and increasing commitment to local, seasonal, healthy, fresh and organic food. There is a fantastic food culture in the West of England. The Bristol food network have put forward a food strategy for the next five years incorporating five key areas of activity. 

Sustainable construction

There are plans to build 90,000 new homes, with associated infrastructure in the Greater Bristol Area. The West of England Partnership expects that more than £500,000 million of investment will pour into new developments over the next twenty years. The scale of the development is a huge challenge but also an opportunity. Hanham Hallbeing developed by Barratt homes is being built to code level 6 and represents the UK’s first large scale zero carbon development. 

Forum for the Future produced the Sustainability Framework for Urban Extensions, and set up the Refit West consortium of environmental groups who are working with local home owners on whole house retrofits to increase energy efficiency of the existing housing stock.

Low carbon living

Climate change is the biggest environmental challenge we face. Bristol is having to reduce its emissions and adapt to the impacts of climate change. Forum for the Future is working with partner organisations to help tackle climate change by enabling both citizens and interested organisations to reduce their own emissions. Projects include the West of England Carbon Challenge through which organisations commit to a 10% reduction in emissions and to better monitoring or management of energy and resource use. We also need to start making infrastructure changes now to cope with the future impacts of climate change. The suburb of Hammarsby in Stokholm, Sweeden is an exemplar model of changing the existing infrastructure to reduce carbon emissions and improve waste and energy infrastructures. 

Education

All three universities in the West of England play an important role in thinking and research to make the city sustainable.