In this episode:

03:00 – Sustainability is no longer just about environmental concerns; it now spills over into climatic concerns, resilience, and future living systems. This means that we have to think of sustainability comprehensively, especially when doing new things, and what it means in the context of social transformation.

“Until now, we’ve addressed sustainability in siloes. But it’s incumbent on us, if we’re thinking about the future, that we think about everything. There’s little point telling people that they should be satisfied when an electricity supply issue is fixed if they have no homes to live in or jobs to go to. The start and end points for all this is social transformation. What are we trying to create? What positive difference do we want to make in people’s lives. The only way to do that is to think about everything. Our job is to imagine what we do and to bring that about in a coherent way so that we can actually change things, rather than doing the same thing all over again.” – Harry

07:30 – In applying this holistic type of thinking and approach to Greenfields projects, it’s possible to redefine urban landscapes today and in the future by asking certain questions.

“When building things like water pipes, you see what communities you’re building them in and the impact you can have. Naturally, you start asking, ‘What more can we do?’ How do we push the envelope in terms of our thinking and knowledge? How can we stretch our knowledge and consider projects from the perspective of what the community needs? How do we take full opportunity to upskill the community and uplift the environment in the process of our development?” – Dominic

11:05 – Creativity, says Harry, should drive our thinking when it comes to sustainability.

“In the throes of a pandemic, where we’re questioning how we’ve lived in the past and how we might want to live in the future, we have to question whether we’ve done it correctly. The tendency is to address legacy issues in bits and pieces because city planners assume that they have to work within the framework they’ve got, rather than imagining how it can be done more effectively.

The questions we should be asking are, how can we anticipate what’s going to be needed in the future rather than just dealing with everything we’ve had for today? How do we ensure that what we do today makes a difference in 20 to 30 years? How do we deal with urban migration? How do we deal with the social challenges seen in poor communities?

We have to think beyond the glamour of smart cities and start thinking about how to advance rural communities. How do we help people find employment in their communities? How do we create the skills that the community needs to prosper? How do we create a sustainable way of living where everyone can easily make a living wage? We’re at the point of integration. We need to take the things we know and have already, apply some degree of prediction about what’s likely to happen or what we can engineer to happen, and figure out how to put all those pieces together to create the whole picture.” – Harry 

25:57 – How does one anticipate future needs and how should we build adaptability into our infrastructure?

“If we don’t start doing things differently, South Africa will have a water deficit of 17% by 2030. So, it’s important that when we plan new water infrastructure that we look beyond bulk construction. We have to put the mechanisms in place that let us monitor that infrastructure to support maintenance and observation, which will become critical. South Africa loses hundreds of millions of litres of water a day through leaks. If we can better monitor the infrastructure, we can fix leaks faster – or prevent them – which will not only save water but will generate more income to build more reservoirs.” – Dom 

28:57 – Context, says Harry, is crucially important in any Greenfields project.

“Start with the purpose. What are you trying to achieve? What infrastructure will support this? Understand that this is an evolutionary process and build flexibility into it. Design is critically important, but it only works if it’s A) in context, B) attractive to everyone that’s going to use it, and C) that it has some life in it. How can you make good use of the infrastructure that already exists and then build with future transformation in mind? For example, South Africa depends on Eskom for its power today, but that may not be the case in future. How can the development accommodate sustainable energy sources in future? What materials and techniques can you use that will accommodate this evolution in decades to come?” – Harry 

48:58 – How can we become better ancestors for future generations?

“Keep going and retain the flexibility to change as society, technology, facilities, and jobs change. We need a paradigm shift. We need things to grow out of the community for the community. It can’t be superimposed on top of the community. The biggest crisis we have is people’s inability to see opportunity. That’s the kind of thing that destroys hope. We need to help communities to understand their opportunities. People shouldn’t have to be happy with their lot. They should be aspiring to something; they should be inspired to do more than they’re able to do. The crucial thing that we can do is to bundle the ‘best of’ everything – technologies, approaches, materials – from around the world and apply it in the right way, in the right context, for the community.” – Harry

“When you’re working on something now for the future, you have to give hope to the community that it’s going towards. The more we share a vision of what that future looks like, the more we can add hope to a community that really can’t see a future. We’ll stagnate in this position where there is no alternative. We’ll just plod along and eventually disintegrate. We need to change that vision, especially in SA, to say, actually, there is hope.” – Dominic