Moving on up: is high-rise the answer to our climate and housing crises?

By Alice McCarthy Sommerville

Alice is a Researcher and Programme Coordinator at the Guerrand-Hermès Foundation for Peace in Brighton, a think tank in the areas of positive peace, collective healing, holistic wellbeing and good governance. Her own research interests are at the intersections of ethics, education and mutual flourishing. Alice is also a Trustee and Volunteer Coordinator at Seaford Environmental Alliance, a local charity which supports community and environmental regeneration through public learning and social action projects and initiatives. Alice home-educates her two children and loves bicycles.

Walking through the quiet lanes of Sussex, one would have to be insensible not to appreciate the open green (and brown) fields, the hedgerows of hawthorn and blackthorn where birdsong can still reliably be heard, and the long-established oaks, beech and cedar which grace the skyline. Squeezed between sprawling towns and bypasses, in many areas of the UK these pastoral idylls are our last bastions of local biodiversity. Yet, incredibly, many of these sites have already been ear-marked by local councils, under strong government pressure, for “Death by Housing Development”.

Typical Sussex countryside

With unrealistic national housing target policies, our rural green spaces in the UK are increasingly vulnerable to invasion by developers, keen to make a killing by the creation of thousands of large family homes, of which perhaps two might be designated affordable housing. In the process, the habitats of thousands of co-existing species (Sussex Wildlife Trust, 2014), and landscapes which have brought solace to generations of residents, are being sacrificed. With over half of the earth’s land surface having already been transformed for human use, we know we cannot go on this way without suffering extreme consequences (Lehmann, 2016). Biodiversity loss is increasing exponentially and, depending on estimates of current species numbers, we are on track to lose between 200 and 100,000 species every year (WWF, 2024). Meanwhile, the building and construction industry is responsible for a whopping 38 per cent of total global energy-related CO2 emissions (UNEP, 2021).

In addition, a recent report found that the current approach to housing development in the UK drains public funds by requiring additional road construction, increases traffic congestion and locks-in car dependency, worsens air pollution and CO2 emissions, creates “unpopular” settlements, and increases local social inequalities (Create Streets and Sustrans, 2024).

“What is the answer? How can we share the limited land we have for the wellbeing of all?”

But despite these concerns, population growth is real. The Office for National Statistics projects that the UK population will increase by eight million by 2050 (ICAEW Insights, 2024), while UN-HABITAT (2025) predicts that three billion people globally will need a new home in the next 5 years, with a general trend of migration towards city and urban dwellings (Moreno et al, 2010). Whatever we may think of current UK housing target policies, as the global and national population grows we do and will need more homes (see note 1). But we also urgently need to protect our green spaces, not only as our key resource in climate change mitigation and countering biodiversity loss, but also because green spaces play an essential role in nurturing physical, psychological and emotional wellbeing and social cohesion (Sussex Wildlife Trust, 2014). So what is the answer? How can we share the limited land we have for the wellbeing of all?

Well, it seems clear that there are only two ways we can protect our green spaces at the same time as accommodating many more people: either live closer together (i.e. in smaller spaces – not a popular option) or build up instead of out – in the words of a 2022 report from the University of Illinois, to “engage the vertical dimension”. (Al-Kodmany, 2022). But with the typical emissions stats for high-rise buildings coming in at a shocking 140-154 per cent higher than average (Pomponi et al, 2021), is the latter a realistic option while keeping global temperatures below two degrees warming?

The answer is… maybe.

With urban sprawl into surrounding green spaces increasingly recognised as unacceptable, experts agree that compact urban design (variously referred to as “green urbanism”, “sustainable urbanism” and “ecological urbanism”) has to be the future of housing development (Lehmann, 2012). Well designed, compact towns and cities, with higher housing densities, use land more efficiently, encourage the use of public transport, support more efficient use of amenities, conserve valuable land resources, and are even likely to reduce individual resident's carbon emissions. Indeed, research suggests that effective compact city design can reduce average car use by as much as 2,000 kilometres per person per year (Lehmann, 2016). Some high-profile examples of developments based on urban density principles are well worth further examination. Try Googling Singapore’s Interlace – a “vertical village” incorporating open space, lush green roof gardens and landscaped “sky terraces” – or Sydney’s Central Park urban renewal project.

The Interlace development, Singapore

However, the density or “compactness” of housing on the land is not the only factor in building sustainable cities and towns. According to the UN Environment Programme, a huge proportion of the construction industry’s carbon footprint comes from the production of concrete and steel, as well as high levels of wastage at all stages of construction processes (see note 2) (UNEP, 2021). Unfortunately, high-rise constructions, by virtue of the strength required to hold them up safely, typically use proportionally more steel and concrete, thereby significantly increasing their climate change impact.

But there are alternative options to consider. A 2016 study by the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU) into the climate change impact of new high-rise construction found that the use of sustainably-sourced timber frames, over traditional steel and concrete (“reinforced concrete”), has the potential to reduce the lifecycle climate change impact of new builds by an impressive 34-84 per cent, depending on building height and regional location. Significantly, the greater climate change impact savings were to be found for the taller buildings studied (12 – 21 storeys).

In the UK, in particular, the transition towards living in compact urban environments is likely to take a significant change of mindset, with a shift towards relating to high-rise apartments as “homes for life” rather than as housing for young professionals (Benton et al, 2024). In a 2022 poll of almost 2,000 people in the UK, almost half believed tall buildings should not be allowed in suburban areas and that tall buildings have damaged London’s historic character (Policy Exchange, 2025). However, when paired with “green infrastructure” features, such as “green corridors” and other natural cooling systems to counteract the increased risks of overheating in densely developed cities, and localised solar and wind energy generation (Al-Kodmany, 2022), a shift towards timber-framed mid- to high-rise, high-density towns and cities may just be the best solution we have. How to convince national and local planners, developers and residents? Well, let’s leave that for another day…

Notes

1. For some instructive reading on this, take a look at Campaign to Protect Rural England (2015 and 2024).  

2. For a local example of a company effectively reducing construction materials waste through an innovative modular approach, check out Boutique Modern, based in Newhaven, East Sussex.

References and further reading

• Al-Kodmany, K. (2022). Sustainable High-Rise Buildings: Toward Resilient Built Environment. Frontiers in Sustainable Cities 4.

• Benton E., Russell, R. and Scanlon, K. (2024). Wellbeing in high rise housing—views from built environment professionals. LSE. 

• Campaign to Protect Rural England (2015). Set up to fail: why housing targets based on flawed numbers threaten our countryside. 

• Campaign to Protect Rural England (2024). Why building the homes we need means re-thinking how we use land.

• Create Streets and Sustrans (2024). The Road to Nowhere.

• ICAEW Insights (2024). Chart of the week: UK population projections.

• Lehmann, S. (2012). ‘The Metabolism of the City: Optimizing Urban Material Flow through Principles of Zero Waste and Sustainable Consumption’. In Lehmann, S., and Crocker, R. (eds.) Designing for Zero Waste: Consumption, Technologies and the Built Environment. London: Routledge

• Lehmann, S. (2016). Sustainable urbanism: towards a framework for quality and optimal density?. 

• Future Cities and Environment 2, 8 (2016).

• Policy Exchange (2025). Overwhelming dissatisfaction with tall buildings, finds poll – and no say for the public.

• Pomponi, F., Saint, R., Arehart, J.H. et al. (2021). Decoupling density from tallness in analysing the life cycle greenhouse gas emissions of cities. npj Urban Sustainability 1, 33.

• Sussex Wildlife Trust (2014). Biodiversity and Planning in Sussex. 

• Moreno, E. L., Oyeyinka, O., and Mboup, G. (2010). State of the World’s Cities 2010/2011: Bridging the Urban Divide. United Nations Human Settlements Programme (UN-HABITAT).

• UN-HABITAT (2025). Housing. https://unhabitat.org/topic/housing 

• WWF (2024). No title. (Article on biodiversity loss)