Air Quality in Cities: Embracing Complexity and Delivering Impact

Eukai’s advisory spans the full transport landscape, from strategy to delivery. With deep specialisation across the sector, we develop responses that shift thinking and unlock change. This article looks back at a successful project and shares the benefit of hindsight from a project that helped pave the way for frameworks like Healthy Streets.

Prepared by Will Fooks, Sector Lead – Strategy, Eukai

From 2009 - 2012, Will Fooks worked on ‘tackling air quality in London’, in an area that is not considered fully in transport across Australia, these are his insights over 10 years on.

One of the most interesting projects I’ve worked on was London’s air quality strategy, specifically the 2009 update, which was developed during a turning point in London responded about pollution, health, and urban transport.

The earlier approach to ‘solving’ air quality leaned heavily on the idea that cleaner technology, particularly that reducing carbon emissions, would naturally result in improved air quality. But it turned out the shift to diesel vehicles, while beneficial for CO₂, had the unintended effect of increasing Particulate Matter (PM) and Nox. This resulted in London being at risk of breaching European air quality standards, with potential fines in the hundreds of millions.

Before the 2009 Update Strategy London had some broad, city-wide measures in place, but poor air quality wasn’t evenly distributed. Like many things in a city, it’s highly localised. Specific hotspots with real health risks. So, London needed a new approach.

The multi-disciplinary team brought together academic research (through King’s College), local government, London Government (the Greater London Authority), and Transport for London. The team formed a common bond, which was a deeply human motivation: protecting people’s health. The problem we were approaching was also intellectually challenging too, we knew the problem, but not the solution.

We investigated every solution around the world. Started with maybe 80 ideas, filtered them down, and ultimately delivered the Clean Air Fund. This program included some pretty unusual measures, such as green walls, dust suppressants, signs discouraging engine idling. They may have been stop-gaps, but the mini-trail approach was designed to address the problem.

The evaluation and monitoring we built into that program was extensive. We wanted to know what worked. And interestingly, many of those trial measures prefigured a broader shift. Green walls, for instance, are now far more mainstream. The greenwall on Edgeware station is still there today and looks far more shaggy than it did 15 years ago. The Centre for Low Emissions, which is going amazingly well, started during CAF (though it looks very very different today).

What stands out most, looking back, is how the project helped reframe air quality, it help moved the conversation from a technical or compliance issue to a human health imperative. It wasn’t just a policy tick-box anymore.

That shift laid groundwork that others built on. For example, the Healthy Streets approach now embedded in London’s strategy owes a lot to that foundational work.

I was on the project for four years. And while it was fast-moving and creative, what stays with me is that real, long-term change takes time. Especially in complex urban systems.

The bond between the team members was something special, we still talk today and I’m certain that if you asked them all they would recall the importance and value of the shared purpose across disiplines.

Change doesn't always come from a breakthrough. Sometimes it’s about persistence, clarity of purpose, and keeping health - and people - at the centre of the work.

Links for further reading

Centre for Low Emissions Construction: https://clec.uk/advice/pollution-monitoring-around-construction-sites

London Plan Chapter 4: Air Quality https://www.london.gov.uk/sites/default/files/air_quality.pdf

London’s currently (staggering) investment into the challenge, given the Clean Air Fund was five million pounds. https://www.london.gov.uk/programmes-strategies/environment-and-climate-change/pollution-and-air-quality