The Urban Fix

Resilient Cities in the War Against Climate Change, Heat Islands and Overpopulation

Douglas Kelbaugh

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2019
• Print ISBN: 9780367175696
• eBook ISBN: 9780429614453
• Topic: Architecture
• Subtopic: Urban Planning & Landscaping

Cities are one of the most significant contributors to global climate change. The rapid speed at which urban centers use large amounts of resources adds to the global crisis and can lead to extreme local heat. The Urban Fix addresses how urban design, planning and policies can counter the threats of climate change, urban heat islands and overpopulation, helping cities take full advantage of their inherent advantages and new technologies to catalyze social, cultural and physical solutions to combat the epic, unprecedented challenges humanity faces.

The book fills a conspicuous void in the international dialogue on climate change and heat islands by examining both the environmental benefits in developed countries and the population benefit in developing countries. Urban heat islands can be addressed in incremental, manageable steps, such as planting trees and painting roofs white, which provide a more concrete and proactive sense of progress for policymakers and practitioners. This book is invaluable to anyone searching for a better understanding of the impact of resilient cities in the monumental and urgent fight against climate change, and provides the tools to do so.

1 Connecting the Dots

Climate Change, Heat Islands, Overpopulation and Cities

Every hour of every day there is mention in the media of the planet’s changing climate.

Mind-boggling combinations of heat and humidity continued to emerge in cities near the Persian Gulf . . . sending feels-like temperatures toward the 160-degree mark . . . as relentless heat continued to broil much of the region . . . The searing heat led to an impromptu, mandatory four-day holiday in Iraq.¹

There has also been a great deal of ink spilled on the topic. So why add another book to the chorus? Because climate change (CC) is by far the biggest challenge facing humanity, arguably the biggest since the start of civilization over 5,000 years ago. There are under-appreciated and misunderstood ways to address it. And the impacts of CC are also coming on faster and bolder than expected. In the words of CC chief warrior Bill McKibben:

If we don’t win very quickly on climate change, then we will never win . . . It’s what makes it different from every other problem our political systems have faced . . . It won’t stand still . . . the decisions we make in 2025 will matter much less than the ones we make in the next few years.²

CC is categorically new and qualitatively different from the chronic challenges that humanity has always faced – war, poverty, injustice, disease, hunger, oligopoly, crime, corruption, bankruptcy, ignorance, etc. It is also becoming quantitatively bigger as it exacerbates these perennial problems on top of dire environmental threats. “Climate change is a threat multiplier,” states the U.S. Department of Defense at the Pentagon.³ As it compounds and cascades, the future looks discouraging, even hopeless. There remain too many practices, policies and initiatives that are feeble or in the too-little-too-late category, the huge garbage bin of the many fallen civilizations that have doubled down on existing practices rather than adopt new ones.

Humans have enjoyed almost perfect environmental conditions to flourish for the ten to twelve millennia of the just-ended Holocene Age. As we start the Anthropocene, the warming atmosphere and oceans are triggering changes in the earth’s ecosystems that directly threaten civilization. It is also increasingly clear that the causes of CC are primarily, if not overwhelmingly, anthropogenic. There is effectively unanimous agreement in the scientific community that it is the unprecedented high level of greenhouse gases (GHGs) in the atmosphere that is raising the earth’s temperature. There are local variations in these temperature changes, with some examples of cooling, but the overall trend is warmer, with global temperatures annually setting records. For instance, May 2018 was over 5°F warmer than the average May since 1910 in the U.S.

Our degrading environment and ecosystems are threatening not only human civilization, but also many plant and animal species on which it depends. CC is simply too fast for many species to adapt to, yet too slow to sufficiently motivate humans to act decisively. Our comfortable, beneficent thermal commons is at severe risk, especially in cities. It’s a battle of epic proportions that demands rapid, decisive and integrated mitigation and adaptation – individually and collectively, bottom-up and top-down, short-term and long-term. Although cities have huge eco-footprints and are warming faster than their hinterlands, for many reasons presented in this book, they are ironically the best hope for the foreseeable future.

Classifying things into recognizable patterns seems to be one of the most basic of human instincts and quests: making sense of the world, and searching for meaning in life. Naming and listing things is a way of collecting, even owning them. Humanity needs to connect several major dots in new ways, to better wrap its minds and hearts around disastrous future scenarios. It needs not only to focus on CC, but also to shine a spotlight on urban heat islands (UHIs), a relative unknown in the unfolding crisis. Another dot to be connected is extreme population growth, which is quickly leading to global challenges. Because the mix of problems is new to human beings and to the planet, connecting the dots in a fresh way offers surprising findings including some refreshing hope. But this is not a war that we will “win” or “lose.” Rather it is a challenge we meet, well or badly.⁴ It is both a global war against CC, and a local battle against extreme heat, both of which can be directly and effectively fought by cities, as well as good practices and policies. Slight mutations in pattern can trigger evolution, in the Darwinian sense. That is what is happening with three variables – changes in the atmosphere, urban temperatures and population. They interact, add up, cascade down and compound to make big changes, even tipping points that are difficult if not impossible to reverse. Climate is a major determinant of our survival, as well as of health and comfort, which in turn determine our population level – co-dependent dots in a bigger pattern.

Dot 1 is CC itself, with special focus on the deleterious role that the sprawling built environment plays in this global phenomenon.

Dot 2 is the UHI, a lesser known and misunderstood local phenomenon, which is heating up most cities twice as fast as their surrounding countryside or as the planet as a whole. Coupled with CC, many cities suffer extreme heat. The UHI has been surprisingly underplayed in the climate literature and public discourse about CC, and to date it has remained unclaimed by any environmental group as their clarion call.

Dot 3 is excessive, unsustainable population growth in developing countries, combined with excessive consumption and carbon footprints in developed countries.

The first three dots are challenges. Dot 4 is the city itself, which is a solution, or at least a strategy that offers very effective social and structural ways to address the challenges represented by the first three dots. Cities have experienced a stunning turnaround, one in which they are no longer seen as a problem, as they were a half century ago. As The New York Times architecture critic Michael Kimmelman wrote after attending U.N. Habitat III,

Cities are being recognized increasingly as opportunities for economic and social progress, density as a response to environmental threats; the automobile as a big problem; slums as not just a blight but a potential template for organic urbanism. Young generations around the world, entering the tech economy and bound by the internet, are embracing urban ideals, including the common ground of public spaces, mass transit, streets and sidewalks.⁵

Indeed, cities enhance productivity, creativity, collaboration, wealth, arts and culture, often taking full advantage of new technologies.

How these four dots intersect raises several questions: What do the dots exactly mean and why are they so important? How can we simultaneously address the first two dots – CC and UHI? Why is reducing the UHI so timely? What, if anything, is the synergy and promise of connecting these dots? How do we frame the challenges to motivate and inspire individuals and societies to change behaviors that are counter-productive in the war against CC?

Connecting the Four Dots

What Is the Meaning and Importance of the Dots?

The first dot of climate change is a long-term, game-changing, Hydra-headed challenge that requires a longer explanation. A normal climate has always sponsored mercurial, unpredictable weather, but now its diurnal and weekly patterns swing up and down in bolder cycles and at faster tempos. Mitigation seeks to reduce the root causes of CC, primarily by reducing the emission of carbon, or GHGs, but also by sequestering carbon and by reflecting more solar radiation. Adaptation addresses the impacts of CC, by preparing for its effects, while lowering their risks and consequences. Both approaches are as costly as they are essential and urgent now and for the foreseeable future: If carbon emissions were radically decreased or even magically eliminated tomorrow, adaptation would still be needed to deal with the lingering effects of GHGs already baked into the system with their long half-lives.

First, it should be acknowledged that without climate science little would be known about the existence and causes of CC. It’s invisible, inaudible, odorless, tasteless and untouchable. Thankfully scientists have studied it and alerted us to its dangers. Second, CC’s early impacts – more extreme hurricanes, floods, storm surges, droughts and wildfires, plus higher sea levels – are increasingly obvious to everyone. And annual temperatures have slowly risen: over the contiguous U.S., the ambient temperature increased by 1°C (1.8°F) for the period 1901–2016, and the trend is accelerating. Third, its primary cause is established: too many GHGs clogging our atmosphere, so that more solar heat absorbed and more heat produced by combustion on the earth’s surface is trapped by the atmosphere and doesn’t escape to outer space. Fourth, it is very likely that annual average temperatures will rise by another 2.5°F in the U.S., relative to the last quarter of the twentieth century under all plausible future climate scenarios.⁶ While this change may not seem that dangerous, it is sobering to realize that a 5°C rise was enough to melt an ice sheet over a kilometer thick over much of the northern U.S. And fifth, it is clear what has to be done to address it: reduce GHG emissions through less combustion of fossil fuels and sequester, capture and store excess carbon already in the atmosphere. In short, we would be hapless and helpless without climate science.

Second, the term “climate change” needs more precise explanation. It’s not ideal terminology, as the climate has always changed, is changing now, and always will change. But the term has overtaken “global warming” as more heavily used, because not all of the earth’s climate is getting warmer. In many ways, a term like “climate preparedness” is more useful, as it is more constructive and less laden with political baggage. Paul Hawken and his team of over 200 researchers and consultants decided to use “drawdown” as the operative term and title of their timely book, because it focuses on the solution rather than the problem.⁷ But for better or worse, “climate change,” like “sustainability,” is likely to be the proverbial, everyday term.

On one level, the CC challenge is simple. There are only six basic strategies to address it: consume less, consume things that embody less energy, use energy sources that have lower carbon footprints, naturally sequester carbon, capture and store carbon, and give birth to fewer people. The effective weight given to each of these strategies depends on whether it is for developed or developing countries. In developed countries, there is the need to reduce consumption, but in less developed countries, consumption is understandably on the rise as more and more people are born and more of them move up to middle-class lifestyles. In both cases, consumers will need to choose products, services and activities that have lower carbon emissions. And the choices need to be encouraged by public policy – by taxing, subsidizing, trading, rationing carbon with a downward-tapering ceiling and properly pricing it so the market can help.

On another level – scientific verification – the CC challenge is far from simple. The underlying scientific principles may be understandable, but collecting sufficient data to accurately model and predict CC is extremely elaborate and painstakingly intricate. To date, “modeling studies suggest that temperature...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Table of Contents
• Foreword, by Peter Calthorpe
• Preface
• 1 Connecting the Dots: Climate Change, Heat Islands, Overpopulation and Cities
• 2 Triple Threat: UHIs, CC and Overpopulation
• 3 Urban Albedo and Morphology
• 4 Waste Heat
• 5 Cool Micro-climates and Urban Trees
• 6 Policies and Case Studies
• 7 The Sharing Cosmopolis: Prosperity without Growth
• 8 Cities: Our Last, Best Hope
• 9 Time to Act
• Index