Green on Red

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Guest post from France by Phil's boss Adrian Barrick
To Cannes for Mipim, the alcohol-fuelled annual gathering of Europe's property and construction clans. In many ways, Mipim is an odd setting for a serious debate about sustainability. Apart from a few laudable souls who take the train, or - bravissimo! - cycle, most of the pin-striped pilgrims jet in to nearby Nice airport, immediately jump in a cab, and spend the next three or four days emitting sufficient hot air to blow a hole in the ozone layer the size of France.

They might not be too aware of their personal footprint, but the development community has certainly cottoned on to the competitive advantage to be derived from espousing the sustainable credentials of the latest developments they were unveiling, such as Land Securities proposed zero carbon student village in Corby. Seventeen years after I first heard Sir Stuart Lipton stand up at the second Mipim and gravely tell his architecturally oblivious peers that "good design is good business", the message for today's generation is firmly that "green design is good business".

Except, that is, in Russia - one of the fastest-growing property and construction markets of them all. You cannot fail to notice the russification of Mipim in recent years. Desperate to prove they are fully ingratiated into the European property community, the Russian public authorities and developers have - like an over-eager guests bringing a case of vintage claret rather than a bottle of plonk to someone else's party - pouring unfathomable sums of promotional cash into Mipim. It's a moot point as to which is flowing faster in Cannes these days: the champagne, or the vodka.

But, for now, the sustainability debate has passed them by. I spent a fascinating morning at a Russian investment breakfast organised by our partners at Impress Media, watching as a succession of proud regional dignatories stood up to proclaim their latest eye-popping development plans. The revitalistation of Krasnodar, for example - host of the 2014 winter olympics - is valued at 17 billion euros alone.

Yet even the distant zero carbon targets announced by Alastair Darling this week were nowhere in evidence, alas. Quite apart from each region's focus on driving economic competitiveness, designers were reflecting afterwards that there is rarely room in the budget for basic energy-saving devices, especially not after the poorly-renumerated local panjamdrums have been paid off.

All that, though, may be about to change. Among a younger cadre of officials is an awareness that, to flourish in an economically sustainable fashion, Russian cities need to attract global, blue chip companies - and that in order to do so, the office and retail space on offer needs to be higher quality, and very, very shortly, sustainable. How long before letting a zero-carbon office tower to Google matters more to these guys in career terms than a furtive bag of greenbacks. Goodness knows how corporate social responsibility translates into Russian, but let's hope it won't be long before it starts to translate into roubles.

Comments

[Eredux]

Check out this US Carbon Footprint Map, an interactive United States Carbon Footprint Map, illustrating Greenest States to Cities. This site has all sorts of stats on individual State & City energy consumptions, demographics and much more down to your local US City level...

http://www.eredux.com/states/

[martin]

Interesting post Adrian. You are right that Russia seem to be letting the sustainability agenda pass them by. However, I am pleasantly surprised when I see hits to my blog from Moscow and elsewhere in that region. Through this, my recently attention was drawn to the Foster Eco-Tower in Moscow, which is billed as having an ‘energy cycle’ that will pioneer sustainable architecture and reinforce the economic and social vitality of Moscow City.
One to watch !