Sheffield is rightly proud of its green and blue infrastructure.
But is the city really getting the most out of this infrastructure? And how would treating it as a system help?
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The UK’s first Investment Zone has been declared spanning Sheffield city centre, the Lower Don Valley, Rotherham and beyond. The economic objectives are clear, but there is little mention of sustainability.
This feels like a major omission and a lost opportunity. The Investment Zone is home to many businesses that support a sustainable future. Sheffield has committed to net zero carbon by 2030 and is known for its pioneering work to create sustainable urban places. Why not build on this experience and know-how to create the UK’s “greenest” Investment Zone?
Imagine extending Grey to Green across Sheffield city centre and using the river, canal, railway, roads and development sites of the Lower Don Valley to showcase what an adaptive and resilient urban environment should be.
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The pandemic has helped us all notice the joy in small everyday details, the flowers, the birdsong. Staying close to home, walking daily through local streets and green spaces, has helped us appreciate the natural world around us.
And at the same time, the massive overnight reduction in road and air traffic, the resulting improvement in air quality, the reduced noise and the fragility of our food chains, has focused our minds on the bigger picture of climate change and our relationship with the natural world.
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South Yorkshire Housing Association is the first housing association in the country (world?) to build a WikiHouse. Why did we do this?
The short answer is that in England we need to build more houses, better and faster, to hit the target of 300,000 new homes each year that is needed to tackle our housing crisis.
And we think WikiHouse could be part of the answer.
The longer answer is that while WikiHouse shares the benefits of other offsite construction methods - better/more airtight build quality, lower energy costs, higher environmental sustainability - it has some extra features which set it apart. These include: open source design, opportunities for citizen-led building, easy adaptation and distributed manufacture.
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