Jon Burke 🌍 Profile picture
Energy ⚡️ Waste ♻️ Transport 🚲 Public Realm 🌳 Words in @HuffPost, @BigIssue, @ArchitectsJrnal. @ClimateEmergUK Advisory Board. MIEMA CEnv & RSA Fellow.
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Aug 3, 2023 14 tweets 7 min read
1/ The Daily Mail's latest LTN attack piece - complete with token Northerner sporting flat cap and whippet 😂 - is a hoot.

Since it features LTNs I delivered - the Mail clearly doesn't know London Fields is in Hackney - let's look at some of its claims.
dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1… 2/ Because all the evidence shows LTNs...

* Improving air quality without displacement.
* Halving road injuries,
* Eliminating rat-running.
* Reducing street crime.

....authors @markdavidduell and @eirianJprosser have to rely on unsubstantiated anecdotes.

Fake journalism. twitter.com/i/web/status/1…
Jul 30, 2023 5 tweets 3 min read
I delivered the largest number of LTNs in the U.K.

This is what they do:

* Halve road injuries.
* Eliminate rat-running.
* Reduce pollution, even at boundaries.
* Reduce street crime.

Rishi Sunak wants to impose these scourges on you and your family.
bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politi… Yes, Low Traffic Neighbourhoods "halve road injuries".

"We found...injuries inside LTNs halved relative to the rest of London...indicat[ing] substantial reductions in pedestrian injury risk. We found no evidence of changes...on LTN boundary roads."

https://t.co/P5emH8CkO5findingspress.org/article/25633-
twitter.com/i/web/status/1…
Apr 3, 2023 17 tweets 5 min read
1/ Let me take you on a little journey about why this thread is nonsense. Albeit the kind of nonsense that Twitter thrives on, hence its 5000+ 'likes'.

But, more than that, let me tell you all about the awesome power of urban trees... 2/ The first giveaway that, despite their immense confidence, the Tweeter doesn't really know what they're talking about, is the claim that these algae units are to "be used in places where trees can't survive" is the healthy, mature street trees in both shots.
Nov 10, 2022 12 tweets 5 min read
1/ Recently, I wrote about the harassment campaign conducted against me by anti-LTN Horrendous Hackney Road Closures.

These are the same people who undertook a failed judicial review against the LTNs I delivered and, by all accounts, still owe the taxpayers of Hackney £10,000. Image 2/ Yes, the same anti-LTN group who mocked me up as a slave master and encouraged their gormless acolytes to lodge complaints about my support for LTNs appear to have turned out to be the bunch of dishonest, malignant grifters I warned you about.
Oct 25, 2022 19 tweets 8 min read
1/ Yesterday, we were treated to another statistics masterclass from anti-Low Traffic Neighbourhood journalist Andrew Ellson, of @thetimes.

Since I'm mentioned in the piece - a weird fixation - which cherry-picks DfT data to falsely imply LTNs increase mileage, this is my reply. 2/ Firstly, let's deal with Andrew's statement that I delivered the U.K's largest number of LTNs "on the basis that sat-nav apps were increasing the traffic on local roads."

This claim is false, as my introduction to Hackney Emergency Transport Plan (2020) shows:
Oct 6, 2022 16 tweets 7 min read
1/ You may have seen @Telegraph's & @TimHarford's coverage of recent DfT changes to road traffic stats, showing that 20.3bn miles were driven in London in 2019, not 22.6bn.

Low Traffic Neighbourhood enemies claim this means we don't need LTNs.

They're wrong. And I'll prove it. 2/ Not rubbishing @transportgovuk's data, but 1993 👉2019 miles driven on the U.K's roads annually increased by 100 billion. 70% came from cars/taxis, yet the DfT have not explained why their new estimates show just a 200 million mile increase in London in the decade to 2019.
Aug 8, 2022 14 tweets 4 min read
1/ What if I told you - with the continent suffering another #heatwave and England in severe #drought conditions - that increasing forest cover in Europe by 20% would result in 8% more summer rain, with negligible effects on winter rain?

You might not believe me, but it's true. 2/ What if I told you that photographs over a 54-year period since the reintroduction of beavers to Alberta, Canada, showed they were associated with a 900% increase in open water and a "damatic influence" on mitigating extreme #drought?

You might not believe me, but it's true.
Jul 19, 2022 10 tweets 6 min read
1/ I talk a lot about the cooling effects of street trees and green infrastructure during heatwaves, but one of the best ways of mitigating against high daytime temperatures is reducing high nighttime temperatures.

Let's talk about that. 2/ Concrete, tarmac, and other hard and synthetic materials - think the astroturf pitch (car tyre dump) or plastic play surfacing your Council recently installed - accumulate heat throughout the day and do not begin to release it until the external temperature begins to fall.
Jul 18, 2022 4 tweets 1 min read
1/ I forgot to mention a secondary - and very important - reason to keep your houseplants well watered during a heatwave.

It's a little bit magical, but it *only works* if you have terracotta pots like this...👇 2/ So, you fill your watering can with tap/grey water - provided it's colder than the room temperature (which is very likely) then you go around the house and water your plants *with terracotta pots* until the soil is thoroughly wet.

That's when the magic happens.
Jul 17, 2022 14 tweets 4 min read
1/ Over the past decade I’ve gone through all the stages of mourning associated with the global warming-induced collapse of the environmental systems that make human civilisation possible, so here are my top tips for getting through periods of extreme ‘climate weirding’. 2/ As soon as you’ve finished reading this important public service announcement 😉, get off social media. It’s full of fatalistic people saying we can’t do anything about our dire environmental circumstances - we can - because they don’t have the imagination or guts to do so. Image
Oct 27, 2021 11 tweets 5 min read
🧱 The built environment represents 40% of U.K emissions, but the #Treasury's approach to the decarbonisation of this sector is an object lesson in how a lack of joined-up thinking is taking us away from our legally-binding #netzero carbon commitments.

A #Budget2021 THREAD! Image 🔨It can take between 10 and 80 years for a new, energy-efficient building to offset the emissions created during the construction process. Image
Oct 26, 2021 17 tweets 4 min read
1/ What if I told you that the biggest and most urgent problem associated with our sewage system isn't the public health and environmental threat of discharges of human waste into bodies of water? You might not believe me, but it's true... Image 2/ As serious an environmental problem as sewage discharges are, it's the permanent loss of a very specific mineral carried in our sewage that poses the biggest threat of all.

Let's talk about phosphorous.
Oct 4, 2021 9 tweets 2 min read
Car manufacturers so embarrassed of cars taking over our cities that they leave them out of their adverts.

A thread. Image Volkswagen. Embarrassed of cars. Image
Jun 12, 2021 10 tweets 4 min read
1/ Just encountered a City Council seeking to spend a large budget on street trees. Good news, were it not for the way in which they want to distribute funding, which risks perpetuating inequality of access to tree canopy and failing to maximise the trees' environmental benefits. 2/ The Council in question is inviting people to apply for street trees, rather than developing its own plan. Since street trees can increase property prices by 15%+, such an approach risks unevenly impacting housing costs and driving gentrification. poverty.ac.uk/report-welfare…
May 28, 2021 18 tweets 6 min read
What if I told you there was a single intervention we could deliver in our cities that would cool them during heatwaves, reduce flooding, scrub pollutants from the air, boost biodiversity, improve public health, and even reduce crime? You wouldn't believe me. But it's true. Image What if I told you one study in Manchester found that shade from street trees reduced surface temperatures by an average of 12°C and that concrete surfaces shaded permanently by a bank of trees were cooled by up to 20°C in the summer? You wouldn't believe me. But it's true. Image
May 15, 2021 4 tweets 1 min read
Absolutely baffling. I mean, this *does not work*.
May 14, 2021 5 tweets 2 min read
Cressida Dick applying the judgement for which she has become renowned. Not only are many new modal filters completely open to emergency services, creating blue light priority zones, but, LTNs are proven to reduce crime. The Met should prescribe them. thetimes.co.uk/article/178753… What kind of Commissioner of the Metropolis would claim - without evidence - that Low Traffic Neighbourhoods 'hinder response times' while ignoring their proven record at reducing crime? I'll let you make your own mind up.
May 14, 2021 8 tweets 3 min read
✈️Since 2009, the number of foreign flights taken by people from the U.K has increased by 57% (29 million).
✈️ 75% of flights are taken by just 15% of people.
✈️There is no single act of consumption that has a greater impact on global warming emissions.

Aviation, A THREAD... Now, before frequent flyer vegans assail my mentions, please be aware that a) demand elasticity for food is lower than for flights; and b) a *year's* consumption of cow's milk (200ml a day) produces around 80% of the CO2 of *one* return economy flight from London to Berlin.
May 12, 2021 9 tweets 3 min read
When people say LTNs are 'divisive', what they really mean is 'let's go back to the days when we could drive wherever they wanted without any push-back'. All LTNs do is highlight the unsustainability of doubling the number of cars on our roads to 40 million in 30 years. It's strange the same people didn't think 40,000 premature deaths in the U.K from air pollution - to which cars make a disproportionate contribution - long before the new Low Traffic Neighbourhoods was 'divisive'. Why? Because the media wasn't interested in our concerns.
May 10, 2021 20 tweets 6 min read
1/ Hedgerows are not only central to our sense of national identity, they're also of immense environmental value. Their loss, and potential for preservation and restoration, also tell the story of our unsustainable way of life and how we can step back from the brink. 2/ Since WWII, the U.K has lost half its hedgerows - a staggering 300,000 miles. Although rates of hedge destruction have been reduced since the high watermark of the 1980s, losses are still occurring due to removal and mismanagement, with huge environmental consequences.
Apr 15, 2021 13 tweets 4 min read
1/ Here's a really good example of what some companies are getting right on sustainable product design; what they're getting wrong on sustainable product design; and why regulation is the - fundamental - missing piece of the excess consumption jigsaw. Image 2/ So, what do @clarksshoes get right? Elimination of petrochemical-based glues ✔️Efficient design of biodegradable upper, reducing material waste ✔️Minimal detailing, reducing embedded carbon from manufacturing ✔️Minimisation of dyes, reducing product's chemical footprint ✔️