Bristol did well to be the only UK city to be shortlisted for the European Green Capital Awards, unfortunately our entry wasn’t as strong as that of the winners. The judges yesterday chose the Green Capital for 2010 as Stockholm and 2011 Hamburg.
Comparing our entry with that of Stockholm, which is aiming to axe the use of fossil fuels by 2050, just shows we are still far behind the leaders here. Although we had similar claims to amount of greenspace we didn’t make much of challenge with our transport plans (bus lanes & cycle lanes) as other cities in the final already had much better systems in place, not just in the planning stage.
It’s quite strange that Hamburg (another ‘Port City’) and based their entry on the management of one of europes largest container ports. With plans for sustainable land use, managing CO2 levels and increasing efficiency of the port. It may seem strange to base a winning entry on one industry, but this is a very large industry in Hamburg and it even appears that it was the port authority that was submitting the entry and not the city council.
Our entry may have shown Bristol to be the UK’s greenest city, but maybe that illustrates how far behind the UK is in green matters. Also, in future applications we should look at a more rounded entry, not just basing it on our green spaces, which maybe managed by the council were hardly implemented by them! Perhaps including reference to the work planned at Bristol Airport Expansion as being ‘quite’ green by using onsite renewable sources, including wind power and biomass heat generation. Though many ‘greens’ would be horrified that an expanding airport could ever be used to promote green issues.
What Bristol will need for success in future is a vision for the future, something it appears to have missed in this application.
