Jonathan Smales, Human Nature’s visionary founder, calls for rigorously sustainable neighbourhoods forging a new generation of civic assets

We have a new PM, a new NPPF and renewed commitment to housing delivery and a new generation of council housing. Meanwhile, the world is on fire, glaciers are shearing off, climate weirding is running amok; nature is ever more depleted, the cost of everyday living rises, seemingly inexorably; food security is at risk, the UK’s resilience as a nation is in question, economic productivity is becalmed. While Andy Burnham has brought balm to acute social divisions, the underlying challenges are real and deep.

In his talk for Temple Bar London, Jonathan Smales, a pioneering environmentalist turned sustainable developer, who founded and is CEO/Executive Chairman of Human Nature, will explore how can housing delivery, in well-judged places, grounded in and suffused with rigorous sustainability, help address this reality.

Smales and his company, Human Nature, represent a radical, eco-centric paradigm shift in real estate development, operating more as a progressive movement for sustainable urbanism than a traditional commercial developer. Rejecting mainstream volume housebuilding as ecologically and socially "catastrophic”, they focus on constructing highly collaborative, ultra-low-carbon neighbourhoods such the Phoenix, Lewes, Sussex, designed around walkable communities, renewable energy and bio-based materials.

In this age of anxiety, social alienation and friction are rising; inequalities corrode trust; public health is under pressure; climate-linked catastrophe is everywhere becoming immediate and visible; nature is being depleted; and too many economies struggle to generate vitality, meaning and sustainable prosperity. The result is not simply a collection of crises. It is a loss of confidence in the future. And at the same time, argues Smales, there is a widening gap between what we know and what we continue to build, finance and tolerate. We know that better homes, healthier neighbourhoods, lower-carbon infrastructure, stronger communities and a regenerated living world are possible. Yet much of the built environment and the economic system behind it continue to reproduce the opposite. In that sense, he maintains, that we risk, as Vaclav Havel wrote, “living within the lie”, acting as though the prevailing model is inevitable even when the evidence, the technology and public expectations tell us otherwise.

Smales insists that rebuilding confidence requires more than distant targets or worthy intentions. People need to see and experience a better future in the places where life actually happens: in homes, streets, neighbourhoods and local institutions. Seeing the better future is believing, experiencing it is everything. There is a huge upside to the downside, he maintains, and it's imperative we find it and soon.

In his talk, he will discuss and invite audience questions responding to a range of issues:

• Is this system failure, and if so, what happens next?

• Housing delivery is failing in numbers, type, quality, and in relation the global megatrends in our summary above: why is this and is it inevitable?

• Is there a model that can creatively disrupt the sector and transform our failing system?

• Can we create a new generation of civic assets: homes, infrastructures, whole places? What are the principal elements of this, and what might successful places - adjudged by these criteria - be and feel like?

• What are the principal constraints holding this back?

Speaker bio:

Jonathan Smales believes deeply in the power of place to transform everyday quality of life, house everyone well, nurture belonging and identity, help heal social division, address climate and nature catastrophes and deliver sustainable economic productivity. Rather than simply think this or speak to it, he acts through his business, Human Nature, to try to enact it. A former MD and international trustee of Greenpeace, he has been a keen student of and practitioner in sustainability for more than 40 years.

Resource links:

Web - humannature-places (https://humannature-places.com/)

LinkedIn - Jonathan Smales (https://www.linkedin.com/in/jonathan-smales-6305414/)

The talk is chaired by Lucy Bullivant Hon FRIBA, Trustee, Temple Bar Trust.

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Please note: Temple Bar will be open for ticket holders from 18:05, please arrive in good time to be checked in and seated by 18:20. Our public talks start at promptly at 18:30.

Description supplied by the event organiser.