Cities: Getting smarter, not brilliant yet
The challenge of creating a truly sustainable city is, to quote Winston Churchill, “a riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma.” So far, some cities have done considerably better than others at becoming smarter and greener … but there’s not a single one yet that meets all the requirements for sustainability.
Zero carbon? Masdar City, under development in the United Arab Emirates, has been billed as either a zero-carbon or low-carbon city, but that goal remains a long way off. Launched in 2006 and originally set for completion by 2016, the project now has a construction deadline somewhere between 2020 and 2025.
In a 2008 study by the Brookings Institution, Honolulu was identified as the metropolitan area with the lowest carbon footprint in the US. However, that assessment took into account only emissions from passenger and freight highway transportation and from energy consumption in residential buildings. Viewed from a bigger-picture perspective, Honolulu looks anything but sustainable: it relies heavily on imported food and other goods from the mainland US, used petroleum for 90 per cent of its electricity generation as of 2005 and has an economy dependent on airline-based travel (and the emissions from that aren’t counted in its greenhouse gas reduction plan so it “didn’t burden the tourism industry”).
A recent green economy report from the United Nations’ Environmental Programme highlighted a number of encouraging sustainability initiatives taking place in cities around the world: Singapore’s pioneering road-charging scheme, Sao Paulo’s waste-to-energy project, London’s BedZED low-energy residential development, Curitiba’s efficient bus system and innovative recyclable waste-for-fresh-produce exchange programme, Amsterdam’s smart work-centre trials and more.
However, the report also noted that “none of these cities possesses an ecological footprint below 4 hectares per capita … more than twice the world average biocapacity per capita in 2006 — suggesting that there is still some way to go in implementing sustainable change.”
Improving the sustainability of cities is more than a technology challenge … it’s a leadership, policy and economic one as well. While individual projects and initiatives can improve some aspects of a city’s environmental footprint — energy, water, transport and so on — a more holistic approach will be needed to tackle overall performance. That’s especially true as cities aren’t static systems but are, just like the technologies designed to make them smarter, changing all the time.
