Defining The Sustainable City PDF

1 DEFINING THE SUSTAINABLE CIT Y A DEFINITION Because a city is a human settlement that is designed for human rather than ecological well-being, it may seem inconsistent to be defining a sustainable city. With more than seven billion people on the planet and a l...

1 DEFINING THE SUSTAINABLE CIT Y A DEFINITION Because a city is a human settlement that is designed for human rather than ecological well-being, it may seem inconsistent to be defining a sustainable city. With more than seven billion people on the planet and a likely maximal population of nine billion or  billion, it is not possible to design and build human settlements that are in perfect harmony with nature. According to ICLEI Local Governments for Sustainability (), “sustainable cities work towards an environmentally, socially, and eco- nomically healthy and resilient habitat for existing populations, without compromising the ability of future generations to experience the same.” The goal of the sustainable city is to build human settlements that have the least possible impact on the environment. Although some may ques- tion the ethics of this, our definition of impact is to ensure that the natural systems central to human well-being are maintained and damaged as little as possible. The sustainable city minimizes its emissions of conventional air pollutants and greenhouse gases; uses as few nonrenewable resources as possible; discharges effluents into waterways after treatment that removes the most harmful pollutants; uses energy and water as efficiently as pos- sible; and attempts to reduce and recycle waste and minimize the impact of whatever waste disposal is needed. There is no clear, agreed-to definition of a sustainable city in the lit- erature, though such definitions often include a range of environmen- tal, economic, social, political, demographic, institutional, and cultural goals (Satterthwaite ). In , the United Nations Centre for Human 4 CONCEPTS Settlements (UNCHS) Sustainable Cities Programme defined a sustain- able city as one “where achievements in social, economic and physical development are made to last” (UN-Habitat , ). A  report by the United Nations stated that sustainable cities can be achieved when inte- grating four pillars: social development, economic development, environ- mental management, and urban governance (United Nations ). The World Bank (b) defines sustainable cities as those that are “resilient cities that are able to adapt to, mitigate, and promote economic, social and environmental change.” The United Nations Environment Programme (, ) more specifi- cally defines resource-efficient cities as those that “combine greater pro- ductivity and innovation with lower costs and reduced environmental impacts while providing increased opportunities for consumer choices and sustainable lifestyles.” According to Kent Portney, cities that take sustainability seriously engage in a wide variety of activities that try to improve and protect the environment, either directly or indirectly through actions such as reduction of energy consumption. He cites efforts such as reducing solid waste, redeveloping brownfield sites, pro- tecting biodiversity, improving public transit policy, and enacting climate action goals as the types of actions that reflect a sustainable-oriented city (Portney , ). It is possible to define sustainability so broadly that it loses meaning. In this work, I will do my best to provide a clear and bounded definition. In addition to preventing damage to vital ecosystems, the sustainable city is also a place that attracts people, culture, and commerce. It pro- vides opportunities for human interaction and for activities that develop human potential. The forms of culture, commerce, entertainment, and social interaction can vary according to culture, taste, and tradition. And then the city’s function is to provide an opportunity and a facil- ity for these actions to take place. When thinking about a sustainable city, it is probably worth understanding what an unsustainable city is. The unsustainable city is one that damages its natural surroundings and repulses rather than attracts people, culture, and commerce. Cities, like all human societies, evolve and change. The needs and expectations of the population change, and a place’s ability to accommodate those needs and expectations also change. And so a city is a set of economic, political,  DEFINING THE SUSTAINABLE CITY 5 and social systems that interact with each other and exist in a specific physical setting. One way to provide a more operational understanding of a city’s evolu- tion and of the transition to a sustainable city is to relate my own experience of living in New York City for more than  of the past  years. When I was a boy, New York apartment buildings still had incinerators in which tenants’ garbage was burned in the middle of the night. The rest of the city’s garbage was brought to landfills in Brooklyn and Staten Island. Sewage from Manhattan was dumped untreated into the Hudson River. New York was a manufacturing and commercial center. Clothing, toys, bicycles, and even automobiles were made within the five boroughs. The now famous High Line Park was originally an elevated roadbed for freight trains that ran from the Hudson River docks to the factories located on the West Side of Manhattan (in Tribeca and Chelsea). After World War II, nearly half of New York’s economy was devoted to clothing manufacturing, distribution, and sales. We had a wonderful, fully functioning system of mass transit, an extensive park system, and a water storage and delivery system that remains an engineering marvel. The water system was needed because we destroyed most of the extensive network of groundwater that lies beneath the street grid in Manhattan and Brooklyn. Toxic waste was stored underground and in waterways such as the still poisoned Gowanus Canal. Over the past decade, New York City has been gaining population, and it is likely that within the next decade we will be a city of nine million people. That will be a more congested and less pleasant place unless we are able to improve mass transit and build new and more creative pub- lic spaces. In the competition for global business and population, a city needs to be safe and orderly, but dynamic and exciting as well. Today, the former factories of SoHo and the West Side either are multimillion- dollar homes and commercial establishments or have been demolished to make way for the shiny new glass and steel creations of the world’s “Starchitects.” New York City has made the transition from a center of manufacturing, commerce, and finance to a center of education, health care, media, finance, public relations, and tourism. The city now exports all of its garbage to out-of-state incinerators and landfills. Its subway, sew- age treatment, water, and park systems provide a tremendous head start in the transition to a sustainable city. 6 CONCEPTS The city’s PlaNYC  and OneNYC sustainability plans are efforts to begin the transition to urban sustainability. They set goals and priorities for the public-private partnership that will bring about the transition. The marriage of economic development and environmental protection initi- ated by former Mayor Bloomberg was both important and innovative. The idea that community-based environmental justice groups and powerful real estate interests could sit together and find common ground was a remarkable accomplishment for the Bloomberg administration and for New York City. In the transition from an industrial and commercial city to a postindustrial global capital, New York City nearly went bankrupt and nearly collapsed in crime and social disorder. But enlightened leader- ship, resiliency, and luck saved my hometown. THE RATIONALE FOR A FOCUS ON CITIES As manufacturing becomes more mechanized, the economies of cities focus on those types of organizations most dependent on people’s brain- power and creativity. People are needed less for their muscle than for their brains. These less mechanized and more labor-intensive operations tend to be service providers such as hospitals, educational institutions, hotels, or recreational facilities. Or they can be entities that focus on planning, strategy, creativity, and design—public relations firms, financial advisors, media companies, consulting firms, and cultural institutions. Globally, more people live in urban areas than in rural areas, with  percent of the world’s population residing in urban areas as of  (United Nations , ). The world’s population is becoming more urban- ized because of an economic change related to the decline of manual labor and the growth of the brain-based economy. While electronic media and communication technology make it possible to contribute creative input from anywhere, the informal network that fuels the creative economy requires that we be physically present to fully participate—something we don’t yet fully understand about human communication. The person who “Skypes into” a live meeting is never a full member of the discus- sion. We are social creatures craving interaction and live contact. This is why we focus on the need to make cities more sustainable: their growth  DEFINING THE SUSTAINABLE CITY 7 seems related to a long-term change in our economic life and the nature of work itself. The concentration of population creates some problems for material and energy flows into and out of a human settlement, but it also creates opportunities for economies of scale and creative problem solving. These ideas of closed systems of production and consumption are central to the concept of the sustainable city. As the mechanization of agriculture reduces rural employment and as the Internet communicates the appeal and seductiveness of urban lifestyles, more and more of the world’s popu- lation is moving to cities. This is especially true of young educated adults: two-thirds of young adults in the United States (ages  to ) with a bach- elor’s degree live in the nation’s  largest metropolitan areas (Cortright ). This creates opportunities for more efficient production, distribu- tion, and consumption of goods and services. It also creates efficiencies that come from a “sharing” economy. Cars, bicycles, and indoor and out- door spaces can be more easily shared in a dense settlement. Instead of  families each having their own half-acre backyard, a -acre park can be shared by many more people and holds the possibility of many uses that require more space than a half-acre. People move to cities for a range of reasons, from favorable labor mar- ket conditions, to attractive public infrastructure, to the benefits of being near centers of finance, corporate headquarters, and information and technology (Buch et al. ; Champion ; Dittrich-Wesbuer, Föbker, and Osterhage ). Cities that have experienced resurgence are usually competitive, attract new and growing activities, and are therefore more interesting places to live; they develop a distinct and comparative advan- tage (Cheshire ; Storper and Manville ). Diverse amenities, cul- tural institutions, educational institutions, and other facilities as well as differentiated neighborhoods are also possible in cities. A neighborhood that attracts families might be distinguished from one that is attractive to single professionals, young couples, and students. The economic and social attractiveness of cities coupled with the diverse character of neigh- borhoods helps explain the growing importance of urban areas. On the other side of the equation, the resources required to clothe, feed, house, and stimulate urbanites can strain the resources of the planet if they do not largely depend on renewable rather than finite resources. 8 CONCEPTS Population plus the rate and style of consumption drives resource utiliza- tion, but so too does the use of particular materials and sources of energy in production processes. The residents of cities will have some ability as consumers to insist on sustainable production processes, but these are not processes that they will control. While urban dwellers may not directly observe the environmental impact of their consumption, governments, nongovernmental organiza- tions, and researchers must observe, analyze, project, and communicate those effects. Public awareness of effects will hopefully lead to changes in public policy, regulation, and ultimately private corporate and individual behaviors. Key will be the development and implementation of technolo- gies that permit consumption while mitigating its environmental impact. In the United States, Japan, and Europe, we have already seen that this is possible. Gross domestic product (GDP) has grown over the past half- century, but air pollution and water pollution have been reduced. Control technologies have been put in place to reduce these effects. Pollution control technologies and green infrastructure cost money but, if designed correctly, can increase quality of life and economic efficiency for people living in cities. When cities are clogged in gridlock, or closed down due to flooding, or waste energy and water, then the cost structure of businesses operating in those cities is impaired because of lower productiv- ity. When air pollution sends children or their parents to the hospital, the costs of health care and child care must be counted as costs of air pollution that can be reduced with investment in pollution control technologies. In sum, the focus on cities is required because if we are to achieve a sustainable economy and planet, it needs to happen in our cities. The behavior of people and their institutions needs to be changed, and as people will be in cities, we need to focus our attention on these forms of human settlement. The pressure on the countryside and on our eco- systems is coming from the actions of people in cities. As my colleague Ester Fuchs has observed, leadership from government will be required to ensure the focus on cities results in sustainability. According to Fuchs (, ): “Leadership from city government, and especially mayors, is critical to the long-term planning that is required for sustained invest- ment in infrastructure, economic growth and environmental sustainabil- ity that will ensure any city’s viability in the future.”  DEFINING THE SUSTAINABLE CITY 9 THE ELEMENTS OF THE SUSTAINABLE CITY We will discuss in later chapters the social, political, managerial, and eco- nomic elements of the sustainable city. The social elements include a set of values and perceptions that lead to consumption and behavioral choices that minimize human impact on the environment. This is facilitated by a legal and regulatory structure that reinforces this behavior. The laws and rules are the outcomes of stakeholder interaction in a political process that is supportive of sustainability. A city’s government and private sector must possess the organizational capacity to collect and recycle waste, facilitate distributed generation of renewable energy, build energy efficiency, and ensure the cleanliness of all material flows into and out of the city. And the sustainable city must be capable of obtaining or generating the financial resources needed to develop and maintain sustainability infrastructure (Wang, Hawkins, and Berman ). These elements of infrastructure and rules are essential to the sustain- able city and help provide an operational definition of sustainability. The regulatory framework includes the right to be paid for energy contrib- uted to the electrical grid, rules governing waste management from the smallest household to the largest business, building codes, energy effi- ciency codes, congestion pricing, and other elements of the tax code that reinforce resource efficiency and reuse. The infrastructure includes green solutions to combined sewer overflow, sewage treatment, recycling and effective use of waste materials, water filtration, air pollution control, toxic waste regulation and treatment, mass transit, and electric personal transit. The most difficult element to build in the sustainable city will be the required infrastructure. This will include microgrids and smart grids that will require a huge investment of capital in rebuilding the electrical system. This will take decades, leadership, and persistence to complete. The same is true of new waste management and recycling facilities and mass transit systems. In the United States, underinvestment in virtually all forms of infrastructure has become normal and accepted practice. Bridges often need to be near collapse before we consider replacing them. In addition to underfunding of capital expenditures, many operating facilities are poorly maintained because of inadequate operations and management budgets. No effort to increase energy efficiency and reduce greenhouse gases can 10 CONCEPTS succeed without enhanced mass transit. Because a national solution is not on the political agenda, places like Washington, D.C., New York City, Chicago, and San Francisco are on their own. New York City’s third water tunnel is an example of the nature of these projects. When this water tunnel is completed in , it will have taken nearly half a century and more than $ billion to complete. The goal of this project is to ensure that the city’s upstate water supply can be effectively and efficiently delivered to the city (Flegenheimer ). The infrastruc- ture being replaced is close to a century old and badly in need of repair. New York City has a magnificent system of water supply. It is an example of farsighted long-term leadership and investment without which the modern city of New York could never have been built. It takes advantage of ecosystems, gravity, and best-management practices to deliver high- quality and relatively low-cost water to New York. However, like the city’s subway system and electrical grid, it is old infrastructure that is decaying, and its maintenance is essential to the transition to a renewable resource– based economy. As a political matter, mayors and other elected leaders prefer capital projects that can be completed within their term in office and are visible and symbolic of progress. A waste management facility, a smart grid, a water tunnel, or a renovated subway line are expensive, sometimes invisible, and difficult for the media to report on. TRANSITIONING TO A SUSTAINABLE CITY The job of building a sustainable city atop the current unsustainable city will involve a decades-long transition period and a paradigm shift in the way we manage and pay for cities. The field of management itself will need to change as we integrate the physical dimensions of sustainability into management education and then into organizational management. Just as current CEOs must understand accounting, finance, regulation, interna- tional business, strategy, marketing, and human resource and information management, the CEOs of the sustainable city must learn how to integrate energy, water, and material efficiency into routine organizational manage- ment along with a concern for environmental effects all the way through the supply chain and the process of production and consumption.  DEFINING THE SUSTAINABLE CITY 11 This process has begun in some organizations with the start of sustain- ability offices, which in some cases are symbolic greenwashing exercises but in other organizations play the role of change agent to remind senior management about sustainability and to provide technical assistance when implementing it. Building the sustainable city requires that more of our organizations have the management and technical capacity to incorporate renewable resources and waste reduction practices into daily organiza- tional life. Environmental risks often become financial risks. The world is too complex and too observed for companies to get away with corporate environmental mismanagement. A company cannot simply dump toxic waste by the side of the road and assume it will not be detected. My own view is that all competent management should be sustainability management. All of a city’s agencies should plan for the effects of climate change on their operations. They should ensure that their buildings and equipment are retrofitted for resiliency in the face of more frequent and intensive storms. Agencies should also make their operations more energy and water efficient, and they should work to minimize the environmental effects of the services they deliver. In addition to the development of organizational capacity, private and public organizations need to identify means of generating the capital required to construct a sustainable built environment including buildings, energy, and waste and water infrastructure. Finance mechanisms will dif- fer according to the sector and function being performed. Private-sector green finance has become more feasible as investors look for sustainable businesses to invest in. Some funds have been established that require sustainability features in companies being funded. This includes both the service or product being produced and the process of production. Envi- ronmental liabilities and costs such as Volkswagen’s air pollution issues and British Petroleum’s Gulf of Mexico oil spill have been noted by inves- tors, and the risks posed by a lack of attention to sustainability issues have begun to be measured. The deepest problems will be with the funding of sustainability infra- structure. Because traditional and highly valued infrastructure such as roads and bridges is woefully underfunded, less visible and traditional infrastructure is also suffering from the public’s unwillingness to pay the taxes needed to finance these projects. User fees, tolls, and privatization 12 CONCEPTS are methods to address these issues, but they too face political opposition. Funding of new green infrastructure such as smart grids, advanced waste management, mass transit, and renewable energy is even more difficult. One way to assist in financing the sustainable city is to enact laws and public policies that require institutions and individuals to operate according to sustainability principles. Individuals who waste resources or dispose of waste incorrectly can be sanctioned or those who behave “correctly” could be rewarded. Institutions that want to obtain building permits could be required through the building code to build green build- ings. Licensed plumbers, architects, electricians, and other craftspeople could be required to be trained in sustainability issues and adhere to sus- tainability principles. The government could also use its own purchasing power to drive the market toward green production. For example, New York State Governor Andrew Cuomo took the most significant green step of his governorship when he directed his Depart- ment of Public Service to enact a new clean energy standard requiring that by , at least  percent of the state’s electricity be generated from renewable resources (New York State ). This is a demanding but feasi- ble effort and is a clear indicator of the governor’s priorities. The renewable energy standard announced by Governor Cuomo is a real, operational, and meaningful step. The New York State Public Service Commission regulates the generation and transmission of electricity in New York State and has a similar responsibility for natural gas, steam, telecommunications, and water. The utilities that the commission regulates are “natural monopolies” due to limits of access to space for power lines and similar infrastructure. When Governor Cuomo directs the Public Service Commission to switch to renewable energy, the force of that order should not be underestimated. It is a meaningful, real-world step that will have a dramatic impact on power generation in New York over the next decade and a half. Driving local sustainability policy will require active and effective political support at the community level. This political support will need to be built on a strong foundation of popular support for these policies and practices. A necessary but not sufficient condition for the transition to a sustainable city is a demand from the public for the development of such a city. This cannot be a “top-down” approach, else the set of mass behav- iors needed in the sustainable city will not take place. Cheating, cutting  DEFINING THE SUSTAINABLE CITY 13 corners, and disregarding sustainability principles cannot be condoned: this would undermine the legitimacy of sustainability policy and impede the transition to the sustainable city. To build support, sustainability must be defined as a set of positive aspirations, rather than a set of grim behav- iors reinforced by negative sanctions. Chapter  on sustainable lifestyles will focus on sustainability’s positive attributes. These could serve as the basis for political support. My hope is that all of this will result in more concern for the well-being of our neighbors and our community. That concern could lead to a more determined effort to develop new revenues to pay for infrastructure and to care for each other. It could lead to an examination of our tax structure and an effort to increase taxes where taxation will do the least harm and reduce taxation where it will do the most for society. I know this sounds naive, but my first moment of political awareness was watching a young president ask all of us what we could do for our country, not what we could do for our stock portfolio. If we are to effectively make the transi- tion to a sustainable, renewable resource–based economy, we will need to rebuild that sense of community and shared sacrifice that we have drawn on in the past.