Justin W. Cook's Posts from Low2No

Timber construction growing in Finland

Thu, 13 Oct 2011 16:06:00 +0300

September 2011 rendering of Sitra's ground floor showing the timber facade, finish materials and precast concrete podium on which the timber frame/CLT office building sits © Sauerbruch Hutton

There are many advantages to using timber as the principal structural material in large buildings (also see this):

on the economic side, timber reduces conveyance and logistical costs, reduces construction time and eases work performed by downstream trades
on the environment side, timber building materials provide long term carbon sequestration; when harvested sustainably, timber stocks tend to improve carbon sink capacity over un-managed land
socially, especially in Finland, timber is a preferred finish material for its warmth, texture and connection to historic buildings and nature

Timber construction was identified early in the Low2No project as a promising way to meet our sustainability principles and is being developed as the main structural and finish material for Sitra's office building, a first in Finland.

As mentioned earlier, SRV and VVO (our client team partners) were unable to rationalize timber construction for the residential buildings, citing market conditions and other risks as limiting factors. At the time, Finland's new fire code (developed with Sitra) that allows for multi-story timber construction was hot off the press and I think the known unknowns of this code's implementation introduced too much risk into a project already loaded with "many innovations."

One 8 story CLT building binds 850 return trip flights from JFK-LHR eCO2

But just last week, SRV announced that it had entered into a partnership with Finland's forestry giant Stora Enso to build a mixed-use (commercial, office and hotel) timber building in Jätkäsaari! We are thrilled with this development. This is something we have been pushing for a long time and we hope it to be the next step that starts a wave of timber construction across Finland.

The project will use Stora Enso's proprietary approach to multi-story cross laminated timber (CLT) construction. Interestingly, their marketing for the product focuses in the quantity of carbon that an 8 CLT story building will bind for the long term. Turns out, it is about the same as 850 return flights from London to New York City! Watch their promotional video here.

While we would have loved to see this partnership initiated under the banner of the Low2No block, it is clear that Low2No is exercising a gravitational force that is pulling the industry foward and beginning the long transition to a future built environment that is carbon neutral.

41. Week in Review

Fri, 07 Oct 2011 04:26:00 +0300

BIM model screen shot of Sitra's timber office ©Arup

Back on the job here at Low2No. Work has been proceeding at a blistering pace in London and Berlin as our design team prepares to deliver our L2, or design development, drawings next week. This is a significant point in the project's progression as "end of L2" is when the local designers will take a leadership role in project implementation.

Interior BIM model screen shot of Sitra's timber office ©Arup

This month is the moment when the client team will step back and perform two critical tasks: costing and project review. Even in strong markets, a €60M investment can cause some consternation. But as the euro's stability decreases with every news cycle, we have some difficult decisions ahead of us.

We are committed to a triple bottom line plus carbon (TBL+CO2) approach and will review this next phase with this principle as our top level priority. It is increasingly clear that planning requirements and real estate costs make development in Helsinki difficult, especially without basic government support instruments (such as feed-in-tariffs), but we hope to find a way to make a low carbon, mixed-use development economically viable.

BIM model screen shot of Sitra's timber office ©Arup

Interior BIM model screen shot of Sitra's timber office ©Arup

The client team is working to develop a joint company (landlord/janitor company) to own and manage the block's common infrastructure, energy infrastructure (PV), commercial space, and parking. When developing a block-wide sustainable solution, shared ownership provides critical synergistic benefits and is necessary to manage the block's shared resources as one entity. A joint management company solution is a new step toward social sustainability in Finland.

Sitra is also organizing a meeting with leadership from the real estate industry who are involved in writing new legislation for "3D" real estate formation (mixed-use code)—possibly to be implemented for the first time in our block. A mixed-use code will allow challenging ownership conditions to be overcome more easily, such as the one we face in our block, where the basement can have property lines independent from above ground property.

Word comes from Jukka this week on two projects he is shepherding: the European 11 Competition (he is a jury member and will tell more once it is public) and a board meeting of the LAICA project which helps individuals commercialize innovative energy solutions. The Energy Programme has continued to expand its impact and we look forward to more.

Welcome back to Low2No!

Mon, 03 Oct 2011 03:57:00 +0300

Over the past 6 months, we have been hard at work designing and building a new home for Low2No. This new site is intended to both be a place to learn more about the city block that we are building in Helsinki's Jätkäsaari district (recently named Airut, but more about that later) and provide a platform for a global discussion around transitioning the built environment to a low carbon future.

Diagram of the website's "code commits" since April 2011. A code commit is when the developer takes a snapshot of the site and saves it as it is being coded. In this phase, there were 336411 lines of code added, 32001 lines deleted.

Thank you to XOXCO for their tireless work on the back end of the site, and to Muotohiomo for design. Well done. Also thanks to my colleagues Bryan, Annemaria, and Olli.

The city block now has its own section on the site: the Block page where we will discuss the latest developments in its design, energy and carbon strategy, support of the people that will occupy it and some of the materials that have been developed by our team along the way.

We still believe that our Low2No competition was one of the most innovative approaches to sustainable design of the built environment anywhere, so we have refreshed and explained the many dimensions of that project here.

To the sustainability/carbon discussion side, we are beginning to open up a new area of work called the Low2No model. Low2No has always been a broad project with many initiatives. This had to do with the nature of challenge (the built environment has an extremely large set of stakeholders and areas of work), and also Sitra's mission (we work between sectors to promote systemic change).

Under the banner of the Low2No model, we are looking more directly at how our transitional approach to decarbonizing the built environment can and is being applied outside of our development project in Helsinki. We hope that this area of work will flourish following some key decisions that will be made by Sitra in the coming months.

Our new site coincides with the release of three articles, or in-depth looks at the issues central to the challenge of sustainability and the built environment as told by leading professionals from around the world.

David Wood from Harvard's Kennedy School of Government discusses the role of private finance in building a sustainable city. Tuuli Kaskinen and Roope Mokka from Demos Helsinki reflect on their work in enabling individuals to help consumers make more energy and carbon conscious choices. And Federico Parolotto and Francesca Arcuri from Milan-based Mobility in Chain propose a better way of managing mobility and transportation planning.

These are original articles supported by Sitra and are the first of a series that will be published every month or so.

we are looking more directly at how our transitional approach to decarbonizing the built environment can and is being applied

Finally, we will be publishing a series of dossiers that provide a broad look at issues such as carbon, energy in buildings, enabling people to make more sustainable choices, smart systems and services etc. The dossier format provides a way to expose and organize the myriad of issues, challenges and recent developments that each topic encompasses.

This site will live and breath as we move forward with the Low2No project and will provide us the flexibility to add content as we go. Please check in regularly or subscribe to our RSS feed. And let us know what you think!

Growing our way out of the problem

Wed, 28 Sep 2011 18:22:20 +0300

The vast majority of food related carbon emissions come before preparation in the home. Moving small scale production in house can help push down a family's carbon footprint.

2011-09-28

Wed, 28 Sep 2011 18:22:20 +0300

a:11:{i:0;a:3:{s:2:"id";s:4:"1679";s:8:"box_size";s:1:"2";s:9:"box_color";s:7:"color_5";}i:1;a:3:{s:2:"id";s:4:"1667";s:8:"box_size";s:1:"2";s:9:"box_color";s:7:"color_5";}i:2;a:3:{s:2:"id";s:4:"1603";s:8:"box_size";s:1:"2";s:9:"box_color";s:7:"color_5";}i:3;a:3:{s:2:"id";s:4:"1594";s:8:"box_size";s:1:"3";s:9:"box_color";s:7:"color_6";}i:4;a:3:{s:2:"id";s:4:"1605";s:8:"box_size";s:1:"3";s:9:"box_color";s:7:"color_4";}i:5;a:3:{s:2:"id";s:4:"1592";s:8:"box_size";s:1:"4";s:9:"box_color";s:7:"color_6";}i:6;a:3:{s:2:"id";s:4:"1631";s:8:"box_size";s:1:"2";s:9:"box_color";s:7:"color_5";}i:7;a:3:{s:2:"id";s:4:"1580";s:8:"box_size";s:1:"2";s:9:"box_color";s:7:"color_1";}i:8;a:3:{s:2:"id";s:4:"1549";s:8:"box_size";s:1:"3";s:9:"box_color";s:7:"color_4";}i:9;a:3:{s:2:"id";s:4:"1681";s:8:"box_size";s:1:"3";s:9:"box_color";s:7:"color_5";}i:10;a:3:{s:2:"id";s:4:"1671";s:8:"box_size";s:1:"2";s:9:"box_color";s:7:"color_6";}}

2011-09-28

Wed, 28 Sep 2011 17:52:20 +0300

a:10:{i:0;a:3:{s:2:"id";s:4:"1679";s:8:"box_size";s:1:"3";s:9:"box_color";s:7:"color_5";}i:1;a:3:{s:2:"id";s:4:"1667";s:8:"box_size";s:1:"2";s:9:"box_color";s:7:"color_5";}i:2;a:3:{s:2:"id";s:4:"1603";s:8:"box_size";s:1:"3";s:9:"box_color";s:7:"color_5";}i:3;a:3:{s:2:"id";s:4:"1594";s:8:"box_size";s:1:"5";s:9:"box_color";s:7:"color_6";}i:4;a:3:{s:2:"id";s:4:"1605";s:8:"box_size";s:1:"4";s:9:"box_color";s:7:"color_4";}i:5;a:3:{s:2:"id";s:4:"1592";s:8:"box_size";s:1:"4";s:9:"box_color";s:7:"color_6";}i:6;a:3:{s:2:"id";s:4:"1631";s:8:"box_size";s:1:"2";s:9:"box_color";s:7:"color_5";}i:7;a:3:{s:2:"id";s:4:"1580";s:8:"box_size";s:1:"3";s:9:"box_color";s:7:"color_1";}i:8;a:3:{s:2:"id";s:4:"1549";s:8:"box_size";s:1:"3";s:9:"box_color";s:7:"color_4";}i:9;a:3:{s:2:"id";s:4:"1671";s:8:"box_size";s:1:"2";s:9:"box_color";s:7:"color_6";}}

Carbon footprint of food

Wed, 28 Sep 2011 17:52:20 +0300

Percentage of emissions per capita NOW (left) and in 2050 (right). Food will increasingly play a role in carbon mitigation.

75%

Tue, 27 Sep 2011 04:40:32 +0300

Carbon emissions reduction using timber floor construction vs. pre-cast concrete. (Low2No study)

2011-09-28

Tue, 27 Sep 2011 04:40:32 +0300

a:9:{i:0;a:3:{s:2:"id";s:4:"1667";s:8:"box_size";s:1:"2";s:9:"box_color";s:7:"color_5";}i:1;a:3:{s:2:"id";s:4:"1671";s:8:"box_size";s:1:"2";s:9:"box_color";s:7:"color_6";}i:2;a:3:{s:2:"id";s:4:"1603";s:8:"box_size";s:1:"3";s:9:"box_color";s:7:"color_5";}i:3;a:3:{s:2:"id";s:4:"1594";s:8:"box_size";s:1:"5";s:9:"box_color";s:7:"color_6";}i:4;a:3:{s:2:"id";s:4:"1605";s:8:"box_size";s:1:"4";s:9:"box_color";s:7:"color_4";}i:5;a:3:{s:2:"id";s:4:"1592";s:8:"box_size";s:1:"4";s:9:"box_color";s:7:"color_6";}i:6;a:3:{s:2:"id";s:4:"1631";s:8:"box_size";s:1:"2";s:9:"box_color";s:7:"color_5";}i:7;a:3:{s:2:"id";s:4:"1580";s:8:"box_size";s:1:"3";s:9:"box_color";s:7:"color_1";}i:8;a:3:{s:2:"id";s:4:"1549";s:8:"box_size";s:1:"3";s:9:"box_color";s:7:"color_4";}}

2011-09-27

Tue, 27 Sep 2011 04:39:07 +0300

a:14:{i:0;a:3:{s:2:"id";i:1669;s:8:"box_size";i:3;s:9:"box_color";s:7:"color_1";}i:1;a:3:{s:2:"id";i:1667;s:8:"box_size";i:3;s:9:"box_color";s:7:"color_1";}i:2;a:3:{s:2:"id";i:1631;s:8:"box_size";i:3;s:9:"box_color";s:7:"color_1";}i:3;a:3:{s:2:"id";i:1629;s:8:"box_size";i:3;s:9:"box_color";s:7:"color_1";}i:4;a:3:{s:2:"id";i:1617;s:8:"box_size";i:3;s:9:"box_color";s:7:"color_1";}i:5;a:3:{s:2:"id";i:1615;s:8:"box_size";i:3;s:9:"box_color";s:7:"color_1";}i:6;a:3:{s:2:"id";i:1605;s:8:"box_size";i:3;s:9:"box_color";s:7:"color_1";}i:7;a:3:{s:2:"id";i:1603;s:8:"box_size";i:3;s:9:"box_color";s:7:"color_1";}i:8;a:3:{s:2:"id";i:1594;s:8:"box_size";i:3;s:9:"box_color";s:7:"color_1";}i:9;a:3:{s:2:"id";i:1592;s:8:"box_size";i:3;s:9:"box_color";s:7:"color_1";}i:10;a:3:{s:2:"id";i:1580;s:8:"box_size";i:3;s:9:"box_color";s:7:"color_1";}i:11;a:3:{s:2:"id";i:1578;s:8:"box_size";i:3;s:9:"box_color";s:7:"color_1";}i:12;a:3:{s:2:"id";i:1549;s:8:"box_size";i:3;s:9:"box_color";s:7:"color_1";}i:13;N;}

7.1

Tue, 27 Sep 2011 02:44:04 +0300

Mt CO2e emissions per resident New York City

2011-09-27

Tue, 27 Sep 2011 02:44:04 +0300

a:13:{i:0;a:3:{s:2:"id";i:1667;s:8:"box_size";i:3;s:9:"box_color";s:7:"color_1";}i:1;a:3:{s:2:"id";i:1631;s:8:"box_size";i:3;s:9:"box_color";s:7:"color_1";}i:2;a:3:{s:2:"id";i:1629;s:8:"box_size";i:3;s:9:"box_color";s:7:"color_1";}i:3;a:3:{s:2:"id";i:1617;s:8:"box_size";i:3;s:9:"box_color";s:7:"color_1";}i:4;a:3:{s:2:"id";i:1615;s:8:"box_size";i:3;s:9:"box_color";s:7:"color_1";}i:5;a:3:{s:2:"id";i:1605;s:8:"box_size";i:3;s:9:"box_color";s:7:"color_1";}i:6;a:3:{s:2:"id";i:1603;s:8:"box_size";i:3;s:9:"box_color";s:7:"color_1";}i:7;a:3:{s:2:"id";i:1594;s:8:"box_size";i:3;s:9:"box_color";s:7:"color_1";}i:8;a:3:{s:2:"id";i:1592;s:8:"box_size";i:3;s:9:"box_color";s:7:"color_1";}i:9;a:3:{s:2:"id";i:1580;s:8:"box_size";i:3;s:9:"box_color";s:7:"color_1";}i:10;a:3:{s:2:"id";i:1578;s:8:"box_size";i:3;s:9:"box_color";s:7:"color_1";}i:11;a:3:{s:2:"id";i:1549;s:8:"box_size";i:3;s:9:"box_color";s:7:"color_1";}i:12;N;}

Pre-fabrication reduces material use by 30%

Mon, 26 Sep 2011 16:25:53 +0300

On-site construction is a highly inefficient action and 30% of the material used in construction is waste. When buildings are constructed off-site in factories waste can be reduced to 2% of total and pre-fabrication can reduce material use by 30%.. This would not only reduce carbon emissions but also reduce building costs, risks and construction time.

2011-09-26

Mon, 26 Sep 2011 16:25:53 +0300

a:14:{i:0;a:3:{s:2:"id";s:4:"1613";s:8:"box_size";s:1:"3";s:9:"box_color";s:7:"color_8";}i:1;a:3:{s:2:"id";i:1665;s:8:"box_size";i:3;s:9:"box_color";s:7:"color_1";}i:2;a:3:{s:2:"id";i:1650;s:8:"box_size";i:3;s:9:"box_color";s:7:"color_1";}i:3;a:3:{s:2:"id";s:4:"1601";s:8:"box_size";s:1:"3";s:9:"box_color";s:7:"color_1";}i:4;a:3:{s:2:"id";s:4:"1599";s:8:"box_size";s:1:"3";s:9:"box_color";s:7:"color_1";}i:5;a:3:{s:2:"id";s:4:"1590";s:8:"box_size";s:1:"3";s:9:"box_color";s:7:"color_1";}i:6;a:3:{s:2:"id";s:4:"1588";s:8:"box_size";s:1:"3";s:9:"box_color";s:7:"color_1";}i:7;a:3:{s:2:"id";s:4:"1586";s:8:"box_size";s:1:"3";s:9:"box_color";s:7:"color_1";}i:8;a:3:{s:2:"id";s:4:"1584";s:8:"box_size";s:1:"3";s:9:"box_color";s:7:"color_1";}i:9;a:3:{s:2:"id";s:4:"1576";s:8:"box_size";s:1:"3";s:9:"box_color";s:7:"color_1";}i:10;a:3:{s:2:"id";s:4:"1572";s:8:"box_size";s:1:"3";s:9:"box_color";s:7:"color_1";}i:11;a:3:{s:2:"id";s:4:"1555";s:8:"box_size";s:1:"3";s:9:"box_color";s:7:"color_1";}i:12;a:3:{s:2:"id";s:4:"1528";s:8:"box_size";s:1:"3";s:9:"box_color";s:7:"color_1";}i:13;a:3:{s:2:"id";s:4:"1596";s:8:"box_size";s:1:"1";s:9:"box_color";s:9:"undefined";}}

Holcim Awards Sitra's Office Design!

Sat, 24 Sep 2011 00:20:00 +0300

The venerable Holcim Foundation has awarded Sitra's office building design an acknowledgement prize! Congratulations to Sauerbruch Hutton Architects (as main authors), Arup and Experientia! The Holcim Jury recognized the multi-story timber office design as being exceptional and the low-to-no carbon emissions principle as a significant contribution to sustainable development.

Juan Lucas Young and Andrew Kiel (Sauerbruch Hutton); Jan-Christoph Zoels (Experientia); Leo Mittelholzer (Holcim Foundation)

The Jury statement read: In terms of its construction and program, the office building is commended by the jury for achieving the aspired principles of transferability, transparency and inventiveness. All of the construction, even the cores and the prefab façade panels will be entirely in Finnish timber – globally an innovation for a 26m high 6-storey office building. Beyond these measures, the project has a successful holistic approach towards its design, connecting social, ecological, aesthetic and economical demands on a high level and it is thus an outstanding example of how sustainable architecture can be achieved on a larger scale. More in the award report here.

We hope that this award will help raise the profile of timber construction and an integrated design approach here in Finland.

Low2No Camp: the making of urban entrepreneurs

Fri, 23 Sep 2011 20:17:00 +0300

A guest post by Outi Kuittinen of Demos Helsinki reporting on this week's Low2No Camp round table:

Low carbon living is about low-energy buildings, superb public transport and smart metres. It is also about groups and individuals that make our cities more beautiful, more flexible, more satisfying, more democratic and more sustainable. Low2No Camp organised by Demos Helsinki with support from Sitra, started this May by bringing together 25 passionate urban activists from Helsinki. To feed their imagination and to raise their bar higher, we shipped them to Berlin in a cargo ship to teach and to learn how to make our cities more sustainable and better to live. Back in Helsinki, we asked them to build their solution for a sustainable city and let them loose.

In summer months the campers were busy organizing their usual stuff like Helsinki Night Bike Rides, Ravintolapäivä (Restaurant day), Kallio Block Party, Punajuuri Block Party and farming urban vegetables. But on those hot days they also scribbled a lot of Post-its, discussed over Facebook, met face to face and sketched presentations thinking and thinking how to scale up what they are doing.

This week in Jätkäsaari they came out to potential partners. What we saw was our urban enthusiasts grown into urban entrepreneurs. They want to change the way we produce our food, use our space, dress ourselves and think of our possibilities to make the city our own. We are very proud to present 100 Ways to Eden, Hukkatila Ltd, pukuhuone.fi, School of Activism and Aquaponics Finland.

What is common to these ventures is that they don't do it all ready for us but enable us, the citizens of the city, to do ourselves.

100 ways to Eden is a cooperative that scales up urban farming. First they will take Pasila and create an urban farming centre in an old railway yard. It will harbour education, research and development on urban farming, plus exhibitions, food markets and gastronomic experiences. Next they will take Europe and Russia.

Hukkatila Ltd is a development company exploring the blue ocean of built environment: the mis- and underused square- and cubicmetres of the city. That is, for example the offices outside working hours, the basements of block of flats, derelict houses, areas waiting for the construction to start. The streetwise experts of Hukkatila will couple these spaces with right users in need, develop concepts to bring the space alive and invest in building the activity.

Pukuhuone.fi (The Dressing room) believes that in ethical and ecological consumption clothes are the new food. Pukuhuone.fi is a web-based service that helps us to develop our own style by providing well-edited inspiration, bringing us the providers that offer quality and style instead of fashion and throwawayism, enabling us to lend and rent clothes and telling how to take care of our belongings.

School of Activism continues what Low2No Camp started. It builds networks of passionate actors and seeds urban activism where its needed. It travels to help local people to solve the problems of their city. From the point of view of the public sector, School of Activism helps to commit the citizens to their city and to bring about fresh solutions. For companies it offers new creative contacts and ideas.

Aquaponics Finland is a closed system of food production that supplies us with plenty of fish and vegetables – grown in our homes, schools and neighborhoods. And it does it with 70% less energy compared to the normal cultivation.

These urban start-ups are out and they are serious. Want to help them fly? Check their contact details on their presentations or contact them through Outi: outi.kuittinen(at)demos.fi.

Thanks Outi!

Making Sustainable Cities an Object of Private Investment

Wed, 21 Sep 2011 20:59:07 +0300

The Only Green Markets are the Ones You Create: Finding Gatekeepers

Fri, 16 Sep 2011 00:58:40 +0300

Resources

Wed, 14 Sep 2011 23:06:38 +0300

As they come available, we will post drawings, images, reports and other material that we think will be helpful for others endeavoring to change how the built environment is designed and delivered.

Sustainability Framework

Enabling Sustainable Lifestyles Concept Book

Making Sustainable Cities Investable

Tue, 13 Sep 2011 20:59:07 +0300

In this short essay, I offer a broad overview of some key issues that come up when thinking about the role of private investment in (re)developing sustainable cities. I concentrate on understanding why investors might look to sustainable cities as an important investment arena.

But I would like to do this within a frame of thinking about how sustainable cities themselves become investable for private capital. This means integrating the project level -- what sorts of buildings, infrastructure, retrofitting, or energy production projects are sustainable -- with a larger vision of cities (broadly understood not merely as political jurisdictions, but as metropolitan regions) as vibrant organisms that need to be thought of holistically for sustainable investment to achieve its potential. Private investors cannot do this alone -- for sustainable cities to become investable, close cross-sector coordination among regional, national, and international governments, the private sector, and civil society groups will be necessary.

I take investment in sustainable cities to be a subset of responsible investment -- that is, investment that integrates environmental and social factors into investment decision-making, and support long-term sustainable economic activity that serves the interests of society as a whole.[1] As I hope to make clear, I believe that sustainable cities are a promising new focus for responsible investment, and a theme that sheds like on the role that finance can play in serving the interest of society as a whole.

Sustainable Cities

Cities have been for some time a vital focus of efforts to address anthropogenic global warming through sustainable investment. For instance, a recent report by the United Nations Finance Initiative Environment Programme (UNEP FI) on "Cities" offers a convenient highlighting of the key reasons that advocates cite for focusing on urban areas.[2] Cities account for outsized resource consumption -- they are home to 50% of the world's population but account for 75% of the world's carbon emissions and 60-80% of the world's energy consumption.

Rapid urbanization in the world's developing economies is a leading social and environmental macrotrend which raises the importance of developing sustainable urban forms amid substantial disparities in wealth and access to opportunity. Already, urban environments across the world both direct and constrain our capacity to respond to issues of resource consumption, carbon emissions, and, more expansively, sustainable human and economic development.

At the same time, cities offer enormous opportunity. The concentration of economic, social, and intellectual activity in close quarters makes cities sources of innovation and diffusion of sustainable practices.[3] There are positive externalities associated with urban economic activity. Well-designed, dense, compact, and connected urban form is tied to more sustainable living patterns. And by virtue of their concentration of people and activity, cities offer scale, the ability to support sustainable investments of the magnitude to make a difference in the face of the immense challenge posed by climate change.

So what are sustainable cities? For the purposes of this note I will focus primarily on carbon mitigation, the topic that has received the most attention to date in terms of investment, though there are other resource issues around water or ecosystem preservation, for instance, or resiliency and adaptation issues related to likely changes in climate, that are equally as important.

A variety of approaches to the problem take into account both the need to find new ways to build new cities that serve growing urban populations, and the imperative of revitzing existing cities of all sizes by making buildings more energy efficient, energy sources clean and renewable, and urban design more friendly to carbon mitigating lifestyles and work patterns. Though there is no clear working definition of a "sustainable city" as of yet, we can set as a rough benchmark something like an urban area that mitigates climate-related emissions significantly enough to meet consensus estimates for what is needed to mitigate climate change. In other words, sustainable cities must meet their share of responsibility in global targets for emission reduction set out by organizations such as the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.[4]

An impressive and growing literature on sustainable cities has focused on the need for new commitments to sustainable urban planning, investment, civic engagement, and national and international coordination in support of sustainable cities. International groups like the C40 Climate Leaders Group -- supported by the Clinton Climate Initiative, or ICLEI -- Local Governments for Sustainability, bring together municipal leaders with public, private, and non-profit organizations to highlight and share best practices and toolkits. Climate change networks that engage the private sector -- groups like Ceres and its Investor Network on Climate Risk; or the Climate Group -- have similarly worked on specifically urban issues in relation their broad goals of guiding private sector activity towards more sustainable practices.

The role of private investment in sustainable cities has received specific attention, with advocates from all sectors searching for ways to mobilize private capital towards more efficient, resilient, and productive cities[5]. Discussions often center on how to engage private investors, what products they might use to invest in sustainable cities, and what public policies will most successfully catalyze private investment.

Sustainable Cities are an Opportunity for Private Investors

Investing in sustainable cities is more a topic of discussion than an investment discipline as of yet. Investors might look for sustainable projects such as wind energy production, or green building development, or transit lines and smart growth real estate – but these are not necessarily linked to cities themselves.

But there are a number of reasons to think that investors might take up sustainable cities themselves as a topic. I will focus here on the growth of two types of investors who may come to play an important part in this movement – to simplify, I'll call them Responsible Investors and Impact Investors, though in reality there is substantial overlap in who they are.

The archetypal Responsible Investor is a large institutional investor – say a pension or sovereign wealth fund – with theoretically long term time horizons and a class of beneficiaries (pensioners, or citizens) who would reap gains from increases in the public good as well as financial returns to the fund.[6] Sustainability has become an important theme for these investors, on the belief that over the long term investments with superior environmental (and social) benefits will potentially outperform, by reducing risks from political, cultural, and economic change, and capturing the benefits of forward-looking economic devleopment.[7] They may have signed onto the UN Principles of Responsible Investment, whose preamble notes that "these Principles may better align investors with broader objectives of society." Many need to invest very large sums of money.[8]

Responsible Investors face the challenge of balancing their portfolios in the face of environmental and social macrotrends, from the growth of emerging markets, to global resource depletion, to rising disparities in wealth, to global trends towards urbanization. The issue that has received perhaps the most attention in recent years is climate change, with, for instance, a recent report from Mercer Investment Consulting arguing that investors must significantly shift their portfolios and asset allocation strategies to take into account the risks and opportunities associated with climate change mitigation and adaptation.[9]

From this perspective, investment sustainable cities offer a number of advantages:

Scale: Cities offer the potential for large scale investments in sustainable infrastructure and real estate, creating opportunities for market development.
Long term time horizons: These investments can mature over long periods, supporting the time horizon of the funds themselves.
Positive externalities: Funds, and their beneficiaries, can benefit from sustainable investment strategies that support economic development and encourage market development for the transition to a low-carbon economy.
Risk mitigation: Sustainable cities may help funds protect themselves against the downside risks of climate change disrupting economic activity.

Each of these factors, at the level of the city, enhance the benefits of any particular sustainable project in which a fund might be invested. Cities with comprehensive sustainability strategies ought, in this view, be more compelling investment opportunities.[10]

Sustainable City investment ecosystem

Impact Investors focus on investments that make financial sense, and have intended, specified, tangible social and/or environmental benefits. They are often associated with innovative investments meant to catalyze other private and public sector capital, or with taking risks and accepting reduced returns in exchange with outsized social impact--for instance by creating investment vehicles that serve low income areas or that support innovative energy efficiency investments. They may join organizations such as the Global Impact Investing Network, which focus on regions and sectors of interest to multiple investors.[11]

The archetypal Impact Investor is a foundation or high-net worth individual focused on creating social impact through market tools. For these investors, sustainable cities offer:

Innovation: The innovation associated with dense urban living, and the ability to grow to scale relatively quickly, allows Impact Investors to support catalytic opportunities.
Leverage: Sustainable Cities offer potentially scalable models that can be applied elsewhere, creating leverage for the social benefits of impact investments.
High impact targets: Impact Investors have the potential to provide below market capital to low-income areas, or to support mixed-income development, that ensures that sustainable cities serve whole populations, and do not merely externalize environmental costs onto underserved areas. In addition, investors particularly concerned about specific localities have the opportunity to address a variety of issues all connected to the sustainability of a particular place of high interest to them.
Sustainable investment ecosystems: Impact investment can involve complex deals and risk taking on innovation that require the support of public, private and civil society ecosystem in order to succeed. Sustainable cities, understood holistically, would be laboratories for developing investment ecosystems that deploy private capital more effectively to public purpose.

As for Responsible Investors, the idea of a sustainable city – a metropolitan region whose design and culture favor sustainable energy use and living patterns – increases the benefits for Impact Investors of each of these factors, by capturing the benefits of individual investments and creating mutually beneficial and reinforcing deployments of capital.

Vehicles for Investment

Responsible Investment and Impact Investment have both received substantial attention and growth in recent years, catalyzing products for all sorts of investors that have carbon mitigation, urban resiliency, or sustainable land management built into their business rationale.

For instance, the World Bank, the IFC, the European Investment Bank, and others have developed a class of "green bonds" meant to appeal to institutional and retail investors who look for relatively straightforward investment products that serve these sustainability goals. These bonds help finance, among other things, urban infrastructure projects tied to carbon mitigation efforts. The Climate Bonds group is working on standards to ensure that green bonds fulfill their environmental promise, and in the process provide readily accessible products for investors and bond issuers alike. [12]

Other examples include real estate funds that target transit-oriented development or energy efficient buildings. Efforts have been made by large real estate fund managers to green their existing building portfolios. Green building guidelines such as the LEED program of the US Green Building Council, the BREEAM ratings in Britain, or Green Star in Australia have all helped set standards for energy efficient buildings. Specialized funds have developed to help green affordable and workforce housing units, or to revitalize brownfield sites in cities and reduce sprawl, or to build or refurbish mixed-use, mixed-income buildings in proximity to transit.

Finally, venture capital and fixed income funds have supported innovative small business development around environmentally sustainable goods and services.

These various products are designed to appeal to different sorts of investors. Responsible Investors are looking for products which fit into their portfolios, and can be benchmarked for financial return against peer groups with less social impact. These investors face the challenge of finding investable products that aggregate enough deals to absorb institutional scale capital. They often depend on third parties -- public or civil society -- to work with them on designing investable deals, either through community engagement or financial support of one sort or another. Successful products have typically come in the form of conventional investment products, with support from collateral organizations ensuring the delivery of public benefit. For Impact Investors, the need is for a robust infrastructure that can source deals in hard to work places, or provide capital to mitigate risk or enter new spaces for investment. Across the range of investments, urban areas and sustainability have been a focus.

But the products themselves rarely are designed to support sustainable cities, understood holistically. Instead, they focus on projects, deal aggregation, and fund development that contribute to sustainable goals within an urban setting. How can we take this interest in sustainable investment products, and turn it into support for sustainable cities themselves?

Making Sustainable Cities Investable

For private investment to fully participate in making cities sustainable, investment products, public policies, and civic support need to be created around efforts that combine an interest in sustainability, the importance of cities, and the multiple potential sources of capital. This will be most effective where the models of urban places and metropolitan regions are developed that link investment to broader sustainability goals. Otherwise, the benefits of sustainable projects -- one-off sustainable investments -- cannot capitalize on the long-term benefits and innovative potential of truly sustainable communities.

To make a city investable, then, it requires the coordination of projects, funds, investors, policy makers, and civil society organizations, around a common goal against which specific types of investments can be measured. Investors differ in their needs and capacity, and so multiple forms of private capital will be necessary to support sustainable cities. Just as importantly, a framework that coordinates these sources of capital, helps build pipeline opportunities, and creates mechanisms to hold investors accountable for superior social and environmental performance, is fundamental to creating a sustainable investment platform. In other words, some set of stakeholders must create a vision for a sustainable city that both encourages and holds investment to account.

Examples of sustainable city policies abound, but examples of sustainable city policies designed to catalyze private investment are harder to come by. Four examples can help illustrate what might be necessary to make sustainable cities investable. First, the JESSICA program, a program of the European Investment Bank, encourages the creation of metropolitan-based investment funds that catalyze private investment by creating investment policies that use public money to catalyze longer term time horizons, and coordinate multiple sources of investment from public and private sources. In theory, the JESSICA program will help make investment in sustainable urban areas more attractive, and the place-based nature of the fund offers the potential for coordinating investment against a broader vision for a sustainable city.[13]

In the United States, Living Cities, a consortium of the country's largest charitable foundations, has begun efforts to integrate public policy and private investment towards share goals for urban regeneration. In a difficult investment climate generally, and in places in need of investments like Detroit, Cleveland, or Baltimore, Living Cities is working to integrate urban regeneration strategies so that multiple stakeholders have a share goal against which the value of specific deals can be measured. Not every deal needs to deliver the same social and environmental benefits, but together the deals are meant to create capacity, in cities as a whole, to receive sustainable investment.[14]

And in Rio de Janeiro, the Brazilian Ministry of the Environment, the municipality and state of Rio de Janeiro, and the US Environmental Protection Agency have begun work on a bilateral project that seeks to coordinate public and private investment opportunities in Rio, in anticipation of accelerated private infrastructure and other investment due to the World Cup in 2014 and the Olympics in 2016. This project aims to support the directing of investment towards the development of a sustainable Rio. A sustainable Rio includes efforts to extend public transit systems and transit-oriented development, improve water and waste management, and revitalize Rio's bays, so that access to economic and social opportunities for people of all classes is tied to investment and development criteria.[15]

Finally, Sitra's own low2no project in the Jatkasaari district of Helsinki has focused on ways to make the development of a city block -- through new urban design criteria, procurement strategies, and innovative use of sustainable materials -- both a model for and tool to create a market for sustainable development practices that can be extended throughout Helsinki, Finland, and beyond.[16]

Together these relatively new projects, even in their developing state, offer some suggestions as to how to make sustainable cities an investable opportunity for private markets. They suggest a series of considerations for making sustainable cities -- as cities, as places, as sources of mutually beneficial investment and positive externalities that generate both public goods and investment returns – investable.

Build a common table around the goal of a sustainable city: Coordinating public, private, and civil society actors around a common goal can lay the groundwork for sustainable investment from the private sector. At the level of the project, complicated deals requiring multiple sources of funding and multiple forms of approval from the public sector can benefit from linkage to clear sustainable development goals. At the level of the city, a coherent strategy for carbon mitigation can help match investment opportunities to investors who can achieve sustainability results. Perhaps most importantly, at the level of the city, a consensus set of goals can take the onus off any one particular investor, fund, or project to achieve everything themselves.

Think systemically about market transformation: Private investment in sustainability, especially in the built environment, can sometimes focus on one-off investment opportunities or signature projects rather than the development of systemic sustainable change. If the development of a sustainable investment ecosystem is necessary to support such change, attention must be paid not just to high-profile projects, but to robust investment intermediaries, community engagement, forums for coordinating different kinds of investment, pipeline generation of deals that serve a common goal, and procurement strategies that help create robust sustainable supply chains of goods and services.
Use land-use planning, regulations and incentives to guide the market: Even investors who focus on sustainability as an intended outcome are guided by regulations and incentives that promote public goals. A clear policy framework around land-use and green building regulations, incentives for energy efficiency and alternative energy production, or public private partnerships that match public and private money are all ways to help both catalyze private investment and to shape investment outcomes. The use of public policy must strike a balance between engaging investors and offering a reasonable rate of return on investments that make demonstrable contributions to urban sustainability.
Sustainable cities should be inclusive communities: The idea of a resource efficient, low-carbon city will not answer the challenges of climate change and resource scarcity if it is inaccessible or unaffordable to all but the wealthy or powerful. Otherwise, the gains in sustainability are likely to exacerbate social inequity at the same time that they outsource environmental damage beyond a city's borders. An integrated approach to supporting sustainability with social equity is needed to create truly sustainable cities. This is true both for the challenges of retrofitting and regenerating existing cities, and meeting the demands of the growing urban populations and new (mega) cities found especially in emerging markets.

Conclusion

The advantages of making sustainable cities an object of private investment should rebound to society and investors alike. A holistic view of sustainable cities, with a coherent plan for engaging private investors across the range of asset classes, sectors, and risk/return profiles that cities need for private investment, should allow for self-reinforcing positive externalities. Cities can coordinate their public policies and investments with private investors to accelerate the transition to a low-carbon economy within a framework that ensure the creation of public goods. Investors, in return, should be able to reap the benefits of more dynamic and resilient economies that will, over the long term, mitigate the risks of climate change, and help define and create new investment opportunities.

This virtuous circle will only be achievable if we move beyond one-off investment in projects and funds, and find a way to make sustainable cities themselves investable.

Footnotes:

[1] For an overview of our work at the Initiative for Responsible Investment on these topics see www.hausercenter.or/iri.

[2] United Nations Environment Programme , Cities: Investing in Energy and Resource Efficiency (2011).
http://www.unep.org/greeneconomy/Portals/88/documents/ger/GER_12_Cities.pdf

[3] See for instance Ryan Avent's elaboration of this theme in The Gated City (Amazon Kindle Single, 2011).

[4] This is obviously a relatively narrow definition, meant only to capture the family resemblance among efforts to make cities sustainable. For an example of a more comprehensive account see for instance Saskia Sassen, "Bridging the ecologies of cities and of nature," The 4th International Conference of the International Forum on Urbanism (IFoU) 2009 Amsterdam/Delft, The New Urban Question – Urbanism beyond Neo-Liberalism 2009.

[5] Private investor here is an umbrella term for non-public investment that seeks a financial return.

[6] The term "universal investor" has come to be used to describe those investors so large that, in order to diversify their portfolios, they cannot divest from the economy. For a good definition see James Hawley and Andrew Williams, The Rise of Fiduciary Capitalism: how Institutional Investors Can Make Corporate America More Democratic (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2000).

[7] The United Nations Environment Programme Finance Initiative has elaborated on this theme in a series of papers focused on the materiality of environmental information to investment decisions – see most recently Universal Ownership: Why Enviromental Externalities Matter to Institutional Investors (UNEP FI, 2011) and more generally the publications found at http://www.unepfi.org/publications/investment/index.html.

[8] See www.unpri.org for the Principles of Responsible Investment.

[9] Mercer's The Climate Change Report: the impact of climate change on strategic asset allocation can be found at http://www.mercer.com/articles/1406410

[10] For two recent efforts to address the role of institutional investors in sustainable investing see the OECD Discussion Note Della Croce, R., C. Kaminker and F. Stewart (2011). "The Role of Pension Funds in Financing Green Growth Initiatives" and Bolton, P., Guesnerie, R., and Samama, F., 2010, "Towards an International Green Fund", mimeo, September 2010.

[11] For more on impact investing see www..thegiin.org and the works cited there.

[12] We have posted a brief note on the global green bond market at http://hausercenter.org/iri/wp-content/uploads/2010/05/IRI-Green-Bonds-note.pdf. Climatebonds.net is an invaluable resource on the topic.

[13] On JESSICA see http://www.eib.org/products/technical_assistance/jessica. We included a short case on JESSICA as an impact investing policy in itiative in our paper, written with our partneres at Pacific Community Ventures, Impact Invseting: A Framework for Policy Analysis and Design, (2011) found at http://hausercenter.org/iri/wp-content/uploads/2010/12/Impact-Investing-Policy_FULL-REPORT_FINAL.pdf

[14] On Living Cities's approach see Ben Hecht, "Revitalizing America's Struggling Cities", Stanford Social Innovation Reveiew (Fall 2011) found at:

[15] For a brief introduction to this project, the Joint Initiative for Urban Sustainability, see http://www.epa.gov/international/jius.html.

[16] Low2no.org.