Green CITYnomics

The Urban War against Climate Change

Kenny Tang

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2017
• Print ISBN: 9781906093228
• eBook ISBN: 9781351279420
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Business generale
• Index: Business

Today, more than half of the world's population are living in cities that are now contributing 80% of global greenhouse gas emissions. They cover less than 3% of the earth's surface. And urbanization continues apace. With such a massive carbon footprint, it is vital that cities are part of the solution. Despite this, scarcely any consideration has been given to the potential impact of climate change on urban dwellers, especially in the developing countries and burgeoning megacities of Africa, Asia and Latin America, where a wide variety of environmental and development challenges are likely to further exacerbate their vulnerability to climatic effects.

Green CITYnomics presents a rich set of contributions by a highly diverse group of 45 of the world's leading urban experts on climate change. In particular, it illustrates the desire some cities are already demonstrating in engaging in this war. Standing still is not an option. Budgets have to be fought for; minds have to be won over; old, untenable and unsustainable ideas and solutions must be challenged; green and sustainable solutions must be given the chance to develop and to prove themselves.

Each of the cities and urban centres discussed – from Hong Kong to Dresden; from Mexico City to Qatar – are, in their own ways, heroes and examples to us all. This book provides a compelling manifesto for the world's cities in their "Urban War against Climate Change". It is essential reading for climate scientists, national and local policy-makers and scholars worldwide.

Section 1
Introduction

1
Introduction

Dr Kenny Tang CFA

Climate change is one of the most pressing environmental, economic, security and social issues affecting the world today. It has the potential to wreak enormous damage to infrastructure, buildings and systems—in effect, on human society and our way of life on this planet.

Climate change has the ability to bring about the following impacts on urban areas:

• Heat and deaths associated with heat stress
• Air quality and health
• Storm surge flooding
• Urban drainage flooding
• Building and infrastructure subsidence and landslides
• Wind storm
• Drought (implications for water resources and availability for consumption)
• Resources and amenity
• Disease

This book is about climate change: specifically, the desire of cities to fight the urban war against climate change. It is about cities turning their back on the liabilities they have created from yesteryears into the sustainable assets of tomorrow. Each of the cities and urban centres mentioned in this book is, in its own way, a hero and example to us all. The urban war against climate change is far from being won—but it is a start, and a good start!

Threats of climate change

Climate change threatens the basic elements of life for people around the world—access to water, food, health, and use of land and the environment. On current trends, average global temperatures could rise by 2–3°C within the next 50 years or so, leading to many severe impacts— often mediated by water including more frequent droughts and floods.

The consequences of climate change will become disproportionately more damaging with increased warming. Higher temperatures will increase the chance of triggering abrupt and large-scale changes that lead to regional disruption, migration and conflict.

A comprehensive picture of impacts can be built up by incorporating two effects that are not usually included in existing studies (extreme events and threshold effects at higher temperatures). In general, impact studies have focused predominantly on changes in average conditions and rarely examine the consequences of increased variability and more extreme weather.

The combined effect of impacts across several sectors could be very damaging and further amplify the consequences of climate change.

In tropical regions, even small amounts of warming will lead to declines in yield. In higher latitudes, crop yields may increase initially for moderate increases in temperature but then fall. Higher temperatures will lead to substantial declines in cereal production around the world.

Declining crop yields are likely to leave hundreds of millions without the ability to produce or purchase sufficient food, particularly in the poorest parts of the world.

Climate change will increase worldwide deaths from malnutrition and heat stress. Vector-borne diseases such as malaria and dengue fever could become more widespread if effective control measures are not in place

The homes of tens of millions more people are likely to be affected by flooding from coastal storm surges with rising sea levels. People in South and East Asia will be most vulnerable, along with those living on the coast of Africa and on small islands.

Some estimates suggest that 150–200 million people may become permanently displaced by the middle of the century due to rising sea levels, more frequent floods and more intense droughts.

Source: N.H. Stern, The Economics of Climate Change (London: TSO, 2006; www.hm-treasury.gov.uk/sternreview_ index.htm)

2009—a key year

More than half the world will live in urban centres for the first time in 2009. As such the process of urbanisation is one of the most powerful and visible forces on Earth. Over the 20th century it resulted in humans shifting from being a rural to an urban species, and is expected to continue over the centuries to come. What drives the process of urbanisation, which results in a significant increase over time in population and extent of cities and towns? Factors may include changes to population, employment opportunities associated with industrialisation, consumption patterns, international migration and accessibility.

The human race is fast changing from being a rural species to an urban one. Urban areas now house just over 50% of the world’s population compared with only 14% in 1900; this proportion is estimated to increase to 60% in another 20 years. Yet these urban centres occupy less than 3% of the Earth’s land surface.

Furthermore, the rate of growth in developing countries is faster than in industrialised nations. China illustrates this point succinctly. For example, nearly 18% of China’s population lived in cities in the late 1970s compared with nearly 40% of its 1.3 billion population living in urban areas today.

China's urbanisation and its pressure points

By 2030, one billion consumers will live in China’s cities. The scale of the urbanisation phenomenon is startling. The scale and pace of China’s urbanisation promises to continue at an unprecedented rate. If current trends hold, China’s urban population will expand from 572 million in 2005 to 926 million in 2025, and hit the one billion mark by 2030. In 20 years, China’s cities will have added 350 million people—more than the entire population of the United States today. By 2025, China will have 219 cities with more than one million inhabitants—compared with 35 in Europe today—and 24 cities with more than five million people.

It is estimated that, between now and 2025, China’s cities could pave five billion square metres of roads and build up to 170 new mass-transit systems (twice the number that the whole of Europe has today). By 2025, cities will construct 40 billion square metres of floor space in five million buildings, of which up to 50,000 will be skyscrapers—the equivalent of building up to two Chicagos every year. The incremental growth alone in urban China’s consumption between 2008 and 2025 will be equivalent to the creation of a new market the size of Germany’s in 2007.

At the same time, the expansion of China’s cities will represent a huge challenge for local and national leaders. Of the slightly more than 350 million people that China will add to its urban population by 2025, more than 240 million will be migrants. This growth will imply major pressure points for many cities including the challenge of managing these expanding populations, securing sufficient public funding for the provision of social services, and dealing with demand and supply pressures on land, energy, water and the environment.

Hungry for energy

With current trends, energy demand is set to more than double, requiring massive expansion in capacity—as much as 1,200 gigawatts of extra capacity between now and 2025. China’s freight volumes—largely carried by road—will quadruple by 2025. Beijing has recently allowed the private sector to participate in infrastructure building (such as toll roads), mainly in joint ventures with local governments or state-owned enterprises.

Yet multinational corporations have tended not to look much beyond China’s fast-growing eastern seaboard. In the next decades, however, it is China’s mid-size cities where most of the burgeoning middle class will live and where most residential construction growth will occur.

Some cities haven’t even touched the edges of businesses’ radar screens. There are an additional 195 urban centres that China does not designate as cities but which are cities in terms of size, population and stage of development. They are also growing rapidly.

Source: McKinsey Global Institute, Preparing for China’s Urban Billion (2008).

Climate change and urban centres

Buildings and infrastructure are by far the most prominent visual features of urbanisation. However, it needs to be noted that the influence of urbanisa-tion extends far beyond the city and urban boundaries. For example, the vast volume of resources that are consumed by urban and city dwellers in their activities generate an ‘urban footprint’.

Such urban activities generated by urban and city residents release greenhouse gases (GHGs) both directly (e.g. from fossil-fuel-based transport) and indirectly (e.g. through electricity use and consumption of industrial and agricultural products). Furthermore, the high density of people in urban centres makes them possible focal points of potential vulnerability to the impact of climate change. On the other hand, cities clearly represent major concentrated opportunities for adaptation to climate impacts and mitigation of GHG emissions through their activities. As such, the process of urbanisation is both an outcome as well as a key driver of global and environmental change.

Despite more than half of the world’s population living in city and urban areas, little or no consideration has been given to the potential and actual effects that climate change will have on urban dwellers, especially in the developing countries of Africa, Asia and Latin America. Yet these regions— especially those in Asia and Latin America with their rapid economic growth— represent a majority of the world’s urban population, including most of its largest cities! These fast-growing urban centres already face a wide variety of environmental and development challenges which are likely to further exacerbate their vulnerability to climate change.

The concentration of people and economic activities in towns and cities is likely to intensify their strategic and tactical vulnerability to the effects of climate change. Conversely, this concentration provides the strategic opportunity for decision-makers to build safe housing and climate-resilient infrastructure, create climate-friendly livelihoods and develop urban systems that produce better air quality, water and health outcomes for those who live in them.

Why Green CITYnomics?

The idea of a green city is still pie-in-the-sky. Given that a city is usually built up over centuries if not hundreds of centuries, it is not surprising that the normal practice of building infrastructure such as schools, hospitals and other buildings takes time to change. In so doing, it is our task to encourage our city leaders and decision-makers to turn the planetary liabilities that have been built up over time into sustainable assets.

In developed countries, many cities are burdened with a legacy of old infrastructure. In some instances, it may be necessary or appropriate to build new infrastructure and buildings while, in many cases, such possibilities are not feasible for economic or practical reasons. In order to address climate change, it is therefore necessary to develop the means to adapt and transform infrastructure.

• Liabilities built up over decades and centuries of fossil-fuel-based development
• Liabilities built up over decades of outdated design of cities and towns
• Liabilities built up over decades of silo-based policy-making, etc.
• Liabilities built up over the decades of disparate systems of heating and cooling
• Liabilities built up over the decades of disparate systems of unconnected transport systems
• Liabilities built up over decades of ruinous air quality and the resulting deterioration in health quality

Now we have the opportunity to turn these liabilities into assets that are capable of sustaining the city’s capacity to live and grow on a sustainable basis. What were disparate modes and systems of transport can now be designed into transport hubs that are capable of transporting goods and people on an economic basis. What were disparate systems of heating and cooling individual buildings now become heating and cooling on a city-wide basis. The excess heat of a building becomes the heating fuel for another! Buildings that were once designed for aesthetics are now designed with energy production, energy efficiency and energy conservation right from the outset. We need to urgently train our future urban designers to take into consideration the sustainable needs of the planet.

This book sets out why and how we can turn decades and centuries of liabilities into the green and sustainable assets of tomorrow.

The Urban War against Climate Change

The examples of potential effects from climate change illustrated in the book show that we have a war on our hands. Standing still is not an option. That is why the book’s subtitle The Urban War against Climate Change is so apt. Administrators, policy-makers, financiers and citizens all have a common interest in fighting and winning this war. As Chris Walker states in his Foreword, ‘Budgets have to be fought for; minds have to be won over; old, untenable and unsustainable ideas and solutions must be challenged; and green and sustainable solutions must be given the chance to develop and to prove themselves.’

In fighting this urban war against climate change, we must internalise the externalities of climate change. For too long, the emission of greenhouse gases was free. Now it must bear its share of the cost. For too long the cost of pollution was free. Now it is not. For too long, air quality has been sacrificed in the name of progress and development. Now the health of the citizens is at stake.

This is where the challenges lie in the urban centres in the developed and the developing world. Urban centres in the developed world have priced in the cost of carbon while those in the developing countries have not.

This book gives us a glimpse of what is possible—nothing more! If our citizens continue to make the urban war against climate change into a real and winnable one, then we stand a chance of making a significant change for the better. If our decision-makers make the urban war against climate change an issue of the highest priority, then we stand a chance of making real and lasting change to our infrastructure, air quality, land use, energy use, building development, urban design and community-based energy systems. Cities that treat their climate change obligations seriously are cities worth living in, for they will be healthier cities for their citizens.

Climate change in urban centres can be understood, anticipated, managed and controlled

Given the focus and attention on urban centres as key economic and social centres with huge investment programmes, it is clear that the impact of climate change in our urban centres can be readily understood and therefore anticipated. Furthermore, with the huge investment programmes in roads, buildings, energy systems in our urban centres, it is cle...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Dedication
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Foreword: Leadership by cities
• Preface
• Acknowledgements
• Section 1: Introduction
• Section 2: Policy-making and C02 management systems
• Section 3: Health, air quality, transport, land use and water
• Section 4: Solar heating, urban heat island
• About the contributors
• index