London, Paris, Rome, New York. If civilization needed an icon, “the city” would be it. Half of humanity now lives in urban areas, a figure heading for 75 percent in coming decades.
Or maybe not. The sprawling North American city in particular is a product of the cheap energy and profligate consumption of a materially exuberant age that is rapidly coming to an end. Cities may well confront a triple specter of climate change, scarcity of energy and resources, and broken supply lines. Even the generally conservative U.S. National Intelligence Council (NIC) recently predicted that global demand for energy, food and water could easily outstrip supplies over the next decade or so, triggering trade-disrupting international conflicts.
This is unfamiliar ground. Since World War II, politicians and planners have shaped cities with no regard for resource use or ecological concerns. Today’s land-grabbing, auto-dominated, fuel-inefficient metropolises have evolved into parasitic black holes, sucking in excessive megatons of energy and materials from all over the globe and spewing out volumes of (often toxic) waste. In North America, buildings and urban infrastructure account for 40 percent of material consumption and a third of energy use. High-income cities have an ecological footprint—the dispersed area of land and water required to supply their needs and assimilate their wastes—that is several hundred times larger than their political areas.
All this must change. Climate science indicates that to have even a chance of avoiding a catastrophic increase in mean global temperature, the worldwide economy must be largely decarbonized by 2050. The NIC argues that the U.S. should actually complete its transition by 2025. Such goals pose an unprecedented challenge to urban authorities at all levels.
To begin to meet that challenge, state and municipal governments must create the land-use legislation and zoning bylaws that urban planners need to consolidate metropolitan areas and smartly raise their density. Compact cities can boost their inherent urban efficiencies to unprecedented heights by exploiting the following characteristics:
- A high proportion of multiple-family housing, which reduces per capita consumption of land, infrastructure and just about everything else.
- Multiple options for recycling, reuse and remanufacturing of materials, along with skilled people for those activities.
- Car-free mobility, through investments that make walking, cycling and public transit viable.
- Co-generation of electricity and use of industrial waste heat to reduce per capita energy consumption.
- Improved livability with cleaner air, easy access to amenities, and a greater proximity of shopping and employment.
Efficiency gains are not enough, however. Sustainability and security demand that cities become more self-reliant. Urban designers must rethink cities as complete ecosystems. The most resilient option might be a bioregional city-state in which a densely built-up core is surrounded by supportive systems. Without becoming isolationist, such bioregions would produce much of their own food, fiber and water and recycle their waste. By being less reliant on imports, they would be partially insulated from climate vagaries, global resource shortages and distant military conflicts. And because inhabitants would depend on local ecosystems, they would have a powerful incentive (currently absent) to manage their resources more sustainably. The aggregate effect would be global sustainability.
Seem over the top? Perhaps. But our rethinking of cities must match the challenge. Scientists are deeply worried; you should be, too. If we can’t save our cities, we won’t save ourselves.
Note: This article was originally printed with the title, "More Sustainable Cities".
This article was originally published with the title More Sustainable Cities.
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Add CommentIn general, I appreciate your suggestions. But I have some reservations. Although theer is a movement to return to the cities, there will always be people who prefer to live in the suburbs with its open spaces and private yards. One man's sprawl is another man's spaciousness. Cars are necessary there. Cars are also the only practical means for people in a city running errands in multiple locations. You can't beat a car for convenience and enjoyment. Many people justifiably dislike using public transit. It will take quite a lot to convince people to abandon their cars and take slow, crowded, and generally unpleasant public transit. Walking and biking are fine, but, in my upinion, very limited answers. In addition, we have a vast infrastructure investment in the suburbs. What are we to do with that? I should point out, too, that people in undeveloped countries count on us as a market. Self-sufficiency will destroy those markets and further impoverish those countries.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisDear Professor Rees
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI really think that we need to either set the dialogue and do concrete actions or be ready for the nature�s reactions. It is not more a discussion of how much comfort I am ready to give up. I have some articles and proposals on this and I selected the one bellow to share:
Balance between Globalization and Localization
The human history is rich on examples where the excessive stress on one side of any dual perspectives issues leads us to problems. I like the metaphor of a pendulum. At any time, on this kind of issue, we can think of a pendulum. It can be moved either towards one side or another, lets call these sides blue and green. When people start applying some force to move it for one side, lets say for blue side they apply a force. That force just speeds it up adding more energy to it. In the short time it is perceived as a speed of the pendulum towards the blue side. But what is really happening is that you are only transforming some kinetic energy into more potential energy. And the more you push the more potential energy the pendulum has to get back. Since you have gravity the more off balance you go the greater is the force you should apply to keep it there. It goes in such way that at some point you need a tremendous force to keep it where it is or to move it just a little bit up blue side.
For instance, in real life when we start centralizing control in organizations the arguments are for standardizing things to be more productive and not reinvent the wheel here and there, for having some economics of scale, for simplifying the decision making process, for having more synergy towards a common goal, for specializing people on issues and so on. And with these arguments we go for centralization very confident on what we are doing. The more we are convicted about the argument the more we push. But at some point when we are really too much out of balance what happens is that the gravity forces call the system for more balance. They start showing us that the standardization have gone too far and now we spend a lot of energy (force trying to keep the pendulum where it is) because of our bureaucracy, our time responses are declining, we became too rigid and almost inflexible and unable to adapt to a constantly changing environment (people, nature, life). Although our decision making process is fast and precise the implementation of that decisions through many hierarchical levels of authority is very slow and the misinterpretations on each level leads to different action from the intentioned ones. The organization turns to be very big and the decision making too far from the diverse contexts of operation and unable to be adequate to all of them so the actions on the end start making no sense in their local contexts. And it is amazing because the more we insist on this the more fast we start killing the organization. The very creative people start going out to places where they have room for it. New local organizations start and become successful because of their creativity and context sensitivity. And over time eventually our organization either change or die.
We could talk about many daily life examples on this kind of duality like authority and liberty, rule based and creativity, conservative and innovative, and so on. But I want to focus these article on the pendulum metaphor for the Globalization-Localization movement. It is very interesting to see how fast we went into globalization and how much we have pushed the pendulum to this side without thinking of arguments to try balancing it. Now we are facing many problems mostly around social and environmental degradation. When we pushed too much for globalization we start destroying beautiful wisdom communities: their ancient wisdom, their local small scale sustainable production capacity, their culture, their creativity, their way of living, their connection to nature and even their own survival capacity. Also we start producing almost everything somewhere abroad in a very centralized way, having distances both in time and space between the production and consumption that uses more energy and more chemicals to produce and transport. The same issues regarding centralization previously discussed start happening here.
Since we have a duality here for sure we have arguments for both sides. So the question is where are the balance between these two approaches?
I just want to set up the debate on that, for a more balanced humankind life. I think that one of the best things of globalization is the sharing of information, knowledge and experiences on one side and the cooperation without frontiers on the other side, thanks to the information and communication technology. In my humble opinion globalization has its good face and balanced use when we have everyone having access to information and communication technology. And this means to enable the exchange of ancient wisdom, of culture, of knowledge, of experiences and of best practices. It also means to give people access to education and worldwide opportunities, and to set up platforms of worldwide cooperation without precedent. Cooperation to make projects, cooperation to educate people, cooperation to leverage opportunities for all, cooperation on social construction, cooperation on life improvement researches, cooperation on health care and researches, cooperation on organizational development, cooperation on environmental care, cooperation on communication for life, cooperation on ancient wisdom recovery, and so on. This makes us a globally connected village.
On the other hand, I think that regarding material production of foods and goods we should move back to locality for the great part of the things we need. And as locality I mean one micro-region that can be formed by a network of communities. When you do your own production locally, you have more connection to real life and are more aware of its cycle effects. Many issues like packaging, cans making, transportation, recycling and conservation are either eliminated or reduced drastically. You tend to have greater diversity of products, which are more attached to each communitys history, culture and values. These products tend to be produced more on demand and more closely to its consumption reducing the need for preservatives and artificial chemistry. We tend to consume the products of the season because we know they are healthier and more environmentally friend. For each product they can choose their own best way of containing, packaging and transporting, reducing the needs for a landfill. We also dont have only one pasteurized culture brought to life by a very controlled media, but the celebration of diversity and creativity.
This way we get the best things that globalization can do to nourish life and remain with more human scale communities that cherish their culture, their values and their way of living, that are environmentally friendly and also have itself connect to other worldwide distributed communities to cooperate and forge its own path and pace of consciousness evolution.
Eduardo Manoel Araujo New Zealand Autumn 2005
Author of the book A Possible Dream from a non-sustainable materialism to a holistic sustainable life published in Portuguese by Willis Harman House, Founder of Arayara an association created to contribute to the improvement of Education, Citizenship and Quality of Life in Schools, Communities and Organizations. Sponsored leader of AVINA Foundation and Environmental Advisor of COPEL and energy utility company that generates, transmits and distributes energy to the whole Paran� state in Brazil.
His current interest is: Human Values and Spirituality of People and Organizations; Ecological Consciousness of Sustainable Development; Strategic Management; Appreciative and Conscious Leadership; Organizations, Communities and People Development.
Check out "Can Sustainable Cities Save the Planet?"
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisCar-dependent suburbs should be allowed, but not subsidized as they are now. I don't care if you drive a car as long as I don't have to pay for the parking, the roads, and the health care costs of your car. Not to mention the foreign wars, the deaths, and the ecological destruction.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIf we tax auto use to reflect its real costs, then you can drive as much as you want and can afford.
The foreign trade issue is much the same. Subdized trade has damaged local production in Mexico, the United States, and all over the globe. Eliminating the subsidies or imposing counter-taxes makes markets work better as well as encouraging apporpriate local sustainability.
Getting to sustainable cities is as much about stopping subsidies of unsustainable practices as about anything.
It is surprising how few consider that it is the growth in the petroleum supply that has fueled food production and population growth. So, what happens to population levels when that petroleum supply contracts?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI have been considering this question ever since my heart stopped for 10 minutes following a car accident in Kenya in 1980, depriving me of the abilities to walk, speak, remember, etc. Regaining them required staggering, walking and jogging more than 330 miles, which also gave me the opportunity to reflect, and design an infrastructure that could support us all, without a drop of petroleum.
Please see those reflections at www.greenmillennium.eu which I present as a challenge to you to design something even better - to support, feed, transport, employ and fuel a global population of 10 billion, without a drop of petroleum!
Please join the debate at the website using the Contact form, or email me directly at humansolutions@greenmillennium.eu
Thank you for thinking of the components of our genes, which may still exist in the Year 4000, and which are only a multiple of 20 of the 5 generations that we will know in our own families (20 x 20 years/generation x 5 generations = 2000 years!). Please note that those same components existed in the year 0, equally only 20 multiples away in the past - how short civilization in a rapidly warming world has been!
Kim Gyr, Director, Green Millennium