Sustainable Futures for Southwark

In March 2019, Southwark Council became one of the first boroughs in London to declare a climate emergency, undertaking commitments to make Southwark carbon neutral by 2030. The borough reached out to the Service Futures Lab to assist them in designing a more sustainable and climate-conscious future for their local communities.

Southwark is impacted by the climate crisis in various ways — from risk of flooding due to the continuing sea levels rising, to residents being severely affected by the heat stored in the concrete of buildings. Keeping these potential climate-derived threats in mind, the postgraduate students involved in the project used Critical Service Design to propose greener solutions relating to Transport, Energy and Construction, Consumption and Circularity, and Biodiversity.