CityMakers Voices No.5 — James Cameron

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

It's hard enough to get the economic and financial system to value nature in the sense most people understand it. I'm involved in a pioneering project in Scotland called Highlands Rewilding, where we're trying to show that you can combine regenerative agriculture, coastal fisheries management, or even traditional forestry in a way consistent with natural capital principles. In the urban environment, natural capital is usually associated with protection from other harm — rising sea levels, or something like air pollution.

But 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. And the more you think about it, the more possible that feels. 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 in an urban environment than you find in some agricultural settings. The Crown Estate, a very large property owner, can plot a pathway for pollinators between parks in London and their rooftops. That's an enhancement of natural capital.

Is it easier to put a value on nature in a city like London than in a city facing tougher daily struggles?

I think that 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 strong challenge to that notion, because it is so obviously constructed by us, for us, and so you can literally alienate yourself from nature. And then a flood comes, or you experience the kind of heat that is so debilitating you can't function. Increasingly, and maybe sadly, because of climate change, the sense that we are separate from nature becomes nonsensical.

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 — so you make the transition you have to make to manage the consequences of climate change, but you do it in a way that is alluring. In a city environment, that might mean building parks that also act as a barrier to sea-level rise, or understanding that green infrastructure is a more cost-effective way to manage water—natural systems that are very effective at dissipating a storm surge or channeling water flow after a particularly rapid downpour. We know now that you don't win hearts and minds with fear.

So who's leading the charge toward more resilient cities?

Sometimes whoever has the vision leads, but it doesn't get done until you align lots of other interests. It's very important to be imaginative — to imagine a different city, or a way of living in a city that is different — and that act of imagination can come from any part of the spectrum of actors involved in city development. But if you really want to change the real world, you need several people to align behind that vision, or to contribute to it in a way that makes it realizable.

This is a multidisciplinary field. How do you communicate well across it?

Language is everything — we are nothing without it. Professional languages are territorial, so it's very important to be able to translate and interpret and struggle over the barriers that languages create. Most professions are quite protective of their language space; it gives them status. These problems absolutely demand that people either let go of that protective barrier or learn how to translate — while keeping accuracy within their discipline, because specialization still matters. On climate change, on sustainability, we need to up our game. We have to communicate to a very wide range of actors, including people who don't think about this every day: why it might be in their interest, why this vision of what could be — and you could be a part of it — would be better than what you have now.

You've mentioned a different mindset among younger urban generations. How far does that go?

There is an intergenerational element to the entire conversation about climate change, and it shows up in how you might live well together in an urban environment. I do a podcast with my goddaughter — an intergenerational conversation on climate change we call Fossil vs Future: I'm the fossil, she's the future. But in all seriousness, there are ways of living that require that conversation to be had, and in some ways settled, in what you build, how you organize living within it, the public spaces that connect you.

And here's a hopeful suggestion: my sense is that the way a generation much younger than me wants to live can offer a good guide to how best to live when you pass a certain age. Cities are extremely good at convening; they're very good at sharing resources. If you ask how the young want to live — sometimes have to live, because they don't have the resources to buy big spaces all for themselves — there's an idea there that could be shared between the generations. If you want to solve complex problems like urbanism in an environment affected by climate change, you need to share each other's power as well as each other's ideas.

This interview is part of CityMakers Voices, a conversation series from the Holcim Foundation that gathers the thinkers, designers, and decision-makers whose work shapes the cities we live in. They form part of CityMakers, a new resource focused on the people, places, and programs revitalizing the urban realm.