Soho Community & Environment Fund
Chair of Waste Watch, the national public behaviour change charity focusing on waste and resource use. A founder director and shareholder of London Recycling Ltd. Active in a range of local issues, set up Soho Community Environment Fund. Originated Central Cities Institute at the University of Westminster. Long term owner of restaurant in Soho and Central London resident near to Piccadilly Circus for 40 years.
Listen to Matthew’s Futures Fair 09 presentation.
Can we retrofit right at the heart of our cities?
We know that a city like London is already a heat island, with higher than average temperatures across the South East England. But on top of that, Soho and the West End is effectively another heat island on top of the London heat island. There is as more activity in Soho on some nights at 3 in the morning – from people, traffic and buildings – than there is at 3 in the afternoon. Therefore there is almost no opportunity for normal diurnal cooling at night. So heat stays locked up in the area and in the summer months is much higher than anywhere else in London.
Change will not be easy. It is the very historic environment, the narrow streets, the architecture, the mixture of uses, the ambience of these central core areas that people love to visit and work in. We can’t knock great swathes of buildings down and start again with ‘eco architecture’. Soho is a conservation area with a high concentration of listed buildings. We have to retrofit what we have.
I am a ‘think global, act local’ man and that means Soho, London- because it is where I have lived and worked for the last 40 years. Why Soho? Well because it has a great track record in setting trends. I hope it is not arrogant to say, what many people do today in the West End they do tomorrow in the rest of London and elsewhere a week later. So if we can do it here and get it right it saves the need for a huge retrofitting marketing budget. Word will spread virally and other historic core areas will follow us, in London and elsewhere. What better trend could Soho set now!
