What does zero carbon look like if you are planning a new housing development in your town. The UK’s building stock is one of the oldest in Europe, accounting for nearly 40% of the nation’s total carbon emissions, so how possible is it for our cities to cut them to zero before 2050?

Lecturer Lara Salinas explains how she has worked with local residents in the borough of Southwark in South London, encouraging them to take up zero carbon building design and retrofit. Professor Ljubomir Jankovic describes working with Welwyn Hatfield Borough Council, supporting their thinking about how housing developments could be built in future and how to build in net zero principles as part of the design process. New Generation Thinker Des Fitzgerald hosts the conversation.

Ljubomir Jankovic is Professor of Advanced Building at the University of Hertfordshire and leads the Zero Carbon Lab.

Lara Salinas is Lecturer in the Design School at London College of Communication and Senior Research Fellow in Knowledge Exchange at University of the Arts London.

Professor Des Fitzgerald is a New Generation Thinker who has co-written a book called The Urban Brain: Mental Health in the Vital City.

This New Thinking episode of the Arts and Ideas podcast was made in partnership with the Arts and Humanities Research Council, part of UKRI. If you want to dig out other episodes you can find a collection called Green Thinking on the website of BBC Radio 3’s Free Thinking programme – there are discussions about a range of topics including climate justice, energy, trees and transport.

For more information about the research the AHRC’s supports around climate change and the natural world you can visit: Responding to climate change – UKRI or follow @ahrcpress on twitter.

Producer: Jayne Egerton