Is London on track to be a sustainable world city?
It is now ten years since the Greater London Authority came into being, charged with the responsibility of “contribut[ing] to the sustainable development of the UK”. The London Plan, the principal policy instrument available to the Mayor, until recently had the vision of making London an “exemplary sustainable world city”, and the Mayor has had the benefit of a London Sustainable Development Commission since 2002 to advise and scrutinise his efforts. Virtually every Mayoral strategy to date has had the pursuit of sustainable development as an overarching goal.
The Mayor and the GLA are not alone. Look across the rest of the public sector - the boroughs, schools and hospitals, the quangoes, departments and partnership bodies - and sustainable development is ubiquitous in visions and strategies, policies and programmes.
Look further, and innumerable charities and community groups are actively engaged in tackling environmental and social and economic issues; and countless large businesses are tackling climate change or ethical sourcing or corporate social responsibility.
And yet, and yet. Is London a more sustainable city than it was 10 years ago? It would surely be hard to claim so. Air quality remains poor, carbon emissions continue to rise, recycling rates remain low, waste volumes remain high; income inequality and child poverty are worse, variations in life expectancy between the rich and the poor are more pronounced and house prices remain unaffordably high for a significant proportion of the population; the economy is limping through the aftermath of the worst recession in living memory and remains chronically dependent on a narrow range of sectors and an enormous amount of public and private debt.
How has this happened? Are these problems simply the London version of national or international problems? Are they simply difficult to deal with? Is it that the plethora of activity of the last ten years will simply take a long time to have an impact?
Or is it that too few people are really that bothered, preferring instead to focus on their standalone issue, their personal or corporate short term priority?
Perhaps it doesn't matter. Perhaps, in 2020, we will look back and yet again shrug: oh well, things have got a little better here, a little worse there, nothing too disastrous has happened. The important thing is that most of still have a half-decent job, most of us can still buy the stuff we want and take the holidays we fancy, the latest iGadget is very entertaining…
The debate on this page, which we will activate during the early part of 2011, will probe these questions. What do we really mean by ‘a sustainable city’? Is it really something we can make happen? If so, how? How on earth - how in the name of London - can we make sure that the good intentions of so many organisations, and so many individuals, turns into the practical actions that will make a genuine difference?