“World’s Most Dangerous City” to World’s Most Innovative City & The Greenest Olympic Games of all Time. What Medellin, Colombia and London, UK achieved in the 21st Century so far to create a blueprint for a sustainable future worldwide.
City planners in the 2020’s are likely to face some of the most potent challenges that they have faced in modern history due to the impending climate crisis and all of the headaches that will arise from it. For any city planners lacking inspiration or feeling dejected, it might be useful to look to the cities of Medellin and London in the 2010’s to feel empowered to take on the many obstacles for cities around the world in the coming decade. The United Nations’ Sustainable Development goal, Goal 11: Developing Sustainable Cities and Communities is a plan to successfully anticipate the massive growth of the world’s population living in cities in the future, and to support this growth while doing so as feasibly as possible, meeting a wide range of standards. One of the most important standards of this goal is to treat environmental concerns as absolutely vital to this urban expansion through innovation in city planning and community practices. Common obstacles to realizing sustainability goals often come from within the community, and one of the largest of these roadblocks comes from economic concerns, and the balancing of the goals of becoming a sustainable city along with profiting from economic opportunities. There is solid evidence that sustainable cities will enhance the local economy, while also improving citizen’s quality of life in every socioeconomic class.
A study conducted by Cloutier, Larson and Jambeck and their article “Are sustainable cities “happy” cities? Associations between sustainable development and human well-being in urban areas of the United States” found direct linkage between citizen’s happiness and living in a society that values sustainability. While the conclusion could only be made by focusing on American cities, there is emerging evidence that suggests that happier people tend to do more to take care of their environments, and in turn when a collective group treats environmental sustainability as a must, that collective group will become happier. Not only will emotions and people’s feelings of well-being grow when living in a community that provides environmental and ecological protection, but the future of humanity depends on this push for sustainable urban centres, as well. Average citizens might question how much their individual choices will impact their locality’s sustainability, let alone that of the greater international community (Cloutier, Larson & Jambeck, 2014).
In the Hydrology and Earth System Sciences (HESS) article “Water footprints of cities — indicators for sustainable consumption and production”, research indicates that a community’s water footprint has a massive impact on the balance for sustainability. Diets that are considered to be luxurious, usually very high in meat, which is common in more developed countries, require a great amount of water that is often exported from poorer countries whose citizens have less access to water. Regions that lack the ability to allocate food sources who are then also forced to export their resources in order to participate in the international economy will then see their water and food security plummet, and result in the poorest citizens suffering the most (p. 224). This is due to a number of factors, but mostly due to the pressure countries face on the world market in terms of foreign trade (p. 224). Food supply chains need to start to opt for shorter distances when it comes to imports and exports, in order to take responsibility and pro-action to produce a smaller overall footprint (p. 225). Residents of highly urbanized cities in more developed countries face some responsibility in order to vote with their dollar and make deliberate decisions in everyday life, purchasing products, conducting business and interacting with their local governments (Hoff, H., et al, 2014).
The article “A Social-Ecological Infrastructure Systems Framework for Interdisciplinary Study of Sustainable City Systems” details some of the most fundamental changes our urban centres must undertake in order to become truly sustainable. Cities naturally have very large footprints, due to the sheer amount of natural resources that are needed to sustain their populations. Most major cities of the world also require long-distance food transportation from far away sources, but this importing also extends to water, gas and even electricity. The article suggests some ways to contribute to sustainability as listed by the Social-Ecological Systems Framework (SES), which includes utilizing video call platforms for conference meetings rather than encouraging travel by plane to and from locations and reduce water usage, which in turn reduces electricity usage. The article also identifies three main actors whose behaviours must change in order to meet sustainability goals, which are individual users, infrastructure designers and operators and policy actors. If these three groups, which essentially encompasses all members of our communities and societies can do their part to find ways of behaving in a more sustainable manner, these goals can be met (Ramaswami, A., et al, 2012)
Societal cohesion is vital to making urban spaces green, and not falling into a disconnected technocracy. The article “Urban green infrastructure — connecting people and nature for sustainable cities” details how important a wide scope of practices are, including social cohesion, support of the emerging green economy and collective adaptation to the effects of climate change. There are indications that the average person could become somewhat alienated from the larger societal movement towards urban sustainability, and being able to include all citizens in the community in the process and organization of this infrastructure would make it more successful (Pauleit, S. et al, 2019). Isolating those who are economically disadvantaged or who lack significant power in the political system is a sure way to fail to make sustainability possible.
The article “Urban Regeneration of Medellin. An example of sustainability” looks at the real life case study of the city of Medellin, Colombia, where urban planners and innovators that valued the principles of sustainability helped to turn one of the most dangerous cities in the world into a model for sustainability and regeneration (p. 47). The social cohesion that also occurred in Medellin with the most disadvantaged and marginalized of the community while embracing sustainability led to the quality of life for everyone greatly improving (p. 49). Medellin’s poorest residents lived on the outskirts of the city in favela type communities on the slopes of mountains, and were cut off completely to economic opportunities due to the lack of a metro system that could provide these low income individuals with transportation to the city centre (p. 49).
The implementation of a new metro line and the innovative use of a low energy metro-cable, gondola system, helped link these individuals living in far flung outskirts to the heart of the city’s economic activity (p. 50). This new metro-cable transportation system also led to a lower level of CO2 emissions in Medellin, proving that sustainability in major cities not only improves the quality of life of individuals, but also protects the environment. Greenhouse gases are prevalent with the use of aging metro buses and the use of cars, whereas a metro-subway system and metro-cable gondola system are economically viable and very low in total emission output. In turn, the city went from one of the most dangerous and violent cities on the planet to a regenerated city that stands out as one of the most sustainable and innovative cities in the world (p. 53), (de Tomas Medina, 2018).
Although many cities have taken extraordinary strides in becoming more sustainable and reducing carbon emissions, are cities ever going to be actually completely sustainable? That is a reasonable question to ask, especially with the massive challenges and roadblocks that are situated in the path to reaching any sort of level of sustainability. The article, “City Enhancement beyond the Notion of “Sustainable City”: Introduction to Integrated Assessment for City Enhancement (iACE) Toolkit” confronts this question and looks to give alternative solutions to reaching a point where urban centres are low in carbon emissions and use energy efficiently and responsibly (p. 153). The unfortunate reality is that there is no such thing as a developed country that does not have urbanized centres, and urbanized centres by default are not sustainable due to the mass amount of energy they require to exist (p. 154).
There are many issues that make sustainability in urban centres a difficult one, as economic growth directly conflicts with the idea of sustainability, and direct unification between municipal policy makers and the government needs to happen to reach the standards in place to be considered sustainable. Essentially, the use of trendy labels surrounding being sustainable as a city are detrimental to the overall task that it takes to actually make significant improvements and see tangible results (p. 55). The most important factor to becoming truly sustainable is to have the model of sustainability directly fused into city planning and those who will be making critical decisions in roles that will have the greatest impact and influence (p. 158), (Cheshmehzangi, A., 2016).
Though, many argue that dwelling on the negatives surrounding the difficulty to becoming sustainable is detrimental if the most ideal of possibilities aren’t given the chance to flourish. The article “Sustainable city-building and the new politics of the possible: reflections on the governance of the London Olympics 2012”, highlights some of the key ways that policy makers can achieve a high level of efficient and effective results through following sustainable models for temporary events such as the 2012 London Olympics (p. 129). The article challenges the thought process of being “realistic” and swapping that for “the possible”, and ways in which policy makers can embrace idealism and utopianism in order to achieve extraordinary results in sustainability (p. 130).
When focusing too much on what is realistic, the result is that communities might falling short in what is actually possible, as reflected by the city of London’s sturdy goals that were established during the Olympic games, and how this greater imagination became a model for others to follow in the future when it comes to implementing sustainability on an everyday basis (p. 125). The government of London established core objectives during the games, including minimizing carbon emissions as a result of the activities of the sporting events, reuse and recycle water, lessen waste and encourage recycling on the grounds, consider the effects of noise pollution on the environment, encourage cycling, walking on foot and taking the bus to and from Olympic locations, as well as shielding the biodiversity and ecology of the natural environment of the city and surrounding areas (p. 128), (Raco, M., 2014).
The feeling of sustainability being too far out of reach and unrealistic could also stem from a lack of exposure to what urban greenery has to offer to a community’s well being. The article “‘Sustainable City’ requires ‘recognition’ — The example of environmental education under pressure from the compact city” focuses on the factors surrounding educational trips for children in grades 7 to 9 to green zones within their urban centres, which is simply due to the distance associated between school buildings and these spaces. By not experiencing hands-on learning in regards to environmental concerns when living in a dense urban zone, students might be losing out on this important educational experience (p. 178). There is also a growing resentment from citizens in regards to the decisions made by city planners with what to do with green spaces in cities, and how environmental justice is continuing to grow in places such as the Netherlands where this article’s study took place (p. 174), (Wolsink, M., 2016).
The goal of making the largest and fasting growing urban centres of the world sustainable is one that requires collective buy in and collaboration to successfully realize. There are many social entrepreneurs, activists, scientists, city planners, engineers and designers who are blazing a trail for sustainability on every continent around the world, and more societal cohesion and community inclusion is a vital part of this transition actually functioning. The likeliness of this goal being met is certainly possible with individuals taking leadership towards fulfilling the requirements of such an undertaking.
Some of the biggest challenges of this goal is garnering enough community support and agreement, and awareness surrounding the issues of some of our societies most marginalized individuals who will feel the effects the most from climate change, and would benefit economically, socially and in terms of quality of life through living in a city that is more sustainable. I possess personal interest in the goal largely due to my experience of living in the country of Colombia for 6 months in 2018, and having personal ties to the country, and learning about the massive steps in progress cities like Medellin have taken to completely transform their citizens’ livelihoods. When it comes to finding a reason for being passionate towards the goal of urban sustainability, it doesn’t take much more than to experience another community that has been so clearly benefited from such steps, and to come away from the experience feeling inspired and wanting to similar actions being made around the world in other societies.
References
Cloutier, S., Larson L., & Jambeck J., (2014), Are sustainable cities “happy” cities? Associations between sustainable development and human well-being in urban areas of the United States (pp. 633–647). Are sustainable cities “happy” cities? Associations between sustainable development and human well-being in urban areas of the United States — ProQuest (mtroyal.ca)
Hoff, H., Döll, P., Fader, M., Gerten, D., Hauser, S., & Siebert, S., (2014), Water footprints of cities — indicators for sustainable consumption and production, (pp. 213–226), HESS — Water footprints of cities — indicators for sustainable consumption and production (copernicus.org)
Ramaswami, A., Weible, C., Main, D., Heikkila, T., Siddiki, S., Duvall, A., Pattison, A., & Bernard, M. (2012), A Social-Ecological-Infrastructural Systems Framework for Interdisciplinary Study of Sustainable City Systems, A Social‐Ecological‐Infrastructural Systems Framework for Interdisciplinary Study of Sustainable City Systems — Ramaswami — 2012 — Journal of Industrial Ecology — Wiley Online Library (mtroyal.ca)
Pauleit, S., Andersson, E., Anton, B., Buijs, A., Haase, D., Hansen, R., Kowarik, I., Stahl Olafsson, A., & Van der Jagt, S., (2019), Urban green infrastructure — connecting people and nature for sustainable cities, (pp. 1–3), Urban green infrastructure — connecting people and nature for sustainable cities — ScienceDirect (mtroyal.ca)
de Tomas Medina, C., (2018), Urban Regeneration of Medellin. An example of sustainability, (pp. 47–54), View of Urban regeneration of Medellin. An example of sustainability (unina.it)
Cheshmehzangi, A., (2016), City Enhancement beyond the Notion of “Sustainable City”: Introduction to Integrated Assessment for City Enhancement (iACE) Toolkit, (pp. 153–158), City Enhancement beyond the Notion of “Sustainable City”: Introduction to Integrated Assessment for City Enhancement (iACE) Toolkit (sciencedirectassets.com)
Raco, M., (2014), Sustainable city-building and the new politics of the possible: reflections on the governance of the London Olympics 2012, (pp. 124–131), Sustainable city‐building and the new politics of the possible: reflections on the governance of the London Olympics 2012 (wiley.com)
Wolsink, M., (2016), ‘Sustainable City’ requires ‘recognition’ — The example of environmental education under pressure from the compact city, (pp, 174–180), ‘Sustainable City’ requires ‘recognition’ — The example of environmental education under pressure from the compact city (sciencedirectassets.com)
