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ah no i don't
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and i want to see him
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me so seven by thinking about societies and the ecological transition
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so my starting point
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is to look historically at the way in which
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city siamese as being the c. t.
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big city equals bad city a
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this is a car that my grandmother received in
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nineteen hundred and six uh expressing vividly
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the image of man just uh one of the fastest growing cities
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in britain and the base blue g. h. or um
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and looking at that i was remembering that uh it just at the same time nineteen hundred would fall
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indeed to their advantage right i i can okay okay right good
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any of a head and the um the belgian panicked
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that published in paris he's the the town tacky they're amazing planes
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um one of the lines up there's a plane colette categorise
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one of the lines from them is or safe room see full exam is yeah
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in a depressed given a from a problem i i think if that line there could be
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a petty evocation of eight again at the same time before the first world war then
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uh the vague my has extraordinary scant she's apparently
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in the crushed at the early in
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the city which had grown beyond all measure
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crowded thirty congested us each of misery
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and potential violence and with this winter whole critique of the city as
00:02:05
something which destroyed itself for growth and that critique was being written it
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exactly the same time by this gentleman also i'll spank law
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because he is the client of the right of the west uh
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aunt regarding this up and landed with a graphic account
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all of the self destructing nature of a button size
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the more city grew the more inevitably it was doomed to self destruction
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so that is why through most of the twentieth century the last century ah century
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but your surgery or but most of the twentieth century
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since the reform as well above all concerned to break up the city to turn the
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big metropolis into small face to face communities
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and the famous example of that
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from again the same period of the early twentieth century is of course ebenezer howard this
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in age of london broken up into gotten cities
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set into a green belt and similar experiments we see
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in fronds m. b. c. in a in
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germany uh and indeed i first encountered your steam direction yeah when he was
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working on the you start lunch off plans of wood or shots
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which is one of the best possible examples of this decide to break up the city
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to bring nature into the city and to diffuse the city through nature
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so the the distinction between town and country would be actually eradicate huge so
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this is the tradition of thinking we came from and the point i want to make to start
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off with is to say that in the context of the ecological transition under the prism
00:04:24
of the ecological transition as we say under that prism that assumption is being
00:04:29
completely abandoned we recognise that large city is not a problem it may
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well be the solution bases most distinctly expressed in the idea of green manhattan
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uh a famous article by david irene in the new york uh
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in two thousand and four everywhere should be more like new york
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this is the wonderful graphic image that the company new york as an
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archetype of a city which is sustainable has a low carbon footprint
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you might see this is very strange 'cause if you look at energy flows will carbon flows or
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resource flies new york appears as one of the
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biggest hotspots the biggest points of concentration
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the biggest devour a overs all sees on the north american continent
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but if you look at it in a trap with that uh it's you rare lies that
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new yorkers who live that is density each new
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york at consumes so much less resources
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and i just quite from david allen's article by most significant measures new york is the
00:05:52
greenest community in the united states uh one of the greenest cities in the wells
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the average manhattan light consumes gasoline at the rate that the
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country as a whole hasn't since the nineteen twenties
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the error that in which the most widely used car in united states of the ford model t. e.
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so in other words is is emphasising the environmental been indignity
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of new york city because of its high density
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and taking the prism of the ecological transition one of the things that we have today
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in the ecological transition as a result of climate change and the un protocols and
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the international agreements to collect teacher within a
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common framework we have fantastic data
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on a resource profiles so all of these forms
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of emission are collected on a national
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level um and can be segregated does if you scales so we haven't methodology
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and so we have data which demonstrates the green as of manhattan and we can that kate
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so for example the u. i. u. the berkeley uh california
00:07:18
schools safe school climate at work have fantastic g. i. s. maps which
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you can see online which show very clearly that the green spots
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ah the biggest cities the biggest concentrations the population it's the exact inverness
00:07:36
of the weld as oswald spineless over it um and if you zoom out to look at
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the eastern seaboard is a whole again you can see that each of the green spots
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as green in terms of the carbon footprint as the deepest countryside per capita
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is the high density city
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so this is the paradox was starting with the paradox
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that today we relies that big can be good
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that city size can be a stepping stone to the
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ecological transition rather than an impediment to it
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and see if you recognise this and one of the most exciting
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developments has been the development of c. g. networks which have
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exchanged good practitioners and developed policies for climate change
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i mean i'm any good give you one example because it's the big cities network
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which is c. forty the network of large cities over twenty four over that it's
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not right great a it was really easy to get through the emission buses
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but in fact there lots will so that they have lots of initiatives this is initiative to do with the with buses
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but if you look at the profile of the network there are eighty mega cities covering six hundred million people
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um hum undertaking ten thousand climate actions so
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this is why city say we can't trust donald trump and missus may
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to lead us to the ecological transition it has to be through the leadership
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of big cities and only by virtue of their size can they need is in this direction
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and uh i mean if you think about it if you try to have allies what it is about the city
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this enables it to have a more favourably environmental profile it's the
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two things it's the buildings buildings which are at high density
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which share party rules which have small uh open footprints
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use less energy per square meter of floor space so the
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lever the density the lower the rate of thermal insulation
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the higher the expenditure per unit of floor space and of course there's
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lots to be done in terms of the efficiency of buildings
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but um nevertheless this is one of the areas in which the the the leadership of the
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c. forty is is working and it's one of the many areas where they have
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very good initiatives to try and improve the building energy efficiency of
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existing buildings this was published in a few days ago
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the second evan efficiency report and it's one of a series of
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initiatives so the first reason then why cities before well
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and they perform better the bigger they are if that is the bigger they are generally the den so they are
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and the den so they are the higher the environmental performance there you have to qualify these
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generalisations but let's make them first and the second reason has to do with people
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and the coven footprint of us as individuals in the big city people walk
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and a ride on trams and they cycle uh and they go by trade and hardly anybody drives a car
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but in the suburbs the main reason for the appalling carbon footprint also the that
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america is the necessity to drive everywhere to have three cars in every household
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and say every aspect of life involves a trip by car and it's very
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hard to walk it in american so but so for these reasons
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we see that big cities are offering a very interesting lead
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in thinking about the ecological transition about addressing climate change
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and all of these cities are defining themselves in terms of the metro area with the
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exception of dublin and london interesting yells ab work but london in a bit
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but these are big cities i mean look at the figures yeah that yeah i mean and big city
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yeah
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let me move on having established that initial starting point yet
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maybe move on and talk about london our case study
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that all cities by definition because they occupy a point in territorial space
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all cities are unique every city is you the personality just is with us ah unique
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personality but london has a particular claim to be thought of as the unique city
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and this is why this the danish architectural historian it's
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teen idol ross most and in nineteen thirty four
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published his book calling london the unique city because on that
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is unlike any other city in maine and your
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it's i like it because i grew from two new k. i. rather than one
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and because it grew from about fifteen hundred on with outside the city walls
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and the original municipality never expanded its walls so not like geneva uh
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not like paris uh not like madrid and not like frankfurt
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and not like forty not like anywhere else london's original
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really lonely this apology to thousand year so it's still that inside it's
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original limits with it said this falls so this is what we call the
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city of london is a very very very small portion of the total
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character of the of the built up area and if we look at london in eighteen forty seven
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we can see that city here is the original roman bridge crossing the river here is the
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roman walls on the medieval war so this is the city of london as we correlate
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but then london drop around another city the city of
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westminster which is where the king move the court
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a thousand years ago so this is why london always groove into centres
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as a biplane and it grew as a policy and trick city
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and that is restless owns most important point and say that london was a
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city a small um it's a big city of small because of allergies
00:15:09
this is restless is point to get a a city which institution they
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was was broken eyes than fragmented as a as a mom as as it could be
00:15:23
and for that reason also developed in a very partisan truthful no a ticket with
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the problems of sanitation and we'll supply and so rich and public health
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linda needed large structures the environmental challenge of running a big city has
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always required size and say in h. e. h. e. eight
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we can see a a london county council was formed
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so i think a big about and but we can
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also see in this map of nineteen hundred how
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the railways expansion
00:16:09
outstripped those boundaries and say london continued to grow
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in a dispersed probably same trick fashion
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right up to the time when ross muslim rages pork in nineteen thirty four
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and so by nineteen thirty nine before the second world war
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we have london a city in eight point six million population with a hundred and fifty
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local government areas and you can see here is that there's a city of london
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so that is a nice apology and and everything else is scaffolding
00:16:42
dispersed in in the hands of multiple different comedians so um
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this was a situation during the second world war and it remained like that all the way through the nineteen fifties
00:16:59
what happened as a result of the war however uh and this was a very important change
00:17:04
was that in the postwar plan for land and so
00:17:08
patrick apple crumb be professor planning university college london
00:17:13
so one of my previous asses he established a famous greenbelt around london
00:17:20
to prevent its the that out would low density expansion
00:17:25
so here we see the green belt here we see the l. c. c. area as it was it was
00:17:35
easy into war growth sprawl and he is the greenbelt and future grated on them was to be
00:17:44
the k. g. in satellite downs on the other side of the green dot so this was
00:17:49
an important physical planning initiative but there was no change to the local government structure
00:17:55
that change occurred in nineteen sixty five when i'm
00:18:02
uh uh the area within the greenbelt
00:18:06
he does that mean that you can see it very clearly there's the greenbelt
00:18:10
use the built up area or reform was carried out
00:18:15
which thoughts big which established a single cancel
00:18:19
for the whole metropolitan area and under it seem to be
00:18:25
missing that from the slide thirty three not nice
00:18:28
parts and my predecessor lines will be economic swim robson
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plays this as a metropolitan reform which demonstrated
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london's potential at last to think big and to devise
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a structure for the management of the city
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which would encompass the entire a built up area all seven million population
00:18:56
within a single metropolitan of or c. but you know the rest of the story palaces already
00:19:03
into graduate in nineteen eighty six this is that to abolish the greater london cancel
00:19:10
so once again we were thinking small in metropolis managed by thirty three
00:19:18
local governments uh there's the map of the thirty three local governments
00:19:29
and the smallest of them you can see is the original city of london
00:19:34
still that still but it's separate municipality it's separate powers
00:19:39
it separate competence is a separate piece falls
00:19:42
and in a way that spread the virus of particular is um
00:19:47
and local is um in the london government system not
00:19:54
this was the happening of london government until
00:19:59
what through through the period when i was at the loans gonna be comics nineteen eighty six
00:20:05
london was run like switzerland is laudable could identify
00:20:10
thirty three separate copies everything had to
00:20:13
be done by agreement it was interesting but it wasn't a good way of
00:20:19
managing a great city it's actually at a time
00:20:23
when that city was expanding rapidly look at
00:20:28
the population trends c. have years of
00:20:32
population decline as london the industry lies here off the year of the uh
00:20:39
losing hundreds of thousands of people suddenly as a result
00:20:44
of global lies asian and uh changes in
00:20:51
the well financial markets and the role of london
00:20:54
in those changes london's started to grow
00:20:59
it grew dramatically and is never stopped greying say every yeah
00:21:04
since around nineteen eighty six we have had positive growth
00:21:09
and this croft takes you up to two thousand and eight but he continues to grow
00:21:14
today so this was a challenge the london
00:21:23
might be managed five thirty three municipalities
00:21:26
in the context of declining but in the context of growth there
00:21:31
was a profound contradiction and this late in nineteen ninety nine
00:21:39
to the final reform of london government which was
00:21:45
celebrated in the creation by norman foster
00:21:49
of this environmental city hall to look for a small building meant to be
00:21:56
uh a big metropolis run by a small team
00:22:01
of uh politicians and and experts
00:22:06
so this is the model uh uh an ecologically progressive building
00:22:12
running an integrated set of services
00:22:17
so here we've got london thinking big since the yet to size
00:22:22
so in the next two sections ready for the rest of the lecture and i don't get going for too much longer
00:22:29
we're looking at how has this experiment works well
00:22:39
it's been based on the two things and assembly for greater than for the for the whole area within the greenbelt
00:22:47
and a directly elected met we've had three men as this is the present mass at the car um it
00:22:53
was elected last yeah for him we had bars johnston before when we had can livingston says been labour
00:23:01
rather independent conservative and then later now the mare has responsibility
00:23:09
the thinking big about under that puts it very very
00:23:12
well responsibility for transport for place for economic development
00:23:19
for planning for environment uh uh and all of these are to be
00:23:28
understood within the context of strategies so the
00:23:32
management to steal around and and sticky
00:23:35
uh each of these policy components uh in an integrated fashion that's thinking big
00:23:44
there's not a plan london is london hits the mat answer all of the matters that had
00:23:50
the ideological differences some of you know the left some of you know the right
00:23:55
but i get to emphasise the consistency with which the man is and the
00:24:01
assemblies have steered laundered and say first of all the first component
00:24:07
as we planned a plan for london to grow within the greenbelt the greenbelt
00:24:13
has always been accepted so london is great its population is increasing from
00:24:19
six point eight million to eight point eight million possibly nine million possibly ten million by
00:24:24
twenty fifty but without growing the size of the city into the green belt
00:24:31
very important principle the principle of self
00:24:34
limitation so growth without physical expansion
00:24:40
london has to be remain competitive so every it at all the policies of
00:24:45
bean shaped by the knowledge of global isolation and will city competition
00:24:51
so london with measures itself against paris frankfurt take yeah
00:24:56
new york say intensification has been enormously important
00:25:03
but secondly
00:25:06
the matter is in charge of transport so these
00:25:09
past seventeen years have seen massive investment
00:25:13
in transpose improvement in london and the g. l. c. was created to
00:25:20
bring costs into land that's the original purpose of the government
00:25:25
in creating a much product no forty to bill right it's about what has happened
00:25:31
since two thousand has been closure of records as be restrictions on parking
00:25:36
as being charging of current as to bring in that cause a vehicle's into it
00:25:42
there's been massive investment in real ways including the
00:25:46
new across london away cross trail which is
00:25:49
going to open next year and very important initiatives
00:25:54
to encourage cycling and pedestrian is um
00:25:58
so all of these things are really important initiatives
00:26:04
which of revolutionised that mode of transportation in a great city
00:26:13
and then thirdly the mac is in charge of
00:26:18
the ambient environment of london it's green spaces land that is a very green city
00:26:24
it always has been through drop box it's low density that's what ross most in love the budget
00:26:30
because we didn't have city rules based housing in london was family has inc
00:26:36
with the garden at the front of the garden at the back
00:26:38
so based on that as a live in how we used to
00:26:41
live until quite recently in flat houses rather than apartments
00:26:47
uh and yet at overall a relatively high density so um
00:26:54
the third important it's plank of merrill
00:26:59
strategy as being management of
00:27:04
the parks the gardens and the green greed of infrastructure
00:27:11
and then finally since the year two thousand of course the intergovernmental
00:27:16
panel on climate change the rise of c. four c. the
00:27:24
increasing awareness of cities role in climate change management
00:27:29
as many that london's mayor has had to formulate policies
00:27:33
for cobble mitigation and for climate change adaptations
00:27:39
and we can see the two policies here one from column education energy saving
00:27:47
improved building efficiency a new methods of generation and so on and the other one for
00:27:53
climate change annotation most important climate change risk the most important challenge to resilience
00:28:00
in london has been flooding because we are coastal
00:28:03
city on the tidal river and um
00:28:08
and london has come very very near to catastrophic floods on several occasions
00:28:14
so there's the policies to and that may um i bring it to a close now by
00:28:21
asking how has it gone how does greater london
00:28:26
measure in the prism of the ecological transition
00:28:32
'cause we are measuring it we have all the data that we need to understand
00:28:36
how well and how badly we're doing so it
00:28:44
um
00:28:50
i i think there's a paradox if we look at greater london from space
00:28:59
the the paradoxes that london has succeeded in in the coming green uh
00:29:09
because
00:29:12
because it is limited it size because it is excepted better regional
00:29:19
set of limits imposed by patrick apple crumb be back in nineteen forty five in the form of the green belt
00:29:25
and so you can see around london very very clearly the regional
00:29:30
form of the green belt and here the the actual london orbital major way
00:29:36
which runs around the city the m. twenty five most of its distance it
00:29:42
runs through greenbelt through open landscapes and that's a very important principle um
00:29:51
and
00:29:55
uh uh by the yes say say so that's that's the matrix of course i could be not other ways in which you
00:30:01
wanted to do so big that many people have argued that this is not the real on the real london isn't
00:30:07
eight million population the real and and it's twelve million pay population
00:30:12
of fifty million population because it extends right away up
00:30:15
the midlands and if you look at travel to work areas
00:30:18
you can define the metropolis on a much bigger scale
00:30:23
but it's institutionally being very important that that hasn't been
00:30:27
the case that we've accepted london has a metropolis
00:30:33
which is contained which has identity and territorial leadership in the form of the matter
00:30:40
i'd actually which is green outside through the green belt agreeing with it
00:30:46
it's there's a very good data space cool giggle the greater long term
00:30:52
green space green space in great something i got a giggle anyway
00:30:58
so if you go there there are fantastic maps looking not
00:31:01
only at land use but also on all parameters of
00:31:06
ecological performance uh and and and by
00:31:10
diversity and a hydraulic g.
00:31:14
and so so uh at london remains a green city um
00:31:23
in terms of transportation it is very very important
00:31:28
that ah thanks to the changes we see in london has declining car use so
00:31:35
all of the full costs a car useful on that have been role
00:31:39
the reality is that people using cause less and less in london
00:31:45
and the travelling more mole by green minutes
00:31:50
and into a developments such as canary wharf for example which were
00:31:54
built on the assumption seventy percent of the people would
00:31:57
drive to work but in fact the blue figures are minuscule in less than ten percent
00:32:04
so um this is been a major policy again
00:32:09
it's not a complete triumph for example cycling promotion
00:32:14
has started around six percent of all trips
00:32:18
and there's a lot of discussion that anyway we've we've got to the maximum of cycling to work
00:32:25
the guy is dressed in like perot wearing crash helmets so
00:32:29
that's been a very remarkable achievement that a number
00:32:32
of office workers senior office workers to cycle competitively i'm
00:32:37
basically fit can go very very fast but
00:32:40
in a way that had the effect of discouraging would gentle
00:32:44
dutch forms of slightly more danish forms as likely
00:32:48
you know the family going to school is it a
00:32:52
put off by the shear velocity and determination
00:32:56
of the guys in like right so this is a challenge uh to be
00:33:01
taken on by by future matters but it's not activate it that the
00:33:05
uh the success of the cycling infrastructure cycle lanes and of the shared
00:33:11
like scheme that vehicle boy spikes has been a very very important
00:33:18
as for the cop and measure we have good measures
00:33:21
of carbon and we have an right regular updates
00:33:26
london sets itself a very ambitious target sixty percent caught
00:33:31
by twenty twenty five sixty percent from the nineteen ninety baseline
00:33:37
sixty percent i'm or not
00:33:40
getting yeah at least we're falling behind the strategy
00:33:46
is that and you can see that all performance in
00:33:50
terms of the missions is very far from uh
00:33:58
in conformity with the strategy so uh uh the big push now is
00:34:07
is on buildings because buildings of the most significant form of
00:34:12
energy emission of carbon emission energy wastage in london
00:34:17
it's partly to do with us was and restless and pointed out so many london is live in
00:34:22
old fashioned family has this i mean i do i live in eighteen century house and
00:34:28
huge areas of land and are single family houses on the
00:34:33
eighteenth century and the nineteenth century when you fly avalon
00:34:37
you're very aware of the extent to which the built environment consists of
00:34:42
family hands which are inefficient in terms of the thermal performance and
00:34:48
obviously the mole no that is live in apartments the mole
00:34:52
that per capita performance is going to improve but it's a challenge
00:34:58
and this at all the other challenges are at this very moment
00:35:04
being brought together in a new document by the mass id gone
00:35:09
i mean i'd i'm not sure about this one the toll because on the one hand it's excellent he's
00:35:15
he's recognise there is a problem with the multiple
00:35:18
strands of strategies green space by diversity
00:35:22
a flooding risk climate change adaptation a transport housing
00:35:29
there are too many london strategies is too much bifurcation
00:35:35
and it needs to be brought together so we need to think
00:35:38
big in the sense of an integration and this is what
00:35:43
he is now proposing a single london environment strategy it's about
00:35:48
to be published for consultation in this spring and summer
00:35:54
the only thing is he's very much i put back he's
00:35:58
a marketing it branding it as he is initiate
00:36:02
so a publicity for it could it enters photographs of
00:36:06
the man in white innocently value right it's a
00:36:09
very nice guy refuse personalising it too much 'cause it isn't the mess tragic it's london strategy
00:36:16
and we don't want it to be too closely identified with him so that he is six asset feels that
00:36:22
you know it has to be a new strategy what we want what london needs thinking
00:36:26
big involves thinking long to um and understanding that all of us uh simply helping
00:36:33
this great city towards a better future
00:36:38
say by way of conclusion uh mister chairman by um
00:36:49
i i in with the paradox which is this has been a fairly
00:36:54
positive presentation uh and i think the story is positive in london
00:37:02
over the past twenty as a as positive precisely because
00:37:10
london has developed the institutional capacity to think big
00:37:15
the paradoxes it is only done that because in a way
00:37:19
it's the what small it's seen itself as a city
00:37:23
within the ramparts of the green belt the green belt
00:37:29
which is insured pat compactness and density as in carriage
00:37:34
the recycling of frasier industrial of brownfield land
00:37:38
um uh and and in the conversation backs we can talk a little bit more about
00:37:44
how different an ecological strategy for london might look if we had to find
00:37:49
london today in terms of the outer
00:37:52
metropolitan region the true commuting radius
00:37:57
the sound of influence of of the great city which has a population of
00:38:03
of twenty million or more uh let's see
00:38:07
that they're very much indeed yeah ha

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Conference Program

INTRODUCTION
Panos MANTZIARAS, Directeur, Fondation Braillard Architectes
Feb. 23, 2017 · 6:48 p.m.
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LE GRAND LONDRES AU PRISME DE LA TRANSITION ECOLOGIQUE
Michael Hebbert, Historien, docteur en géographie, professeur, Bartlett School of Planning, University College London
Feb. 23, 2017 · 6:52 p.m.
123 views

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