Resilient Sustainable Cities

A Future

Leonie Pearson, Peter Newton, Peter Roberts

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2014
• ISBN:
  9781135071455
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Architecture
• Subtopic: Urban Planning & Landscaping

Urbanization is occurring at an unprecedented rate; by 2050 three quarters of the world's people will live in urban environments. The cars we drive, products we consume, houses we live in and technology we use will all determine how sustainable our cities will be. Bridging the increasing divide between cross-disciplinary academic insights and the latest practical innovations, Resilient Sustainable Cities provides an integrated approach for long term future planning within the context of the city as a whole system.

In the next 30 years cities will face their biggest challenges yet, as a result of long term, or 'slow burn' issues: population growth will stretch to the breaking point urban infrastructure and service capacity; resource scarcity, such as peak oil; potable water and food security, will dramatically change what we consume and how; environmental pressures will change how we live and where and; shifting demographic preferences will exacerbate urban pressures. Cities can't keep doing what they've always done and cope – we need to change current urban development to achieve resilient, sustainable cities.

Resilient Sustainable Cities provides practical and conceptual insights for practitioners, researchers and students on how to deliver cities which are resilient to 'slow burn' issues and achieve sustainability. The book is organized around three overarching themes:

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• pathways to the future
• innovation to deliver the future
• leadership and governance issues

The book includes a variety of perspectives conveyed through international case studies and examples of cities that have transformed for a sustainable future, exploring their successes and failures to ensure that readers are left with ideas on how to turn their city into a resilient sustainable city for the future.

PART ONE

UNDERSTANDING RESILIENT, SUSTAINABLE CITIES

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CHAPTER 1

Introduction to the magic and practice of resilient, sustainable cities

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Leonie J. Pearson, Peter W. Newton and Peter Roberts

Urbanization is occurring at an unprecedented rate: by 2050 three-quarters of the world’s population will live in urban environments. The cars we drive, products we consume, houses we live in and technology we use will all determine how sustainable our cities will be. So what is a sustainable city? How does it look, feel and act? Although sustainable development is a contested concept, it is also clear that it can be envisaged and delivered in a variety of ways. For a city, sustainable development should always be subject to the test of whether key aspects of our daily lives and the urban systems within which they play out can be continued indefinitely into the future from a social, environmental and economic perspective — until or unless something emerges to underpin sustainable development in a key urban domain. Figure 1.1 illustrates these relationships as they apply to cities and adds the crucial dimensions of inter- and intra-generational equity and governance.

Figure 1.1 Sustainable development and cities

Source: Roberts, Ravetz and George (2009)

Not only are cities facing their current challenges of pollution, transportation, climate change and more (see Chapter 2) but they are about to experience the ‘slow burns’ of: population growth that will stretch to breaking point urban infrastructure and service capacity; resource scarcity (e.g. peak oil, potable water and food security) that will dramatically change what we consume and how; environmental pressures that will change how we live and where; and shifting demographic and business preferences that will exacerbate urban pressures. The type of city that can handle current challenges, including ‘slow burns’ and exogenous ‘shocks’ (e.g. climatic, financial, tectonic, socio-political, etc.), and thrive in the future is a resilient city.

This book attempts to maintain a dual focus on the sustainable development and resilience of cities throughout. Sustainable urbanization represents the objective for managing the dynamics of future city development to achieve desirable environmental, social, economic and political—institutional outcomes for the long term (UN Habitat 2004). Resilience is generally conceived as the ability of a system (e.g. a city system) to absorb disturbance and reorganize to retain ‘essentially the same function, structure, identity and feedbacks’ (Walker et al. 2004, p. 5). We are pluralistic in the use of the term in this collection, finding useful insights from resilience in ecology, adaptive capacity in social—ecological systems, transition studies in social— technological systems and adaptation in social systems.

We can position these two terms here as complementary but separate axes of performance that cities aspiring for longevity need to achieve: that is, where sustainable development is measured on the vertical axis (from sustainable to unsustainable) and resilience (from brittle to resilient) is on the horizontal axis to provide for a potential mapping of the states of current cities. Such dual-factor mappings are now emerging for particular dimensions of city or country performance; for example, sustainability and liveability (Newton 2012); happiness and GDP (Worldwatch Institute 2008, cited in Jackson 2009); health and income inequality (Wilkinson and Pickett 2009); and sustainability and equity (UNDP 2011), among others. However, resilience measures for cities are less advanced (UNISDR 2012) and do not yet feature on such radar screens.

This realization that the world needs sustainable and resilient cities is a clear message coming from governments, communities, researchers, society and the stressed environment, and it is beginning to reverberate through the media. It is the aim of this book to clarify the urban sustainability—resilience agenda as well as help in its implementation in the future planning and management of our cities by asking leading practitioners and thought leaders to provide their insights on:

• What is a resilient, sustainable city?
• And how can it be achieved?

Following the path-breaking work of the World Commission on Environment and Development (1987) and the host of government policy statements and practical actions which followed, many books and papers have been written on particular aspects of sustainable urban development (e.g. transport, housing, infrastructure, service delivery, energy and planning requirements), and risk recovery planning of cities to ensure they are more ‘resilient’ to crises (e.g. hurricanes, tsunamis, etc.) in the manner in which they rebound, bounce back. This sector-specific approach to planning and risk management of current city life constrains urban futures to sub-optimal performance outcomes and does not necessarily position cities to be better able to cope with holistic ‘slow-burn’ or ‘sudden-shock’ issues. This is the distinguishing feature of this collection compared to current offerings: an attempt to provide a more integrated approach for long-term future planning within the context of the city represented as a whole socio-technical—built—environmental system.

Our book is in four parts. Part One provides an introduction to the need, theory and practice of resilient, sustainable cities. It does this through three chapters: this introduction followed by a chapter highlighting the increasing exogenous (e.g. resource constraints, climate change and financial uncertainty) and endogenous (e.g. socio-demographic change and infrastructure uncertainty) stressors to our city systems (Chapter 2). The third chapter focuses on the leading-edge theory in resilient and sustainable cities — providing clarity in the meanings of: social-ecological systems, resilience and sustainability as well as frameworks for understanding how these terms may be used.

Part Two takes a systems perspective to investigate issues for achieving resilient and sustainable cities focused on economic (Chapter 4), social (Chapter 5), environmental (Chapter 6) and built (Chapter 7) sub-systems. This part is conceptual and identifies within the different sub-system opportunities, blockers and ways forward to achieving resilient and sustainable cities. A synthesis of the four sub-systems and their priorities is pulled together in Chapter 8.

Part Three takes a sectoral perspective to highlight innovative ideas and opportunities associated with city sectors. This part is wide ranging and covers the sectors of: urban technology, biophilic design, food security, transport, water, waste, buildings, energy, network technology, social inclusion and urban design (Chapters 9—20). Each chapter provides examples from the developed world on best practice with insights of where our current cities are innovative and delivering ‘parts’ of a resilient and sustainable city. It also highlights areas where we could do more.

The final part provides insights for leadership and governance that could deliver a city that we can be proud to pass on to our children — in better shape than the one we inherited. Its six chapters start with academic (Chapter 21) and practitioner (Chapter 22) insights into city governance, then touch on leadership (Chapter 23) and policy (Chapter 24). The book then provides its own leadership in the area by a practitioners’ chapter which examines how to make all the changes in the book happen and some great examples of where they have been successful (Chapter 25). Lastly, a conclusion pulls together the whole book and offers suggestions of priorities for the future.

Whilst the book is a selection of commissioned chapters, taken together they weave a complex and comprehensive web of opportunities and ideas for the design of our cities capable of delivering a future that is resilient and sustainable (where ‘design’ covers built infrastructure, policy, governance, societal and economic institutions).

This is a positive, optimistic story about change, opportunity and challenge for a better world. We use case studies and examples from around the world to explore opportunities, successes and failures. It is a collection of work that draws out the leading-edge thinking in research and practice; therefore, relevant references and links are provided. It reflects current best practice thinking and knowledge about the challenges and opportunities for transforming our cities: from degraded failing places to resilient, successful urban centres. The need for such books will last as long as our desire for progressive change endures. The innovative approaches and novel ideas contained in this book are contributions to this end.

While the idea for this book started with a unique conference in Melbourne in 2011 (Sustainable Urbanization: A Resilient Future), the ideas have grown, matured and flourished to produce a more international and holistic work. We thank the conference sponsors: the Australian Academy of Sciences, the University of Melbourne’s Melbourne Sustainable Society Institute, and Swinburne University of Technology’s Institute for Social Research. Also the conference organizers Professor Craig Pearson and Dr Leonie Pearson — a truly intergenerational partnership that worked!

Key link

Sustainable urbanization: A resilient future: http://tedxcarlton.com/Home.aspx

References

Jackson, T. 2009. Prosperity without growth: Economics for a finite planet, Earthscan, London.

Newton, P. 2012. Liveable and sustainable? Socio-technical challenges for twenty-first-century cities, Journal of Urban Technology, 19(1), 81—102.

Roberts, P. , Ravetz, J. and George, C. 2009. Environment and the city, Routledge, London.

UNDP. 2011. Human development report 2011, New York.

UN Habitat. 2004. Urban indicator guidelines, Kenya.

UNISDR. 2012. Making cities resilient report 2012, New York.

Walker, B., Holling, C. S., Carpenter, S. R. and Kinzig, A. 2004. Resilience, adaptability and transformability in social—ecological systems, Ecology and Society, 9(2), 5.

Wilkinson, R. and Pickett, K. 2009. The spirit level: Why more equal societies almost always do better, Penguin, London.

World Commission on Environment and Development. 1987. Our common future, Oxford University Press, Oxford.

CHAPTER 2

The challenges to urban sustainability and resilience

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Peter W. Newton and Peter Doherty

2.1 Introduction

Perhaps the single most important challenge for the twenty-first century is to work towards a more resilient and sustainable urbanized world. In this global strategic urban context, resilience concerns the capacity of an urban system — including its natural, built, social and economic elements — to manage change, learn from difficult situations and be in a position to rebound after experiencing significant stress or shock, while sustainability questions whether or not certain aspects of our daily activities, and the systems within which they operate, can be continued indefinitely into the future, again from a social, economic and environmental perspective.

With a prediction that by 2050, around 75 per cent of an estimated global population of 9 billion will live in urban environments (UNDESA 2012), cities will clearly play a large role in determining whether the world will be a more sustainable place. An ever-growing catalogue of reports (UNEP 2012; UNCSD 2012; Franklin and Andrews 2012) highlights a list of critical issues for cities that will inevitably intensify by mid-century. The need is to start confronting these now with a process of concerted, well-considered actions.

In this chapter we seek to highlight briefly some of the pressures — both exogenous (external origin) and endogenous (local origin) — that impact urban areas and what might be done as a context for framing the urban challenge: what cities need to prepare for. Other sections of the book will focus in more detail on specific interventions designed to enhance resilience and sustainability.

2.2 Exogenous pressures

As cities become increasingly connected in a globalized world, sets of exogenous pressures are likely to exert greater impact than has been the case in even the recent past. Pressures can also be categorized along a ‘slow burn’ versus ‘fast moving’ continuum. For example, climate change, ageing infras...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Notes on contributors
• Foreword
• Part One Understanding Resilient, Sustainable Cities
• Part Two Pathways to Deliver Resilient, Sustainable Cities
• Part Three Innovation for Resilient, Sustainable Cities
• Part Four Governance and Leadership for Resilient, Sustainable Cities
• Index