The Sustainable Masterplan is more than a Five-Year Mission

1. Urban & Civic has a rich history delivering new infrastructure and revitalising communities in the Oxford-Cambridge Arc. Could you explain more about Urban & Civic’s mission since being acquired by the Wellcome Trust?

Urban & Civic’s project work is generally no more than 100 miles from London, and this portfolio currently consists of developments with outline planning consent for approximately 44,000 homes that will be delivered over the next 30 years. We’re also promoting 9 million square feet of commercial and employment space, in addition to the necessary community facilities that these masterplans include.

2. You mentioned ‘core values’ and how these are unique to your approach to considered growth across the Arc. What’s special from a sustainability perspective?

It’s interesting that this report categorises the latent potential awaiting activation in the Oxford-Cambridge Arc as different ‘capital’ themes, because that is also how we’ve been thinking about Urban & Civic’s role as a master developer, in the variety of sustainability-led contributions we need to make to present and future communities.

To put this in a different way, because we build at scale and therefore over much longer periods of time, we set our horizons far greater into the distance. In relation to sustainability and enhancement of the natural environment of the Arc, this means baking in environmental and climate considerations at the outset of our design approach, ensuring flexibility in what we propose and consistency across every site we deliver.

Take environmental net gain as one example: from a position of civil engineering and infrastructure, Urban&Civic are rightly identified with the regeneration of previously developed land that has been seen as potentially high-risk for development. Should these sites contain contamination, the scale of the site area allows us to treat all of this on-site, be it natural invasive species or contamination from a previous industrial use that has made the area hazardous.. We’ve breathed new life into previous Ministry of Defence bases which were once seen as untouchable due to the air fuel leakages from pipework and bunkering positions or the volume of underground asbestos pipes, as well as the ammunition that would have been expected.We’ve been able to identify and segregate all of these issues and resolve it safely on-site, without resorting to landfill, with massive environmental benefits.

Elsewhere we have developed on previous quarried areas, returning those large swathes of land to provide suitable development platforms, often involving millions of cubic metres of material being salvaged and re-used. Indeed, we engineer the design to ensure the site is self-fulfilling in respect of earth work needs, creating the correct drainage response at the same time. Our sites also often contain large volumes of hardstandings which we process to roadstone to create a ‘hard’ environmental benefit without the need for carbon intensive movement of waste product clogging up the roads.

We take the same long-term approach to other environmental improvements on-site, specifically those around improving noise and air quality. We’ve supplemented these with early adoption of noise and visual impact bunding and planting out to enhance air quality attenuation at a very early stage; sometimes 5-10 years earlier than others in this space. That gives us the ability to be ahead on environmental and climate issues, without having to resort to offsite provision or short-term fixes.

The wider landscape and public open space created on our sites demands a high quality estate management regime to reap the intended benefits on biodiversity. Sort term curation or devolution of the work off site is not the answer. What we create,protect and nurture on-site has a genuine impact on present and future communities, and in this way these considerations are for life. We have the ability to establish new biodiverse areas which grow themselves and become exponentially more diverse over time, often also locking in additional carbon capture.

That long-term outlook is why we’re already averaging 8.8% biodiversity net gain across our sites as developed at present, with one already above 16%.

3. The Arc has the potential to be the nation’s standard-bearer in the pursuit of carbon neutrality and more efficient environmental practices. How are you advancing this now, ahead of future legislation?

Urban&Civic has identified three core challenges – climate change and the need for carbon reduction; biodiversity nett gain and the need to protect and enhance our environment; health and wellbeing and the need to create communities and work places which better meet whole life expectations. All three link and this circular review is implicit in everything we do – it’s a flexible and yet resilient agenda, which pieces together everything I mentioned earlier to be comprehensive in our environmental and climate outlook. That’s not to say that these practices weren’t already around in one form or another, but rather that we are actively implementing the science and technology rather than simply talking about it.

Specifically in relation to carbon reduction, this means breaking down our approach to sustainable practices into four critical areas. These actions are common to all sites including the work we’re already undertaking in the Oxford-Cambridge Arc, and it’s the interaction between these steps that we see being the formula for a more comprehensive pathway to net zero and greater environmental net gain for the benefit of future generations:

Carbon literacy is our way to say that we must first understand the science and the issues facing us in empirical terms and then provide some definitive policy and illustration as to how to implement the changes needed. So this is about not only learning and development initiatives, though also about establishing a syllabus and policy whereby all employees understand the key goals to be aiming for as they guide developments forward. We need to know what the milestones are for the next 5-to-10-years before being able to meet and in some cases exceed these objectives.
Design coding is the DNA that allows us to focus on the whole life carbon of each building and piece of infrastructure we create. This isn’t just tinkering at the edges, but is instead a full scale aspirational appraisal of how we can reorganise our residential and commercial stock to be more environmentally friendly, for example by rationalising the infrastructure we create to serve a greater proportion of homes without so much carbon expenditure – building less. The added benefit of course for the the environment is that this similarly increases the amount of land we can turn to soft landscaping. This work will entail establishing a carbon Design Guide to explain externally to stakeholders how we intend to deliver on our promises in physical terms
Landscaping is our next environmental net gain feature, and is underpinned by our biodiversity net gain toolkit that we issue to consultants. This doesn’t mean putting grass everywhere, but lays the foundations for a landscaping plan which makes best use of the land available. Standard green spaces, meadows and rewilding might not be as ‘green’ as you’d think at first glance, especially when compared to alternatives like sustainably managed agro-forestry which could be far more beneficial for local communities and the environment in the long-term. Here we then intend to build on our Biodiversity Toolkit and ensure that suitable species and planting guides can effectively direct our future placemaking
Utilities and energy infrastructure have to remain flexible. When you consider how models and energy supply technologies have developed in the last 15 years, you appreciate how we need to not only consider how buildings must adapt to changing utilities and energy technologies, but also the sort of energy transition we expect to see in the next 20-to-30-years. Establishing demand models for our developments that remain flexible and adaptable to changing technology and customer requirements are key.