Marylis Ramos brings to the conversation a perspective shaped by architecture, environmental design and sustainability consultancy, with expertise spanning energy, health and wellbeing, social value strategies, and the built environment. As Director at Savills Earth, she leads ESG and Sustainability Advisory services across sustainable design, energy and infrastructure, impact economics, operational sustainability and social value. Her experience also includes major regeneration and research projects, from Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park to wider work on zero carbon, green buildings and thermal efficiency.
The conversation opens up a broader way of thinking about net zero in cities.
What if the challenge is not only how cities reduce carbon, but how they make climate action matter in people’s everyday lives?
Net zero is often framed through targets, timelines and emissions data. Necessary as these are, they can make the transition feel distant from daily experience. What emerges here is a different perspective: carbon may be the central metric, but it cannot be the whole story. Cities are lived environments, and any meaningful transition has to account for how people actually live within them.
That is where social value begins to reshape the discussion. A better insulated home is not only more energy efficient. It is also healthier, more comfortable and less stressful to inhabit. A walkable neighbourhood is not only a low-carbon model. It can also strengthen community life, improve wellbeing and support local businesses. Climate action becomes more compelling when its benefits can be felt, not just measured.
Cities matter because they sit between national ambition and everyday life. They are where policy becomes physical, through streets, buildings, transport systems and planning decisions. They are also where the gap often appears most clearly between bold climate targets and the practical tools needed to deliver them. Yet that gap also reveals an opportunity: to approach net zero in a way that is more integrated, more human and more attentive to local realities.
Running through the conversation is the sense that people do not mobilise around carbon figures alone. They respond to cleaner air, safer streets, better homes and a stronger sense of belonging. Once climate action is understood through those shared experiences, the discussion begins to move beyond compliance and toward a more meaningful vision of urban change.
What this conversation suggests is that the future of net zero in cities will depend not only on technical ambition, but on whether environmental progress and social value can be held together in the same frame.
