ground zero for the climate change battle

It's been widely reported that right about now - certainly this decade - cities are overtaking rural areas as home to more than half the world's population. Statistics like this tend to reinforce the emphasis on cities as the source of most environmental problems, making them the focus of research and planning. Most researchers and planners, after all, live in cities.

It's worth remembering that there's still the other half out there. A paper issued last week by the International Institute for Environment and Development claims that cities are often unfairly blamed for producing 75 to 80 percent of greenhouse gas emissions. If you look at where products and services are consumed, rather than where they are produced, cities are only responsible for 40% of emissions, according to the paper - and the consumer should rightly take responsibility. This is not to demonise people in rural areas; the point is that there are a lot of efficiencies and potential improvements in efficiencies that can be made in cities, but not so much in rural areas. Compact cities, for example, can make better use of resources, can have greater synergies between different land uses, and can have people driving less.

In general, wealthy people outside cities are responsible for more greenhouse gas emissions than those in cities as they have larger homes that need to be heated or cooled, more automobiles per household and greater automobile use.

It's not clear, from the summary of the paper, whether the global allocation of emissions to urban and rural areas holds true in developing countries, where there is a particular balance between rich and poor in urban and rural areas that differs from the mix found developed countries. The use of energy by poor people could swing emissions either way: rural poverty often results in less efficient use of energy, such as burning wood for cooking - and likewise, the smog hanging over urban slums might produce beautiful sunsets, but it sure doesn't help the environment.

The paper's author, David Satterthwaite, blames the rich for producing the bulk of emissions, and sees the easiest solutions in urban areas. Both conclusions might be true, but a sustainable solution absolutely must address poverty, wherever it exists, and address it in a way that does not replicate a middle class that consumes resources with abandon. I don't see the point in keeping the battle within city boundaries. Spatial planning, and design of the built form, need to be attuned to environmental preservation on farms, in towns and in the physical and functional relationships between settlements of all sizes.

In a separate editorial in the October 2008 edition of the journal Environment and Urbanisation, Satterthwaite acknowledges the importance of addressing poverty, but keeps the focus on urbanisation and seems not to recognise urban-rural relationships. He notes that efforts by poor communities to gain control over their economic situation can be more easily repressed, and their energy diffused, by municipalities that choose not to (or cannot) address urban inequalities. "In addition, physical proximity is no advantage for urban poor groups when city authorities view them or their settlements as constraints on the city’s development and capacity to attract new investment." Which leads me to think that some strategies to address human settlement challenges could in fact be more effective in rural areas or small towns. And where social and housing needs can be addressed with conscious planning, there must be a parallel opportunity to deal with resource consumption and GHG emissions.

Interestingly for South Africans, the same edition of the journal also includes a paper by Debra Roberts on how Durban has institutionalised a climate change strategy.

Durban is unusual among cities worldwide in having a municipal government that has developed a locally rooted climate change adaptation strategy. The paper highlights the need for climate change issues to be rooted in local realities that centre on avoiding or limiting impacts from, for instance, heat waves, heavy rainfall and storm surges, and sea-level rise, and also the ecological changes and water supply constraints brought about by climate change. The paper also notes how little attention international agencies have paid to adaptation, as the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions (mitigation) has been prioritized. This paper also stresses the importance of building local knowledge and capacity about climate change risks and adaptive responses. Without this, decision makers will continue seeing environmental issues as constraints on development rather than as essential underpinnings of and contributors to development.

having my cake and eating it too

We can't all have big private garderns and still expect walkable communities. This should be obvious, but one reason it isn't is demonstrated by the comments on this post from Eschaton [via kottke.org]: People give examples of how they have big plots of land and can still walk to the shops or schools or work. I could also point out that I walk to a train service that takes me to work every day, and I live in a low-density suburb. But that doesn't mean everyone else can walk and travel on safe, convenient public transport. I chose my house because it is near a station, but if everyone did that, then the prices of houses near stations would skyrocket, and eventually market forces would increase residential densities around stations.

So I consider myself fortunate in being able to make what I consider environmentally responsible travel choices; but if I am honest, I have to admit that while I am limiting my direct contribution to vehicle emissions, I am contributing to a city shape that forces others to drive. Something's got to give.

growth of a monster

For many environmentalists, Walmart is the epitome of how a retailer can take low-density sprawl, accelerate it, and cause havoc by magnifying the trend towards increasingly car-dependent cities. Just for fun, here's a visual representation of how Walmart took over America between 1961 and 2007.

UK eco-towns raising hackles

With the UK government planning a series of eco-towns to act as models for zero-carbon urban development, there are a few objections. The Campaign to Protect Rural England says that the towns shouldn't be on greenfield sites. They could rather be "eco-extenstions", or other forms of development that are potentially less damaging to the environment by avoiding sprawl and improving existing urban areas. The CPRE suggests a number of tests by which the eco-towns should be judged before their plans are finalised.

Urban planner Nicholas Falk adds that some of the eco-towns are on sites that were previously rejected as locations for new towns on other grounds, suggesting that criteria for sustainability aren't being applied properly. The objections don't seem to be over the concept of eco-towns, but over appropriate locations for development.

But a DCLG spokeswoman said the policy would encourage “well planned sustainable growth” on brownfield and greenfield land.

“The statutory planning process will ensure that areas will be protected from inappropriate development,” she added. “These settlements will be designed to the highest standards, make the most efficient use of land, and be designed sustainably and to zero-carbon objectives.”

EcoEdge for sustainability

For anyone interested in current discourse around developing green cities, last month's EcoEdge 2 Conference in Australia provided wide-ranging debate on a number of related topics. Part of the motivation for this event was to generate ideas from academics, architects, planners and others facing the challenge of planning and building sustainable cities, under the four main themes of urbanism, government, buildings and housing. There were also workshops to deliver practical approaches to improving urban sustainability performance.

Presenters attended from China, India, USA, Holland, Denmark, Colombia and other countries, and their presentations are available on the CityEdge web site. A number deal with the challenges of slums and other concerns in developing countries.

making do with less

Eskom has tried several tactics to force big electricity users to reduce demand, in a last-ditch attempt to minimize the need for load shedding. Some industries have had an understanding for some time that they would be called upon to partially shut down their operations; more recently the mines were forced to drastically scale back; and the latest strategy - a step too far, in the ANC's view - has been to refuse to issue permits for large new developments for a few months. Without the permits, the developments can't proceed.

The ANC is outraged, no doubt, because they see this as applying the brakes to economic growth. The government may be right - but only because it hasn't bothered to develop a strategy to encourage developers who could (with a little nudge) make do with reduced dependence on the national electricity grid.

I find it curious that the backlash from government has been more vociferous in the case of the permit delay tactic than in the case of shutting down mine operations. Given time and carefully applied political pressure, the mines could probably find alternative power sources to supplement their main supply, but in the short term there is little they can do but comply with restrictions, and this clearly has an economic impact. New developments, on the other hand, could be configured to have greater flexibility in their mix of power supplies from the start. Government and Eskom should be working together with developers to find ways to encourage a new wave of thinking - particularly with new developments. In industries where the market calls for it, this is already being done. The planned expansion of the Cape Town International Convention Centre is a good example.

when is green not green?

There are tools for measuring your personal carbon footprint, tools for determining the embodied energy in construction materials, tools for designing low-carbon buildings, and tools for getting developments accredited for various measures of sustainability. The choice is growing every month, and therein lies a challenge: how to standardise what we mean by "sustainable". As international agreements evolve through processes such as the current negotiations around the next phase of the Kyoto Protocol, we will be forced to converge on an agreed standard - at least as it pertains to carbon emissions. (Though George Bush seems set on developing his own carbon market in parallel, reminding me of the old Betamax vs. VHS battle for ascendancy in video technology, or the current Blu-ray vs HD DVD war.) In the meantime, we will be faced with a growing number of disputes over developments like this one in Maine, USA.

RUrbanism - transformation in India

There are a number of plans, in various states of preparation and implementation, for new cities to be developed on principles that establish new levels of sustainability performance. Just as important is how to improve the performance of existing cities.

This is not new, but new to me: an archived post on WorldChanging brought to my attention by a colleague, about RUrbanism. This essay about the Goa 2100 Project suggests a way for existing cities - particularly, but not exclusively in developing countries - to transform themselves to perform more sustainably. This planning project for the capital city of Panjim, in the Indian state of Goa, addresses the relationship between growing urban centres and their rural hinterland.

RUrbanism is a design framework that offers a new way to look at "everything from urban form, to resource flows, to the mix of paid work and unpaid community engagement that comprise a vital community. It also offers powerful, quantitative methods for planning that transition, from finding the optimal size and shape of built infrastructure to financing the process of rebuilding over several decades."

The project looked at things like optimum densities, principles for infrastructure design, use of local materials, and design that is adaptable (and ultimately recyclable). After extensive modelling, the project concluded that the city of Panjim could be sustainably transitioned - affordably - within a period of 30 years. No mean feat, considering the lifecycle of urban infrastructure.

But perhaps the most important challenge that Goa 2100 identified was the transformation of current institutions and systems of governance. The sustainability transition clearly new values and ethics: sufficiency, equity, and the ethic of using a minimal throughput of matter, energy and information with the least impact on nature society and future generations. These were identified as key goals for the project, and they require changes in how a society like Goa governs itself.

road to nowhere

We usually think of roads, railways and even waterways within cities as infrastructure that connects different parts of the urban area. But if poorly planned, they can divide communities and actually reduce accessibility to some parts. There have been plenty of examples of negative impacts on a grand scale, such as elevated waterfront freeways in Boston, Toronto and Cape Town; or more localised community divisions from widening of small roads to get more traffic past a bottleneck, making it harder to walk or cycle to shops, schools and other local destinations.

This can have a serious impact on sustainability by reducing the viability of local businesses, destroying social cohesion and stability, and resulting in decline in areas that are isolated. The 3 November edition of NewScientist [sub req'd] reports on a study that has confirmed that "geographical isolation is a prime cause of social deprivation, economic inactivity and crime, but can be hard to quantify." The study's authors, Dimitry Volchenkov and Philippe Blanchard, have come up with a mathematical model of neighbourhood accessibility [link to technical paper], which is a key first step in preventing new ghettos from emerging out of bad planning:

Random walks defined on undirected graphs assign the absolute scores to all nodes based on the quality of path they provide for random walkers. In city space syntax, the notion of segregation acquires a statistical interpretation with respect to random walks. We analyze the spatial network of Venetian canals and detect its most segregated part which can be identified with canals adjacent to the Ghetto of Venice.

Riebeek Valley sprawl

Riebeek Kasteel has been getting a bit of press coverage over the past few months, with a volley of letters to the editor last week. The small farming town, about an hour outside of Cape Town, is witnessing a court battle between a farmer and the residents living next to his vineyards.

Residents are claiming that the farmer is not following health and safety requirements when he sprays his crops, and are experiencing health problems from pesticides drifting in the wind. The farmer says he's following prescribed procedures.

The issue is not as straightforward as that, but it's a classic case of conflict between urban and rural land uses. The town's main attraction is its location: nestled in a valley filled with vineyards and olive groves, away from bigger urban areas. This has fuelled expansion of the town into agriculturual land at the same time as the farmers are experiencing a boom in demand for their olives and grapes.

On the face of it, Riebeek Kasteel presents a model of the ideal relationship between town and country. Physical expansion of the town onto productive farmland clearly has negative impacts, but what interests me here is the interaction and symbiosis between the two.

The biggest sign of the town's tourist boom is the annual olive festival, but there are smaller markets throughout the year, a steady escalation of property prices, and new businesses opening all the time that are not aiming at the traditional small-town market. Farmers are taking advantage of this new market for agricultural products by opening retail outlets and selling products at weekend markets. Townspeople benefit - in theory, at least - with more jobs.

There is no clear urban edge - either in planning or on the ground - and many vacant plots within the town are used to grow crops, adding to the sense that the town is integrated with the farmland. (The irony, in light of the current controversy, is that there was a time when farmers would spray the entire town with pesticides, believing they were doing everyone a favour.)

Urban sprawl is often facilitated by an economic weakening of farms on the urban fringe. In the case of Riebeek Kasteel, both the town and surrounding farms are thriving, producing a strong dynamic between them. On the fringes of larger urban areas, this strong relationship might create a useful check on sprawl, more effectively than a tightly controlled urban edge.

It will be interesting to see how land development plays out in the Riebeek Valley. Most recent growth in Riebeek Kasteel has been outward, rather than on vacant plots within the town. In the neighbouring town of Riebeek West, there has been a stronger focus on infilling rather than outward sprawl, and some of the recent housing projects have been at densities higher than one might expect in a rural town. This may have more to do with the intentions of the owners of surrounding farms than with strong planning, but as land values increase within the towns, the farmers may feel the urge to sell. Let's hope that a healthy urban-rural symbiosis will keep temptation at bay.