Our March forum 'Sustainable cities and tall buildings'

Image: Edge London Bridge by next to London Bridge Station, courtesy of architects Pilbrow and Partners.

Future Cities Forum is holding its 'Sustainability and tall buildings' discussion forum in March, hosted by Marcus Richards who is a partner at professional services firm, EY. The discussion event will take place at EY's offices in London. Investors, developers, government, architects and planners will join the debate.

Marcus is Partner in EY-Parthenon’s Infrastructure Advisory practice, leading work across government, regeneration, and infrastructure investment. He advises on major programmes spanning freeports, social infrastructure, energy and city-region growth, helping clients shape financial strategy, attract private capital, and deliver long-term resilience.

Cities in the UK will be facing ongoing issues around sustainability including achieving net zero through green infrastructure, tackling pollution and addressing social equity in housing with shortages in urban areas. One important consideration is how to empower local communities to co-design solutions for their particular challenges, opening up office space to provide community facilities for local school children and homes with shady areas for play. How can government work on economic growth with balance around environmental protection. How can green finance be used to benefit these goals?

Future Cities Forum will be asking questions about the sustainability of cities and new towns, best practice for master planning of dense sites and brownfield land where some planners and architects believe that tall buildings may be the answer to achieving larger numbers of new homes. Further questions to contributors will be:

• How are developers and architects improving sustainability in cities through the design of tall buildings?

• Will future suburban housing compete on efficiency and sustainability terms with tall buildings?

• How do new materials and modern methods of construction save on carbon footprint?

• Is the re-use of heritage buildings better for office supply, than creating new tall towers ?

• How can planners create better density in cities and new towns?

Marcus spoke to Future Cities Forum - on the back of the November Budget announcements - about how government decisions might affect sustainable building development, whether it is around suburban housing or the planning of new towns:

'Any model you put in place must be very resilient to cope with changes in a programme that might last ten years, and where there will be radical change. The New Towns programme is an important example in that it had lots of fanfare but because there is no detail this is now creating a problem with a private development sector that needs clarity on time-lines and costs.

'Government should look to formalise links between different departments to enable capital funding for the inclusion of social and other infrastructure across regeneration developments. On Victoria North in Manchester this has been successful - it happened in an informal way at first and then grew organically. Government wants the New Towns programme to be a collaborative process, so I hope this is made clearer in the Budget.

'Build-To-Rent has been a cornerstone of urban regeneration and government will need to think how it evolves in the future, especially how it might work out of town, in a financially viable way, in suburban locations and also how these developments can incorporate later life care, well-being and later life living as the model matures.'

Image: Victoria North development in Manchester - courtesy FEC / Manchester City Council

Image: courtesy of Pilbrow and Partners, Aspen development at Canary Wharf

Pilbrow and Partners

The London based architecture practice is developing tall building projects such as Aspen and Edge and says:

'Our design for Aspen, a new mixed-use development in Canary Wharf, reinvents vertical urbanism to deliver an ambitious mix of functions, while emphasising street-level experience and addressing London’s housing need.

'The compact site will deliver residential, hotel, health centre and primary school around a new public space close to the Elizabeth Line’s Canary Wharf Station, also creating a new hub between Marsh Wall and the Isle of Dogs. The centrepiece of the new community will be a renovated 1860s public house. This will be surrounded by a landscaped square, and two mixed-use towers.

'One 65-story tower will contain 495 homes, a modern health care centre and a five-star hotel. Alongside 200 rooms, the BREEAM Excellent hotel will provide public facilities including a cafe, restaurant, conference space, as well as a roof garden, spa and pool.

'At ground floor, the public space will be further animated by a range of shops. A lower, 35-storey tower will comprise 139 affordable homes alongside a new community space, and on-site primary school. The design utilises our in-house AI design optimisation tool to ensure favourable aspect and layout for each home within the triangular plan of the towers .

'To reduce energy consumption, the scheme is part of a district wide heating and cooling network, using highly efficient water source heat pump technology to supply 20,000 people across the area, including residents, hotel guests and other users.'

Image: EDGE London Bridge on left under construction in November 2025

EDGE Building

Pilbrow has been working on the design and build of EDGE on St Thomas Street next to London Bridge Station. The firm states:

'The 275.500 square-foot high-rise building, featuring 26 floors of commercial office space, is projected to become one of London’s most sustainable office towers, designed to achieve BREEAM Outstanding and WELL Platinum certifications.

'Located on beautiful riverside stretch of the South Bank, EDGE London Bridge embodies the perfect fusion of heritage and innovation while cementing the street's position as a hub for forward-thinking businesses in one of the world's most dynamic cities.

'The building’s façade commemorates Bermondsey's Victorian engineering heritage. Flexible zones on the office floors will be constructed in timber, which allows users to easily connect floors in the building with the atrium and interconnecting stairs to stimulate collaboration and promote healthy lifestyles. 

'With the upper floors overlooking scenic views of South Bank, EDGE London Bridge offers facilities which include a tenants' club with a large terrace, a gym, high-quality bike parking and best-in-class associated facilities to encourage sustainable modes of transport, and a publicly accessible coffee bar on the ground floor

'Upon entrance, the green podium offers a lively invitation for users to meet and connect. The landscaping surrounding the building cascades into the reception and beyond with generous displays of green inside, complete with planted balconies. Underfloor air supply in combination with natural ventilation will provide optimal air quality. Together with good natural light from the floor-to-ceiling windows and radiant cooling, the thoughtful sustainable design for EDGE London Bridge overall contributes to a healthy environment for the building’s users.'

Image: view along St Thomas Street in Southwark with EDGE on left and the Shard. Part of the historic Guy's Hospital campus is in the distance - courtesy Future Cities Forum

Images credit Metropolitan Workshop 

Regeneration of Carpenters Estate and the retrofit of modernist towers

LDA Design is part of the team appointed to design the brand new neighbourhood of Station Quarter, a prominent part of Newham’s regeneration of the Carpenters Estate.

It describes the project:

'Metropolitan Workshop heads up the design team. Station Quarter is Phase 3 of London’s largest regeneration project, to create a bold and welcoming gateway to the regenerated Estate.

'Making the most of its proximity to Stratford Station and the new Gibbins Road entrance, Station Quarter will be a dynamic neighbourhood with three towers flanking a new high street. It will be defined by generous spaces and strong connections between people, place, and the wider Stratford context, with landscape architecture by LDA Design. The new design will rationalise the street layout and improve pedestrian flow around the area.

'Depending on the final design, it is expected that Station Quarter will provide around 500 new homes, with a mix of affordable housing and private rental market to capitalise on its proximity to the station.

'The Council’s wholly-owned housing company, Populo Living, is taking forward the detailed design of the first three phases of the regeneration of Carpenters Estate.  The planning application for Phase 3 is expected to be submitted in autumn 2026.

Over 12 years, the resident-led masterplan will deliver 2,300 new and refurbished homes for Newham, half of which will be genuinely affordable. The masterplan was shaped by community feedback and streets and spaces are prioritised, with improved connections to Stratford Station and Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park. Seven distinctive public spaces will form a coherent network with a neighbourhood park at the heart

'A significant regeneration milestone was reached in 2025 with a start on the retrofit of James Riley Point, one of the estate’s three landmark Modernist towers. The retrofit is being done to the Passivhaus EnerPHit standard and sets a new benchmark for residential towers. Under-used space at the base of James Riley Point will be rebuilt as a new multi-purpose facility for the community.

Image: Colmore Row in central Birmingham with Birmingham City Hall and Paradise development in distance - in 2023

Greater Birmingham Chambers of Commerce states that as Birmingham continues to attract record levels of investment in urban regeneration and city centre development, the next 20 years will see the city as we know it transform:

'Birmingham City Council's Big City Plan establishes the importance of ensuring this transformational change is driven by sustainable growth, underpinned by the target of a 60 per cent reduction in the city's carbon dioxide emissions by 2026.

Developers will need to plan their schemes in a socially responsible way, striving for low carbon, sustainable buildings that are ready to be part of a connected net zero city. Here are five principles to consider for Birmingham's investor and developer community.

Tall buildings can create a memorable cityscape

'Birmingham has a clear need to expand upwards as well as outwards, maximising the use of existing city centre space by bringing high-quality tall buildings through the planning system.

'Compared to the UK's other major cities, Birmingham has few tall towers today and in the pipeline, but recent years have seen their emergence in the build-to-rent sector such as the 155m Octagon development at Paradise and 42-storey Mercian tower off Broad Street.

'Tall residential schemes are complemented by central commercial towers such as 103 Colmore Row, which is attracting headline professional tenants such as financial adviser Grant Thornton and law firm Shoosmiths.

'While stitching tall buildings into the skyline, long-term spatial planning should ensure their location is handled carefully, respecting the surrounding environment and topography. With the youngest city population in Europe, and vibrant professional and creative sectors, Birmingham's developments must continue to offer value for money.

Offsetting new build developments to achieve carbon credentials

'Low carbon credentials are non-negotiable for Birmingham's new builds, and won't be achieved through embedded carbon reductions alone. Credible, integrated offsetting strategies must form a key component of low carbon plans for buildings.

Birmingham's investors and developers should take heed that the current cost of carbon is around £70 per tonne according to the UK Green Building Council, however this could increase to more than £120 per tonne or more by the end of this decade.

'Offsetting strategies need to be part of the core development appraisal process, rather than a bolt-on or afterthought. The UK Green Building Council's Renewable Energy Procurement and Carbon Offsetting Guidance for Net Zero Tall Buildings provides a useful set of principles to structure thinking.

The built environment must respect the natural environment

'While pursuing offsetting strategies, there is an increasing requirement for developers to ‘green' buildings and enhance surrounding biodiversity, to futureproof the city centre and respond effectively to the impacts and opportunities presented by climate change.

'There is more data available now than ever before on the climate risks faced in specific locations, and these resources should become a first port of call when embarking on any project in Birmingham, to enable effective proactive mitigations.

Mitigating transition risk - the potential for assets to become stranded due to their reliance on fossil fuels - should be carefully considered as part of long-term building strategies. Any building that cannot be economically adapted to join the transition away from fossil fuels could become a stranded asset, seeing its value fall significantly.

Whole life understanding is critical

'For all these reasons, Birmingham's developers need to be thinking now about how their assets can be net zero across their lifecycle.

'Enterprise Wharf, in the Innovation Birmingham Campus, is Birmingham's first smart-enabled building powered by IoT technology. This is a case in point on post-construction building performance, with active management of a building's facilities management - from HVAC to lighting and CCTV - key to ensuring continued carbon savings.

'Thinking beyond a building's immediate use, a transformative factor in reducing construction impacts could be the adoption of a circular economy, whereby developers prioritise using existing parts and materials from buildings due for demolition. This would require a mindset shift, with buildings proactively designed with future re-uses in mind.

Carefully planned refurbishment will breathe new life into existing assets

'In planning the future cityscape, developers must consider the assets we have today, and how existing buildings can be reinvigorated to retain the distinctive character of the city while minimising operational carbon.

'The refurbishment of 60 Church Street offers a prime example of this principle, with £2 million of work completed to install new heating and cooling systems, underfloor and perimeter trunking, and new suspended ceilings with metal tiles and LG7 lighting - bringing a historical building into a modern context.

'Refurbishment is now becoming the norm for commercial buildings in London, and this trend is likely to continue growing across Birmingham's developments as a key component of the city's sustainable growth.

'If developers pursue these principles, they could play a huge part in developing a smart Birmingham that's match fit for the future, providing high quality living, authentic experiences and a hub of knowledge and creativity.'

Join our Future Cities Forum at More London in March for further discussion on this important topic.