A sustainable city, eco-city, or green city is a city designed with consideration for social, economic, environmental impact (commonly referred to as the triple bottom line), and resilient habitat for existing populations, without compromising the ability of future generations to experience the same.[1] The UN Sustainable Development Goal 11 defines sustainable cities as those that are dedicated to achieving green sustainability, social sustainability and economic sustainability. They are committed to doing so by enabling opportunities for all through a design focused on inclusivity as well as maintaining a sustainable economic growth. The focus will also includes minimizing required inputs of energy, water, and food, and drastically reducing waste, output of heat, air pollution – CO2, methane, and water pollution.[2] Richard Register, a visual artist, first coined the term ecocity in his 1987 book Ecocity Berkeley: Building Cities for a Healthy Future, where he offers innovative city planning solutions that would work anywhere.[3] Other leading figures who envisioned sustainable cities are architectPaul F Downton, who later founded the company Ecopolis Pty Ltd, as well as authors Timothy Beatley and Steffen Lehmann, who have written extensively on the subject. The field of industrial ecology is sometimes used in planning these cities.
The UN Environment Programme calls out that most cities today are struggling with environmental degradation, traffic congestion, inadequate urban infrastructure, in addition to a lack of basic services, such as water supply, sanitation, and waste management. A sustainable city should promote economic growth and meet the basic needs of its inhabitants, while creating sustainable living conditions for all.[4] Ideally, a sustainable city is one that creates an enduring way of life across the four domains of ecology, economics, politics, and culture. The European Investment Bank is assisting cities in the development of long-term strategies in fields including renewable transportation, energy efficiency, sustainable housing, education, and health care. The European Investment Bank has spent more than €150 billion in bettering cities over the last eight years.[5][6]
Cities occupy just 3 percent of the Earth's land but account for 60 to 80 percent of energy consumption and at least 70 percent of carbon emissions. Thus, creating safe, resilient, and sustainable cities is one of the top priorities of the Sustainable Development Goals.[7] The Adelaide City Council states that socially sustainable cities should be equitable, diverse, connected, democratic, and provide a good quality of life.[8] Priorities of a sustainable city include the ability to feed itself with a sustainable reliance on the surrounding natural environment and the ability to power itself with renewable sources of energy, while creating the smallest conceivable ecological footprint and the lowest quantity of pollution achievable. All of this is to be accomplished by efficient land use, composting organic matter, recycling used materials, and/or converting waste-to-energy. The idea is that these contributions will lead to a decrease of the city's impact on climate change.
Today, 55 percent of the world is estimated to be living in urban areas and the United Nations estimates that by the year 2050, that number will rise to 70 percent.[9] By 2050, there may be nearly 2.5 more billion individuals living in urban cities, possibly making it more difficult to create more sustainable communities.[10] These large communities provide both challenges and opportunities for environmentally-conscious developers. There are distinct advantages to further defining and working towards the goals of sustainable cities. Humans thrive in urban spaces that foster social connections. Richard Florida, an urban studies theorist, focuses on the social impact of sustainable cities and states that cities need more than a competitive business climate; they should promote a great people climate that appeals to individuals and families of all types. Because of this, a shift to denser urban living would provide an outlet for social interaction and conditions under which humans can prosper. These types of urban areas would also promote the use of public transit, walkability, and biking which would benefit citizens' health as well as benefiting the environment.[11][12]
Different such as agricultural plots within the city (suburbs or centre). This reduces the distance food has to travel from field to fork. This may be done by either small-scale/private farming plots or through larger-scale agriculture (e.g. farmscrapers).
Various methods to reduce the need for (a massive energy demand), such as passive daytime radiative cooling applications, planting trees and lightening surface colors, natural ventilation systems, an increase in water features, and green spaces equaling at least 20% of the city's surface. These measures counter the "heat island effect" caused by an abundance of tarmac and asphalt, which can make urban areas several degrees warmer than surrounding rural areas—as much as six degrees Celsius during the evening.[14]
Showing pockets of urban spaces creating the Heat Island effect with ranging temperatures [15]
air conditioning
Improved and an increase in pedestrianization to reduce car emissions. This requires a radically different approach to city planning, with integrated business, industrial, and residential zones. Roads may be designed to make driving difficult.
public transport
Optimal building density to make public transport viable but avoid the creation of .
urban heat islands
alter the surface energy balance and can help mitigate the urban heat island effect. Incorporating eco roofs or green roofs in your design will help with air quality, climate, and water runoff.
Green roofs
Plants growing on building
Zero-emission transport
to reduce energy consumption and greenhouse gas emissions using renewable energy sources.[16]
Zero-energy building
or SUDS in addition to other systems to reduce and manage waste.
Sustainable urban drainage systems
Energy conservation systems/devices
– garden and landscape design for water conservation
Xeriscaping
incorporates five elements: fuel economy, occupancy, electrification, pedal power, and urbanization.
Sustainable transport
to combat inefficient resource patterns and ensure a sustainable production and consumption roadmap.
Circular economy
Increase of would increase cycling within cities and reduce the number of cars being driven and in turn reduce car emissions. This would also benefit the health of citizens as they would be able to get more exercise through cycling.
cycling infrastructure
– development and operational management tool providing guidance and M&V for city administrators currently monitor and evaluate energy savings in various facilities.
Key performance indicators
or SSI – voluntary national guidelines and performance benchmarks for sustainable land design, construction and maintenance practices. Key areas of focus are soil, vegetation, hydrology, materials, and human health and well-being.
Sustainable Sites Initiative
Sustainable cities are creating safe spaces for its inhabitants through various means, such as:
With regard to methods of emissions counting cities can be challenging as production of goods and services within their territory can be related either to domestic consumption or exports. Conversely the citizens also consume imported goods and services. To avoid double counting in any emissions calculation it should be made clear where the emissions are to be counted: at the site of production or consumption. This may be complicated given long production chains in a globalized economy. Moreover, the embodied energy and consequences of large-scale raw material extraction required for renewable energy systems and electric vehicle batteries is likely to represent its own complications – local emissions at the site of utilization are likely to be very small but life-cycle emissions can still be significant.[20]
The Recycled Park in Rotterdam, the second-largest city in the Netherlands, is an initiative introduced by Recycled Island Foundation, a Netherlands-based organization focused on recycling littered waste via creating their iconic island-parks, among other sustainable projects. Rotterdam's Recycled Park is a cluster of floating, green hexagonal "islands" composed of reused litter. The group has utilized a system of passive litter traps to collect this litter from the Maas River.[25] The park's location upon the Maas River reflects a circular process aimed at creating a more sustainable city.
On the underside of the recycled park are materials that will support the growth of plants and wildlife indigenous to the area. This interest in growing the biodiversity of Rotterdam's natural elements is also reflected in other cities. Chicago's Urban Rivers organization is similarly trying to solve this issue by building and growing the Wild Mile of floating parks and forests along the Chicago River with the goal of revegetation.[26] Both Urban Rivers' and Recycled Island Foundation's interest in improving the area's biodiversity reflects an interest in greening the built urbanism of the surrounding city.
Rotterdam's Recycled Park may suggest a greater trend in creating floating structures in response to greater climate-change-motivated impacts. The Floating Farm in Rotterdam sustainably approaches food production and transport.[27] Other floating structures include renewable energy-powered houseboats and luxury residences some 800 meters from the coast.[28][29] The Dutch city of Amsterdam likewise boasts a neighbourhood of artificial, floating islands in the suburb of IJburg.
The idea of expanding both commercial enterprise and residential developments onto the water is oftentimes reflective of the demand to limit land-usage in urban areas. This has various, wide-reaching environmental impacts: reducing the aggregation of the urban heat-island effect, the zoning efforts expended on engineering and regulating the floodplain (and potentially, the capacity of waste-water reservoirs), and reduce the demands of the automobility state.
The Recycled Park is a holistic approach to limiting the expense of waste. The employment of greenery has air-purifying effects, to reduce pollution. Additionally, the modular, hexagonal design allows reconstruction of each "island"; this space thus also offers environmental sustainability, as well as an open space for community-growing and other social opportunities.
Gender associates an individual with a set of traits and behaviors that are construed to be female and/or male by society.[60] Gender is a key part of a person's identity, which can influence their experiences and opportunities as they navigate through life. This is no different for how gender impacts how they navigate through the built environment.
Men and women experience the built environment differently. For over two decades, professionals in urban planning have called for the routine consideration of gender relations and gendered experiences in the urban design process. Specifically, city planners emphasize the need to account for systemic differences in people's lived experiences by gender, when designing built environments that are safe and equitable.[61] This applies to the development of climate resilient cities.
Women represent 80% of people who've been displaced by the climate crisis.[62] Women are more vulnerable to the impacts of climate change because of the roles they are socially assigned by gender. For instance, women are primarily responsible for food provision in the household.[62] Unprecedented patterns in the frequency and magnitude of floods and droughts – due to climate change – directly impact the caregiving responsibilities of many women, causing them to disproportionately suffer from the consequences of these natural disasters.
The inequitable distribution of the burden of climate change by gender is unjust and can be addressed in the design of sustainable cities. Achieving gender equality is not only ethically important but economically smart, since supporting female development benefits economic growth.[63] Moreover, it's socially and economically relevant to design sustainable cities not only for women, but by women.
Mobility or the ability to move/go places is essential to daily life. Our mobility is primarily determined by the transportation infrastructure that surrounds us. Throughout US history, mobility and right to place have been regulated through codified social rules of who can go where, and how. Many of these rules were drawn along racial/ethnic and nationalistic lines.
Discriminatory housing and transit policies, like red lining, have compounded the oppressive living conditions marginalized racial groups have been subjected to centuries, and have limited the socioeconomic opportunities of future generations.[64] The legacies of these discriminatory policies are responsible for many environmental injustices we see today.
Environmental injustice refers to the unequal distribution of risk to environmental threats, with vulnerable populations – e.g., people of low- and middle-income (LMI) and people of color (POC) – experiencing the greatest exposure and least protection.[64] Environmental injustice is pervasive and manifests in many ways, from contaminated drinking water to mold-infested housing stock.[65] One example of environmental injustice is the varying burden of heat exposure on different racial and socioeconomic groups.
Urban areas often experience higher surface temperatures than less developed regions because the concentrated impermeable surfaces are good at absorbing heat, creating the “heat-island” effect mentioned earlier.[66] The risk of adverse health effects caused by the heat island effect is and will be compounded by the increasing frequency in heat waves due to the climate crisis.[67] This threat is quite dangerous for vulnerable populations – including infants and the elderly – who lack access to air conditioning and/or tree coverage to cool down. This limited adaptive capacity to urban heat is concentrated in LMI and historically segregated neighborhoods.[67]
Specifically, neighborhoods in cities that were historically targeted by redlining and divestment experience higher average land surface temperatures than surrounding areas.[67] These differences in surface temperatures embody the legacy of discriminatory housing policies in the US, and highlight how historic urban planning practices will interact with the effects of the climate crisis. We must create the sustainable cities of the future with these historic practices in mind. The heat island effect also exacerbates the impacts of another form of environmental injustice that disproportionately affects minority and low-income groups: air pollution.
Urban infrastructure projects that produce environmental toxins – like industrial plants and highways – are frequently built near or in LMI and POC communities because of favorable zoning codes, cheaper land prices, and less political backlash. This is not because residents don't care, but because they often lack the time, resources, and connections necessary to prevent such construction.[68] In turn, pollutant-producing operations disproportionately impact LMI and POC communities, harming the health outcomes of these groups.[69]
A study by the University of Minnesota found that if nitrogen dioxide levels (NO2 – a product of the combustion of fossil fuels) in non-white communities were reduced to equal those in white communities, there would be around 7,000 fewer deaths from heart disease per year.[70][71] This mortality disparity highlights the health impacts of discriminatory zoning and urban planning policies, which disproportionately expose LIM and POC communities to air pollution. The disparity also shows how much we have to gain from sustainable transportation reform which eliminates combustion-engine vehicles.[72]
The inequitable breakdown of exposure to environmental risks by race and income reinforces the understanding that the climate crisis is a social issue, and that environmental justice depends upon racial justice. There is no one right way to address these issues. Proposed solutions include eliminating single-family zoning, pricing a minimum proportions of housing units for LMI households, and requiring community engagement in future urban planning projects.[73] To select the best combination of solutions to create sustainable cities tailored to their environments, each city must be designed for all community members, by all community members.
. The City of Merri-bek in Melbourne's north, has programs for becoming carbon neutral, one of which is 'Zero Carbon Merri-bek', amongst other existing sustainable implementations and proposals.
City of Merri-bek
. Over the past 10 years, various methods of improving public transport have been implemented, car free zones and entire streets have also been implemented.
City of Melbourne
Helmut Bott, Gregor Grassl, Stephan Anders (2019) , DETAIL Publishers, Volume 1, ISBN978-3-95553-462-2
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