What would Eastside look like if had sustainability at its heart? David Middleton reports
Let me transport you to another world and time...
This is Birmingham Eastside. It was the largest inner city regeneration programme in Europe. I am particularly proud of it because it demonstrates the forward thinking of my city – the second city of the country and with a motto "Forward".
Thanks to forward thinking, Eastside boasts the most efficient transport system - a Montreal styled, multi-modal, integrated system which needs only one ticket to use the high speed commuter trains to the suburbs, the hydrogen powered trolley buses, or the inter-city system.
Arrays of small wind turbines on all the new high-rise buildings help provide some of the energy to produce the clean hydrogen. Trolley buses were, of course, preferred to trams because there was no need to install tracks, thereby saving enormous volumes of materials.
The same hydrogen powers the fleet of community cars that people can use if they wish. Each inner-city resident has a smart card providing an allocated amount of free use of these small run-arounds. Such is the efficiency now of public transport few inner city dwellers own their own cars.
The high-rise buildings – home to people as well as commerce - are themselves net producers of energy - not net users. The power they produce from solar glass and internal micro turbines feeds into a community energy system. This functions off-grid and therefore provides security of supply. The result is one-quarter of the centre of Birmingham is not dependent upon the national grid.
A major part of this local grid is the bio-energy system that uses organic wastes from the community plus bio-fuels grown by the rural community on the edge of the city and brought in by canal. This move coincided with the decline of sugar production in the UK meaning that farmers were desperate for new markets. Sugar beet today adds an efficient fuel stock to Eastside’s energy needs.
Thankfully in the development of Eastside plans to kill off the small engineering companies that had historically been located there for decades – some for more than 100 years - were dropped.
Aston and the University of Central England worked with these businesses to create new ways for Eastside to function in a sustainable manner. The combination of academic thinking and engineering knowledge was a major resource for Birmingham to effectively tap into in the creation of Eastside and is now available for other cities to use.
The new city park has been a major success, as has the large numbers of roof gardens on top of the high risers. Both provide recreational facilities for the increased numbers of inner city dwellers, and have attracted new wildlife and fauna.
Birmingham now looks more like New York’s Central Park, always busy with walkers, joggers and cyclists or people just moving from one part of the city to the other. Both the open waterways of the park - its lake and the roof gardens - work together as a means of accommodating the enormous amounts of water that so frequently fall in the increasing numbers of storms we now experience due to global warming. It has been a great success in preventing flash flooding in the area.
This space, greenery, the flora and the wildlife seem to have created a distinctly better and more relaxed placed to be. It is a friendlier and happier place.
Eastside as it will be? Sadly, not really. Not in this comprehensive way. The vision is just a reality dropout by me. There will be some good elements of sustainable development in action but they will be few in number against what could have been.
The Forward City - Birmingham - could have been the first world-leading city to take on climate change and sustainable development big time. What a missed chance!
* David Middleton is chief executive of the Midlands Environmental Business Company and the UK Business Council for Sustainable Development
