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3°C Neighbourhood was the first chapter of the Neighbourhood Public Square proposal that was published back in April 2024. It reflects our progress, learning and insights from that time, and continues to directly form an integral part of the design methodology for Neighbourhood Public Square and Retrofit House.
For us, the findings provided some of the core parameters that the design of the Neighbourhood Public Square must address and respond to in order to fulfil its infrastructural role in the neighbourhood, in particular identifying risks of more frequent extreme heat; food and water insecurity; climate migration; rising costs of living and more that we must prepare for together.
More broadly, climatic forecasting such this lays out the fundamental conditions that any infrastructural project must consider to ensure long-term resilience according to best- and worst-case scenarios; information that remains largely unavailable to many.
3°C Neighbourhood is, however, not a design manual or how to guide. It doesn’t hold all the answers of what these findings mean or directly translate into every specific aspect of our design and decision making, which would vary greatly by context, and is always changing. Instead, taking these findings off the page requires active postures of rooted, dynamic, hopeful and honest organising with many disciplines, skills and experiences working together rigorously and creatively to fundamentally reimagine how our neighbourhoods and economies function, starting from where they are.
By publishing it openly as soon as the research was ready we sought to open source research, reflection and proposition about the time we are in, underscore the urgency of our collective action, and offer some blueprints for ways forward at the civic infrastructure and neighbourhood scale in collaboration with a range of visionary partners. We also recognised the risk of this, and offered principles to engage with the work respectfully, including embodying postures of proposition.
At the time of first publishing 3°C Neighbourhood in April 2024, global mean surface temperature (GMST) stood at +1.3°C. Now, as we write—from a sweltering 34°C summer day here in Birmingham—just over two years later, it stands at +1.4°C.
We know that the work ahead is great and many, with a role for everyone. We continue to invite you to hold the tensions of confronting the consequences of a warmer planet, whilst reimagining courageously, boldly and tangibly in the here and now **together with us in this chapter, as we become aware of and equip ourselves for the worst, whilst building towards a new, more hopeful future.
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This chapter is co-authored with Dark Matter Labs, and is a new piece of research looking at future climate predictions and what they mean for UK urban neighbourhoods.
Whilst immediate actions to adapt to the impacts of global temperature rises remain necessary, the focus on this alone risks only dealing with climate breakdown on a symptomatic level, and creating new industries of growth and extraction.
Read the 3°C Neighbourhood chapter in full:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/16G2quTb-ng4bsZNT5Hu7Ue1a5HzN0wwK/view
“Even today’s lowest carbon, bespoke new build homes have a footprint of around 150 kgCO₂e/m², more than fifteen times what every new home will need to be in 2030.”
3°C Neighbourhood showed that the UK’s current decarbonisation strategies are unviable without further extraction that would deepen the social and ecological harm they seek to address. Without profoundly transforming how we design, build, use, re-use, and live with the built environment around us, the +1.5°C threshold is only a few years away.
