‘A kinder city is a place for everyone’ - Experts gather during Great Big Green Week to see how new housing can be both happy and healthy

The event is being held as part of Great Big Green Week, the UK’s biggest celebration of community-led action on climate and nature.

“We associate cities with rush, noise, busy-ness and the anonymity of crowds. But a city can help create the conditions for kindness to flourish,” says Alex Robinson, CEO of Hubbub, an environmental charity in London, who will be speaking on the panel.

Research by the Centre for London shows new housing is desperately needed and the number of new homes built annually will need to double from 37,000 to 74,000 for 15 years to solve London’s challenges with affordability and homelessness.

But rapid development is often concentrated in low-income boroughs, where it risks displacing residents, erasing cultural heritage, and putting strain on local services like health, education, childcare and transport.

A recent analysis from Friends of the Earth, a global network of environmental organizations, warns that overdevelopment is reducing biodiversity and pushing communities out of areas they’ve lived in for generations. Crucially, they found that people of black, Asian or minority ethnic (BAME) origin are more than twice as likely as white people to live in areas in England that are most deprived of green space.

Humaira Ikram, the founder of landscape and design Studio Ikram, says ownership is a key element to building sustainable cities. Ikram has worked on projects like the Maxilla Gardens North Kensington and the Wolves Lane Centre in Walthamstow ensuring the community are engaged in consultations.

“I’d love to have more fruiting trees and shrubs so that more people can forage and come together as a community,” she said, adding that growing apples for picking and juicing days, as well as nut trees and berries, could provide opportunities for communities to come together.

For London-based architect Jan Kattein, part of the solution lies in taking an integrated approach to redefine how social and environmental policy is implemented.

He points to a major housing development project in Angel Yard in Edmonton which is creating barriers for local residents to access education and employment while under construction.

“There are things that the housing will fix, but it will take years for the development to start to have an impact. That's more than half a child's life lived in desolation,” says Kattein. A 2022 study published in Nature Sustainability found that youth growing up in places with more greenspaces have better developmental outcomes.

His firm worked with Enfield Council and local businesses to create physical changes like setting up an enterprise space as well as cultural and community spaces. They have also addressed environmental concerns by cutting traffic outside the school and reintroducing nature and biodiversity into the local area.

Ultimately, he says, this approach helps the firm contribute towards building cities that are not only greener, but also kinder.

“A kind city is one where we accept that the city is for everyone,” he says. “It's a place where there are facilities for people to meet and interrelate across demographics and social classes, without a need to pay for that favour.”

Ikra, Kattein and Robinson will be joined by other experts on 11 June. Spots are limited, sign up here: www.theconduit.com/upcoming-events/building-kinder-greener-cities/

For more about Great Big Green Week head to: greatbiggreenweek.com/