What are Sustainable Cities? Sustainable Cities

What are Sustainable Cities?

Modular floating villages, tree-covered skyscrapers, and zero-carbon smart cities are all possibilities. These are some examples of climatopias or utopian urban designs that try to solve climate change. Climateopias can take various shapes, but they are the futuristic dreams of architects and designers throughout the world who are attempting to develop sustainable urban settlements in the face of rising environmental concerns. Many of us are dealing with climate change daily, which can be both frightening and motivating. But, as we plan for climate change, we must consider not only infrastructure but also what makes a city a city: its people.

Therefore, we must ask ourselves: What fosters a city's development and prosperity, both now and in the future? Or to put it another way, what constitutes a sustainable city? Strong communities are necessary for urban areas to assist lead and steering the different issues that arise from coexisting in close quarters with other people, particularly in light of the additional stresses of climate change and the uneven distribution of vulnerability. But in practice, those principles are frequently challenging to realize. Frequently, not everyone who could be touched by a decision is included in the group of persons who can make it. Or, perhaps, there isn't enough money to upgrade or adapt landscapes made for a certain purpose—like the movement of cars—with more accessible features like bike lanes.

Urban planning, geography, economics, and even agriculture are all included in the multidisciplinary topic of environmental planning, which focuses on how to create sustainable communities that are better places to live, work, and play. Sustainable development, which may refer to anything from managing natural resources in a way that respects the environment to assisting cities in growing in ways that can be sustained for future generations, includes environmental planning. This implies that as environmental planners, we prioritize developing plans that appropriately utilize natural resources. When everyone participates in environmental laws and regulations, environmental justice is achieved. This is what we strive to achieve.

To borrow a corporate term, this is the quadruple bottom line: beneficial outcomes for people, the planet, profits, and the community. However, sustainable development might be a contradiction in terms of what is good for the environment and what is good for the economy. So, if we strive to preserve or conserve anything, we must first ask ourselves, "What are we trying to save?" For example, we may focus on environmental conservation and reducing our usage of natural resources. As a result, urban planners will employ a variety of models and planning techniques to assist in the creation of interactions within the city that conserve and utilize open space.

Cities' residential zones can be rezoned to create walkable districts with a mix of homes and shops, rather than simply one or the other. This results in compact zones where people desire to live and work, reducing the need for individuals to drive across the region. Zoning and other measures are frequently used in smart growth planning, which attempts to manage and direct the movement of sprawl, or locations on the edges of cities such as suburbs and edge cities that are spreading into open, undeveloped terrain. We may also utilize ecological design, which is an attempt to construct structures, and even entire towns, to mirror nature. And buildings constructed like living machines, or that stress passive solar design aspects that use the Sun for heating and cooling, are just getting started.

The design and architecture of cities encode a lot about our ways of life and cultures – and we can protect that, too. But, no matter what we strive to save, we will generate conflict. For one thing, because urban planning is about connections, it is rarely a neutral act. New urbanism, which is similar to smart growth but generally just at the local size, is one approach to sustainable neighborhoods. It frequently produces locations that people are drawn to, which can lead to gentrification.

Gentrification occurs when the value of land and rent in low-income regions rises as a result of new investment. This expansion becomes troublesome when individuals are not treated fairly, as we learned while discussing redlining and urban regeneration. People may be priced out of their neighborhood — or city — if communities do not prepare methods to boost economic prospects for lower-income inhabitants or safeguard low-income housing. There is no one solution or quick response to this problem, but we may begin by focusing on the individuals involved and the history of the place while keeping equality in mind.

Cities have large population concentrations, which makes services like public transportation, education, and healthcare convenient to obtain. And the cost of necessities like electricity and internet connection has dropped. By acting as hubs for diffusion and cross-cultural interaction, urban surroundings may encourage innovation, new business prospects, and technological improvements. Dense people, however, also strain the ecosystem. The same economies of scale that make it affordable to deliver services like renewable energy and education are also responsible for a lot of waste, pollution, and stress on water resources. Even while urban areas have greater resources, the way those resources are distributed may result in uneven health results.

The grey-green division is a remarkable illustration of this. Houses on the (typically) richer side are peacefully ensconced within shaded, tree-lined streets. And suddenly, on the opposite side of a single road, everything turns to colors of concrete and asphalt; grey roads, grey rooftops, grey sidewalks. This has an impact on our emotions, health, and even the biodiversity of life around us. All of this greenery also contributes to the reduction of the impacts of urban heat islands, where all of the asphalt, concrete, stone, and steel absorb heat and prevent air pollution from dispersing. Whether it's because of the city's physical location or because there are more heavy pollutants like vehicles or factories, cities have a lot more asthma instances, ear-nose-throat infections, and people with weakened immune systems.

This is especially true in impoverished sections of cities with bad housing, where residents have less money and less access to health care. There are other issues as well, such as how air pollution from factories and automobiles may interact with water in the atmosphere, resulting in acid rain. Its impacts can be felt hundreds of kilometers distant from the places where it originated. There are also water quality challenges, such as wastewater overflows and chemical dumping in urban rivers.

The US Environmental Protection Agency states that environmental justice, which is the idea that everyone has a right to protection from environmental hazards regardless of race, gender, age, class, or politics, emerged from the civil rights movement in the 1960s. The majority of cities were constructed long before environmental justice was a topic of discussion in urban planning. Planning for the future and making peace with the past is therefore essential to establish sustainable cities. There is a conflict between new construction and retrofits that reuse existing materials and places as we try to align the built environment with our notion of justice and environmental effect.

For example, we must determine what to do with lovely historic structures located in earthquake-prone places. Urban planners and structural engineers may collaborate to decide what type of modification is required to make a structure earthquake-proof – or whether it is safer for everyone if the building is demolished. And repurposing what is already there, such as the work of French architects Anne Lacaton and Jean-Philippe Vassal, who have received accolades for their work upgrading buildings, may have a huge worldwide influence. In the early 2020s, the materials and construction sectors are responsible for 10% of global greenhouse gas emissions, which will be drastically reduced if current buildings and infrastructure can be repurposed.

The urge for reuse also protects biodiversity outside of cities and reduces the number of ecosystems disrupted when urban development is allowed to run wild. Much of this can be jeopardized when a greenfield development is selected over a brownfield development, whether for homes, stores, or manufacturing. A greenfield development project is a blank slate for architects and builders. Brownfield development is done on top of previously utilized land. Retrofitting is simply one option available to us as we consider effective approaches to combat climate change and atmospheric warming. When individuals strive to modify their habits, many are hampered by structural issues, such as living in an area with no public transit or that is poorly planned for accessibility.

Planning for sustainability and working with what has already been created provides a method to begin tackling the greater retrofits that our society requires. And, if we are to transition to new technologies such as electric automobiles or retrofits such as efficient windows and insulation, we must also create room for and be prepared to assist people who cannot afford the changes. Who pays for retrofits or the environmental consequences of unsustainable designs is a political question. As a society, we frequently accept that certain individuals will have to live with the economic or environmental implications of the sorts of development decisions we make, which might disproportionately affect disadvantaged populations.

Creating sustainable cities must thus be part of our present as well as our future. That means ordinary individuals like you and me can become involved. A cooperative, sometimes known as a co-op, is a group of individuals that band together to manage a resource, such as housing or agricultural output. In Barcelona, the La Borda co-op is based on a non-speculative housing collaborative housing concept utilized in Denmark, Germany, and Uruguay. This implies that people do not own the individual units in which they reside, but they also do not pay rent to another person or firm; instead, they become members of a cooperative enterprise.

It's a little difficult, but what matters here is that it's a means to avoid continually attempting to make a profit on property or homes. Individuals cannot sell or even rent their co-op space, which keeps rates low for everyone. The facility was also designed to be adaptable to the demands of each inhabitant. Their structure had not yet been completed when individuals moved in! This allows co-op members to finish the building to meet the needs of the group rather than having to rebuild afterward, saving them money on construction costs. And we see this kind of collaborative work all across the world.

From grocery shops in Detroit to homes in Greece to sustainable agriculture in Kerala, India, people are coming together to harness their numbers and purchasing power to envisage new ways to trade products and services that would allow them to live secure, healthy lives. However, with a reduced footprint. Planning our cities and neighborhoods – including our rural towns! – is a collaborative endeavor. Many cities and regions hold frequent public planning meetings where people may hear about how their leaders are prepared for the future and speak out for places and areas that planners may not be considering. When communities join together to define their neighborhood, they build the sort of place they want their location – and future – to be.