World Population Day
Creating a resilient world for everyone, leaving no one behind.
The 11th of July is World Population Day – a day established by the United Nations for us to reflect on the challenges of our growing population, as well as the solutions to help promote a better world for all humanity. This year’s theme, ‘To Leave No One Behind, Count Everyone’ is about improved population data to more accurately reflect the diverse nature of our society, which is so vital for ensuring we can deliver better services for all people.
Population, what of it?
As Urban Designers, recognising the needs of all people is at the very core of our values, and forms a part of our commitment to creating more resilient places for us, and future generations to enjoy. A major challenge we face around the globe is population increase, with which come increased pressures on the places we live, be it cities, towns or villages. Some of the major challenges we face based on population rise include but are not limited to, adequate housing, food security, transportation and accessibility, access to education, access to healthcare, access to employment, safety from crime and increased C02 emissions.
In some places however, population decline can also be problematic – with an ageing population who are no longer economically productive, which contributes to increased strain on our public services, particularly healthcare. This also causes issues in the supply and demand of housing, with older people living longer in family homes, rather than downsizing. The slow down in downsizing means that we have less family homes available on the market and as such, the need for homes overall in the UK is greater.
In the UK, the Office for National Statistics (ONS) projects that the population will ‘pass 70 million in 2026’, and with this rising demand there is a lot of focus in UK politics on the need to build more homes and create better access to vital services such as health care and education.
At edge we place this sustainable approach at the heart of all our proposals, integrating the ‘10 Characteristics Of A Well-Designed Place’ within all of our proposals. This approach ensures we design places which cater to all types of people, as well as being resilient towards the changing future needs of the next generation, especially through our landscape led approach.
Where it is contextually appropriate, we propose higher density and mixed-use schemes, which not only cater to more people, but also enables better services to be proposed alongside the developments, We are especially excited to see the integration of mobility hubs emerging within more of our work. These hubs aim to make places more accessible to more of us. We have some exciting projects that are currently ‘top secret’, in which we have been re-imagining the future of mobility, ability and mobility hubs as catalyst for new places. Watch this space for updates on this exciting work in the future!
Written by Izzie
