The Human Sustainable City

Challenges and Perspectives from the Habitat Agenda

Bruno Forte, Maria Cerreta, Pasquale De Toro, Luigi Fusco Girard

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2019
• ISBN:
  9781351773379
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Economía
• Subtopic: Desarrollo sostenible

This title was first published in 2003. Seven years after Habitat II culminated with the Istanbul agreement on Sustainable Urban Development, this book brings together many of the world's leading experts from the fields of architecture, urban planning, economics, sociology, politics, environment and geography to assess the successes and failures in fulfilling the objectives decided upon at this historic meeting. Illustrated with a wide range of case studies, this volume is divided into three main sections; firstly examining the challenges, secondly, the approaches, and finally, the practices. The book represents a critical appraisal not only of the issues related to urban development but also of the modalities to face these issues from real examples, these in return can be used as starting points to construct new 'real utopias' or at least, to future 'best practices'.

PART I

AN ENVIRONMENTAL APPROACH

Introduction to Part I

Pasquale De Toro

An Increasingly Urban World

On 6–8 June 2001 a Special Session of the UN General Assembly was held in New York for an Overall Review and Appraisal of the Implementation of the Habitat Agenda. It is also known as Istanbul +5, coming as it did five years after the Second Conference on Human Settlements (Habitat II), held in Istanbul from 3 to 14 June 1996, which adopted the Habitat Agenda (UNCHS, 1996), comprising a set of actions with the goal of achieving the two fundamental objectives set by the Conference: adequate shelter for all and sustainable human settlement development in a urbanizing world.

The Habitat +5 meeting drew up the Declaration on Cities and Other Human Settlements in the New Millennium, which reviews the degree of implementation of the Habitat Agenda worldwide, progress made, obstacles and emerging issues, and comes to the conclusion that the Agenda is not only still viable today, but must act as a cornerstone for the sustainable development of human settlements in coming years. Indeed, today we find ourselves at a crossroads in human history, at a time when the ‘urban issue’ is paramount. Almost half of the total world population of six billion people lives in cities, a rate that is set to increase in the near future. The world is facing unprecedented growth in urban population, especially in developing countries.

This introduction, while not claiming to provide a comprehensive account of the health of the world’s cities from an environmental point of view, seeks to highlight some fundamental aspects, with a view to understanding at what level of sustainability/unsustainability we are living and acting today, especially in urban settings, as well as what actions can be undertaken to achieve a more sustainable future.

First and foremost, we need to understand the size of the urbanizing world in which we are living. The current world population exceeds six billion inhabitants, a figure that is all the more staggering if compared to the number at the turn of the twentieth century – 1.6 billion, which increased swiftly to two billion in 1927, three billion in 1960, four billion in 1974, five billion in 1987 and six billion in 1999 (UNDP, 2002). Moreover, the world’s population is increasingly made up of city dwellers: around the year 1000 AD, the city with the largest population in the world was Cordoba, with 450,000 people, in 1800 it was Peking, with 1.1 million people, in 1900 London, with 6.5 million, in 2000 Tokyo with 26.4 million (a far cry from its 1.5 million population in 1900). Nowadays, megacities, i.e. those exceeding the ten million people mark, number no less than 19 (including, among others, Mexico City, Bombay, Saõ Paolo, New York, Beijing), while in 1900, the cities with more than one million inhabitants were just 16. Finally, whereas today about half the world’s population are city dwellers, in 1900, a mere 10 per cent of the total population lived in cities (UNDP, 2002; UNCHS, 2001).

The trend towards urbanization is also set to continue in the coming years: according to UN forecasts, three global population scenarios could take shape by the year 2050: a conservative estimate setting total population at 7.7 billion, a medium one at 9.3 billion, and a maximum growth scenario forecasting a staggering 11.2 billion (UNDP, 1997). Against these growth forecasts, it is expected that by 2030, about 60 per cent of the global population (which could exceed eight billion) will live in cities. This figure is all the more telling if we consider that as late as 1950 only 29.7 per cent of the world’s inhabitants lived in cities, and that over the following 50 years, i.e. by the year 2000, urban population had reached 47.4 per cent of the total.

Never before in the history of humankind had urban areas reached such an impressive extension and encroached to such an extent upon rural areas. To make just a few comparisons, it took Jericho, the oldest city in the world, 7,000 years to change from a small village to a ‘city’ about 3,000 people strong. Ancient Athens numbered between 215,000 and 300,000 people, when, in 432 BC, it reached the maximum population which could be supported by the surrounding countryside. Rome, the only ancient city to register a large population by modern standards, presumably ranged between 750,000 and 1,250,000 inhabitants between the late Republican period and the fourth century AD. We need to wait for the development of Constantinople in the Middle Ages and Beijing in the early modern period to find two cities able to rival ancient Rome (Hall, 2001).

Today, with about 50 per cent of world population living in urban areas, the attendant environmental problems, especially in developing countries, are unprecedented. According to some estimates, 1.1 billion people breathe heavily polluted air, 220 million do not have access to potable water, 420 million do not have access to basic sanitation and at least 600 million lack adequate housing. Moreover, over the coming years, the trend towards urbanization will indeed be especially marked in developing countries: by the year 2030, about 57 per cent of their population will live in cities, against 17.8 per cent in 1950 and 40.5 per cent in 2000. While at the end of 2000, three of the ten largest cities in the world belonged to developed countries (Tokyo, New York and Los Angeles), by 2015 only Tokyo will remain in the ‘top ten’ and will still top the list with its estimated 27.2 million inhabitants as the largest city in the world, while the other nine will all belong to less developed or developing countries: the first six will include Dacca, Mumbai (Bombay), Saõ Paolo, Delhi and Mexico City, each exceeding 20 million inhabitants. Moreover, in 2015 there will be no less than 21 mega cities with over 10 million inhabitants and 58 cities with over 5 million (there were 40 in 2001), 48 of which in developing countries (UNDP, 2002).

Against this scenario, issues of water and energy supply, waste disposal, transport, and lack of infrastructure and housing, will deeply affect the development of cities and the quality of urban life. Unless appropriate sustainable development policies are adopted, we will find ourselves travelling along a road leading to increasing ‘urban poverty’ a term that defines not only a lack of material goods, but has ‘a broader meaning of cumulative deprivation, characterized by squalid living conditions; risk to life and health for poor sanitation, air pollution, crime and violence, traffic accidents, and natural disasters; and the breakdown of traditional family and community safety nets’ (World Bank, 2000, p. 3). Indeed, relentless urbanization is producing a growing number of informal settlements (which harbour 30 to 60 per cent of the urban population in developing countries), ranging from the slums of India to the favelas of Rio de Janeiro, where all aspects of urban poverty are exacerbated, offering stark evidence of the fact that, due to the failure of recent urban policies, increasing urbanization not only imports poverty from rural areas, but helps create it in the cities themselves.

The cities, especially those in developing countries, show, paralleling their fast-paced population growth, an increase in ‘critical areas’: unemployment, environmental deterioration, lack of urban services, decay of existing infrastructure, lack of access to land and financing, lack of adequate shelter for all. Indeed, it is estimated that over one billion people live in seriously substandard housing, often in slums and squatter settlements. Moreover, in many countries, what is rated as decent housing¹ is totally inadequate by our standards.

The global housing stock in cities amounts to 700–720 million units of all types. It is estimated that 20 to 40 million urban households are homeless. A significant number of those housed, however, cannot be regarded as living in adequate shelter. Worldwide, 18 percent of all urban housing units (some 125 million units) are non-permanent structures, and 25 percent (175 million units) do not conform to building regulations. Most deficient housing units are found in the cities of the developing countries, with more than half of all less-then-adequate housing units located in the Asia and Pacific regions (UNCHS, 2001, p. 30).

And if so many housing units are substandard, we often find whole neighbourhoods that are considered to be ‘less than adequate’. This is not only due to the lack of basic services, but, to a greater extent, serious environmental deterioration and pollution. If it is true that we are living in an era marked by a deep global-scale ‘ecological crisis’ (greenhouse effect, the Ozone hole, desertification, etc.), it is equally true that this crisis has an urban dimension. Indeed, cities are not only places where critical environmental effects are produced but also places where those effects are most strongly felt, and this is even more true in the cities in developing countries. To quote a few examples, motor vehicle traffic accounts for 70–80 per cent of total emissions in cities in developing countries; also, forecasts indicate a 60 per cent increase in CO₂ emissions in the atmosphere between 1997 and 2010, 65 per cent of which coming from developing countries.

Rapid urbanization and the environmental crisis are the two sides of the same coin: the greatest environmental problems affecting city districts or even whole cities are air and water pollution, waste collection and management (including toxic waste), and noise pollution (UNCHS, 1997). In particular, air pollution is mostly due to the use of fossil fuels for industrial production purposes, for electrical power generation, for household heating and as fuel for motor vehicles. In general terms, air pollution is marked by sulphur dioxide and other suspended particles, lead, ozone and carbon monoxide. Water pollution is caused by urban sewage and industrial wastewater, which are discharged into the rivers of many cities or into nearby lakes and seas. Moreover, groundwater pollution is linked to poor landfill management, which allows pollutants to filter into the soil, or to the pesticides used in agriculture which also penetrate the soil. The problems associated with waste are linked not only to the growing volumes of municipal solid waste (often handled without appropriate recycling procedures), but also to the storage of toxic waste, often highly flammable and liable to explode on contact with water or other chemical substances, and in most cases also carcinogenic. Finally, noise pollution is mostly associated with industrial activities, construction, airport and road traffic: hundreds of millions of people live in areas where the threshold of 70 dB(A) is exceeded by far, with all the attendant effects on physical and mental health.

The growth of cities, aside from causing serious urban pollution problems, has also led to an increase in their ‘ecological footprint’ – that is their consumption of resources and the increased demand for waste assimilation placed on natural ecosystems. The ecological footprint is calculated as the land area necessary to sustain current levels of resource consumption, support, and waste discharge by a given population (Wackernagel and Rees, 1996). Indeed, the steady advance of urbanization contributes to an increase in the impact of urban areas on natural resources – both renewable and non-renewable – that are crucial for the life of the city itself, such as drinking water, agricultural and forestry products, fossil fuels, etc. Although admittedly each city’s ecological footprint varies according to its consumption models and waste management systems, it has been calculated that the land area needed to support a city is not less than ten times its built extension (Rees, 1992). For cities in developed countries, the imprint is greater: for instance, it has been calculated that the ecological footprint of the 29 largest cities in Europe and the Baltic is between 565 and 1,130 times larger than the area of the cities themselves (Folke et al., 1997), and even that London’s ecological footprint is close to the whole productive territory of England (Chambers et al, 2000). Moreover, ecological footprint analysis does not refer solely to the current consumption of a community but also to its foreseeable demands, which can then be compared to the availability of resources, also identifying probable deficits. The ecological footprint concept thus provides a precious support for sustainable planning, and enables researchers to monitor, over time, the changes in the sustainability/unsustainability conditions of a city or even of a whole region or country.

Towards a Sustainable Future?

The aim of the sustainable development of the cities, which implies a reduction of their ecological footprint, can and must be achieved: sound environmental management can directly improve people’s welfare while also supporting economic growth. At the same time, appropriate urban policies can promote and finance environmental improvements and the protection of ecosystems well beyond the boundaries of cities (UNCHS, 2001). The reduction of a city’s ecological footprint implies a number of measures, of which ‘most are linked to one of the following:

• Increasing biomass production within the city or its immediate surroundings (e.g. crops, fish, trees).

• Reduced waste or increased use of waste as an input into production (e.g. organic waste used for compost; waste water used for urban agriculture; improved performance on reclamation and recycling of material).

• Increased efficiency in the use of resources imported into the city (e.g. fresh water, fossil fuels and other mineral resources UNCHS, 1997, p. 409).

In terms of the latter point, it is estimated that production efficiency can be improved at least of a ‘Factor Four’: this means it is possible to achieve a fourfold increase in resource productivity or, alternatively, that the welfare of world population can be doubled while halving its consumption of natural resources. This ‘efficiency revolution’ is already feasible to a large extent in both rich and poor countries, and is also economically effective (von Weizsäcker et al., 1998). Some signs of change, which seem to point the way to a more sustainable future management of cities and territories, may already be detected, encouraging us to hope that in the near future we may witness a ‘new industrial revolution’ founded on Ecoefficiency. For instance, it might be possible to minimize power and material consumption in production processes, in turn reducing waste production (McDonough and Braungart, 1998).

On the other hand, greater awareness of environmental issues has, over past 15 years, spurred a noticeable increase in solar and wind power generation: during the 1990s, coal consumption increased by 1.2 per cent per year and oil consumption by 1.4 per cent, but over the same decade, solar cell sales increased by 17 per cent per year and wind power generation rose by 26 per cent (Brown et al., 1999). Moreover, hydro-electrical, geothermal and biomass power generation rose more slowly, between 1 and 4 per cent per year, but still showing a consistent trend (Brown et al., 2001).

Nowadays solar cells may also be incorporated in rooftiles and glass walls, enabling buildings to generate their own power. Moreover, semiconductor research has led to the development of thermo-photovoltaic (TPV) cells which convert heat generated by the industrial process into electrical power. To complete the picture, progress in electronic microcircuit technology has made it possible to produce the compact fluorescent lightbulb (CFL), which consumes one quarter the electricity required by incandescent light bulbs and lasts ten times longer.

Also, thanks to the decrease in the costs of wind and sun-generated electricity, over the next few years the production of hydrogen by means of water electrolysis will become cost-effective, and fuel cells will turn hydrogen into elec...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• List of Contributors
• Preface
• Introduction
• PART I: AN ENVIRONMENTAL APPROACH
• PART II: AN INCLUSIVE APPROACH
• PART III: AN INTEGRATED APPROACH
• An Open Conclusion
• Naples Declaration
• Index