Sustainable Urban Systems and Environments

Introduction

Sustainable living in future urban communities requires new ideas, scientific and technical innovation, systems thinking, and a revolution in our way of life.
Key questions addressed:
- Factual: What is sustainable development? What are the main problems urban areas face? Where can sustainable cities be found?
- Conceptual: How can the city be viewed as a system? What is the relationship between innovation and sustainability?
- Debatable: Can a truly sustainable city exist?
Chapter objectives:
- Understand cities as systems and steps towards sustainability.
- Explore sustainability and the impact of scientific and technological innovation.
- Promote awareness of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

Approaches to Learning (ATL) Skills

Communication, collaboration, organization, critical-thinking, and creative-thinking skills are emphasized.
Learner profile attribute: Risk-takers – approaching uncertainty with forethought and determination.

Assessment Opportunities

Criterion A: Knowing and understanding
Criterion B: Investigating
Criterion C: Communicating
Criterion D: Thinking critically

Key Words

Carbon footprint, development, oxymoron, subjective, sustainable.

Initial Exploration

See-Think-Wonder activity based on images related to sustainable development.
Building upon previous explorations of sustainability in earlier IB MYP levels.
Goal 11 of the Sustainable Development Goals: Make cities and human settlements inclusive, safe, resilient, and sustainable.

What is Sustainable Development?

Sustainable communities balance economy, environment, social and cultural aspects, housing & built environment, services, and transport & connectivity.
Economy: Local people have opportunities to make money and improve their quality of life.
Environmental: Actively minimizing climate change through recycling, water conservation, and environmentally sensitive building practices.
Equity: Providing access to services, jobs, and education for all ages, races, cultures, sexes, and abilities, ensuring fairness for future generations.
Governance: Including local people in decision-making, promoting civic values, responsibility, and pride.
Social & Cultural: Creating a community spirit with inclusive events, mutual respect, and effective policing to reduce crime.
Housing & Built Environment: Attractive, safe, and useful buildings with ample open spaces.
Services: High-quality services for families and children, including affordable public, community, voluntary, and private services.
Transport & Connectivity: Transport facilities that reduce dependence on cars and encourage safe walking and cycling.

The Egan Wheel

Developed in 2004 by Sir John Egan to evaluate cities and urban areas in terms of sustainability.
Eight components:
- Well run
- Well served
- Well designed and built
- A sense of place
- Fair for everyone
- Active, inclusive and safe
- Environmentally sensitive
- Well connected
Activity: Applying the Egan Wheel to assess local community sustainability.
Scoring system example provided for the 'well served' category.
Subjective measurement based on personal feelings, tastes, and opinions.

Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)

In 2015, the United Nations replaced the Millennium Development Goals with the 17 SDGs.
Goal: To create more sustainable cities and communities by making urban areas self-reliant and efficient.
Activity: Researching and presenting key aspects of the SDGs.
British Council encourages young people to design campaign posters to highlight SDG goals.

SDG Goal 11: Sustainable Cities and Communities

Key facts:
- Half of humanity (3.5 billion people) live in cities.
- By 2030, almost 60% of the world’s population will live in urban areas.
- 95% of urban expansion will occur in the developing world.
- 828 million people live in slums, and the number is increasing.
- Cities occupy 3% of the Earth’s land but account for 60-80% of energy consumption and 75% of carbon emissions.
- Rapid urbanization strains fresh water supplies, sewage systems, living environments, and public health.
- High density in cities can lead to efficiency gains and technological innovation, reducing resource and energy consumption.

Sustainable City as an Oxymoron?

Discussion on whether the concept of a 'sustainable city' is contradictory.
By 2050, 6.5 billion people (two-thirds of humanity) will live in urban areas.
Rapid urban growth in the developing world leads to mega-cities.
In 2014, there were 28 mega-cities with 453 million people.
Extreme poverty is concentrated in urban spaces.
Making cities sustainable requires ensuring access to safe and affordable housing, upgrading slum settlements, investing in public transport, creating green public spaces, and improving urban planning and management.

How Can the City Be Viewed as a System?

Urban areas must be understood as systems to realize sustainability.
Richard Rogers (1997) identified two city types: unsustainable linear city and sustainable circular city.
Linear city: Unsustainable, with waste outputs.
Circular city: Sustainable, with re-processed outputs.
Linear System: Inputs of food, goods, non-renewable energy, and people result in outputs of waste (organic/inorganic), air pollution, noise, goods, services, wealth, and sprawl.
Circular System: Inputs of food, goods, conservation and use of renewable energy, and people result in reduced outputs with recycling of organic and inorganic waste (water, compost, paper, plastic, etc.).

Carbon Footprints

A measure of the impact our activities have on the environment, measured in units of carbon dioxide equivalent.
Methane (CH4) has 20-30 times the warming effect of carbon dioxide (CO2) per unit mass.
The world average carbon footprint is about 6 metric tonnes of carbon dioxide per person per year.
Data analysis and graphs are used to identify trends and anomalies.
Links to Sciences and Mathematics for further exploration of statistics and climate change impacts.
Activity: Use WWF's carbon footprint calculator to estimate personal carbon footprint.

Carbon Footprint by Country

Table 7.1 presents carbon footprint data by country from 1990 to 2013, measured in metric tons of CO2e per capita.
CO2e (carbon dioxide equivalent) is a standard unit for measuring carbon footprints.
Activity: Analyzing trends and anomalies in the provided data.
Identification of general trends in the data.
Discussion of factors causing higher carbon footprints in certain countries.
Consideration of the reliability of carbon footprint as a sustainability measure.
- $CO_2$ : Carbon Dioxide

What are the Main Problems Urban Areas Face?

Urban areas face a multitude of problems, based on income and environmental concerns.
Factors combine into urban stress: overcrowding and noise, depletion of green space, waste overburden, poor quality housing, social deprivation, crime, and inequality.
Urban congestion is defined as travel demand exceeding supply.
Traffic congestion is attributed to rapid city growth in LEDCs without infrastructure and affluent populations increasing vehicle ownership. MEDCs have commuting from further housing.
2016 study: The average US commuter wasted 42 hours a year stuck in traffic. Urban stress and air pollution.
Air pollution results from traffic idling: carbon dioxide, nitrogen oxides, and particulate emission.
Air pollution causes respiratory diseases.
Air pollution levels in cities is an indicator for urban sustainable development in SDG 11.
Access to clean energy is highlighted as an indicator for sustainable energy in SDG 7.
Mortality due to air pollution is used as an indicator for health in SDG 3.
WHO states that one in nine deaths in 2012 resulted from air pollution-related conditions, with 3 million deaths attributable to ambient air pollution.
Air pollution exacerbated by depletion of green spaces to improve infrastructure.
Table 7.2 and 7.3 present lists of the most and least polluted urban areas.
Lists are measure in (μg/m3).
$PM_{2.5}$ refers to fine particles (2.5 micrometres or smaller in diameter) produced by combustion, including motor vehicles, power plants, forest fires, and some industrial processes.

Social and Economic Inequality

Urban areas experiences extreme differences between poverty and wealth.
Differences in access to jobs, housing and education.
Cycle of deprivation includes poor skills, living conditions, education, and ill health.
LEDCs face overcrowding and the development of slums due to rural-urban migration.

Where Can Sustainable Cities Be Found?

Approaches: purpose build sustainable cities or towns, and retrofit existing cities.
Case Study 1: Masdar City, Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates
- Mission: Develop the world’s most sustainable low-carbon city.
- Aims:
  - Low carbon footprint.
  - Powered by renewable energy.
  - Research and education into sustainable technology.
  - Design comfortable environments to reduce air conditioning, heating, and artificial light.
  - Educate three-quarters of residents with sustainability education.
  - Pedestrianization with underground transport.
- Capture prevailing winds and traditional panelling to reduce air conditioning demands.
- Buildings consume 40% less energy and water.
- Powered by a 10 MW solar power plant and 1 MW solar rooftop system.
- The solar plant produces 17,500 MWh of electricity annually and diverts 7,350 tonnes of carbon emissions.
- Car-free environment using automated electric passenger cars and lorries.
- Controversial because initial plans were changed due to the 2008 global crisis.
- Issues include costs and reliance on external power stations.
- Continued to rely on energy from power stations elsewhere.
- It does not contribute to increasing sustainability of the United Arab Emirates (UAE) as a whole.
$MW$ : Megawatt
$MWh$ : Megawatt hours

Curitiba, Brazil – An Example of Adapting a City

Curitiba, capital of Paraná state in southern Brazil, transformed from agricultural to manufacturing city through sustainable planning
Awarded Global Sustainable City Award in 2010.
Aims: Improve the environment, reduce pollution and waste, improve the quality of life of residents.
Has a urban master plan since 1968 and when Jaime Lerner was in power in 1971.
$600 million budget for sustainability initiatives.
- Reduced car use, through public transport.
- Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) system with dedicated bus lanes is more sustainable than tube system.
- 80% of travellers use buses, equal fare for all journeys.
- 200 km of bike paths: car use is 25% lower than the national average and air pollution is low.
- Green Space: Increased from $0.5m^2$ per person to $52 m^2$ per person.
- 1,000 parks and areas, where flood prone, and tax breaks for green building projects.
- Recycling: 70- trees saved: 1200 per day.
- Food and bus tickets are rewarded for recycling.
Other examples of cities modifying elements of their systems to increase sustainability: London’s congestion charge, Hong Kong’s vertical greening and Copenhagen city bikes. UK gov offers incentives for people to cycle to work.
Discussion on most effective method: building new eco-cities or retrofitting old ones?

Jaime Lerner (1937–Present)

Architect and urban planner, three-time mayor of Curitiba, Brazil.
Led urban revolution known for urban planning, public transportation, environmental social programs and urban projects.
Served as governor of Paraná State
Jaime Lerner international awards include the highest United Nations Environmental Award (1990), Child and Peace Award from UNICEF (1996), the 2001 World Technology Award for Transportation, and the 2002 Sir Robert Mathew Prize forthe Improvement of Quality of Human Settlements. In 2010 Lernerwas nominated among the 25 most influential thinkers in the world by Time magazine.

Innovation and Sustainability

Inventors find ways to harness new technologies to improve sustainability, particularly in urban areas.
Bill Ford discusses congestion-free future, which has been realized with the advent of Waze.
Waze was created in 2009, and develops solutions that help people make better choices, and shares daily commutes using a global community of over 115 million people.
100% powered by users who can report traffic issues and redirects them to their destination.
Bought by Google in 2013 for US$1.3 billion, adding social data to its mapping business.
Uber aims to reduce the number of cars on the road, and operates in excess of 644 cities in 77 countries, and was valued at US$82.4 billion in 2019.
By reducing the need for car ownership, it contributes to a reduction in the overall number of cars on the road, thus reducing carbon emissions, minimizing traffic congestion on roads and eventually disincentivizing vehicle ownership in the first place.
‘Uberpool’ a ride sharing service, and electric cars in Portland, Oregon.
Controversies include pricing, driver conditions and passenger safety.
Uber was stripped of its licence to operate in London after TFL found it was ‘not fit and proper’ to hold a private hire operator licence.

Veena Sahajwalla

Veena Sahajwalla: director of the Centre for Sustainable Materials Research and Technology (SMaRT) at the University of New South Wales, and has been referred to as a ‘waste warrior’ and ‘The Woman who loves garbage’ .
She is the inventor of ‘green steel’ , the environmentally friendly technology for recycling end-of-life rubber tyres to replace coal and coke in steelmaking.
More than 2 million tyres have been diverted from landfill and greenhouse gas emissions have been reduced.

Design your own piece of smart technology

Working either on your own or with a partner, use the ideas on this page, elsewhere in this book and your prior knowledge to help you create a form of smart technology that aims to increase an element of sustainability in urban areas.
You could generate an idea for an app, a piece of machinery or a new technology, or find a way of improving a piece of existing technology.
Criteria A, B , C are practiced in this action.

Can a Truly Sustainable City Exist?

Activity: Sustainability essay (1,000–1,500 words).

Conclusion

The chapter examined the urban environment as a system, exploring the role of innovation in increasing sustainability. The study considered the notion of sustainability, its meaning, and its development, noting it encompasses more than just environmental concerns.
Students are encouraged to reflect and evaluate whether urban systems and environments can be managed sustainably in a way that improves the lives of residents while maintaining environmental integrity.
The significant individuals examined in this chapter have all approached uncertainty with forethought and determination, working independently and cooperatively to explore new ideas and innovative strategies, and being resourceful and resilient in the face of challenges and change.
Encouraging risk-takers for your learning in this chapter.
Questions we asked Answers we found Any further questions now?
Factual: What is sustainable development? What are the main problems urban areas face? Where can sustainable cities be found?
Conceptual: How can the city be viewed as a system? What is the relationship between innovation and sustainability?
Debatable: Can a truly sustainable city exist?.