New writing… My latest piece for Eniday looks at the urban resilience opportunity to be found over our heads. Where clean meets green, it is as much about plant power as power plants and offers real-estate owners and property developers, architects and engineers, planners and ecologists the promise of smart-city biodiversity for the 21st-century. To learn more, read the full story of unrealised potential that is ‘Up on the Roof: Birds, Bees & Biosolar’.
New writing... Pleased to say I have another piece published in The Times newspaper today, as part of a special report on Smart Cities, by Raconteur. It looks at why business, the built environment and wider community must embrace constant change and lifelong learning to benefit fully from intelligent and responsive digital cities of the future:
• ‘What being ‘smart’ means for cities’.
The full 16-page Smart Cities report is available to view/download here.
A version of this article first appeared in a Special Report on ‘Future Cities’, published in The Times, 26 March, 2013.
According to received wisdom, it is not possible to put a price on Nature, however, to much debate, that is exactly what has been happening increasingly of late, as policymakers and markets strive to develop robust metrics to determine the value of living-planet assets and liabilities.
The UN has estimated world ecosystems deliver essential services worth in excess of $70tn a year. In the UK alone, the National Ecosystem Assessment generated figures claiming responsible stewardship of green spaces could be worth at least £30bn a year to the economy, in health and welfare benefits. With a view of green space worth up to £300 per person, provision of good access to same for every household in England could knock £2.1bn off the country’s annual healthcare bill.
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