Towards More Sustainable Cities
Saturday, June 26, 2010
Towards Sustainable Cities
By David B. Sutton 沙乐明 Ph.D and Cyrille Jegu 吉古 MBA
China’s Urbanization Story
Approximately 600 million now live in China’s cities representing about 45 percent of the population but the scale and pace of China’s urbanization 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. While the US has 46 cities with populations of more than one million and Europe has 60, China has an incredible 175. 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.
The expansion of China’s cities will represent a huge challenge for local and national leaders. By 2030, two-thirds of China’s roughly 1.5 billion people will live in urban areas. To cope with the increase, China plans to build 50,000 new high-rise buildings and 170 new mass-transit rail and subway systems (by comparison Europe has only 70). The World Bank estimates that between now and 2015, approximately half of the entire world’s new building construction will take place in China. This growth implies 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. It also implies a further de-humanization of cities, erosion of the social fabric that should hold communities together. Communities disappear to be replaced by individuals living beside each other without much connection other than sharing the same address.
Urbanization accompanied by large-scale construction of urban infrastructure and services, including housing, roads, and water and sanitation systems will result in a large increase in the consumption of steel and cement. Demand for energy in urban areas will more than double, and demand for water will increase by 70 to 100 percent. Where will it all come from? …But more importantly: at what and whose cost?
According to the experiences of OECD and EU countries, the energy utilized in urban buildings and transport accounts for two thirds of final energy consumption. The share also grew rapidly in China from 35.9% in 2000 to 41.9% in 2007. According to China’s National Resource Defense Council (NRDC), China’s buildings accounted for 30-40% of the country’s total energy use.
If we look at the root cause of this issue, we quickly realize that Peter Senge is right:
“We do not have a management problem, we have a design problem”
Not just a Building Design, but also a broader Economy Design problem and, until and unless these design problems are fixed, by regulatory mechanism or otherwise, more sustainable building and cities will not be built in sufficient numbers and the low-carbon economy will remain where it is today: an aspiration.
The Cities Development Challenges and Options
In the years ahead, China has the option of building denser, more productive cities. Denser cities tend to produce lower demand for energy—up to 20 percent lower in the case of energy for transport. They also tend to support an economy with a larger share of high-value activities due to the availability of more skilled labor. While national land policy will play a role in managing land-related pressures, there is a range of policies that cities themselves can adopt to contain urban sprawl, and by doing so improve the quality of life of urban residents, cut energy demand, and optimize the use of land.
•Concentrated Cities:
One option being discussed argues that China should tailor policies that would shift urbanization toward a more “concentrated” shape of urbanization. This pattern of urbanization could produce 15 super-cities with average populations of 25 million people or spur the further development of 11 urban “clusters” of cities, each with strong economic networks and combined populations of 60-plus million.
By moving in this direction, China would cut its public spending requirement by 1.5 trillion RMB a year (2.5 percent of GDP), reduce SO2 and NOx emissions by upward of 35 percent, halve its water pollution, and deliver private sector savings equivalent to 1.7 percent of GDP in 2025 mainly through reduced natural resource consumption.
This concentrated urban growth scenarios could produce 20 percent higher per capita GDP than that yielded by China’s current urbanization path, would have higher energy consumption but also higher energy efficiency, and would contain the loss of arable land. Concentrated urbanization would also have the advantage of clustering the most skilled workers in urban centers that would be engines of economic growth, enabling China to move more rapidly to higher-value-added activities.
In order to create this type of dense development, cities will need—possibly within the framework of a comprehensive strategic land-development plan—to focus on maximizing the effectiveness of their transportation infrastructure, on holistic congestion-fighting strategies, and on urban planning that uses land strategically—for instance by developing integrated, mixed-use areas and pursuing transit-oriented development.
•Networks and Clusters:
Another design pattern seeks to balance the drive towards concentrated mega-cities with a discussion on clusters of integrated harmonious (eco) communities connected by major transportation arteries. A series of multifunctional compact cities are seen stretching along major transportation arteries separated by urban forests and agriculture. These green buffers can help maintain and vitalize water and wind channels to combat urban heat island effects.
•Eco-Cities:
Increasingly, we see Governments giving attention to the construction of eco-cities.
One definition of an eco-city is “a city that provides an acceptable standard of living for its human occupants without depleting the eco-systems and biochemical cycles on which it depends.” Creating sustainable communities and (low carbon) cities will be a long-lasting challenge. With these massive new plans of urban construction over the next 20 years, China has a unique opportunity to construct eco-cities on a major scale. The unthinkable alternative is being locked into inefficient and ultimately expensive systems for many years to come. Cities need resource-efficient buildings, and ecologically friendly water, power and transport systems. Their inhabitants must also be able to live sustainably.
From Ego to Eco-systems:
The need to change mind-set to a sustainable way of thinking
In order to move towards more sustainability in its cities, China will have to make a significant shift in both its hardware and software. A more sustainable model of urban planning and development requires a philosophical rethinking of people’s place in the world, governance and institutional reform, and technological renovation of its current model of industrialization. A new model based on development rather than just economic growth. A new model which improves the health and resilience of its entire people and environment rather than the wealth of a few.
•Philosophical Re-thinking:
Whether we like it or not Sustainability is and always will be fundamentally an ecological concept. Like all living things, the human species and their systems of operations must adapt to the limits of earth’s natural life-support systems. All the human device and accord in the world cannot transcend those limits.
Based on the false assumptions of unlimited natural resources to draw from, unlimited ecosystem services to support us and unlimited places to put our wastes, human society has evolved linear economic systems that takes natural resources, makes products and then disposes of them as waste when they are no longer deemed ‘useful’ or ‘of sufficient value’. Sooner or later, in a finite world, this one-way industrial process must end. There is a limit to resources available as well as the capacity for the earth’s life-support systems to absorb the impact. The myriad of environmental problems we are experiencing today in our cities are a manifestation of reaching these limits. Calls for moving towards sustainable development come from such an understanding.
Sustainable Development is not about technology and economics; it is about state-of-mind. As the great American Naturalist Aldo Leopold once put it: (over 60 years ago):
“Civilization has so cluttered elemental man-earth relation with gadgets and middlemen that awareness of it is growing dim. We fancy that industry supports us, forgetting what supports industry.”
Through these words, Leopold is reminding us that we need to appreciate our place in Nature and our absolute dependence on the natural processes that sustain us. Technology may give us the tools to more effectively interact with natural process but brute force technology forced upon the living landscape is not wise “scientific development” and certainly not sustainable.
Sustainable living is mindful living – being conscious of how we are involved with, how we affect and are totally dependent upon our planet’s life-support systems.
•Governance and Institutional Reforms:
Government policy needs to be informed by this realization of our dependence on natural ecosystem services and the planet’s physical limits. Planning and implementation needs to be ecosystem-based and moved towards flexible and adaptative practices and procedures. Managing cities’ demand for resources rather than simply focusing on building the supply infrastructure needed to keep pace with demand is an essential step toward sustainable governance and planning.
For example, boosting energy productivity—the level of output we achieve from the energy we consume—is largely a ‘pain-free’, measurable, ‘low-hanging fruit’ option. China’s cities would generate positive returns from future energy savings, freeing up resources for investment elsewhere. Urban China has the opportunity to abate energy demand growth by 30 QBTU , including the potential to reduce oil demand by just over four million barrels of oil per day. In tandem, China would be able to cut urban water demand by close to 40 percent by 2025.
The government’s role in policy should be more than facilitating supply. It should be to envision the common good where everybody’s needs are met and encourage the most effective and efficient means of meeting those needs. Then a bristling market with innovative suppliers providing super-efficient processes and appliances and a diverse set of energy sources specifically matched to end-use needs can supply them.
In order for this to happen, we need a government intent on providing for the Common Good that facilitates the exploration of efficient, effective means, the education of the people about those means and the provision of those means. This must be done by insuring a level playing field, so that the best of human ingenuity and creativity can work as it should, serving the agreed upon ends of society.
The supply-side approach rests on the belief that more energy we use, the better off we are. Energy, like money or material, has been elevated from a means to an end in itself. Albert Einstein brilliantly summarized this aberration:
“Perfection of means and confusion of ends seem to characterize our age.”
On a path of energy efficiency, on the contrary, how much energy we use to accomplish our social goals is considered a measure less of success than of our failure–just as the amount of traffic we must endure to gain access to places we want to get to is a measure not of well-being but rather of our failure to establish a rational settlement pattern. The cornerstone of a sustainable energy policy is to seek to attain our goals with elegant frugality of energy and trouble, using our best technologies (ingenuity) to wring as much social function as possible from each unit of energy use. This should be the goal of any government policy that purports to represent all its citizens.
Weak Implementation and Enforcement Mechanisms remain one of the Great Challenges for China. Policies and regulations are not being realized because of obstacles to implementation. China’s decentralization process is both a strength and a weakness when it comes to hard policies on energy and low carbon development. Issues such as lack of coordination and compliance, and buy-in difficulties are well known.
Addressing them will be difficult, but as long as they persist, China’s potential to become a leader in technology, clean environment and sustainable human development will be difficult to realize. It is therefore necessary to strengthen capacities and institutions to integrate and coordinate policies among sectors and regions and at all levels, and to monitor and enforce implementation. Specific mechanisms for policy implementation should be identified and efforts carried out to strengthen policies, regulations, and institutions in order to achieve efficient policy implementation in China’s priority areas.
Measurements Matters! We attend to what we measure and we can optimize what we measure. Unfortunately, we all too often measure the wrong things and forget to attend to what matters.
“They know the price of everything and the value of nothing.” – Oscar Wilde
Profitability, for instance is a measure of economic efficiency. Like net energy analysis, what is left over from all the input to the system is the net yield–the profit of the system. There are major differences, however. For one, in net energy analysis, the units of measure are real– inescapable manifestations of the physical world–the laws of physics. An act of Congress, the President’s Council of Economic Advisors, the World Bank, Stanford’s Business School, or even the ‘Supremacist’ Court cannot repeal the Laws of Thermodynamics.
On the other hand, the measures of these economic analyses are arbitrary–figments of social convention, value negotiated by the most powerful in society. Not only are these measures not fixed in any basis of physical reality, they are incomplete–they systematically exclude known costs (inputs). To a large extent the apparent success or profitability of decades of economic efficiency analyses, rests in the cleverness of avoiding the inclusion of many essential real costs.
These avoided costs, historically, have been called “external costs” or “externalities”– as if giving them a label justifies them being left off the books. This and other forms of the economist’s “word magic” have been challenged for decades. Suffice it here to say that the calculation of economic efficiency for decades has been based on the systematic exclusion of known costs which is purposely deceptive, if not criminal, rendering it virtually useless.
As an example, the proposal for China’s Mega-Cities coming from the McKinsey Global Institute cited above are almost exclusively based on their calculations of their benefit to GDP. What does GDP measure? What does it leave out? It is not unlikely that what GDP leaves out are what are most needed when it comes to a sustainable future.
This incomplete accounting of “economic efficiency” is a prime example of what Albert North Whitehead called, “the fallacy of misplaced concreteness.” The famous mathematician, Norbert Weiner was even more biting in his critique, “economists have developed the habit of dressing up their rather imprecise ideas in the language of the infinitesimal calculus… Any pretense of applying precise formulae is a sham and a waste of time.”
We need to develop complete accounting methods that measure all the right things and in turn monitor and measure real outcomes making those involved fully accountable. Unfortunately those accountable are not always responsible, and those responsible are all too often not accountable.
Who derives the benefit and who accrues the cost?
•Technological Renovations:
Rethink our problem solving approaches and use the most appropriate technology we have for a given task. We can envision two fundamentally different ways, or “paths,” to supply our energy needs, for instance. The “hard path” involves large scale, highly technological approaches that rely on centralized electrical production. This strategy implies large capital investments in plants and distribution networks, increasingly costly technologies to locate, extract, transport, and convert the raw fuels, and a centralized bureaucracy of managers and technicians to organize and maintain the system. In contrast, the “soft path” involves small scale, widely dispersed, elegantly simple approaches that rely on a mix of different local sources of energy tailored to specific needs.
The distinction between hard and soft energy paths rests not on what energy source it uses but on the technical, socio-political structure of the energy delivery system thus focusing our attention on consequent and crucial organizational differences. Soft energy systems are characterized by: (a) a reliance on renewable flows that are always there whether we use them or not (e.g. sun and wind, and biomass) — on energy income not on depleted non-renewable energy capital; (b) the use of diverse energy sources – supply is seen as an aggregate of many modest contributions, each designed for maximum effectiveness in particular circumstances; (c) flexible, low-tech (not unsophisticated) applications; (d) the matching in scale to end-use needs, taking advantage of free distribution of local energy flows; and, (e) the matching in quality to end-use needs.
Thousands of Community energy programs (small scale solar, wind, hydro, biogas, industrial process heat/co-generation… etc.) can be developed using local resources employing thousands of local residents generating income and building local economies meeting the specific determined needs of each community. At the community level first steps can also be better addressed, steps like reducing the need for delivered energy in the first place by “plugging the leaks,” using technical fixes and simple design solutions such as sealing drafts, thermal insulation measures, increasing the efficiency of appliances used, heat recovery and co-generation of electricity – all being produced at site of use and under local control.
“Scientific Development”, that is Sustainable Development based on Scientific Principles such as those advocated and practiced by the Natural Step (TNS) with its Framework for Strategic Sustainable Development (FSSD) for more than 20 years, does not necessarily imply hard path technologies and delivery. The most sophisticated and elegant science, technology and engineering often include the simplest design techniques and low-tech applications. The goal should be the elegant simplicity of applying the most appropriate, efficient, cost (economic, environmental and social) effective means to meet the specific desired ends – this is the soft path and it can be taken to meet most of our society’s needs.
This Rethinking, Reform and Renovation are essential to a new approach to urbanization in China.
•Cities as Eco-Systems:
When talking about Eco-cities, we need to see cities as ecosystems sustained by the functions of the ecosystems of which they are a part. Ecosystems supply our clean air and water, generate oxygen, absorb carbon dioxide, capture and transform the sun’s energy, provide food for all its constituents, generate no waste, are very diverse and dynamic, independent yet interconnected. Ecosystems support life in all its forms for the common good.
Using the criteria from the Research Center for Eco-Environmental Sciences of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, we can envision China’s future eco-cities as having some of the following characteristics:
1. Compact built-up areas below and above ground (6 to 10 levels up), with population densities of 10,000 per square km. These concentrated constructed areas are separated and surrounded by large expanses of open green areas. A common eco-city criterion is to have large green areas within ten minutes walk of the residents’ place of work and living.
2. Large open green spaces of forests, grasslands and agriculture as well as urban gardens and green rooftops serve as the lungs of land ecosystems (natural and urban) providing the oxygen we need as they capture and store the CO2 in the air. This carbon capture function has become evermore important in these times of global warming. Together with the wetlands, these areas provide the crucial functions of water harvesting, retention and purification. Water is a cities’ life-blood (as it is for all ecosystems). Healthy urban metabolism needs to insure a safe water supply by focusing on water conservation, harvesting and purification. There should be no less than three times the area of these valuable service areas to urban built area. When consciously planned with prevailing water and wind channels in mind (using the best permaculture practices), these areas can effectively combat urban heat island effects.
The most ecologically sound mobility for this pattern of compact areas separated by large green areas is to have a prominent transportation aorta of light rail connecting these city clusters and connecting with intercity subway and other energy efficient public transit, bicycles and pedestrian pathways serving 80% of the urban population. Those taking the direct train on the main axis will have no more than a half an hour trip to downtown.
Living systems sustain themselves by accessing the constant flow of incoming solar energy and circulating the material resources they need through grand closed looped cycles of use and reuse. Likewise these eco-cities will maximize their use of solar energy and other renewable energy sources, striving for more efficient use of energy. For example, lowering energy consumption and carbon emissions by providing 80% of the energy for building air-conditioning and heating being supplied by terrestrial heat, solar energy, biomass and other clean technologies.
Likewise, the linear construction and industrial processes of past cities with their ecosystem depleting and waste production, will be replaced by circular processes where all outputs are fed back into the system for reuse, and essential ecosystem services are repaired and protected.
Standards drive green building. Now many cities are adopting polices that require new building to be built to a certain standard. The World Green Building Council now certifies green construction and performance in 14 countries, including China. Incentives to developers and consumers to invest in and purchase and tax breaks to buyers have encouraged the construction of energy conserving buildings. New low energy, sustainable building materials have been used in the newly constructed buildings that represent the highest energy efficiency standards. Their performance will be monitored and standards enforced.
Harmonious neighborhoods of the cities’ residents will be facilitated and maintained and special efforts made to preserve local customs and culture as well as provide good public safety and security and opportunities for active participation. Each of these local extended communities integrated within a string of compact cities can strive for the harmonizing goals advocated by the Leadership in Environment and Energy Design Neighborhood Development System (LEED ND).
Using these criteria we can look to the day when the rush of the world’s cities to build the tallest (ego) sky-scrapers is replaced by a competition to construction the world’s most (eco) sustainable ones.
World Expo 2010: Showcase of Eco-City Innovations
We are experiencing a potentially world-changing event. Shanghai, home to 19 million residents, the country’s largest metropolitan area, is hosting World Expo 2010, which is expected to be the biggest World Expo in history with over 150 countries and 50 International organizations sharing scientific and technological innovations and their experiences of urban development. There will be many diverse eco-city innovations being showcased at the Expo and in and around Shanghai.
This represents a unique opportunity to educate the public about what can be done to reduce the environmental impact of our development by experiencing first-hand true working examples of these sustainable technologies.
It is expected that these applications will be chronicled and live on as an Expo legacy and serve to facilitate the technology transfer beyond the Expo and Shanghai well into the future and throughout China. This world event should not only inspire and inform but also empower the visitor with the tools to facilitate the spread of these technologies that we need for a sustainable world.
Time will tell whether the vast number of visitors touted to the Expo will come or whether the massive infrastructure developed to manage them will be up to the task or whether the boost to the local economy promised as a return on the large investment will materialize.
Whether it appears in the short term to be worth it or not, It is important to realize that there are real, long-term value to the city and to China that far exceeds current short-term concerns.
What makes the Expo so important is that it is a unique opportunity for ideas and solutions from around the globe on how to manage urban living to be presented at a vital time in China’s development.
The Expo is about presenting innovation and ideas, and China badly needs ideas and real examples of how they can be implemented. The country is embarking upon the fastest and greatest urbanization program in the history of the world. The shape and structure of those cities will define the country for many generations. The city of Chongqing has more than a half a million new residents each year. The Three Gorges dam that has allowed the Yangtze River to open up China’s interior to trade now threatens to erode Shanghai shoreline through the lack of silt, and is increasingly poisoned. The worthy causes of lifting hundreds of million of peoples rapidly out of poverty has taken – and is still taking – a heavy toll in pollution and un-stainable exhaustion of the country’s natural resources. These problems are not unique. The Dickensian coal-smoke fogs of London, the foam-covered chemical soup of North America’s Great Lakes and the polluted waters of Minamata Bay were similar compromises for those countries’ industrial progress. These were problems to which solutions have been found. In these examples, solutions were found long after the problems were produced. What is encouraging about this time in China is that they already know they need to attend to these things and are already seeking solutions.
It is here that the Expo can play such a vital role in providing ideas (solutions). As China’s cities develop, their enduring success will come because they are places in which people can enjoy diverse, healthy cultured and fulfilled lives. The Expo has gathered together a unique range of presentations of what countries from all parts of the globe and the economic development scale are most proud of in their solutions to urban living. For Chinese city dwellers and those that plan their cities, this is a truly unique opportunity to see, all in one place, what could be. Where the Expo will really succeed is in providing inspiration and options so that the people of China can build better cities and have better lives living in them.
About the authors:
David B. Sutton 沙乐明, Ph.D is a human ecologist and an international consultant specializing in, ecological conservation, sustainable development, integral health and creative communications. With over thirty years experience teaching at the University level, working with International Corporations and Research Institutes, Publishers, Governmental and Non-Governmental Organizations, he is engaged throughout the world for his creativity, problem-solving and writing skills. He has served as a trainer for The Natural Step in the U.S. and has lived and worked out of Shanghai, China for the past eight years.
Cyrille Jegu 吉古, MBA an expert on Circular and Low Carbon Economy, is leading the development of the Framework for Strategy Sustainable Development (developed by The Natural Step) in Asia with a primary focus on China; providing educational, research and advisory services in Strategic Sustainability to Businesses, Communities, NGOs and Governments. Cyrille is also a guest lecturer on Strategic Sustainability in a number of universities in Asia. He is a member of the Cambridge Sustainability Network, the Institute of Directors, an Energy Saving Trust Ambassador in the UK and a member of the International Energy Conservation and Environmental Protection Association in China.
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