Focus of work

The need to decarbonise how we live is well known, and the UK has managed to halve
greenhouse gas emissions since 1990, primarily due to the decarbonisation of the
electricity and industrial sectors. This leaves surface transport as the highest emitting
sector, responsible for 30% of UK emissions in 2024. If we are genuine about
decarbonisation, then we need to decarbonise all transport, including in the suburbs, which
is where most people live.

Decarbonising the suburbs brings more than environmental benefits; it helps create
neighbourhoods that are safer, cleaner and more attractive, with better connections to the
places people need every day. It also supports local shops and services, making
communities richer and more cohesive.

With the government pushing to build more houses, we find ourselves at an inflection point
in the UK – will there be a shift to the kind of ‘good ordinary’ sustainable housing common
in comparable European countries? Or will the need for speed and the reliance on
speculative house building by the monopoly UK house builders result in the ‘good ordinary’
continuing to be the exception and not the rule?

This report from Jonathan Bray is based on a year of visits and research into the decarbonisation of suburban transport in the UK and mainland Europe. It highlights the lessons we can learn from ‘next-level’ cities and sets out seven key recommendations for the UK government.

Key findings from the report

• Existing lower-density suburbs in the UK are packing in more and bigger cars, and then paving over gardens to accommodate them. This ‘green to grey’ conversion mitigates against climate resilience. (FACT: As a proportion of urban England, green space declined from 63% in 2001 to 55% in 2018)
• Many new suburbs are badly built and poorly designed and located. They are often designed around the car, lacking public amenities and services (including public transport). They are also often hostile to wheeling, cycling and walking.
  Millions of households have no way of charging vehicles on or outside their property. This is holding back the transition to electric cars, which the Climate Change Committee say is the single biggest thing we can do to cut emissions from land transport. (FACT: 90% of EV charging takes place at home, but around 30% of UK households do not have access to off-street charging.)
• Some of the most promising alternatives to single occupancy car use are the most neglected by policy makers. This includes car pooling and car clubs, and new forms of ‘light mobility’ like E-Bikes. (FACT: Germany has 5.4 shared cars per 10,000 people, France has 2.1 and the UK has only 0.6.)
• There is hope and examples of good practice, with social and public housing now seeing decarbonisation as more of a priority. The energy sector has decarbonised at an extraordinary rate, and the transition to electric vehicles (which can be powered by greener energy) is well underway.

Recommendations for the UK government

• Review Department for Transport policies for impacts on the suburbs to identify ‘missing pieces’ in policy making in relation to suburbs and to tackle potential obstacles to transport initiatives with the greatest potential in suburbs
• Shift the policy focus on car electrification to tackling residential charging challenges.
• Establish a dedicated ‘future suburbs’ funding stream for piloting innovative approaches at a meaningful scale (such as mobility hubs, demand responsive transport and greater take up of E-bikes).
• Work with ‘anchor’ institutions (e.g. hospitals, universities) and across Whitehall to promote a more integrated approach to climate resilience, and the decarbonisation of energy, the built environment and transport. This includes the potential for a template approach for different kinds of solutions for different kinds of suburbs.
• Co-ordinate action on planning processes, engineering standards and co-procurement to cut the cost and speed up implementation of new light rail schemes. (FACT: Light rail schemes in GB cost twice as much as in France.)
• Shift the balance of national funding for roads from building new highways to greening and reducing flood risk from existing roads. (For example, for the cost of the Lower Thames Crossing, 132 area-wide sustainable urban drainage schemes could be implemented.)
• Support the re-greening of the UK’s front gardens, for example through supporting a Dutch style competition for which area can remove the most paving tiles from their gardens. (FACT: Across the Netherlands/Flanders, a staggering 7.4 million tiles were removed in 2025.)

The main report can be downloaded here
The executive summary can be downloaded here
The visual overview can be downloaded here

If you would like to discuss the findings of the report in more detail, please contact Jonathan at hello@jonathan-bray.com