The Future of Cities
The 21st century will come to be known as the urban century. For the first time in human history more than half of the 6.8 billion people on Earth live in cities. Over the next 17 years, another 1.7 billion people will join our species – what I call homo urbanis. Canada is no different. In 1867, 20 per cent of Canadians lived in cities; now over 80 per cent do.
As such, getting cities right, and making them as sustainable as possible, is fundamentally important to our survival. Overconsumption of scarce natural capital (water, soil, forests, the ocean’s bounty, oil and gas, coal, minerals) causes major environmental problems – foul air, contaminated water and soil, deforestation and desertification, loss of biodiversity, climate change from human-produced greenhouse gases.
This is largely an urban problem. The vast majority of the planet’s natural resources are consumed by city-dwellers – by their homes, transportation, energy, food, clothes, businesses, industries, and governments. A smaller but still significant portion of our natural capital is eaten up by mines, mills, farms, and other rural industrial activities that produce products used primarily by city-dwellers.
North American cities are by far the worst offenders. If China and India’s rapidly urbanizing population of 2.5 billion consumed natural capital the way we do in Canadian and U.S. cities, we would need the equivalent of four Earths’ worth of natural resources. As we only have one Earth, it’s imperative that we imminently abandon our North American urban model of sprawl, freeways, SUVs, and general overconsumption.
Besides their considerable impact on the environment, 21st-century cities constitute a crucial front in the war against poverty. One billion poor people currently live in urban areas of developing countries, many of whom are forced to inhabit informal and mostly illegal slums. Many more will have to adopt such living conditions if we don’t develop creative, sustainable strategies for building modern cities.
The impact of cities on the world today and over the next century cannot be overstated. Thus, in an effort to build strategies for creating sustainable cities and to conceive of the tools necessary to implement them, I have invited a group of experts to discuss various aspects of the broad subject of cities: ecological footprints, climate change, demographic challenges, social welfare, and more. I hope you will join in the dialogue.
Climate Change Denial
by John Robinson
Professor, Institute of Resources, Environment and Sustainability, University of British Columbia.
- First Posted: Oct 19 2009 09:14 AM
- Updated: 8 months ago
Greenhouse gas emissions won’t come down until the public fully realizes how serious the problem is and what they can do about it.
Climate change is bearing down on the world at a terrific speed. According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), if we want to limit global mean temperature increases to between 2.0 and 2.4°C above pre-industrial levels, global greenhouse gas emissions will have to peak by about 2015 and then fall to about 50 to 85 per cent of current levels by 2050. Unfortunately, all the published evidence since that IPCC report was published in 2007 has been even more negative. In March 2009, an international scientific conference on climate change concluded that “recent observations confirm that, given high rates of observed emissions, the worst-case IPCC scenario trajectories (or even worse) are being realized.”
It is clear that global GHG emissions are not going to decrease immediately after 2015 and we are not going to keep temperature changes below 2.5 degrees. But it is just as clear that we need to do whatever we can to begin reducing emissions as soon as possible, and to develop effective adaptation measures in order to minimize the damage climate change will cause.
It seems likely that one reason climate change policies have not been more ambitious or successful is that the publics involved have either not been convinced of the seriousness of the problem, have not been convincingly informed about what measures would likely make a real difference to mitigation or adaptation, or else are unwilling to accept such measures. There is an urgent need to develop more effective ways of engaging the public on climate change issues, to allow them to explore the consequences and trade-offs associated with different courses of action.
The purpose of the urban-scale Metroquest modeling system is to provide such an opportunity. The system will allow citizens who are not experts in these issues to make choices about their future on a scale they can identify with, see the consequences of those choices, and express their views as to which policy measures would be acceptable. Rather than attempting to predict the most likely future, Metroquest allows citizens to explore different local futures and choose the scenario that they consider most desirable. This approach, known as "participatory backcasting," has been found to engender high degrees of interest and buy-in on the part of participants, who feel more invested in scenarios that they create, explore, and choose.
Recently the Metroquest approach has been extended beyond the workshop format in which it is usually used. The Metropolitan Planning Authority of Chicago has used the Metroquest engine to create a website where citizens can explore alternative futures for their city and register their preferred scenarios online. Kiosk-based versions of the software allow visitors at specific sites in Chicago to do the same in person.
The challenge of climate change demands new approaches to engaging the public on the consequences, trade-offs, and choices we face. The Metroquest approach not only informs citizens about the trade-offs and consequences they face, but also allows them to express their preferences about policy options and choices, and the kind of future they want to achieve.
Comments
Re:Marks
“ The average Joe has no idea of the seriousness of this issue. Contrary to the general feeling among scientists, that the public shouldn't be "frightened into inactivity" I content they aren't nearly frightened enough. Sitting through one of Bill Ree's lectures would do the job. I have four hours of broadcast quality footage of Bill's very focused message. I'm wondering how to edit it and get it on the web. Bruce Mohun
Bruce Mohun