Urbanization
choices to be fundamental to environmental sustainability, say experts; Equivalent
of a city of 1 million needed weekly given population growth trend;
Contacts and sources:
Planet Uder Pressure
Unless
development patterns change, by 2030 humanity’s urban footprint will occupy an
additional 1.5 million square kilometres - comparable to the combined
territories of France, Germany and Spain, say experts at a major international
science meeting underway in London.
UN
estimates show human population growing from 7 billion today to 9 billion by
2050, translating into some 1 million more people expected on average each week
for the next 38 years, with most of that increase anticipated in urban centres.
And ongoing migration from rural to urban living could see world cities receive
yet an-other 1 billion additional people. Total forecast urban population in
2050: 6.3 billion (up from 3.5 billion today).
The
question isn’t whether to urbanize but how, says Dr. Michail Fragkias of
Arizona State University, one of nearly 3000 participants at the conference,
entitled “Planet Under Pressure”. Unfortunately, he adds, today’s ongoing
pattern of urban sprawl puts humanity at severe risk due to environmental
problems. Dense cities designed for efficiency offer one of the most promising
paths to sustainability, and urbaniza-tion specialists will share a wealth of
knowledge available to drive solutions.
How
best to urbanize is one among many “options and opportunities” under
discus-sion by global environmental change specialists today, Day 2 of the
four-day confer-ence March 26-29, convened to help address a wide range of
global sustainability challenges and offer recommendations to June’s UN
“Rio+20” Earth Summit.
Other
leading options and opportunities being addressed include green economic
development (Yvo de Boer, former Executive Secretary, UN Framework Convention
on Climate Change), securing food and water for the world's poorest (Bina
Agarwal, Director, Institute of Economic Growth, Delhi University, India), and
planetary stew-ardship: risks, obstacles and opportunities (Georgina Mace,
Professor, Imperial Col-lege, London). For a full list of “options and
opportunities” conference sessions and topics, see conference website.
Cities
responsible for 70% of CO2 emissions
Shobhakar
Dhakal, Executive Director of the Tokyo-based Global Carbon Project, says
reforms in existing cities and better planning of new ones offer
disproportionately large environmental benefits compared with other options.
“Re-engineering
cities is urgently needed for global sustainability,” says Dr. Dhakal, adding
that emerging urban areas “have a latecomer’s advantage in terms of knowledge,
sustainability thinking, and technology to better manage such funda-mentals as
trash and transportation.”
Over
70% of CO2 emissions today relate to city needs. In billions of metric tonnes,
urban-area CO2 emissions were estimated at about 15 in 1990 and 25 in 2010,
with forecasts of growth to 36.5 by 2030, assuming business as usual.
Addressing
climate change therefore demands focusing on urban efficiencies, like using
weather conditions and time of day-adjusted toll systems to reduce traffic
congestion, for example: Congestion worldwide costs economies an estimated 1 to
3% of GDP – a problem that not only wastes fuel and causes pollution, but time
– an estimated 4.2 billion hours in the USA alone in 2005. Estimated cost of
New York City’s congestion: US$4 billion a year in lost productivity.
An
“Internet of things” is forming, he notes – a fast-growing number of high-tech,
artificially intelligent, Internet-connected cars, appliances, cameras,
roadways, pipe-lines and more -- in total about one trillion in use worldwide
today.
High-tech
ways to improve the efficiency of urban operations and human health and
well-being include:
•
Rapid patient screening and diagnostics with digitalised health records;
•
Utility meters and sensors that monitor the capacity of the power generation
net-work and continually gather data on supply and demand of electricity;
•
Integrated traveller information services and toll road pricing based on
traffic, weather and other data;
•
Data gathering and feedback from citizens using mobile phones;
“Our
focus should be on enhancing the quality of urbanization – from urban space,
infrastructure, form and function, to lifestyle, energy choices and
efficiency,” says Dr. Dhakal.
Care
is needed, he adds, to avoid unwelcome potential problems of dense
urbaniza-tion, including congestion, pollution, crime, the rapid spread of
infectious disease and other societal problems – the focus of social and health
scientists who will fea-ture prominently at the conference.
Says
Prof. Karen Seto of Yale University, who with colleagues is organizing four of
the 160 conference sessions at Planet Under Pressure: ”The way cities have
grown since World War II is neither socially or environmentally sustainable and
the environmen-tal cost of ongoing urban sprawl is too great to continue.”
For
these reasons, “the planet can’t afford not to urbanize,” says Seto. “People
eve-rywhere, however, have increasingly embraced Western styles of architecture
and urbanization, which are resource-intense and often not adapted to local
climates. The North American suburb has gone global, and car-dependent urban
develop-ments are more and more the norm.”
How
humanity urbanizes to define the decades ahead
Fragkias
notes that while there were fewer than 20 cities of 1 million or more a
cen-tury ago, there are 450 today. While urban areas cover less than five per
cent of Earth’s land surface, “the enlarged urban footprint forecast is far
more significant proportionally when vast uninhabitable polar, desert and
mountain regions, world
breadbasket plains and other prime agricultural land and protected areas are
subtracted from the calculation.”
“We
have a unique opportunity now to plan for a coming explosion of urbanization in
order to decrease pressure on ecosystems, improve the livelihoods of billions
of people and avoid the occurrence of major global environmental problems and
disas-ters. That process cannot wait,” says Roberto Sánchez-RodrÃguez,
Professor Emeritus of Environmental Sciences at the University of California,
Riverside.
“It
is also important to stress that differences exist in the urbanization process
in high-, low- and middle-income countries and reflect them in our strategies.
We need to move beyond traditional approaches to planning and be responsive to
informal urban growth, to the value of ecosystem services, and to the need of
multidimen-sional perspectives (social, economic, cultural, environmental,
political, biophysical).
Ultimately,
the researchers say, solutions include:
•
Planning and investments in public infrastructure that encourage transit and
acces-sibility
•
Better land-use zoning and building standards that increase efficiency and
multiple uses.
•
Reversing the trend to ever larger homes
•
Ending subsidies that promote low density and leapfrog development and
discour-age compact development, or favour cars at the expense of public transit
•
Improving the quality of inner city schools and addressing other growing urban
challenges, such as growing income inequality, segregation and social
polarization, crime rates and heightened health threats including stress;
•
Through social marketing, foster demand for efficient styles of living
Beyond
city limits
Professor
Sybil Seitzinger, Executive Director of the International Geosphere-Biosphere Programme said, “A truly sustainable planet will require cities to think
be-yond city limits.”
“Everything
being brought into the city from outside: food, water, products and en-ergy
need to be sourced sustainably. We need to rethink the resource flow to
cities.”
Says
Dr. Mark Stafford Smith, Planet Under Pressure co-chair: “A more general theme
of the conference is underlined by the urbanization issue – that much of the
planet’s future is tied up in interconnected issues – climate change and city
design, city resource demands and impacts on rural areas, rural food and water
productivity and the ability of cities to continue functioning. The deep
intensity of interconnect-edness of these issues requires an integrated
approach, tackling challenges together rather than each individually, one at a
time.”
Professor
Elinor Ostrom of Indiana University, the 2009 Nobel laureate in economics and
opening day plenary speaker at the Planet Under Pressure conference,
under-lines the importance of cities in giving effect to globally-developed
policies to achieve environmental sustainability.
Indeed,
through initiatives such as C40, a consortium of cities committed to emis-sions
reductions, cities are showing strong leadership. This approach can help ensure
a move to a more sustainable pathway should global policies fail to deliver.
Contacts and sources:
Planet Uder Pressure
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