Climate Smart Cities Challenge
Development agreement signed by winning team to deliver sustainable, affordable homes.
Sustainable housing developer EDAROTH, (a wholly-owned subsidiary of AtkinsRéalis) has signed a development agreement with Bristol City Council to design and deliver 29 homes - based on the new model created under the UN-Habitat Climate Smart Cities Challenge.
The new homes will be a mix of 13 houses and 16 apartments and will be constructed using offsite manufacturing methods to create low energy-use, net zero homes - which will provide additional capacity for the housing market and directly tackle the housing crisis.
Subject to planning approvals, they will be developed at six sites across Bristol on under-utilised land owned by the city council, including brownfield which is often overlooked by large-scale housing developers, but can be adapted/repurposed to unlock new space for communities.
Central to the development agreement are the sustainable construction methods that are used by EDAROTH with the majority of the building parts being manufactured in a UK factory before being transported and assembled on-site.
THRIVING PLACES WINS BRISTOL’S CLIMATE SMART CITIES CHALLENGE
The Climate Smart Cities Challenge is a city-based open innovation competition led by UN-Habitat, Viable Cities and other partners that invited technologists, businesses, and investors to develop, test and scale cutting-edge solutions in four cities to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Bristol was among the cities to win a bid to host this competition in 2020.
Bristol Housing Festival, Bristol City Office and Bristol City Council designed a challenge for innovators around Bristol’s key pain point, the structural deficit in housing.
Bristol’s winning team is called Thriving Places, and is led by AtkinsRealis and Edaroth UK. This team is addressing this challenge through two streams of work: 1) a system demonstrator to begin work by the summer of 2024 (under the competition, the team is testing the concept of viability and deliverability on six small sites to be aggregated together for development) and 2) a Thrivability Tool underpinned by digital mapping to enable better future decision making and system change.
Watch the Building Connected Places video on ITN to find out more about how AtkinsRealis are using Bristol as a testbed for change and innovation in housing.
A number of small brownfield sites were considered because these are the hardest to develop in terms of viability (see how this relates to Bristol’s challenge below). The proposed solution aggregates the six sites and assesses how best to use each pocket of land. The ambition is that by unlocking these sites the methodology will create a replicable and scaleable solution. With support from Bristol City Council's Housing Development Team it is hoped that 29 social rent zero carbon homes will be commissioned and developed on these sites in 2024.
Bristol Housing Festival and Bristol City Office are proud to collaborate with the project partners and other stakeholders to participate in the Climate Smart Cities Challenge.
This is an initiative by Teknikföretagen, Viable Cities, UN-Habitat, Smart City Sweden, Vinnova, the Swedish Energy Agency, Expo 2020 Sweden and Business Sweden.
Bristol’s Finalists:
Greencore Construction Ltd, Bioregional Hill, We Can Make, igloo Regeneration, Edaroth Limited, Changebuilding, Parametric Solutions AB, Brighter Places, Microgrid Foundry Limited, Nodono technology AB, Ilke Homes, Innerspace homes group ltd, Bristol Community Land Trust, Ecoclime Group AB, PyTerra Limited.
About the competition:
The Climate Smart Cities Challenge is a city-based open innovation competition that will invite technologists, businesses and investors to develop, test and scale cutting-edge solutions in four cities to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
We are currently in the system demonstrator planning phase. See below for the timeline. Watch a summary of Bristol’s challenge in 60 seconds here…
WATCH THE CLIMATE SMART CITIES CHALLENGE LAUNCH AT THE WORLD EXPO IN DUBAI
WATCH A 20 MINUTE CONVERSATION WITH JEZ SWEETLAND ON INNOVATING TOWARDS ZERO CARBON AFFORDABLE HOUSING IN BRISTOL
THE STORY SO FAR…
The first stage of the Climate Smart Cities Challenge was an open call for cities, which asked cities around the globe to talk about their aspirations to reduce or eliminate greenhouse gas emissions, and to present a specific and solvable problem that they’re facing.
In January 2021, Bristol Housing Festival and Bristol One City, with the support of Bristol City Council, submitted an application on behalf of the city of Bristol and in April 2021, we were delighted to be chosen as one of the four cities to participate in the challenge.
Read what Mayor Marvin Rees said about the challenge in his blog.
Read the press release on the UN Habitat Website.
WHAT PROBLEM DID WE SUBMIT?
As we know, Bristol is currently facing a housing crisis, a climate crisis and a construction skills shortage, and the problem we’re interested in solving is how do we deliver new housing so it becomes a positive contributor to reducing greenhouse gases in the city.
The challenge or barrier to this is not the housing technology itself. Where innovation is truly needed is in the model used to deliver housing by multiple stakeholders. The challenge is both in the collaboration required and the financial model and mindset that currently costs, values and processes transactions based on immediate capital return.
The focus of the Climate Smart Cities Challenge is to design a project at neighbourhood level that will showcase how cities can co-create new ideas together with innovators that make cities more sustainable and climate-smart.
