Low Carbon Cities

Transforming Urban Systems

Steffen Lehmann, Steffen Lehmann

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2014
• ISBN:
  9781317659136
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Arquitectura
• Subtopic: Sostenibilidad en la arquitectura

Low Carbon Cities is a book for practitioners, students and scholars in architecture, urban planning and design. It features essays on ecologically sustainable cities by leading exponents of urban sustainability, case studies of the new directions low carbon cities might take and investigations of how we can mitigate urban heat stress in our cities' microclimates. The book explores the underlying dimensions of how existing cities can be transformed into low carbon urban systems and describes the design of low carbon cities in theory and practice. It considers the connections between low carbon cities and sustainable design, social and individual values, public space, housing affordability, public transport and urban microclimates. Given the rapid urbanisation underway globally, and the need for all our cities to operate more sustainably, we need to think about how spatial planning and design can help transform urban systems to create low carbon cities, and this book provides key insights.

Part I

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Classic texts on ecologically sustainable cities

Conceptual evolutions and different schools of thought

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Introduction to Part I

Low carbon cities are sustainably built, within the means of finite environmental resources. The ultimate goal of eco-cities is to eliminate all greenhouse gas emissions and waste; to produce energy on site through renewable sources such as solar, hydro and wind power and biomass; and to ensure residents’ optimal health and well-being. Low carbon cities have an efficient public transport system and appropriate densities, so that they are compact, mixed use and walkable; they operate as a largely self-contained economy, with resources found and products supplied locally. Resource conservation and maximizing efficiency of energy, water and material resources is essential, as is avoiding waste creation and supporting a waste management system of reuse and resource recovery that recycles materials in a zero-waste system.

Low carbon cities do not damage the natural environment or consume a disproportionate amount of resources; they do not waste energy, water or materials due to short life, poor design or inefficient construction and manufacturing procedures. Consistent with eco-efficiency principles, these cities are affordable, manageable and sustainable in the long term.

By comparing everything people consume in a single year, including energy, food, travel, goods and services, researchers have proved that suburbs account for more greenhouse gas emissions per household compared to more compact urban areas. Inner-city residents tend to have much lower carbon footprints, because they live in smaller homes and use more public transport.

The six chapters in Part I, written by some of the pioneers of urban thinking, examine ways to create such ecologically sustainable cities. Pioneers are always a little ahead of others in the way they think about a problem. This range of perspectives on the practice of urban design, planning and infrastructure challenges us to rethink what a ‘good city’ is (or might be) to encourage us to transform our urban systems and begin the transition to low carbon cities.

Herbert Girardet outlines his vision of ‘ecopolis’, a city that is able to regenerate itself. Richard Register argues that, if cities are to sustain themselves in the face of environmental change, they need to go beyond merely adapting and instead should look at how such challenges have been dealt with in the past. Tim Beatley suggests ways to achieve and measure biophilic cities. Norbert Lechner advocates architectural and urban design that is cognizant of the sun’s power. Jeff Kenworthy presents the latest information on a longitudinal global study of the connections between urban planning and public transport. Manfred Lenzen and Greg M. Peters show the links between cities and surrounding areas by studying urban residents’ use of resources in a case study of Australian households.

Chapter 1

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‘Ecopolis’

The regenerative city

Herbert Girardet

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Summary

Cities tend to absorb resources from nature and discharge their wastes without taking responsibility for the consequences. In the last 100 years, the process of urbanization has become ever more resource-intensive, and it now significantly contributes to climate change, loss of soil carbon, decreased natural fertility of farmland and the loss of biodiversity across the world. A comprehensive approach – beyond established concepts of sustainable development – is needed. Regenerative development solutions to many challenges have already been implemented. These include land-use planning in favour of compact, transport-efficient communities; energy efficiency in buildings; smart grids and renewable energy production; waste recycling and reuse. However, we need to think beyond these challenges, ensuring a comprehensive understanding of the global impacts of urbanization on the planet as a living system. This chapter argues that the established concept of urban ecology should be expanded to include all the territories involved in sustaining urban systems. The regenerative development of cities thus takes on the meaning of eco-regeneration.

Introduction

In early December 2012, some 24,000 government representatives, academics, NGO campaigners and journalists got together in the latest round of negotiations to try to tackle global climate change (UN 2012). COP18 was the eighteenth annual ‘conference of parties’ trying to get to grips with an existential challenge facing humanity: how to avoid a global climate catastrophe. The year 2012 also saw the 20-year follow-up conference to the 1992 Rio Earth Summit aiming to address the wider issue of the ever-increasing human impacts on the ecosystems of our home planet (Rio 12 2012). At both events it became clear that none of these issues can be tackled without addressing the consumption patterns of cities. This has become a central responsibility of urban policy makers, developers and city dwellers.

Cities take vast quantities of resources from nature. The new challenge is for cities to help to continuously regenerate the natural systems from which they draw resources.

Humanity has become a predominantly urban species and this historic development represents a systemic change in the relationship between humans and nature. Cities are constructed on only 3 to 4 per cent of the world’s land surface, but the ecological footprints of cities cover much of the planet (Girardet 1999).

Modern cities are an astonishing human achievement. Their buildings and infrastructure systems are unprecedented in their technical complexity. Their transport systems have developed a global reach. Cities are centres of economic activities and intense human interaction. They can offer a great variety of services at comparatively low per capita cost. However, the environmental impacts of an urbanizing humanity have become a great cause for concern. Apart from a near monopoly on the use of fossil fuels, metals and concrete, urbanizing humans now consume nearly 40 per cent of nature’s annual primary production as well (Haberl et al. 2010).

These ecological, economic and social externalities of our urban systems need to be addressed in new ways. The ravenous appetite of our fossil fuel-powered urban lifestyles for natural resources has enormous consequences for all life on Earth, including human life. Cities tend to absorb resources from nature and discharge their wastes without taking responsibility for the consequences. In the past 100 years, the process of urbanization has become ever more resource-intensive, and it now significantly contributes to climate change, loss of soil carbon, decreased natural fertility of farmland and the loss of biodiversity across the world.

Of major new concern are the rapidly growing resource demands of cities in developing countries. As cities become larger and richer, they draw increasingly upon nature’s global bounty rather than on resources from their own local hinterland. The footprints of individual cities can be hundreds of times larger than their own surface area. In a rapidly urbanizing world, we need to wean cities off their systemic fossil fuel dependence, and get them to actively contribute to the restoration of damaged ecosystems upon whose efficient ‘services’ they ultimately depend. However, this is an as yet unfamiliar challenge for urban politicians, planners, managers, architects, developers and city dwellers.

A comprehensive approach beyond established concepts of sustainable development is needed. Regenerative development solutions for many challenges have already been implemented. These include: land-use planning in favour of compact, transport-efficient communities; energy efficiency in buildings; smart grids and renewable energy production; waste recycling and reuse. However, we need to think beyond these, ensuring a comprehensive understanding of the global impacts of urbanization on the planet as a living system.

The transformative changes that are required are challenging because they call for long-term perspectives as compared to the short-term compromises and patchwork solutions that tend to characterize commercial and political decision making.

From urban regeneration to regenerative cities

In recent years there has been a proliferation of urban regeneration or renewal initiatives in run-down cities of industrialized countries. These have aimed to restore the urban fabric, economy and well-being of urban citizens – the ‘inner-urban environment’. Such initiatives have received much funding and media attention, and they have improved the lives of millions of people (‘Urban renewal’ 2013).

However, the concept of regenerative cities goes further – seeking to address the relationship between cities and their local and global hinterland. We need to re-enrich the landscapes upon which cities depend, and this includes the need to increase their capacity to absorb carbon emissions. We need to find ways of creating a restorative relationship between cities and the world beyond, making use of new opportunities in technology, policy and business practice.

This chapter argues that the established horizon of urban ecology should be expanded to include all the territories involved in sustaining urban systems. The regenerative development of cities thus takes on the meaning of eco-regeneration.

Creating regenerative cities thus means developing comprehensive financial and technological strategies for an environmentally enhancing, restorative relationship between cities and the ecosystems from which they draw resources for their sustenance.

Agropolis: the city and its local landscape

Traditional cities had an intimate connection to their local landscapes. In his book The Isolated State, the prominent nineteenth-century economist Johann Heinrich von Thünen described the way in which human settlements, in the absence of major transport systems, are systemically tied into these landscapes through various logically arranged modes of cultivation (Von Thünen 1966). In fact, they ensure the landscapes are continuing productivity and fertility by returning appropriate amounts of organic waste to them. I call this traditional form of settlement ‘Agropolis’ (see Figure 1.1).

In many parts of the world, towns and cities – lacking efficient transport systems connecting them to the outside world – had these kinds of systemic relationships to the landscapes from which they emerged. They depended for their sustenance on nearby market gardens, orchards, forests, arable and grazing land, and local water supplies. Until very recently, many Asian cities were still largely locally self-sufficient in food as well as fertilizer, using human and animal wastes to sustain the fertility of local farms (King 191...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• List of figures
• List of tables
• List of contributors
• Acknowledgements
• Foreword Planning for sustainable and low carbon green cities
• Preface Holistic approaches to future cities
• Introduction Low carbon cities: more than just buildings
• Part I Classic texts on ecologically sustainable cities: conceptual evolutions and different schools of thought
• Part II New directions: designing for low carbon cities
• Part III Urban microclimates
• Glossary of urban terms
• Annotated select bibliography
• Index