1.1 A General Overview
This book is the result of several years of research into cities and city environments, which focused on the issues of energy, resilience, cooling, heat events and adaptive planning; all of which are directly linked to sustainability. This work highlights the issues surrounding climate change and its impact on cities and living environments. In an urbanising world, this relationship between urbanisation and climate change cannot be neglected. As expressed by Dow and Downing (2011, p. 42) climate change āresults from complex interactions with the natural environment, coupled with social and economic changes. Such complexity is not fully understood, and is impossible to predict.ā Furthemore, cities are also complex social and economic entities, and this adds significantly to the complexity of climate change. In fact, some of these complex changes have the potential to ācreate large-scale humanitarian crisis in the futureā (ibid.). As the situation becomes more complex, the result will be more unpredicted scenarios. Some of these climate change effects will ultimately bring substantial changes to how we drive future development. They will eventually influence some of our decisions regarding where we choose to live, work and stay, and will impact our well-being and quality of life.
According to the United Nations Environmental Report (2012), cities occupy only 3% of the global land surface but consume more than 75% of our overall energy and produce more than 50% of global waste. However, cities are our major economic hubs, accounting for the generation of 80% of global gross domestic product. The latter figure alone makes urbanisation inevitable. This is regardless of any of the negative results, particularly for developing nations who look up to the achievements of developed nations. The fact is that there is no rural developed nation. Hence, we anticipate that urbanisation will continue, as it can be expected to make nations more prosperous as they aim for more growth and economic development. This never-ending human need, or perhaps greed (Gough 2016), will continue to change our climates and earth systems. The ultimate impact of this will be on societies, which will become more fragile and more sensitive to the impacts of climate change. There are indications that the resilience of many global habitats are already being challenged. Therefore, the expected consequences will not only be environmental, but will also have significant implications for societies, as well as the future of our living environments, cities and nations.
In the last two decades, most of our built environment development has been concentrated on urban development and urban expansion, multiplying the number of mega-cities, extending the physical boundaries of many cities and increasing the density of many urban environments. These trends have changed our cities significantly, and will continue to change the major cities of developing nations around the globe. The facts and figures for urbanisation have been introduced and discussed by many scholars, but their correlation with the increasingly important issue of climate change is yet to be assessed in detail. When the Paris Talks closed in 2015, much of the global attention was on the initiation of the process of decarbonisation of cities (Cheshmehzangi 2016). The argument that we are living on an urban planet, and that urbanisation will continue until at least 2050 puts major pressure on the direction of urban transformations and sustainability ideals. Hence, climate change matters: its impacts are widespread, from food security concerns, to issues of energy, water, environment and society, particularly concerning the resilience of our urban environments.
Cities and operations within city environments are major contributors to climate change. Nevertheless, in recent years they have also played an increasingly large role in combating climate change impact. The objective of this book is to understand the impact of climate change on cities and how people can act to reverse or mitigate some of these impacts. As argued by Dodson (2010, p. xix), many of our human activities are economic, and generally contribute to the changes in climate that will eventually affect our quality of life and well-being. Therefore, the need for transformation is essential:
We are faced with the need to develop new knowledge, a better understanding of how biophysical and socio-economic systems interact, develop new strategies and actions, and new international cooperative arrangements in order to solve what is the defining challenges of the twenty-first century.
In this respect, we argue in support of changes, or at least tangible transitions, in institutions and institutional arrangements, mindsets and mentalities, behaviours and preferences, and more importantly general knowledge. Hence, human beings as the planetās dominant species need to be more responsive to these challenges and become more reflective when it comes to finding the right solutions. Future pathways should be informed by decisions taken in the past and ought to differ in many ways. Leaving the majority out of decision-making processes will harm us in the long run.
Most people are currently not very involved in the process of change, but given the number of projects that exist around the globe we anticipate an increase in engagement in these transformational and transitional processes. The implementation of people-led and people-oriented projects and/or initiatives will mean a new round of interventions in cities that will mitigate the effects of climate change. In this book, we highlight some of these projects and suggest methods of implementation that will help to achieve sustainable development goals. Our arguments focus on the people dimension as central to climate change mitigation. We do not suggest quick fixes or unrealistic interventions but emphasise long-term visions and bottom-up scenarios.
1.2 Climate Change Matters
First, it is important to clarify that climate change is different from global warming. This is a mistake that is made by many, especially the general public. Climate change itself should be regarded as āglobal climate changeā (see climate.ānasa.āgov). Although many aspects of climate change relate to warming issues, the term also covers other complex climatic conditions. Regardless of their nature, the role of human activities in this climate change is certainly a major concern. For instance, anthropogenic global warming (AGW) is simply a term used for global warming caused by the actions of humans. Many of the temperature fluctuations and sudden seasonal changes signify new climatic conditions that affect regions and even nations. In recent years, we have seen tangible delays in seasonal change or sudden changes of temperature. Some of these effects are unprecedented but are occurring more frequently. Cities are often affected the most. This is because they generally have a higher population in a concentrated area, higher intensity of activities, and higher temperatures owing to urban heat island effects (UHIE). Thus, it would be an mistake not to relate climate change matters to city operations and urbanisation.
We have to come to the recognition that as well as changing the planet, urbanisation is changing us as a species significantly as well. As Girardet puts it (2008, pp. 3ā4), āall-out urbanisation is fundamentally changing the condition of humanity and our relationship to the earthā. He argues that we are increasingly changing ourselves into āan urban speciesā. In reality, by making such transformations we experience many changes, with our needs changing our lifestyles and consumption patterns, and our new perspectives affecting what we acquire and what we care about. The growing consumer-based societies can relate to these changes closely, and they encounter new issues of governance, sudden increases in energy demands, food supply requirements, water shortages and environmental degradation. We put ourselves into a cycle, in which at first we affect our environment and climate, and then are affected by our environment and climate. This continues until we or the environment changes; and if this is to be a positive move, it would better come from us rather than the planet.
Mistakenly or just through thoughtlessness, in many disciplines we often regard humans as separate from the eco-system rather than part of itāa common egocentric mistake that separates us from nature and our environment. To understand the issues created by climate change we should first understand its causes and effects. Much climate change is created by human activity and is caused by our accumulated neglect during more than two centuries of industrialisation, rapid development, environmental degradation and increased production and consumption. In recent years, globally we have recorded many hottest years and hottest days. The increasing frequency of extreme heat days indicates a gradual change in our climatic conditions. Resulting from climate change, many of our natural disasters are also directly linked with the increase in temperature. These include more frequent hurricanes and wildfires, both of which are fuelled by increasing water and atmospheric temperatures.
In their ongoing study, Global Climate Change: Vital Signs of the Planet, NASA (see climate.ānasa.āgov) gives a comprehensive introduction to the scientific evidence of climate change and how climate has changed over the years. Nine areas of compelling evidence for climate change are listed: (1) global temperature rise; (2) warming oceans; (3) shrinking ice sheets; (4) glacial retreat; (5) decreasing snow cover; (6) sea level rise; (7) declining Arctic sea ice; (8) extreme events; and (9) ocean acidification. All this is based on global warming and its adverse impact on the global eco -system (Cheshmehzangi and Butters 2017). The following sheds some light on this evidence as it relates to cities and city environments.
1.2.1 Global Temperature Rise
Globally, the average surface temperature has been steadily rising since the late nineteenth century, accounting for an increase of 1.1 Ā°C. In many cities, particularly in the warmer climate zones, this increase has been more than 2.0 Ā°C, and in some locations up to 4.0 Ā°C. In fact, most of the recorded global warming has occurred in the past four decades, with 2016 and 2017 been verified as the warmest years on record. If this continues to increase, as is expected in city environments in particular, we should witness severe cases of UHIE and urban overheating scenarios, with increases in cooling load and demand, health issues, discomfort and vulnerability of the affected populations.
1.2.2 Warming Oceans
The rise in temperature not only affects the land surfaces of the planet, but also affects (to a greater degree) the oceans, which absorb much of the heat. Such atmospheric changes have resulted in an increase in temperature both in the top layer (up to 700 m) and in the deeper waters. Although this increase appears very minimal (Levitus et al. 2009), its longevity is the main concern. The impact on cities of warming oceans is mainly related to the increase in frequency of tropical cyclones/storms and the intensity of hurricanes. These increasingly affect many coastal cities globally. The most affected regions, where cities are often located, are coastal zones and bay areas. Climate change puts significant pressure on the resilience of such regions.
1.2.3 Sea Level Rise
The continuous shrinkage of...