An award-winning, recognized authority in the global climate change movement, James Cameron, the London-based chair of the Holcim Foundation's Board, works across renewable energy and natural capital ventures spanning the UK, Africa, and South Asia. For the latest edition of our interview series, we sat down with him to discuss what it takes for cities to value nature, and why the case for climate resilience is won by making the future more alluring.

What does an economically valuable natural system look like in the urban environment?

During my long tenure as London Sustainable Development Commissioner, we decided to take advantage of London's existing green spaces and promote the idea of London as a city of parks — a place where natural capital could flourish in an urban environment. London has loads of private gardens as well as public green spaces — more than many cities — and in those places there are pollinators; sometimes many more than you find in some agricultural settings. The Crown Estate, a very large property owner, can plot a pathway for pollinators between London parks and their rooftops. That's an enhancement of natural capital.

Does every new piece of urban infrastructure have to consider the climate crisis when it's commissioned?

Assuredly, yes. No modern infrastructure should be built without considering climate change — otherwise you're building in an unreal world. We need to build in a real world, and the real world is affected by climate change and will be for generations. Equally, we've learned a lot about how to do that beautifully — you make the transition you have to make, but you do it in a way which is alluring. 

For the next generation of city makers — where does the opportunity lie?

In most cities there is an opportunity to develop in ways that are both human-centered and advance the idea of working with, alongside, and in nature — taking away the pretense that we're somehow separate from nature in the first place. An urban environment is a really good challenge to that notion, because it is so obviously constructed by us, for us, and so you can alienate yourself, literally, from nature. And then a flood comes, or you experience the kind of heat that is so debilitating you can't function. Increasingly, because of climate change, the sense that we are separate from nature becomes nonsensical.

Our film series continues under a new banner — Cities in Motion — and opens in Bucharest, where regeneration begins with the buildings and land already in place.

Here, ambitious urban regeneration projects range from a historic house transformed into Romania's first purpose-built independent theater since 1946, to a flood reservoir reborn as a welcoming public landscape. 

Behind each stands a determined city maker — architects, cultural founders, and civic leaders working with what Bucharest already has.

The short documentary features multiple voices shaping how the city builds, exploring how Bucharest is turning reuse into a design opportunity.

At the UIA World Congress of Architects in Barcelona, a session convened by C40 Cities with the Holcim Foundation took on the “Architect's Blues” — the tension between the profession's climate ambitions and the market realities shaping them.

From a stage shared by city architects, practice leaders, and cultural institutions, five voices offered five ways forward for making the most of what already exists in the urban fabric.

• 1. Treat the existing city as your site. “The city is already there. That's my playground. It's not a blank page,” says María Buhigas San José, City Architect of Barcelona. Her team mapped the city and found buildings occupy just a quarter of its fabric — unlocking 100 hectares of overlooked leftover space now becoming pocket gardens and shaded playgrounds.
• 2. Make urbanism legible. “It's our role to make architecture more democratic,” says Marion Waller, Director of the Pavillon de l'Arsenal in Paris. Citizens should be taught to better understand the built environment - where materials come from and where their tax money goes in forming a better urban realm. 
• 3. Think first, build second. “It's a lot cheaper to do good thinking than to build badly,” says Kjetil Trædal Thorsen, Founding Partner of Snøhetta. The Norwegian architect calls for the profession to be practically minded - and think about positive positions worth defending — he borrows his own view from the poet Salena Godden: pessimism is for lightweights.
• 4. Learn the language of money. “If you want to change the business, you have to understand it,” says Kika Krista Kjærside, Head of Program at the Danish Architecture Center, whose program brings young architects together with engineers, constructors, and financiers early in their careers — building the shared city-making language that turns good intentions into better built outcomes.
• 5. Choose your battles before they choose you. “To be an activist architect, start by choosing the projects you do and the ones you don't do,” says Tatiana Bilbao, Founder and Principal of Tatiana Bilbao Estudio. For the Mexican architect, architecture is a primary form of care — and her meaningful agenda is set the moment a commission is accepted, at every meeting that follows.

The conversation on stage also turned to the next generation: our Executive Director, Laura Viscovich, sat down with Holcim Foundation Fellow Jacob Meyers to make the case for architects returning to city halls.