Sustainable Street Fighter - Ep132: Jon Burke

Michael Liebreich Jon, thank you so much for joining us here on Cleaning Up.

Jon Burke I'm delighted to join you, finally. I waited for that call for many months, saw the illustrious stars who attended and participated, and still, I'm still a bit stunned that I received an invite at all, Michael.

ML  Well, it's thoroughly earned, I hope that our audience agrees at the end of an hour of this, but... Where we're going to start, as always, is to ask you, in your own words, to describe what you do. And we're going to need the short version because you do so much.

JB  My main role appears to be living rent-free in the heads of people who don't want to change the way systems, the energy systems, the transport systems in particular, and the public realm of the cities in which we live. They seem to be very exercised by what I regard as fairly commonplace, or if not commonplace, certainly common sense ideas about how we radically transform our cities, to prepare them for the kind of global warming that we've already baked in with existing emissions, but also for future climatic changes arising from emitting too many greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. My kind of primary interest, because I've always lived in cities - I was born in a city, I'm from Liverpool originally - my primary interest has been in cities, because I think that they're the locus of change. I think the suburbs are a real challenge. But I think if we can test things and deliver things successfully in cities first, then it's possible for us I think, to then bring that to the suburbs. And the preconditions that allow us to test these things in cities such as density, or invariably fairly good public transport networks - certainly better than the suburbs - I think are really useful in helping us to test these ideas.

ML  So, that's great, because you've set yourself up... Sometimes when I have guests, they'll sort of reel off a little bit of their bio and say exactly which roles and you know, how many A levels they got, and all that kind of stuff. But what you've done is you've said, you live in the heads of people who don't want to change the way our cities work, broadly speaking. And those of our listeners - you also have dropped in that you were born in Liverpool - those of our listeners, perhaps also in the US, will have spotted that you sound like Ringo Starr, and they'll probably be very, very happy with that. So, that's the Liverpool connection. But you ended up in Hackney, let's talk about that. How did you get to Hackney? Because you didn't just talk, you actually did a lot of stuff.

JB  Okay. So, I mean, my potted history is, my undergraduate degree is in civil engineering. I was an absolutely dreadful, civil and structural engineer, probably too interested in politics. And then, when my wife was working in a - my then girlfriend my now wife - was working in a hostel for victims of domestic violence, she used to do evening shifts, so I self-taught myself a few different A levels, which I didn't have previously. And then I ended up getting a job as a Parliamentary Assistant in the City of London Corporation. Fascinating role, fascinating place. And then shortly afterwards, I moved to City Hall, where I worked for the London Assembly Labour group for about six to eight years in various different roles. And then in 2014, I was first elected to the London Borough of Hackney's Council, one of 32 London boroughs in London, as you know. And then, not long afterwards, two years afterwards, the former mayor of Hackney stood down to take a job at City Hall advising Mayor Sadiq Khan, and I threw my hat in the ring to replace him. And I was kind of surprised to find that I was shortlisted by the National Executive Committee of the Labour Party to contest that. And the main reason I'd done it is because, although Hackney, which had previously been a byword for kind of local government dysfunction - no overall control in the late 90s, 20% of its streetlights not working etc., etc. - had been kind of transformed over 20 years. But one of the areas that had been neglected was environmental policymaking, I could see huge opportunities. And so, I eventually became Cabinet Member for Energy, Waste, Transport and Public Realm in Hackney. So, I was kind of the de facto cabinet member for environment and in that role delivered the largest number of low traffic neighborhoods and schools streets in the UK; lots of public realm transformation, such as the largest free drinking water fountain program in the UK; the largest urban forestry program in the UK; fortnightly waste collections eliminating 6000 tonnes of black bag waste from incineration annually. And, really seized the opportunity to deliver those changes that were within our power as a local authority. And... I can't be the judge of how successful those interventions were. I think it'd be fair to say there are a plurality of opinions, particularly around my interventions on surface transport emissions. But I think that's always going to be the case when you're seeking to, in my case, retard and reverse a car normative status quo.

ML  So, at this point, I should point out, or we should point out, you and I both that, although we're both basically working class lads, we've taken very different paths obviously in our careers, but also politically. So, there's you, becoming a Labour candidate, becoming a Labour councillor; I've obviously taken a different route. And we should put that out there because there will be thing.... this could be a real sort of love fest, you know, I've got complete respect for much of what you've done. But also, I think that you and I have some - how can I put it - areas we might not agree on. But the work that you did in Hackney, that you've listed, to me seems pretty obviously transformational and good. You didn't mention much about street trees, maybe we'll come back to that.

JB  I did mention the urban forestry programme, we can touch on that in a wee bit.

ML  How many trees did you plant?

JB  Over a period of about two years, I secured funding for and designed a program of 5000 new street trees, 30,000 saplings in our green spaces and 1000 mature park trees. Bear in mind, Hackney is the sixth smallest local authority area in the UK, so a very significant intervention. But it was the street trees in particular which was the most costly element. I mean, the programme cost almost £5 million, the overwhelming majority of which went on street trees. But you know, they are the most advanced, highly-tuned, engineered, precision-engineered technology we have to address, through shading and evapotranspiration, the intensity, the frequency and the duration of extreme heat events in our cities.

ML  Let's get back to trees, thank you for that. So, it's just under 40,000 trees, we'll get back to that, because that's one of the areas that we're going to furiously agree on. But let's come back to the politics, because you also you what I think of as being sort of good things that you did, you got some extremely aggressive reaction, did you not? To the point where you got death threats?

JB  Yeah. Okay. So, let me touch on that in just a second. But what I will say on kind of things like political differences, I think, firstly, it's important that we don't continually fall in about things in the environmental community; that we have that grit in the oyster, that we have that kind of dynamic discourse of relationship, that we test each other's ideas, and I think that happens a lot. I think that, firstly, one of the reasons I like you, Michael, is because, you are, frankly, a no-bullshit, solutions-focused person, and I see a lot of our somewhat robust responses... I see a lot of my robust responses in your robust responses to people. And I think it's important that within the environmental community, if that's what we're in... And I'd say, we're probably drawn from quite unusual backgrounds as part of that community - we're not representative, I think, particularly of that community. Because it's not comprised generally, of people from working class backgrounds and more's the pity for that. But I think, you know, we've always been focused on quite similar outcomes; I think we recognize the challenges that we face, the severity of the crisis that we face. I think we both come from engineering backgrounds, and engineering people tend to be very focused on solutions. I think probably where we differ a little bit is on inputs, rather than outcomes. I would have a view on the best way to structure an energy system being around public ownership. Whereas you would be a bit more agnostic, and be focused on kind of what works, so there's probably a little bit more politics to.... And you would probably draw the conclusion that markets are a better... And I would agree... There are also aspects of my own political worldview that I'm not particularly... One of the reasons, I'll probably never be a perfect fit, even on the left, although I come out of a Bevanite-type background, is because I'm apt to go off range. And, you know, I've studied widely, and I would have views on things like ownership rights as being, the importance of ownership rights as being an appropriate backstop against the destruction of our wider environment, for example. Whereas most people on the left have got no concept of the tragedy of the commons; they would commonify, if you will, everything to the point of it being completely denuded. And so, we probably have touched base on those issues on several occasions. But mainly, I just like the aggressive way in which you take on the inordinate number of bullshitters that exist in the world of social media, and do it with, you know, aplomb, frankly, much better than I do it.

ML  Well, I think we both have our moments, I think. And I do think that there's a kind of commonality, which is neither of us are particularly easy to intimidate. And I think that's kind of... you've got to have some basic STEM skills to be able to... Focus on the outcomes, which you mentioned, some basic STEM skills, without which all of this is kind of meaningless, and then just an ability to stand your corner. Because there are so many people who are actually so tribal and then they say these things that are just kind of like, that's just so manifestly and obviously wrong. And I suppose I find it very difficult to sit there and say, well, you know, my career would be better if I just espoused this or that idea. So, it's nice to be in the company of some, kindred spirits, if not kindred political... we're not, we're certainly not political brethren. One of the things I'm going to pick you up on: you talked about ownership of the energy markets, and actually, you wrote in October 2021, in the Big Issue, Power for the People: It's Time to Renationalized the UK Energy System. And I had an episode - in fact it's our most popular episode yet of Cleaning Up - with Yanis Varoufakis on this exact subject, about nationalizing the power system, not the whole energy system, but the power system. And it was hilarious, because I thought that in the to and fro, I had allowed him to display the fact that he knew almost exactly zero, about how the power system actually worked. But because he's got more social media followers than me. Also, by the way, he's brave, and he's...

JB  He rocks an excellent leather jacket as well. I don't think either of us should get into work in the leather jacket game. Anyway, but one of the things I think you don't talk about as much anymore, because you're so busy doing a lot of the technical stuff around hydrogen and power... Some of the stuff that I think you've touched on, which is some of the most important contributions you've made is in the debate around prosperity and growth and redefining growth and prosperity... I think there's a massive conversation to be had about limits to growth, about limits to the concept of growth, about achieving adequate degrees of prosperity. But I think you've also made some really good points - some points I wouldn't agree with - made some really good points about the marginal benefit you can derive from certain kinds of products - maybe in a in a non-exclusionary, non-rivalrous way - that mean that we can continue in a technical sense to grow the economy, but de-couple it from some of the negative externalities around emissions and environmental degradation and resource depletion that have traditionally been associated with economic growth. And I mean, I'd love to do four-hour show with you on that just, because I think that that argument, and getting that answer right, is, is central to... We're beginning to enter an age of what I would call structural responsibility, in which we need to create new regulatory and political structures that produce better outcomes without individuals having to stand in the supermarket aisle - as I used to do, and do less these days - in the supermarket aisle and say, well, shall I buy that packet of biscuits, but it's got a plastic tray on it and a plastic, and its plastic kind of wrapper? Or should I go for these biscuits, which have got the weight, you've got the paper wrapper, but the paper isn't from a sustainable source? I don't know how to, you know, I don't know how to quantify the carbon intensity of these various different products. That's hell, that is hell for humans - you can't live like that, it's impossible to get anything done.

ML  So, the story I tell of being paralyzed with indecision, in a motorway service station, because you don't know whether you should take the paper to dry your hands or run the electricity. And it doesn't tell you whether it's clean electricity or not. So, you stand there, and you just don't know what to do. And that's it. But you're very kind to refer to some of that stuff. So, I wrote a piece - and we'll put a link into the notes - about the secret of eternal growth. And it's not about growth in GDP, but it's about eternal growth in human wellbeing. Because I think that's the other thing that you and I share, is complete commitment to improving people's lives. And I think there's a lot of sort of fake, fake concern or concern-trolling, about well, you know, we've got enough and therefore, we should stop growth. But of course, growth is things like better medical care, and better housing quality, and better quality food and more time off to spend with our family and our loved ones. And it's also things like, by the way, tourism and travel for all the people who can't yet do it. And I think what we really need to do is ensure that we can keep providing those goods - not physical goods, but those good things - but without, obviously, breaking the planetary boundaries.

JB  Exactly. And that's why my focus was very heavy... you might want to go on to talking about street trees or public realm now. One of my big commitments was to deliver non-rivalrous, no- exclusionary, first-class public goods that everybody could benefit from in the London borough of Hackney, and nobody could be excluded from. I tried to create the Savoy of the public realm, and I think that's something that we, you know, should be seeking to pursue.

ML  So, let me just... trees, we've kind of talked about trees. I just want to make the point that, not all the listeners will have realized, something that we spoke about in our little preparatory chat, and we've also interacted with online - we're both super committed to street trees. And the funny thing is, I am in part, in large part, as an engineer... When I realized, and there's a wonderful book - we'll put a link into the notes for this as well - called Into the Cool, and it explains that a tree is really a heat pump. What it does, it absorbs energy from within cities - so it's evapotranspiration - it absorbs energy, and then it gets blown away outside the limits of the city, where it will condense and fall as rain and all the rest of it. But it's a machine for moving energy out of cities. It's an amazing thing.

JB  Absolutely. I think we also discussed the fact that - which is totally understandable - I think people think the vast majority of urban cooling comes from shading, when in actual fact, it's coming from evapotranspiration. And the almost... I hate to use... I'm an engineer, so I hate to use the term "magical" and I know you'll wince at that, quite rightly so... But you know, the process of cooling water vapour from trees and the way in which it extracts energy to do that and cools the air... I mean, it's just remarkable. Although there's some debate around the quality of this analysis, it's somewhere within the ballpark to say that a medium-sized street tree produces the same atmospheric cooling effect as 10 room-sized air conditioning units operating 24 hours a day. Now, people will say well, they don't produce any atmospheric cooling. Also, I recognize that you don't walk past it and feel an icy blast, and that's also part of the magic of them as well. One of the things I do think is really interesting and will be in future is that dynamic.... So, with street trees we're seeking... they are highly-engineered, both, in terms of evolution, but in terms of our specimen selection, in terms of our geographical... people don't realize how highly technical arboriculture is, urban forestry is, in that respect. 50% of Hackney's street trees are from non-native sources. Now, we got 50% from native sources, because obviously, we wanted the ecosystem service of assisting and boosting biodiversity locally. But we also recognize that we needed to plant specimens at particular locations that we knew are resistant to reflective light. Well, if you're in the City of London, for example, you need to plant some nettle trees, which are native to southern Italy, because they are going to be able to survive some of the glare from these big glass buildings. So, it's a fascinating subject. I think the interesting thing is about trees, and you've just alluded to the fact that the contribution of the volatile organic compounds from them, as well as the water vapour, can produce a rainwater effect as well. I was reading a paper recently, which speculated through various different advanced modeling techniques, that an increase of 20% forestry cover in Northern Europe, would increase rainfall levels in the European summer by 8%, offsetting the rainfall that we're losing as a result of climate change, with virtually no winter impacts and no impact on coastal regions. Massively important. But then there's also the work of people like Nadine Unger, who talk about the albedo effect that says more forestry will actually cause a more rapid heating of the planet. And we as people who are looking for engineered solutions to the challenges that we face, need to be mindful of all of that work that's out there at the moment. Maybe another thing we've got in common is retentive minds and a voracious appetite for interesting things.

ML  Well, in my case, really I'd just rather be reading something interesting than doing any real work. But the point that you made in there about the tree, you said that one tree will do as much cooling as 10 air conditioners, which really locates a lot of the discussion around our cities. We're at the point now where more people live in cities than don't. And if you look at the experience of climate change of your average human, the single thing that you could do to mitigate their lived experience, is actually going to be street trees. And it's just so poorly understood. When we go to school and they teach you about trees, it's all about photosynthesis, right? The sunlight falls on the leaf, and then the water comes up, and then you get the co2 in it combines with the water and you get these sugars and etc. But they never teach kids about evapotranspiration and the cooling effect, which is by far the biggest flow of energy; far more of that solar energy falling on the tree actually goes into heat and then is either cooled or not, depending on whether there's a tree there. It should be taught in schools.

JB  And I think, just on that, we also need to talk about... So, there's an absolutely fantastic paper by Carly Ziter and a team at the University of Madison, Wisconsin, which was the first study to demonstrate not just... Because I think that the 40% canopy cover data I think has been established by numerous different studies, and essentially what that demonstrates is the nonlinear relationship between canopy cover in an urban environment and street temperatures. So, for every 1%, you go above 40% canopy cover on street, you start to achieve temperature reductions of greater than 1%, right? So, it's essential that you get to that figure and you build on it. But also, what it demonstrated is a huge impact - and for the first time, I think that paper - the huge impact that de-paving from our cities, makes as well. So, we've got to go beyond street trees and deliver rainwater gardens, urban hedges or at constrained locations. And of course, the benefits of that then... Because the reason this paper is so interesting is what it demonstrates is that the key to reducing, if not the frequency, but certainly the duration and the intensity of urban extreme heat events, is what happens at night. And part of the problem with our cities is that they have been concreted over and covered in so many hard surfaces that they effectively act like a giant storage heater. And as soon as the ambient temperature, the atmospheric temperature, drops below the temperature of the paving, then the paving starts to release the heat, in the classic way that a storage heater does. And so, removing, large areas of quite unnecessary hard standing in our cities is central to getting those nighttime temperatures down, so the daytime temperatures don't get as high as they might have otherwise got. And I wrote an article for the Big Issue on this last year about the reality of 40-degree heat waves in our cities in the UK, and what we need to do to address them. So, a lot of that is in there.

ML  I couldn't agree more. You know, it's so funny when you do see people look at, for instance, King's Cross and they're like, oh, it's this marvelous regeneration - and it was right? This was a horrible, horrible, dangerous area, and it's now full of restaurants and offices, and it's great. But you've got like eight little teeny, weeny trees, and everything else is paved over. And I look at that as a catastrophe.

JB  It's absolutely shocking. So, I think that the Museum of Illustration has now moved on, but they had some really good exhibitions there. It's called something like... it's not Wheatsheaf Square, but it's something similar to that [Granary Square]. But I know the square that you're thinking of, and those trees can't possibly compensate for the hard standing of that location. But you know, they've created a space that will increasingly not be able to be... On the hottest days, you couldn't spend any time there with your children...

ML  And then the normal reaction of the town planners is to put one of those squirty fountains that a few kids can play in. It's just tragic, it's absolutely tragic. Look in the four-hour version of this conversation, we could get into mental health, we could get into employment opportunities for people who maybe do not have civil engineering, or energy engineering backgrounds, but maybe just want to be working with trees and drainage. I also got very, very angry about the whole Thames super sewer. You had Thames Water.... Now, I'm gonna start sounding like one of you lefty types. You had Thames Water: privatized, hoovered all the money out, gave it to its shareholders in the Cayman Islands, and then said they didn't have enough money to stop flushing sewage into the Thames. And paid a bunch of engineers to say the only solution is a new piece of massive hard engineering - the Thames super sewer. Because sustainable drainage wouldn't work in London, and it was subsequently found that it was complete nonsense...

JB  It's utter nonsense. And in fact, there's a report that was conducted by academics, an experiment conducted by academics at UCL a number of years ago, on green roofs, sustainable urban drainage within an estate, and the figures are just staggering. None of the water that fell on that state over the pilot period entered the storm drain system; it was reducing runoff by, 80 odd plus percent. Again, a small street tree, even without a large tree pit - a standard tree pit surrounded by asphalt - will, just from leaf area alone, eliminate 60% of the rain that falls on it in the average rain event, and prevent that alone from reaching the ground. I mean, there are just numerous solutions to alleviate the pressure on the drainage system of London. I find it fascinating that we've got an enormous and almost inordinate amount of challenges that you and I and lots of other people don't even have solutions to at this stage. But there are also a lot of challenges for which there are oven-ready solutions now that we could be deploying that are cheap, that are not only revenue-generating, but economic development-generating interventions, that we could be undertaking today. I mean, we could be mandating every local authority in the country not to deliver segregated cycle infrastructure that reduces the number of short distance motor vehicle journeys, now, because they don't have the capital budget for that. But we should be mandating them to integrate it into their existing capital plan to ensure that when they go into the ground next time to resurface, they delivered the infrastructure there, because the marginal cost of that's almost zero - the labour costs are the main cost of any of those jobs. And, just that lack of solutions-based thinking drives me mad... I'd much rather be playing golf at the weekends and enjoying myself and spending time with my family, than having to spend my life doing this, but you sort of realize... It's a bit like that scene in Harry Potter, where he sees the stag come through, and then he goes back in time and he keeps thinking his dad when he realizes he's the one that has to get rid of the Dementors. You sort of sit around going, someone's going to come along soon with the answers. You know, I'm having dinner, I've got the kids, you've got homework, and then they just don't - they just don't, they're just not there. So, you've got to pitch in.

ML  Absolutely. And I'm not sure that either of us is really built to kind of step back and say, well, somebody should do something. It's like, well, no, we are, that's us. But let's get back to low traffic neighborhoods. Because that's really where the politics... all of the kind of bad behaviours on all sides, really kind of coalesces around low traffic neighborhoods. And that culminated in Hackney with you getting this death threat. And I don't know... hopefully... does it trigger you, if I sort of show people the death threat?

JB  I'm not part of the triggered generation, to be honest. No, it's fine.

ML  I mean, I'm gonna hold this up. I don't know if anybody can see that, because the cameras washing out, but in any case, it's this sort of scrawled note that was sent to the council. And it said, Mr. Burke, you f.... c..., we will come to visit you, you f..... c.... We intend to burn down your house while you are sleeping, you c.... Stop the traffic or we will get violent. You ride a bicycle, we like our car, and we will continue used [sic] our cars - not very grammatical - and we will attack your kids and family, one of you will get hurts. I mean, it's just extraordinary stuff. And I hate to say it, but probably not coming from somebody who's completely... who's got mental health issues. It's probably just coming from some upstanding member of the community who perceives you as the focus of all the things that are harming them, because you want to have livable streets.

JB  Yeah, I mean, I think actually... I mean, that didn't... Although it was grim from the perspective of my family, that didn't particularly rattle me. I think the relentless abuse and calling into question my character and my honesty, being told that I was taking brown envelopes as a member of the North London Waste Authority. Even though, not only did I never receive a stipend for it, I had to pay for my own public transport. Then they did to be fair give good sandwiches during the AGM meeting, so that compensated for it slightly. And to have your character on social media relentlessly attacked... I think some people are really good at - and it's probably one of my psychological flaws that I was brought up to be a bit of a fighter and stuck up for myself frequently, some might say too frequently - but I think that knowing that you came into politics to do good and then to be told relentlessly... to be compared to Pol Pot and various other genocidal maniacs because you've implemented a series of low-traffic neighborhoods, which are neither new - Hackney's oldest LTN is De Beauvoir, which goes back to 1974 when local, disproportionately mothers, from quite working class backgrounds, got fed up with their kids being run over, and to campaign for it. It'll be 50 next year, still going strong. I think that... I think it was more a combination of a large number of people attacking my character that I found quite hard. And then also... I'm very up for making the case for my values and fighting for them and delivering them. And there's definitely an aspect among some of my Hackney Council colleagues that they thought it was all a bit much, essentially, and they thought, can't we maybe go a bit a little bit slower, and a little bit softer. But you know, these are the same people who stood up in a council chamber and declared a climate emergency. You know, so there is no way. And I'd often get people coming to me, really good people, and they'd say, I went to Amsterdam for my holidays, and it was fantastic, and can't we just do what they did there? I was like, well have a look at the footage of De Pijp back in the 70s, where you've got grown man driving at kids, fistfight in the streets. Very little human progress has been achieved without some degree of pushback from those who benefit from the status quo. And the status quo around cars, how it's arisen is really remarkable. The number of registered motor vehicles on the UK road has doubled in 30 years. Even since the end of the pandemic, the number of new registered motor vehicles on the UK's roads has increased by one and a half million. We've gone from 27 million cars on the road in 2000 to 41 million today - in 23 years. It's just absolutely enormous the effects of that. So, any policy that then seeks to reverse a process which has seen an overloaded main road network, which was designed to carry through traffic, bleed out, and to treat our residential streets as a pressure relief valve for that overloaded main road network is always going to be a huge challenge. I accept that, but of course, it doesn't make it any easier when you're relentlessly told that the reasons behind your action in this respect are malign. I think most people who are in politics, you know, certainly don't view themselves in that way.

ML  Without for an instant condoning, not just that letter that I just read, but also some of these attacks on your character... This would not be Cleaning Up if I didn't push back at least a bit. And do you see why people get riled up about these low traffic neighborhoods? Or the 15-minute city, which is kind of the same sort of thing? Do you see, do you understand? Is there anything legitimate, let's put it that way? Is there anything legitimate that you see in their pushback?

JB  Okay, so I think the first thing... It's good that you've mentioned 15-minute cities alongside LTNs, because I think a lot of the kind of, frankly, batshit conspiracy theories that we hear about - the World Economic Forum and 15-minute cities - what people are actually talking about often is low traffic neighborhoods. 15-minutes cities are a concept. I think some people have developed the idea that the state's going to turn up one day and build a wall around your town, and you're not going to be allowed out of it, or you'll only be allowed out for a limited number of times a year. Which is a nonsense, because it would completely go against the circumstances that are required to grow the economy in the first place. So, the kind of people who are supposedly minded to build a wall around your town are hardly going to prevent you from getting to the local town.

ML  To be fair, that's the batshit crazy people...

ML  The people who want economic growth are generally the people who are against... Because what they would say is, the 15-minute city, the problem is, that there'll be more and more barriers erected to moving fluidly the length and breadth of a city. So, you'll be expected to stay in these kinds of 15-minute cells. And the whole point of a city... The reason we're in a city, rather than a village where you can do everything - if you want to go 15 minutes and do everything, then it's called a village. But if you want to... you want to live in a city for education, for culture, for your relatives, whatever, and they may not be in the 15-minute range. And the barriers will be erected by a bunch of people who frankly don't care about economic growth. Because half of them are de-growthers and extinction rebellion types and people like JB, and so on... And so, that's their... I think that's the articulation against the 15-minute city.

JB  Yeah, I mean, I think you're right insofar as that's how people understand, some of these people understand the concept of 15-minute cities. But 15-minute cities are about enabling people. And I think this brings us back to I think the kind of disjuncture, that exists between right wing perceptions of freedom and negative perceptions of freedom, and what I'd call that a left-wing, positive perception of freedom. 15-minute cities as a concept is about ensuring that everybody can access most of the things that they require to live a good life within a relatively short distance. And you know, there are people who purport to be against 15-minute cities, some of whom live in LTNs, by the way - I won't go telling you who. But then go to the south of France on holiday and come back and say, it's absolutely fantastic. We were staying in Marseille or Lyon, and there was a there was a bakery downstairs, there's a park at the end of the street... The idea of the 15-minute city is to ensure that those things are there for you to access them should you require, but that if you do need to go further, as inevitably people need to do, or wish to go further in fact, that they can do so. I think one of the misconceptions about things like LTNs is that LTNs are fully-boarded areas, the filters exist... In actual fact, if you really want to get out of that cell without driving through the open modal filter, just go through the route where there is no barrier, of which there always is.

ML  But that comes to the heart of it because of course, what the opponents will say is that, if you want to add local services and make the local area work better and have more... nice bakery, nice primary school, nice childcare, nice this, nice that, that's good. But what they will say is you don't actually do that. What you do is you stick a planter across the road and stop.... In other words, it's a negative. What you're doing is making movement harder, not making the area more attractive. And that would be I think, their critique.

JB  So, what I would say, if I'm going to be my most pugnacious, I would say, I will not be taking lessons on local economic development from people who drive to get their shopping from an out-of-town shopping center in a pickup truck, right? I would say that those arguments... Some of them, I think, are based in, fears that people have, right? And in that sense, they're kind of legitimate. But the reality is that you don't create communities in which there's a high degree of footfall, there's a low level of road injuries, there's a high standard of quality, there's a high level of neighbouring, by creating the conditions that make it... Not only make it easy, but actively encourage people to drive 500 meters to the shops. The thing to understand is, if we look into the data, the overwhelming majority of private motor vehicle journeys in the UK - and the DfT's data makes this clear - are not for business or commuting purposes - that's around 12%. 50% of all motor vehicle journeys in the UK are for leisure or shopping, right? 40% of all motor vehicle journeys in the UK, private motor vehicle journeys, are under two miles, right? They're mostly being taken by people who could otherwise undertake in different modes of transport. They may not wish to do so, but as policymakers, we have to create the circumstances in which, to some extent, we try to reflect that utilitarian principle of the greatest happiness of the greatest number. Now, we know from the literature that, whilst not preventing motor vehicles from accessing any single inch of a local area, right, we can, through the delivery of modal filters that prevent through traffic, right... Which is, you know, like Hackney, before I delivered the LTNs, 40 odd percent of motor vehicles that were traveling through the borough was traveling through from one end to the other without stopping. We were deriving no social benefit from that whatsoever. But we know from the literature, Michael, that LTNs halve motor vehicle injuries, induced motor vehicle industries, which is to say that they have the chance of my child being killed on the way to school, if I were to live in an LTN. We know that they halve the number of local motor traffic movements, right? We know they improve quality, not just within the LTN, but on boundary roads. And we also know, which I think is really fascinating, and the result of I think increased footfall as a result of the delivery of LTN... Because recent data has also shown they reduce car usage and reduce car ownership within those areas - data from Waltham Forest and Lambeth. One of the things I find fascinating is that in Waltham Forest, we've now subsequently found... Because that was where Boris's first mini-Holland was funded. Again, we had a Conservative Mayor of London. Very topical issue at the moment, obviously, Boris Johnson, receiving a lot of criticism for what he may or may not have said in Parliament. I think one of the things in retrospect that people will look back on his legacy, by the way, people will say that he probably did more to promote active travel than any other Prime Minister before and possibly for a long time. Hence, as well, I think there'll be an interesting retrospective around his interventions in that area. But they've now found that there are substantial reductions in street crime, particularly of a violent and sexual nature, within LTN areas. Which goes to demonstrate that not only are they a bit of a silver bullet for reducing road injuries and emissions - particulate matter, improving air quality - but they're also making people safer on our streets, as well. If I were to come to you five years ago, and say, I've got a policy intervention, Michael, that can achieve all of these things, most policymakers would bite my hand off. There's naturally been a push back because cars are an expression of our individualism. They're probably quite fun - I've never owned a car... I mean, I can drive, my wife can drive. I understand why people like them. But because cars have become a kind of hieroglyph, if you will, for freedom, in the minds of some people, actually, I think their reactions to things like low traffic neighborhoods are more based in the idea that they affront their conception of what freedom is, than that they actually limit their ability to use a motor vehicle.

ML  So, I was thrilled that you referred to Boris and his mini-Holland, Waltham Forest and so on; I was on the board of Transport for London, and when we do the four-hour version, we'll also talk about how I had to do some quite... I'm going to say quite nasty things to get the cycle superhighways through. In other words, we had to be quite well, not nasty in any moral sense, but there was a bit of political maneuvering that had to be done to get that through, and I was quite proud of that, but it was behind the scenes. I thought you were going to also point out that the shops, the actual commerce... You didn't talk about... You talked about the footfall in respect to street crime, but actually, it's amazing, every time there's talk of a low traffic neighborhood, everyone says, but the shops, they need all the people who arrive by car. But of course, as you rightly point out, most people zoom through, don't buy anything, and the shops do very well in LTNs. That's data, that's not just me or you saying that. But I'm going to come back to, you've raised the point about liberty and freedom and what it means. There is... let's take an example that I think you probably know about, and I know about, although neither of us live there: that's Chiswick High Street. And there's no question, it would make a magnificent low traffic neighborhood. There's lots of lovely little shops, there's lovely, wealthy people who would buy things from boutique shops, but it is also an important through route, east-west into and out of London. And so, although it might be magnificent for the people who live in Chiswick, to reduce the amount of through traffic, what about the rights of the people who have to actually move east-west through London? Do they not have rights as well to pass through a neighborhood? Not at high speed, and to harm your children and so on, but do they not have rights as well?

JB  Okay. So, there's a couple of different ways of looking at this. But I'll do the realpolitik one first, right. And the realpolitik of it, is that the iron law of local government is to serve the interests of people who elected you, not the people who drive through your community. I mean, that just kind of makes total sense. Why would you, as a local policymaker, go to your electorate, after four years, on a four-year cycle in London and say, actually, I had an opportunity to reduce the chance of your child being killed on the way to school in the morning, Mrs. Jones, and to improve local air quality, and to increase footfall in your local neighborhood shops, etc., but I chose not to do it, because my priority, frankly, was someone living in Surrey, right? I mean, that doesn't make... the realpolitik of that... It doesn't make any sense to me why counselors who - again, shall remain nameless now - are so combative, when it's manifestly in the interests of the local residents to implement some of these measures. In answer to your broader question - the right to life is inviolable, right? And I would say that the right to clean air is an extension of the right to life. So, it's more of a first order consideration than the right to shave five minutes off your vehicle journey into outer London by taking a sat nav-induced back road route, rather than the main road network, which was built to carry that traffic. And I think this is something that I have to continue to go back and emphasize - that our residential streets were not built to be a pressure relief valve for an overloaded main road network.

ML  Chiswick High Street, High Road, High Street, is not a residential street. It carries a major amount of traffic.

JB  But very few people, if anyone... I've never seen anyone advocate the inclusion of Chiswick High Road within an LTN.

ML  Maybe not Chiswick High Road. But you know, you've got another thing going on - maybe it's not specifically LTN-related - but, you know, I had a taxi driver yesterday, who said that he came back after the pandemic, he'd been a taxi driver for many years, took some time off, actually was a delivery driver, key worker, came back as a taxi driver. For the first time in his life, he got six points on his license, right? Twice, he was done - once for driving 22 miles an hour in a 20 mile an hour zone, and once we're driving 23 miles an hour. So, this kind of hostility to roads and to road traffic and to cars, isn't that just extreme? A taxi driver... Surely in any world, you would allow a taxi driver to ply his or her trade because we can't do all journeys by cargo bike or walking?

JB  Indeed, and I've said this publicly, I'm a regular user of taxis. Often black cabs, but sometimes also private hire as well, which allow me to lower my net contribution to emissions by ensuring that I don't need to own a car. But you know, my kids play football and things like that in far flung parks and stuff and occasionally I have to get out to those, and the ability to get there, particularly on our quite hostile roads is quite challenging. And I think that... I've always said - which is one of the things I find so amazing about how hostile black cab drivers, in particular, have always been towards me, right - I've always said, I see black cabs, and maybe to some extent, as well, private hire vehicles as being part of a package of solutions that allow us to have a much smaller social fleet, if you will, of motor vehicles, whilst also benefiting from the obvious benefits that the use of Motor Vehicles sometimes provide to people. But you know, on the point about speed limits: speed limits are there for a reason. If you exceed the speed limit... Clearly, if you exceed it considerably, you're far more likely if you collide with somebody in your car to kill or seriously injure them. But you know, the law cannot, I think, realistically or practically, around speeding, be applied on the conditions at that particular point. I think that the law needs to be, by definition, either lawful or unlawful. And I think that a professional driver should be as capable of remaining in a 20 mile an hour limit, as they are remaining a 30 mile an hour limit. I think perhaps to some extent, it's more forgivable if it's an 80-year-old grandmother who gets into a car and drives once a year; these are people who drive every day, and they understand the importance - or at least they should understand the importance - of road safety in our cities. But I would also say, this is an example of one of the solutions to which I referred before which are at our disposal now, that we're not seeking to exercise. There should be mandatory speed limiters in cities on motor vehicles, frankly, and then these taxi drivers wouldn't have a problem, because they'd be operating within defined laws of the game, if you will.

ML  I think the issue by the way... I drive an electric car around London. I think the issue - I agree with you the speed limit should be adhered to, I'm not arguing that anybody should get a free pass - I think the problem is that if you do drive around London, you've got this kind of irrationality; you'll get sort of residential streets that seems to be 30, and then you'll get major roads that are clearly for through traffic that are a 20. And they jump around, the speed limits jump around all the time, it's almost impossible.

JB  Massive issue which I tried to address as a member of the Transport and Environment Committee at London Councils, by the way,

ML  And the four-hour version of this conversation would now go into at least half an hour on how absolutely shockingly awful Mayor Sadiq Khan has been at doing anything rational on our streets, or with trees, or with... And then we can get into knife crime, and you can get into the police and the fire and the whole... Catastrophic.

JB  I would say, to his to his credit, and you'll have seen from my own tweets, and from the piece that I wrote for Architect's Journal last year, if you caught it, which is entitled, The Mayor Talks a Good Game, but he Doesn't Walk the Walk, or something to that effect. It's probably the most highly critical piece... Because there's a huge conspiracy of silence around this environmental record in the media; there's no real critique there at all. But I would say it was less dreadful as you describe, and more highly contradictory. So, on the one hand, you've got someone like Will Norman, really pushing on and delivering some segregated cycling infrastructure and being generally supportive of the delivery of low traffic neighborhoods by the boroughs, for example. On the other hand, you've got an enormous two and a half, 3 billion pound Silvertown tunnel, which will inflict an extra 40,000 cars on the streets of East London and some of it's already disproportionately poisoned ethnic minority communities; his support for the expansion of City Airport, which he then subsequently rescinded; I think there's a lot of contradictory behavior in City Hall, and that's been my consistent criticism. I'll be supportive of people when they make the right decisions, but equally - and that probably also marks me out as a bit of an unusual figure, you know, in politics in general, but you know - if it's necessary for me to say, you got this wrong, to people who are ostensibly on my side, I think I'm very happy to do that as well.

ML  I worked quite closely with both Boris, and then I begged to stay on under Sadiq Khan, to work on actually road and bus safety. And I think his performance on that has been execrable. And if anybody's listening to this, who thinks that just because he wrote a book called Breathe about air quality that he has any clue about how to steer a city towards some sort of environmental settlement, and improve conditions for people. You've called it contradictory; I think that on any given issue, what he does is decide what creates the best PR in the near-term, what gives him an opportunity to attack the government or to shift responsibility to somebody else. And I think that he is so far from the leader that London needs. But that's a longer conversation...

JB  I think the very short version of that conversation is that, London is your Europe's only megalopolis, and I think there's a massive problem in this country more generally, if you take a look at metro mayors that, far too many people are not actually, who want to be the Mayor of London, or want to be the Mayor of Greater Manchester, are actually interested in cities, or interested in local government, or city government, or interested in addressing the kind of practical challenges of cities. And far too many people I think, see it as a stepping stone, either back into government, or into government. And I think that is reflected in City Hall's uneven record, shall we say, on environmental matters.

ML  Jon, we're running a little bit long, we could go for four hours, we do want to bring this in near the hour. But I want to leave it where we started, which is to ask you in your words. What happened, how did your time at Hackney finish - the short version, please - and then what did you go on...? Because you yourself were trying to stand for mayor - Liverpool, your city - but then for various reasons that didn't work and you're now up in Edinburgh? So, how did that all happen?

JB  That is the big reveal of this podcast; the first time I think anyone's kind of noted where I actually live. But because I like you, I think we should allow it - VAR-style. But basically, I stepped down from Hackney Council on the 31st of December 2020. And depending on who you speak to that was because I was the most complained about counselor in the country, because of my support for low traffic neighborhoods, my vociferous support for low traffic neighborhoods. Or because I wanted to become the Mayor of Liverpool, because I'd always secretly been a career politician. And I have to often remind them that career politicians are not as frank as I am about the matters that concern me. When in actual fact, going back a number of years before that, before the pandemic, we were making plans to move to be closer to my brother and his wife, up in the frozen north - not as frozen as I'd like it to be. And then towards the end of my time in Hackney... I mean, bear in mind, 2020 kind of changed things for everyone, but it was an enormously productive but stressful period for me. There was a point at which I literally worked 15 hours a day, seven days a week, for eight months. And the thing to remember is, I wasn't just dealing with the implementation of low traffic neighborhoods and schools streets, I was doing things like trying to take out a high court injunction to prevent alcohol consumption on London Fields, because we were getting like 10,000 people turning up and reveling throughout lockdown, bullying local working class families out of the only local garden they had, and turning it into an all-night party, basically. So, there were so many other things going on, and I was enormously tired. But notwithstanding that, you know, as I said at the time, the former mayor of Liverpool stepped down under a cloud... It's a fantastic job, it's a fantastic city. But because I wasn't living in the city at the point at which that all went live, it wasn't possible for me to put in an application unfortunately. And then you know, I've subsequently moved to Edinburgh and you know, absolutely adore the city. Though the environmental habit is there, and the political habit is very difficult to kick. And that's why I was in Edinburgh City Council chambers just last week, making the case for the retention of low traffic neighborhoods, in the neighborhood in which I... there's low traffic neighborhood filters in the neighborhood in which I live. So, I continue to be very interested and active in this area, and, you know, I hope, in my own small way that, I've inspired other councilors to take a kind of maximalist approach to what you can achieve when you're a cabinet member in local government in the UK, despite your lack of powers and often funding.

ML  Well, I'm pretty sure... I know you're doing great work, so I don't want to say anything negative about where you are at the moment, up in Edinburgh, and also working with Key Cities, I know, working for Gloucester and doing plenty of other things. But I would love to have you back in some big elected role, getting into those political fights, because I think... Not that every place needs to do everything that you did, but you certainly shifted that famous Overton window and allowed a lot of people to do a lot of things they wouldn't otherwise have been brave enough to do.

JB  Well that's very kind of you. And to reciprocate your kindness, I will appoint you to the board of TfL once again. All joking aside, though, your work on bus safety and the safety of bus drivers in particular. I mean, I think it's interesting - we talked about not conforming to type politically - the working class is traditionally the area of concern, I think of people on the left, or who purport to be on the left. And yet very little, I think, was done to ensure the safety of those drivers. I think that you were one of the awkward squad of people who just continually returned to that issue and talked about the minor scandal, that was the disproportionate deaths experienced by bus drivers throughout that pandemic. We were talking about doctors, naturally, we were talking about other frontline workers, but I think that the narrative... We were not nearly concerned enough about the workplace safety of these individuals, as you know, as we should have been. And there's much to commend you for, for having been, almost a lone voice in making those arguments

ML  There's a few of us, and that story... You talked about the right to life is inviolable, and yet, it is extraordinary, the abdication of responsibility of the mayor and also of Unite the union for the working conditions of London bus drivers, and also London tram drivers, before the tragic Sandylands crash. And, we could, as you say, the four-hour version of this conversation, we could do an entire...

JB  I would love to bore you witless about how my kind of socialist philosophy is a kind of pre-Marxian one that links back to the likes of William Morris and the Garden City movement and all of that, which would be wonderful to discuss.

ML  Wonderful. Now, we are now completely out of time, but that does set us up for my invitation for us to do exactly that, perhaps over a nice pint of beer, or a dinner, or whatever.

JB  Several pints is even better than one pint of beer, I'm told.

ML  Potentially several pints, but without ever encouraging our audience to drink to excess. Thanks very much, Jon, it's been absolutely tremendous talking to you.

JB  Thanks for having me along, Michael.

ML  So, that was John Burke for six years councillor for the London Borough of Hackney, cabinet member for energy sustainability, transport and the public realm, and still an ardent campaigner for urban transformation. You'll find links in the show notes to the episode mentioned in today's conversation, that's episode 104 With Yanis Varoufakis, on the wisdom or otherwise of nationalizing the electricity system. You'll also find you'll also find links to some of the articles that were mentioned during our conversation. For instance, my October 2018 piece and titled The secret of eternal growth, as well as John Burke's July 2022. piece in the big issue, and titled 40. See, heat waves are now reality. It's time to transform our cities. And his September 2022 piece entitled London mayor talks the talk on climate. Pity he doesn't walk the walk.