How Can Cities Become More Sustainable - Essay Example

?Cities Sustainability Issues Introduction As the urbanization process accelerates further, more than 4 billion people are projected to live in cities in next 10 years; it becomes necessary that cities become ecologically sustainable. Cities can become sustainable if they recognize the need to operate based on natural ecological processes–a system that is resilient, symbiotic, adaptive, and believe in regenerative capacity. If cities recognize these needs and incorporate these characteristics then sustainability is possible. With the onset of industrial revolution in US and Europe in the beginning of last century has caused mass migration of population to the urban centers such as London, New York, Paris, Tokyo, Berlin etc. Most of these cities had less than one million population in the beginning of 19th century; that surpassed to more than 10 millions in subsequent periods causing great distress on resources of water, clean air, energy. Situation in some of the cities in developing countries such as Shanghai, Mumbai or Sao Paulo is different. The density of these urban centers is more than double of that seen in the London or New York. All these cities are growing at the rate of 2 to 6 percent per annum and likely to cause further stress on the resources and derail the ecosystem. If this continues, the sustainability of the cities is in jeopardy unless some new ways are found. Cities in the Developed World London, Paris, California, New York all have become the huge unrestrained consumption centers of cheap energy and profligate material supplies that has caused ecological imbalances in those countries. As mentioned by Rees, William (2009) in Scientific American in its March issue, “Politicians and planners have shaped cities with no regard for resource use or ecological concerns. Over the years building and infrastructure have consumed more than 40 percent of material and a third of energy.” He warns that all this must end. If mean global temperature is to be kept in check, it is essential that worldwide economy must be made free of further carbon foot print by the year 2050. It is a challenging task to all urban centers at all levels. He suggests that Multiple-family housing, reducing per capita consumption of land and other infrastructures should be planned. Rees is of the opinion that sprawling land areas for living increase the energy need by way of unnecessary transportation for work and shopping. Reliance on automobiles and cars should be reduced by providing path ways for cycling, and walking. Public transport system should be made efficient to avoid the use of personal vehicles. Recycling of used materials is a necessity and that should be done to lessen the use of fresh material so that natural resources can be conserved for a longer period of time. Cogeneration of electricity and waste heat recovery is need of a day to reduce per capita consumption of fresh energy. Energy efficiency and renewable energy are the good propositions but the big question is that city like San Francisco releases 78 percent of its greenhouse gases from the cars and transportation and only 17 percent from buildings and this is true for all major cities of North America. The solution essentially lies at using mass transit system and eliminating the use of personal vehicles as much as possible. Personal vehicle density in most of the US cities is so high that this is a single most cause of green house gases across all major US and cities of Europe. And solution lies in reducing or eliminating the use of these personal vehicles that can help reduce the green house emissions drastically and put the eco system in balance. Cities of Developing World In contrast to the cities of developed economies, there are cities of developing countries such as Sao Paulo, Shanghai, and Mumbai, where issues are, more than green house gases, inadequate availability of potable water, absence of proper sanitation facilities to slum dwellers, and cleanliness. More than one million people is said to have been living in slum area within Sao Paolo urban center causing pressure on availability of potable water. World Bank decided to support a project to augment the potable water supply at Guarapiranga river basin in an environmentally sustainable manner. The project was also to rehabilitate the sanitary infrastructure for more than half million habitants with solid waste collection and drainage system. The point is that sustainability issues are different here. Over 60 percent population of the Mumbai city stays in slums. Dharavi which is within Mumbai is one of the biggest slum pockets in Asia housing 60,000 families. The issues here are minimum sustainable water supply, proper sanitation facility and cleanliness, which are the issues for the civic authorities. Mumbai has the least density of personal cars as it has most efficient mass transit system to take people to their work place as far as 60-70 kilometres. More than 5 million people take advantage of the mass transit system daily that is working almost 20 hours a day efficiently. The city does not have green house gas issue so much as faced by its counterparts in US and Europe. Comparing and Contrasting Cities of Developed and Developing Countries Shanghai has the same issues as posed by Mumbai and Sao Paolo. These cities of developing countries exhibit a different scenario so far sustainability issues are concerned. Their energy consumption levels are so low that there is no possibility of emerging any sustainability issue The cities in West have issues regarding sustainability that have surfaced due to over use of resources that continued for several decades causing ecological disturbance and green house gases. The sustainability issues in the cities of developing countries, if they are at all, relate with inadequate facilities, huge population base and low buying power of its inhabitants. In the west the cities are unsustainable because they are spread with very low densities. This cause people to use much higher energy for transportation and houses also consume higher energy for heating and cooling with such low density population. A community consumes resources like water and energy as inputs and converts them into usable forms generating wastes. This is what known as the metabolism of any city and the endeavour should be to make this metabolism more efficient so that their effects on ecological foot prints are not visible. That will solve the sustainability issues whether they are in developed world or in developing countries. References: 1. Rees, William E. (2009) Building More Sustainable Cities 14 April 2011 http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=building-more-sustainable-cities 2. What cities should do to become more sustainable and resilient 14 April 2011 http://switchboard.nrdc.org/blogs/kbenfield/what_cities_should_do_to_becom.html 3. Improving Water Supply and Sanitation in Sao Paulo 14 April 2011 http://web.worldbank.org/WBSITE/EXTERNAL/NEWS/0,,contentMDK:20754573~pagePK:64257043~piPK:437376~theSitePK:4607,00.html 4. Batty, Michael. How big can a city get? 14 April 2011 http://www.ucl.ac.uk/sustainable-cities/perspectives/batty.pdf 5. Choe, KyeongAe (2010). How Can Asian Cities Become More Sustainable and More Competitive? 14 April 2011 http://www.adb.org/documents/events/2010/cluster-economic-development/CCED-Overview.pdf Read More