Sustainable urban place-shaping

urban areas, where for example 90% of the uK’s population lives, represent complex interconnected systems in which any intervention, no matter how small, impacts on the sustainability of the whole: environmentally, economically and socially. our impact globally depends on our choices locally, and how we shape the places in which we live, work and play will make a significant contribution to this. recently we have been facing two global crises, one environmental the other economic, and it is tempting to focus on technological fixes to address the former crisis, whilst the associated business opportunities will help to address the latter. However, as others have argued, sustainable approaches to the city should avoid the misconception that dealing with the environment is merely ‘an engineering problem’ to be overcome by technology. instead, key ‘precepts’ for shaping places sustainably will need to combine a technological emphasis on form and impact with an equal focus on people and place. There are many ways that we can cut the resulting conceptual cake, and nico larco’s (2015) matrix provides a valuable one. My own work has proposed nine precepts that include: resource efficiency, diversity and choice, quality of life, pollution reduction, concentration, distinctiveness, biotic support and self-sufficiency (see Carmona 2009). To complement larco’s carefully constructed paper, here i draw on my own work to more speculatively draw out key lessons for policy makers faced with the challenges these concepts present. rather than the utopian visions of Modernists or dystopian visions made in Hollywood, in 20, 50 or 100 years time people are likely to seek remarkably similar things from their urban areas as they do now. Whilst buildings may come and go, the structure of our cities that we live with today will still be with us long into the future and already provides us with some of the most robust and universal models for sustainable urbanism. The challenge is to work