Net Zero & Energy
The motoring giant Ford has launched a new team to work with local authorities to help shape the changing face of transport infrastructure. Ford’s City Solutions team is part of the international company’s vision for a ‘city of tomorrow’, which was unveiled last month at the North American International Auto Show by executive chair, Bill Ford. The team is believed to be only one of its kind in the automotive industry and will work with civic leaders around the world to develop and pilot projects to address issues like the advent of electric vehicles, pollution and congestion.
Environment Journal’s Jamie Hailstone spoke to Ford Smart Mobility’s director of city solutions, Jessica Robinson, about the company’s vision and the role civic authorities can play in shaping the city of tomorrow.
Why is a company like Ford interested in issues like infrastructure, congestion and the urban environment?
Ford is expanding its business to be both an auto and mobility company, while making people’s lives better by changing the way the world moves. For more than 100 years, Ford has been part of the community and the trusted source for automotive transportation. But it is clear that the transportation system we developed over the last 100 years will not work for the next 100. Half of the world’s population lives in cities, by 2030 that number is expected to grow by 60%.
REACH is a Sheffield based social enterprise training apprentices to use reclaimed and recycled materials to build affordable eco homes from shipping containers. Launched by ex-police inspector Jon Johnson (pictured below, right), who already runs recycling based social enterprise Strip the Willow, REACH recently got through to the semi-final of the national Virgin Media Business VOOM 2016 pitch competition. Jamie Veitch visited Jon to learn more about his plans for affordable eco homes.
Why is there a need for REACH?
Everybody knows there’s a crisis with housing supply in the country at the moment. There are virtually no affordable houses being built. The government are not helping. Land supply and land prices mean developers are not interested in doing that kind of thing and nobody’s making them do it. In the meantime, average wages are falling, house prices are rising, Right to Buy is taking supply out of the market, housing associations are up against it. People are in desperate straights. They are looking to a future where they are not going to be able to afford their own place to live and that’s whole generations in the future. Every policy at the moment is pushing people to having to rely on a rental sector that’s not reliable, where 35% of properties don’t meet the habitable homes standard, and at the moment there’s just no viable alternative, nobody seems to be looking at a commercial-scale solution – and we’ve got one.
