1. #WILDCITIES
VOLUME TWO | JANUARY 2016#WILDCITIES
evolveagency.com
#WILDCITIES
As more of our city space
disappears under concrete,
glass & steel, our needs for
nature express themselves
in more and more aspects
of how we live today.
2. CONTENTS
evolveagency.com
#WILDCITIES
CHAPTERS
By Rupert Mellor, Head of Publishing, Evolve Agency
Formerly the award-winning editor of The Times’ culture and youth sections
metro and meg@, Rupert Mellor has since contributed freelance commissions
to newspapers including Financial Times, The Guardian, Daily Telegraph, Wall Street
Journal (Europe) and Sydney Morning Herald and magazines around the world.
In parallel roles as communications consultant and copy writer, he has worked
with clients including Lloyds TSB, Laing O’Rourke, Orange, Greenpeace
and Arts Council England.
INTRODUCTION
I A NEW GENERATION OF GREEN METROPOLITAN ICONS
II FOR BUSINESS, PLEASURE, LEISURE
WELL-BEING, IT’S GREAT OUTDOORS
III HOW PLACEMAKING PLANNERS ENTREPRENEURS
ARE KICKSTARTING ACCESS TO NATURE
IV TODAY, PROGRESSIVE DEVELOPERS BRANDS
MAXIMISE THE VALUE OF OUTDOOR SPACES
V GROUND-BREAKING CROSS-SECTOR
CONNECTIVITY THAT POWERS ECO INNOVATION
VI NEW POLICY’S GAME-CHANGING OPPORTUNITIES
FOR CONSTRUCTION INFRASTRUCTURE
VII SUSTAINABILITY AS DISRUPTIVE INNOVATION —
BOOSTING BOTH START-UPS BUSINESS GIANTS
VIII EATING OUR WAY BACK TO NATURE,
THE RISE OF THE INDEPENDENTS
IX PUTTING THE MARKET BACK IN SUPERMARKET —
A HOLISTIC NEW ROLE FOR THE HIGH-STREET GIANTS?
X DIGGING FOR VICTORY — A SOPHISTICATED, 21ST
-CENTURY
REINVENTION OF URBAN FARMING
XI PEOPLE, PLACES, IDEAS
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AS MORE CITY SPACE
DISAPPEARS DAILY
BENEATH CONCRETE,
GLASS STEEL, CONTACT
WITH NATURE BECOMES
MORE THAN EVER A LONGED-
FOR LUXURY. HOW THEN CAN
PLANNERS, DEVELOPERS,
MANUFACTURERS BRANDS
MOST MEANINGFULLY
INTEGRATE GREEN PLACES,
EXPERIENCES VALUES
INTO OUR LIVES?
INTRODUCTION
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A NEW
GENERATION
OF GREEN
METROPOLITAN
ICONS
On October 12, London’s Tate Modern,
Europe’s most visited contemporary
art museum, unveiled the latest
exhibit to occupy its hallowed Turbine
Hall. Titled Empty Lot, the sculpture
installation by Abraham Cruzvillegas
presented 240 large wooden planters
set in a geometric structure, each
filled with bare earth from a different
London park. Unplanted, and bathed
in the glow of horticultural lights,
the planters will, over the piece’s
six-month duration, gradually reveal
the dormant plant life of each sample
of the city’s soil. Describing the piece
as ‘a non-figurative map of London’,
the Mexican artist taps into a question
people all over the capital, and all the
world’s urban centres, are now asking
more intently than ever – what is the
nature of my city?
With urbanisation at unprecedented
levels, green city spaces are today
prized as never before. Trophy
landscape projects are capturing
imaginations around the world
and showing the communities that
create them in intriguing new light.
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Opening its first section in 2009,
New York’s High Line park has
become a byword for progressive
interventions that raise cities’ quality
of life with smart integration of natural
landscapes into the urban fabric.
Singapore has added a twist of
forward-looking innovation to its
business-like, steady-as-she-goes
reputation with the 2012 opening
of Gardens by the Bay, a 250-acre
collection of futuristic structures
and fantastical landscapes on
reclaimed land powered by solar
energy and green tech. It now looks
certain that London will follow suit,
with the £170 million infrastructure/
leisure hybrid the Garden Bridge on
‘More than ever,
I think people crave
outdoor space’
BEE EMMOTT, EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR,
GARDEN BRIDGE TRUST
course to open in 2018. ‘More than
ever, I think people crave outdoor
space,’ says Bee Emmott, Executive
Director of the Garden Bridge Trust.
‘You can’t buy a house with a garden in
central London any more, development
has become so intense, and with
projections for London’s population
to keep growing at pace, we are really
understanding how precious its green
spaces are. The Garden Bridge will be
a beautiful new park where people can
relax and learn about nature, as well as
being an important transport link,
and its design by Thomas Heatherwick
and landscape by Dan Pearson Studio
will make it an icon that sends a clear
message about London’s world-class
innovation. It will also be an important
contribution to the city’s ecology,
especially for pollinating insects,
boost tourism and catalyse major
redevelopment of the Northbank area,
which has huge untapped potential.’
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FOR BUSINESS,
PLEASURE, LEISURE
WELL-BEING,
IT’S GREAT OUTDOORS
For all its voracious development
and crowding skyline, London is in
fact considered the third greenest
major city on Earth, with some
60 per cent of its surface made
up of green space or water.
‘Public parks were a British innovation,’
says Peter Beardsley, a freelance
landscape designer who worked
on the Garden Bridge’s planting
schemes during his seven years with
Dan Pearson Studio. ‘In Victorian
It is well-documented
that contact with
nature enhances a
sense of well-being
times they were a state investment in
community health when most people
were living in quite toxic, industrial
conditions. They are still getting lots of
use as such – there have never been
so much outdoor sports equipment
and exercise classes in London’s parks,
and you can even make gardening your
workout of choice, with programmes
like The Conservation Volunteers’
Green Gym, which promises to make
you sweat while you help beautify
one of London’s green spaces.’
It is well-documented too that contact
with nature enhances a sense of
well-being, and can even help to
relieve depression and trauma,
which like the physical benefits of
time spent outdoors can significantly
lighten demands on medical services,
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and associated costs. In her thorough
investigation of all the advantages
the Garden Bridge’s new parkland
might bring the city, Emmott came
to know some individual stories that
have made her an enthusiastic
advocate of the restorative
powers of contact with nature.
‘We reached out to a lot of quite small
local initiatives that help people with
mental-health difficulties, or learning
difficulties, and have developed green
initiatives to work with these groups of
people,’ she explains. ‘One organisation
called Grounded Ecotherapy works with
a number of homeless people, people
who have had drug problems, people
who have been on the street. And they
have an absolutely beautiful garden on
the top of Queen Elizabeth Hall in the
Southbank Centre, not just green
space but really expertly conceived
and maintained planting, designed
by the Eden Project in Cornwall.
The head gardener is in his 50s.
He had been homeless for about
30 years, and had serious drug
problems. Grounded Ecotherapy
has turned his life around. He has
a full-time job, he’s so proud of the
space and he works with about 12
people a day who, as he has done,
are feeling the benefits of working
outdoors, and with their hands. We’re
really keen to make the Garden Bridge
a hub for that kind of activity, to
incorporate volunteering programmes
and help getting people off the streets
and back into work through nature
and gardening.’
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HOW PLACEMAKING
PLANNERS
ENTREPRENEURS
ARE KICKSTARTING
ACCESS TO NATURE
Right now, perhaps the highest
expression of London’s love for its
green spaces is the National Park
City campaign, a fledgling bid to
make London the first city in the
world with a status akin to that of
Yosemite, the Serengeti and the
Great Barrier Reef, albeit in a new,
urban definition. The Garden Bridge
and the spectacular brownfield
rehabilitation that is Stratford’s Queen
Elizabeth Olympic Park will certainly
help that ambition, as will plans for a
bold new interface with the largest
single green space in the capital,
the River Thames.
Designed by the architectural practice
Studio Octopi in response to the
Architecture Foundation’s 2013 open-
call ideas project London As It Could
Be Now, the Thames Baths proposes a
floating, pontoon-like pool in the river
itself. A celebration of the dramatic
improvements over recent years of
the quality of water now rich in
salmon, sea trout and freshwater
shrimp, and environmentally sensitive
filtration and energy technologies,
the Kickstarter-funded project has
evolved to become a prototype that
the architects hope will open up urban
waterways everywhere to new use.
‘We want to get
people to reengage
with the Thames’
CHRIS ROMER-LEE, CO-FOUNDER, STUDIO OCTOPI
It’s an ambition that a massive rise
in the numbers of outdoor ‘wild
swimmers’ in the last few years
suggest has legs. ‘We want to get
people to reengage with the Thames,’
says Studio Octopi’s co-founder
Chris Romer-Lee.
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‘It’s London’s largest public space,
people used to swim in it in Victorian
times, when there were several
floating pools on it, and in that way
it brought people together. We want
to claim a tiny part of it back for people
to enjoy, and have it contribute to
boosting people’s health and well-being.
And this won’t be another high-priced
tourist theme ride for the Thames.
This is no London Eye. Our aim is to
solve the problem of there being no
access to the waters of the Thames
for the community. The structure will
be free to visit, and the swimming
price-matched to the nearest local-
authority pool, so kids could even learn
to swim in the same waters their great-
grandparents swam in.’
The same firm is also working on plans
to build a new, rustically styled lido on
Peckham Rye park, and that borough
may also get its own mini High Line
if plans by local residents for The
Peckham Coal Line, an elevated park
that will transform disused railway coal
sidings and link the area’s two main
streets, come to fruition. Mayor Boris
Johnson’s plan to give the city 100
new ‘Pocket Parks’, which recently
came to a successful conclusion, is
yet another symptom of a desire to
maximise any available open space
which is characteristic of our times.
It’s a first-world manifestation of what
Marco Casagrande, an award-hoarding
Finnish architect, urban philosopher
and environmental artist for whom
the word ‘maverick’ could have been
invented, calls ‘urban acupuncture’.
Guided by the mantra ‘nature is
the only reality’, Casagrande has
achieved remarkable success, most
notably in highly congested, intensely
urbanised Asian cities, in improving
living standards and social cohesion
by chipping small chinks into cities’
concrete armour and establishing
modest built interventions shaped
by grass-roots local knowledge
and human-scale needs. These
include the rehabilitation of an
illegal slum in Taipei into a thriving,
low-impact community that went on
to reintroduce sustainable farming to
the city. There, as here, it seems that
hands-on access to a small patch of
nature can ward off the alienation
that can be a side effect of intensely
urbanised and industrial environments,
as well as seeding far broader benefits.
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TODAY, PROGRESSIVE
DEVELOPERS BRANDS
MAXIMISE THE VALUE
OF OUTDOOR SPACES
‘As with built spaces, the inflated cost
of London land means that people are
eking out every last ounce of value
from the green spaces available to
them,’ says Beardsley. ‘And that brings
a tension, too, between those two
imperatives. I’ve been asked several
times by developers to design a roof
terrace with a height allowance of
100mm, which means there’s no way
to have a railing that would make it
safe, because they know they can get
an extra £100,000 for the penthouse
if they add an extra 15cm of ceiling
height and so have used up all their
allowance. Or they may just be adding
the green space to get credits against
the Section 106 fees they have to pay
local authorities. Outdoor space is
often a bit of an afterthought.’
That is starting to change, Beardsley
says, at least at the higher end of
development, citing Argent’s More
London and King’s Cross projects
as good examples of integrated
thinking that allow users of the spaces
meaningful interaction with them
during and after works – in the case
of King’s Cross even extending to the
temporary installation of a naturalistic,
reed- and lily-lined outdoor swimming
pond. It’s a trend whose widespread
growth would serve the city well,
‘People are eking
out every last
ounce of value from
green spaces’
PETER BEARDSLEY,
FREELANCE LANDSCAPE DESIGNER
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especially as traditional urban
planning becomes more and more
outsourced to large-scale developers,
who rather than buildings now
frequently deliver micro-cities with
carefully planned shared spaces and
features designed to foster a sense
of community. Might tapping into
green spaces’ restorative potential,
potentially partnering with charities
to offer challenged individuals work
opportunities, sow some authentic
community spirit into these new-
builds and represent a progressive
new practice for developers? Could
it even help with the perceived
stereotype of developers as the
exclusively profit-driven foes of
established communities?
Of course, there’s much more to
green cities than plant life. While
cities occupy just two per cent of
the planet’s surface, they consume
75 per cent of its resources, and
the pressure is very much on to find
more sustainable ways to live, an
imperative which is both requiring
rethinking of age-old commercial
practices, and driving massive
amounts of innovation. More than
100 cities worldwide have now
announced programmes that will
make them carbon-neutral, one of
many eco ambitions which, while
presenting substantial challenges
to planners, are powering
ground-breaking new
technologies in construction,
energy and manufacture.
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GROUND-BREAKING
CROSS-SECTOR
CONNECTIVITY
THAT POWERS
ECO INNOVATION
‘I don’t think this government is as
committed to energy-saving and green
issues as one would like,’ says Peter
Murray, Chairman of New London
Architecture and the communications
consultancy Wordsearch. ‘I understand
why – they make housing more
expensive and slow things down
– but generally the thinking is not
integrated enough. If more work had
been done on introducing sustainable
urban drainage ten years ago I doubt
there would be the need for the major
infrastructure project of the Thames
Tideway Tunnel. If lots of people were
prepared to break up the concrete
they’ve paved over their gardens, that
would make a big difference,’ he says,
recommending another form of urban
acupuncture, ‘but I don’t hear that
conversation going on nearly enough.
‘A big problem we have in London is
what I call siloitis. Because we have
33 separate boroughs with almost
total power over what happens in their
areas, it’s very hard to drive joined-up
progress. So for example Hounslow has
‘A big problem we
have in London is
what I call siloitis’
PETER MURRAY, CHAIRMAN,
NEW LONDON ARCHITECTURE
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signed a 25-year PFI contract
with a highways contractor,
and nobody knows whether that
specifies impermeable repaving
every time a repair is needed, which
will exacerbate draining issues, or
if sustainable elements can be built
into repairs. Those conversations
just don’t take place. You’d imagine
the Environment Agency would be
pushing this agenda, but they seem
a bit behind the curve on some of
the impacts of climate change.’
While cities including Copenhagen,
Bristol, Amsterdam, Oslo and New
York push committed unilateral
green agendas, traditional models of
procurement at local-government
level remain responsible for much
of the frustration Murray expresses.
But, driven by imaginative and
entrepreneurial new kinds of
collaboration, there is progress.
Based in New York, Citymart is an
organisation set up by London-
trained architect Sascha Haselmayer
which revolutionises traditional
tendering models for cities’ large-
scale procurements, with outstanding
results. More than 50 cities worldwide
have enlisted Citymart’s help,
publishing their civic challenges to
unprecedentedly broad networks
of potential suppliers, accelerating
schemes by up to three times,
discovering innovative solutions from
providers who are overwhelmingly
small and medium-sized enterprises,
and, through energetic networking
eliminating the 40-year waits it
commonly takes a successful solution
to spread from one city to another.
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NEW POLICY’S
GAME-CHANGING
OPPORTUNITIES FOR
CONSTRUCTION
INFRASTRUCTURE
‘We worked with San Francisco when
they wanted to upgrade all their urban
lighting as part of a $20-million tender
process,’ says Haselmayer. ‘They run
lots of infrastructure services, like
electric vehicle charging, smart meters
and traffic lights through wireless
technology, and we realised that rather
than buy a traditional lighting supplier’s
proprietary closed wireless system
and be tied into it for 25 years, there
was an opportunity to source an open
system and save tens of millions by not
rolling out parallel networks that all do
the same thing. It turned out that the
traditional lighting industry didn’t have
a product that could do that, so we put
this out to the broader market through
our network and were offered 59
solutions. San Francisco chose a small,
20-person company from Switzerland
called Paradox Engineering, whose
solution was based on oil-field
technology, and a successful pilot
was up and running within three
months, setting a liberating precedent
for all cities with similar challenges.
Which is pretty much all of them.’
Environmental construction
requirements in the UK are, says
Murray, reasonably rigorous, but
exemplar projects around the world
show there is much, much further
we could go, at both government
and commercial levels. France, for
example, passed a law earlier this year
requiring all new buildings’ rooftops
to be either partially covered in plants
or solar panels, echoing a mandate
introduced by the Canadian city
Toronto in 2009.
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With the UK’s massive current need
for new housing, opportunities
abound. While our politicians and
planners debate eco towns, a new
generation of garden cities and the
future of the green belt/tourniquet,
bold developers might wish to mull
on some of the lessons successfully
learned elsewhere in the world.
Freiburg in Germany for example has
an impressive collection of passive
houses — homes whose insulation and
ventilation systems are designed to
make heating unnecessary— universally
reduced energy wastage, and because
of its planning, little need for cars.
Denmark’s capital Copenhagen has
a network of bicycle superhighways
estimated to have saved $12 million in
medical costs because of associated
health benefits. Cochin in India has
the world’s first fully solar-powered
airport building, while two thirds of
Singapore’s land surface
is now a water-catchment area
feeding 17 reservoirs.
Helsinki has soothed away its citizens’
dependence on private cars with
ride-sharing apps, car pools and smart
travel plans. In Milan, the extraordinary
Bosco Verticale (Vertical Forest)
apartment building embodies architect
Stefano Boeri’s visionary take on green
living, incorporating some 700 trees
and 16,000 plants, the equivalent of
a hectare of natural forest, into
a façade that helped it win first place
for Europe in the prestigious Council
of Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat
award given by the Illinois Institute
of Technology in Chicago this year.
Even Georgetown in oil-happy Texas
has this year opted to use 100 per
cent renewable energy, although
city manager Jim Briggs was quick
to dispel any suggestion of tree-
hugging proclivities – ‘I’m probably the
furthest thing from an Al Gore clone
you could find. We didn’t do this to
save the world – we did this to get a
competitive rate and reduce the risk
for our consumers.’
And while each has suffered
scaling down of its ambition during
development, brand-new eco cities
including Masdar in the United
Arab Emirates, Dongtan in China
and Iskandar Malaysia just across
the Johor Strait from Singapore all
edge our planners, engineers and
builders closer to game-changing
sustainable practices.
Bold developers
might wish to
mull on some of the
lessons successfully
learned elsewhere
in the world
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SUSTAINABILITY
AS DISRUPTIVE
INNOVATION —
BOOSTING BOTH
START-UPS
BUSINESS GIANTS
It’s notable that wind power has now
been deemed the cheapest electricity
in both the UK and Germany, a first for
any G7 economy, by Bloomberg New
Energy Finance (BNEF). Meanwhile the
think tank Cambridge Econometrics
goes so far as to say that the UK
economy would be £20 billion a year
better off by 2030 if it favoured
offshore wind power over gas-fired
generation. But even as leaders
hesitate to wean their populations
off fossil fuels, new green industries
and sustainable solutions continue to
stimulate entrepreneurial minds and
spark ideas with the power to help
forge a cleaner future. Inspired by the
rapid rise of coffee-shop culture in
the UK, Benjamin Harriman and Arthur
Kay last year established Bio-bean, a
London-based energy company that
recycles used coffee grounds
into advanced biofuels
which can then power buildings
and transport. The Californian
company View makes intelligent
window glass which regulates light
and temperature, generating energy
savings – one of an unending series
of products entering the market
which raise the bar for low-impact
construction ever higher. PowWow,
meanwhile, harnesses city-honed tech
to improve rural operations with an app
that detects leaks in irrigation systems,
saving resources and reducing repairs.
And Ooho, an edible, biodegradable,
seaweed-based membrane may soon
replace plastic water bottles in shops,
denting the mountain of discarded
bottles that stacks up to 38 million a
year in the US alone, and heralding a
new generation of packaging in which
recyclability will be superseded by
compostability.
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Nor is this forward-looking thinking
the exclusive domain of young, agile
start-ups. Green Giants is a book by
Freya Williams, US CEO of the specialist
sustainability communications agency
Futerra, which identifies some of
the major brands which have seen
sustainability not as a constraint but as
a way to drive disruptive innovation and
boost profits, each going on to make $1
billion a year from a business line with
sustainability at its core. These include
Toyota, Chipotle, Unilever, Nike and GE.
Thanks to the efforts of environmental
campaigners over the last decades,
ecological awareness is now
widespread, and the public takes
the issues very seriously, as the recent
scandal over Volkswagen’s emissions
test-dodging software clearly showed
with, for the brand, near-catastrophic
consequences. Consumers who want
to tread more gently on the Earth
have meanwhile never been better
served with ethically sourced
and sustainably made products
and services. And while the
positioning and packaging of
Some major
brands have seen
sustainability as
a way to drive
disruptive innovation
and boost profits
early eco-friendly goods often
had something of the hairshirt
about them, many planet-kind
products increasingly leverage
a more upbeat celebration
of voluptuous nature.
Wholesome toiletries are a case
in point, and while Neal’s Yard
Remedies’ old-school apothecary
aesthetic, launched in 1981, has
proved a prescient classic, the
Rhode Island-based runaway
success Farmaesthetics goes for
a full-on kitchen table pharmacy
look for its Sustainable Beauty®
range, with ‘hand-written’ product
names, fuss-free packaging and
ingredients sourced from ‘American
family farms’. Based on ingredients
from the walled garden of bucolic
Somerset country-house hotel
Babington House, Cowshed
meanwhile achieves standout with
a sassier tone of voice and funky
graphics, a smart marriage of
apple-cheeked pastoral
salubriousness with urbane wit.
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EATING OUR WAY
BACK TO NATURE,
THE RISE OF THE
INDEPENDENTS
Audiences’ eco awareness
has grown in parallel with the
revolution that has turned UK food
culture from the butt of a million
French jokes into an eclectic
and accomplished gastronomic
player, with London’s restaurant
scene holding its own among
the world’s leading cities for
fine dining. And while the rise
and rise of the supermarket
behemoths seemed for some years
unassailable – 2010, declared think
tank New Economics Foundation,
marked ‘the death of small
shops’ – the last few years have
seen a remarkable resurgence
in independent suppliers, with
increases between 2012
and 2013 of 28 per cent in
fishmongers, 31 per cent in bakeries
and 65 per cent in independent
supermarkets. Contributing factors
include our education by TV chefs,
trust-sapping setbacks such as
2013’s horsemeat scandal, and the
introduction by small businesses of
enhanced customer services from
online ordering to home deliveries
to gourmet ready meals, more often
than not wrapped up in savvy
brand marketing that communicates
the businesses’ passion for their
specialisms and human-scale appeal.
Brothers Simon and Nick Mellin, for
example, set up the butcher Roaming
Roosters in Pendle, Lancashire, in 1999,
selling sustainably produced chicken
28% Fishmongers
31% Bakeries
65% Supermarkets
INCREASES IN INDEPENDENT SUPPLIERS 2012-3
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Ginger Pig, which grew from the
Borough Market stall of North
Yorkshire farmer Tim Wilson to a
London micro-empire of seven
shops, is a comparable success
story. It’s also one of more than
100 businesses which work with
Hubbub.co.uk, a specialist groceries
delivery service that neatly taps
into both the growing interest in
unprocessed, independently produced
food and city workers’ increasingly
time-poor routines. ‘For the shops
we work with, there’s a great network
effect,’ says Founder and Co-CEO
Marisa Leaf. ‘Customers might check
us out online to order some meat
from Ginger Pig, then see a wine
recommendation that catches their
eye from Bottle Apostle, or one of the
divine breads produced in a Hackney
railway arch by E5 Bakehouse. Typically
our customers buy from five different
shops, so the cross-sales are fantastic.
It’s just one of the ways being part of
our family can start to level the playing
field a bit for small suppliers whose
rivals are the huge supermarkets.
Plus our service lets both customers
and vendors leave notes, so you can
ask the butcher to throw in some
bones for stock, or the fishmonger
might want to give you a recipe tip
for what you’re buying. It really adds
value for people who love their food.’
High-quality, small-batch foods
served with a smile by the people
who grew, reared and/or prepared
them have also found another vibrant
forum of late in the pop-up street
food markets around the city which
are so popular they seem never to
pop down. These, Leaf’s whip-smart
service, and the new success of
independent gourmet suppliers are
all neat illustrations of how, with the
right shift in thinking, even the most
potentially dehumanizing challenges
of accelerated urbanisation – in these
cases population density and busy
schedules – can be harnessed to bring
new life to the more rustic-rooted
and personable traditions city living
can threaten to erode.
and pork reared on the family farm.
Now their expanded site encompasses
a farm shop, bistro and café, and they
plan to open five new shops across
the north of England next year.
Last year they turned over £1.2
million, this year they are expecting
the figure to reach £10 million.
CHAPTER VIII
‘Typically our customers
buy from five different
shops, so the cross-
sales are fantastic’
MARISA LEAF, FOUNDER
AND C-CEO, HUBBUB.CO.UK
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PUTTING THE
MARKET BACK
IN SUPERMARKET —
A HOLISTIC NEW
ROLE FOR THE HIGH-
STREET GIANTS?
Given that the supermarket giants’
generally falling profits might suggest
that the success of their stack-‘em’-
high ethos has peaked – and at its
most extreme level been co-opted
by the rock-bottom discounters – is
it now time for them to heal the rift
between them and small suppliers? To
put the market back into supermarket?
Fixtures as they are of handy high-
street and out-of-town mall sites the
length and breadth of the country, is
there now scope for them to leverage
their vast power and position their
services as complementary rather
than all-conquering, to even support
independents with dedicated space
in their temples of convenience?
And with Amazon Fresh poised to
make what will certainly be a muscular
move into their territory, albeit one
whose format is as yet unclear, is there
not more than ever incentive to evolve?
Efforts by the megabrands to take
a more touchy-feely approach are
rare, but not unheard of. Last year,
in response to the news that EU
countries throw away 300 million
tons of food every year, the French
chain Intermarché launched an anti-
waste campaign, ‘Inglorious fruits
vegetables’ whose wit and warmth
threw into sharp relief just how aloof
and anonymous such shops generally
seem. Beautifully photographed ‘ugly’
vegetables, of the kind routinely thrown
away by producers used to having them
rejected by supermarkets for not looking
appealing enough, graced posters with
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smart slogans such as ‘A HIDEOUS
ORANGE – makes beautiful juice’
in a dedicated aisle whose lumpen
fruit and veg was marked down by
30 per cent. The result? All stocks
sold out, a 300 per cent increase in
social-media mentions of the chain
in the campaign’s first week, and a
rise in overall footfall of 24 per cent.
In London, Budgen’s supermarket
in Crouch End agreed to host a
temporary, volunteer-run food
growing project Food From The Sky
on its rooftop, selling its produce in
the shop. Meanwhile the initiative
ran educational workshops for
schoolchildren and amateur growers,
even attracting Boris Johnson for
a photo opportunity that powered
the Mayor’s highly successful
exhortations to citizens to form
community growing co-ops.
Food production, both artisanal
and technologically alternative,
also has a growing profile in London,
from the new cheeses created
in a Bermondsey railway arch by
Kappacasein Dairy to the Growing
Underground salad leaves produced
in disused underground World War
II bomb shelter tunnels 33 metres
below Clapham by Zero Carbon Foods.
‘The UK has a real energy of
people trying things and
not being afraid of failing’
Growing hydroponically under low-energy
LED lights, without need for pesticide,
these leaves impressed Michelin-starred
chef Michel Roux Jnr so much he
joined the company as a director.
PIERRE-LOUIS PHELIPOT, FOUNDER,
LONDON JAM FACTORY
A surge of interest in beekeeping in
the city has produced at least six
brands of honey, and Pierre-Louis
Phelipot, a French ex-pat set up shop
as the London Jam Factory last year
after friends repeatedly told him the
fruit-rich preserves he was making in
a traditional copper pot passed on to
him by his mother were outstanding.
‘Interestingly, everyone in the UK
urged me to go for it,’ Phelipot says
on his website. ‘But my French friends
all told me I was crazy. I am in the UK
for exactly that reason. There is a real
energy of people trying things and not
being afraid of failing.’
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With huge numbers of the population
inspired by cookery and gardening
programmes, and the messages
about the impacts of food miles
and intensive farming loud,
clear and frequent, the scope
and incentives for scaled-up
urban agriculture in UK cities are
emphatically in place. The Cuban
capital Havana is an exemplary
model, producing almost 90 per
cent of the food its natives eat within
the city. Government might do well
to keep a close eye too on China,
where city leadership in for example
Beijing and Shanghai is systematically
planning and monitoring new ways of
coordinating food production with
small plots of land alongside the cities’
rampant construction programmes,
to harness the farming skills of the
millions moving to the cities in the
greatest urban growth spurt in history.
Then there’s Japan, where the world’s
biggest indoor farm, in a former Sony
DIGGING FOR VICTORY –
A SOPHISTICATED, 21ST
-
CENTURY REINVENTION
OF URBAN FARMING
Corporation semi-conductor factory
in Miyagi Prefecture, is producing up
to 10,000 heads of lettuce a day,
and growing them 150 per cent
faster than an outdoor farm could.
And while the to-capacity
development of most land within
London and the UK’s other very built-
up cities may not be equipped to host
some of the larger-scale projects
China’s army of migrant farmers can
sustain, those urban centres are rich
in small, overlooked, odd-shaped,
underground, rooftop and ex-
industrial spaces that for the likes of
London-based brands and enterprises
Capital Bee honey, Cultivate London,
the tank-based tilapia farm GrowUp
Box and many, many more, are
already more than up to the job.
Urban agripuncture, anyone?
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PEOPLE
Architect Chris Romer-Lee of Studio
Octopi, the man behind the proposed
floating, freshwater swimming pool
Thames Baths, describes the unusual
team structure currently fast-tracking
his idea with forward-thinking strategy.
‘One of the great reality checks
of this project has been accepting
that architects don’t, in fact, know
everything, and collaborating in new
ways. We were approached at an early
stage by an ad agency strategist, Matt
Bamford-Bowes of RKCR, asking if
he could help out. He brought some
really fresh thinking to the table,
challenging us to see the Baths as not
just a one-off project, but a model that
could also work on Leicester’s River
Soar, and in Leeds – and why not then
internationally?
‘It was his idea also to seek
crowdfunding through Kickstarter,
and that has been a great eye-opener,
and really moved the project up a
gear. Matt wrote all the Kickstarter
copy, which brought the idea to life
for a broad audience – another area
where architects tend not to excel! –
and so far we have raised more than
£140,000, which will enable us to
do our next design development and
planning stages much sooner than
would otherwise have been possible. But
beyond that, it has been amazing to see
the profile this has given us, all the way
up to global press coverage, and the
network of fans and friends that forms
around a Kickstarter project.
‘In another move that is completely
alien to how our world usually works,
we’re working with a commercial
manager who procured sponsorship
for London 2012 in a role for LOCOG.
He’s tirelessly opening doors for us to
talk to commercial organisations who
may support us. We’re keen to avoid
loud, logo-based branding,
and think that by tackling these
activities proactively, rather than
trying to bolt them to the finished
project, we can achieve a much more
integrated, harmonious result we’ll
all be happy with.’
thamesbaths.com
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PLACES
Executive Director of the Garden
Bridge Trust Bee Emmott talks about
the regenerative ripples London’s
new green icon will send through the
capital.
‘The Garden Bridge is all about
connection. Connecting the heart of
the city with nature, bringing together
disciplines from engineering and
design to technology and landscaping,
joining up London’s patchwork of
ecological habitats and providing a
convenient transport link for thousands
of commuters every day that happens
to be spectacularly beautiful. But its
impacts will extend far beyond the
finished asset itself, as is always true
of the best innovative infrastructure
projects.
‘We have been working with all kinds of
organisations to make sure the bridge
is not only as good as it can be but also
feeds into as many other aspirations as
possible for improving the areas where
it lands. In Lambeth, an area without
too many large-scale green spaces,
we’ve connected with lots of amazing
green initiatives and schools who we
will help to enhance their offers on
ecology, and the Waterloo Opportunity
Area, which the Mayor’s London Plan
earmarks for major regeneration.
‘Then there’s the Northbank BID.
There is a huge will to transform the
area around the Aldwych, an area of
beautiful architecture, broad streets
and hidden squares and gardens that
has never achieved its potential as
a destination because of traffic and
other factors.
The BID is seeing the Garden Bridge
as a great catalyst, and there are
plans to rethink the traffic flows,
and pedestrianize areas, making it
a lovely place to visit, and joining up
substantial walking routes that stretch
north as far as Bloomsbury and King’s
Cross to the Thames.
All in all, economic benefits through
employment, investment and tourism
will be close to £500 million over
60 years.’
gardenbridge.london
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IDEAS
Marisa Leaf is Founder and Co-CEO
of Hubbub.co.uk, a London-based
specialist online shopping service
delivering high-quality groceries
from independent local suppliers.
She explains her trailblazing
business model.
‘After eight years working ridiculous
hours as a human rights lawyer, I was
really frustrated by neither being
able to buy as good-quality food
as I wanted, nor support the small
local fishmongers, butchers and
greengrocers I loved, as they had
always closed by the time I finished
work. Putting my disposable income
straight into the pockets of Tesco
shareholders really grated, so I had the
idea of an Ocado-type service that
would work with small independent
shops, producers and market stalls.
I piloted it in 2008, borrowing my
boyfriend’s Mini and starting with
just two Islington shops, and I haven’t
looked back. Hubbub.co.uk now works
with more than a hundred of London’s
best suppliers, including Borough
and Portobello Markets, butchers,
delis, fantastic wine merchants, craft
breweries, bakeries and more,
and serves five large areas of the city.
On average we’ve generated 10 per
cent more sales for the suppliers we
work with – and we’re only just starting
to do weekend deliveries now.
‘It’s fantastic to know that much
more money is now staying in some
of London’s local economies’
The suppliers also benefit from our
powerful tech platform, which gives
them bespoke customer and sales
data – another huge advantage big
supermarkets have always had over
them – so they can improve their
service and profits, and it’s fantastic
to know that much more money is
now staying in some of London’s
local economies, helping create
employment and circulating that
money again and again in the area.
Spend £1 in a local butcher and it’s
worth around £1.70 to the local
economy, versus about 10p if it’s
spent in a supermarket. Plus thriving
independent businesses create
desirable local high streets, which
become destinations for socialising
and raise property values – it’s a lovely
virtuous circle.’
hubbub.co.uk
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jake@evolveagency.com
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xing@evolveagency.com
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silje@evolveagency.com
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greg@evolveagency.com
Evolve is a highly specialised brand communications agency,
one entirely focused on helping companies invested in the
future of urban development and city infrastructure.
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