Foundations for change: what is driving the future of the built environment?

By Ann Cousins 18 Sep 24 Reading time: 4 mins

The built environment industry has seen a huge shift over the last 15 years – especially in how it perceives and embeds the value of sustainability from planning to delivery. Moving away from “tick box” approaches, design and delivery decisions are now consistently grounded by considerations of how risk can be reduced and benefits can be unlocked.

Though a huge amount of work remains to achieve the industry’s collective sustainability targets, we are now operating in a more climate-conscious economy and sector. As we look to the future and what’s next for our industry, it’s important to take stock of the progress already made, and the learnings now embedded, so that we can navigate the coming years collaboratively.

Driving momentum and delivery

Change can only be truly adopted when measures are put into place by people working across all disciplines, at all types of organisations. This encompasses engineers, designers, investors, operators, and those in the public sector. The future of our urban environments depends on the cohesion of these actors.

Key areas that have driven both momentum and delivery have included:

• Policy – Recent years have seen environmental requirements be extended and tightened. Legislation gives a level playing field for all industry actors to hold each other accountable, reliably confirming the value of sustainability. 
• Investment – Enhanced reporting requirements such as the Taskforce for Climate-related Financial Disclosure (TCFD) and Taskforce for Nature-related Financial Disclosures (TNFD) have been introduced.
• Evidence – Knowledge of climate science has improved, and easily accessible research (for example publicly available reports and case studies) provide a body of evidence to accelerate future decisions. As an industry, we have learned from each other’s progress, making solutions easier to identify and more cost effective.
• Public sentiment – One of the biggest shifts has been public sentiment, with over 80% of people in Bristol, for example, concerned about climate change and the loss of wildlife. This is directly representative of better education and communication between sector actors and citizens or customers. 

Collaborative innovation is needed

The built environment faces complex challenges that require complex solutions – beyond the climate crisis, pressures related to economic uncertainty, social equity issues, and ageing assets needing renewal continue to shape a perfect storm.

If resilience isn’t tackled and embedded proactively through integrated solutions, extreme weather events will have increased knock-on effects on infrastructure and society. Asset health is crucial for infrastructure, as electric substations and power lines can have pivotal roles in how communities function – for example, a flooded substation could see our ability to treat water compromised.

In the UK, Bristol has taken a leading role in bringing to life interconnected thinking, delivering projects that unlock co-benefits. The Bristol One City Climate Strategy, is a landmark example of this in action, bringing together private and public sector actors to develop an evidence-based vision to realise the city’s climate neutrality ambitions by 2030.

Arup, the firm who developed the strategy, has worked with a broad range of stakeholders to produce emissions studies and baseline emissions gap analysis. Informing business case studies related to risk and opportunity, climate resilience assessments and overarching strategy was developed for the city, aligned to vulnerabilities and hazards – one of the first to also include scope 3 emissions. 

Looking to the future of the industry, collaboration will remain at the heart of progress

Nature-based solutions are also pivotal to infrastructure resilience. Interventions like sustainable urban drainage systems (SuDS) embrace innovation and enhance biodiversity to reduce local flood risk.

For example, Greener Grangetown in Cardiff provides a more sustainable method for catching and cleaning water through the integration of 108 rain gardens in the local streetscape. This has seen 40,000km³ of surface water removed from the public sewer network. Using plants and trees to soak up and filter rainwater, some pollutants are captured and broken down ahead of being conveyed to the nearby River Taff. 

Looking to the future of the industry, collaboration will remain at the heart of progress. Cross-sector engagement helps us to shape long-term and place-based planning, so that solutions can be scaled.

With each new project outlined and undertaken, there is an opportunity to bring in the voices of those across several industries and members of local communities, so that the broadest range of benefits can be identified and delivered.

Ann Cousins / Guest writer

Ann Cousins is an associate director at Arup, a global engineering, design, architecture, and consultancy firm working across multiple sectors, including transport, energy, property, city development, and healthcare.