Are international sporting events unsustainable?

Robin Nicholson writes for Building Magazine:

"Holding the 2022 World Cup in Qatar should make us question the carbon cost of sport.

The football season has begun again - although, being an Arsenal supporter, things didn't start well. While, as a season ticket holder, entering the lower tier of the stadium never fails to thrill, as an architect I love the way this 60,000-seater has been elegantly inserted into the tight Victorian urban fabric so it is almost invisible from the Holloway Road, with good public transport links. And it was built on time and on budget without any fuss.

Sustainability at Arsenal is more about finance and performance than carbon or energy and I don't lose much sleep about the relatively few fans who fly in from around the globe to watch the Gunners. But bells began to ring when FA chairman Greg Dyke recently challenged the viability of the summer 2022 World Cup in Qatar.

Arup will have brought all their brilliance to bear on the design of the five air-conditioned stadiums planned to allow the players and fans some comfort when the local temperature in July can exceed 50 degrees centigrade. Money is clearly not a problem in Qatar but with up to 70% of all energy delivered to air-conditioned buildings being used to power the air-con, how sustainable can such stadiums be? And how will the spaces between the buildings work so spectators, with or without tickets, can mill around in what for many will be unaccustomed heat?

Buildings are only part of the carbon footprint - the spectators have to get there too. I love my sport as much as anyone but I have long wondered about the carbon cost of flying to international sporting events, as we will go to enormous lengths to see Usain Bolt run or our teams play abroad. Many flew into London for the Olympics but how many more will be flying to the next World Cup - 2014 in Brazil, 2018 in Russia and 2022 in wherever. Just what will the carbon price of the 2022 World Cup be if Greg Dyke doesn't persuade Fifa to move it to another country?"

The hours of repose

‘Growing your own’ is becoming mainstream again.

What better way to enjoy the glorious weather at the weekend than to get out and plant? As a newcomer to this game I’m concentrating on high value or unusual herbs and veggies, or the ones – like potatoes – that taste so much better dug straight from the garden. Some lettuce, leeks, spinach and chard somehow survived the winter frosts, and I supplemented these by fresh planting. We have a couple of trays of chilli seedlings for the first time – why buy ones flown in when you can grow your own?

I’m not quite ready to go communal myself but I’m intrigued by how vegetable growing might be a core ‘grass root’ activity feeding the new localism. Incredible Edible appears to have had a truly regenerative effect in Todmorden – it is inspiring.

Le Corbusier isn’t the first urban designer to spring to mind when thinking about allotments. If you google ‘The City of Tomorrow’ you will find principally those familiar images ‘Cartesian’ skyscrapers we have learned to mock.

But elsewhere in the book (which is well worth a read) Le Corbusier vividly describes his ‘garden city housing scheme on the honeycomb principle’. By grouping dwellings together, each with their own terrace, shared land is available in the centre of the block 'just outside your own home'. As well as 150 square yards for communal sports, ‘close at hand are the 150 square yards of kitchen garden joined up with the similar plots belonging to the neighbours.’ By rationalising the layout the allotments are automatically watered. ‘There would be a farmer in charge of 100 such plots and heavy cultivation employed. The inhabitant comes back from his work and with the renewed strength given him by his games, set to work on his garden. His plot, cultivated in a standardised and scientific way, feeds him for the greater part of the year. There are storehouses on the boarders of each group of plots in which he can store his produce for the winter. Orchards lie between the houses and the cultivated ground. This new type of housing scheme turns the inhabitant into a producer.’

Published in 1924, even more relevant today.