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.
The Wealth of Cities
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The Wealth of Cities
by Sherman Kreiner
Managing Director, University of Winnipeg Community Renewal Corporation.
- First Posted: Dec 02 2009 12:34 PM
- Updated: 7 months ago
Economically sustainable cities need to be simultaneously competitive and inclusive.
Economic sustainability is often equated with economic growth. Economic growth, in turn, is predicated on increased competitiveness, increased productivity, and results in increased wealth creation. It is often posed in opposition to social, cultural, or environmental sustainability; that is, that we are trying to balance policies and initiatives fostering economic growth against responsibilities of environmental stewardship, poverty reduction, or cultural awareness. Economic growth is a critical element of economic sustainability because we cannot have a sustainable economy without wealth creation; however, economic sustainability is a much broader concept, which focuses on social inclusion in economic activities, environmental sustainability, and equitable wealth creation.
Economically sustainable cities need to be simultaneously competitive and inclusive; neither alone is sufficient. Competitiveness without inclusiveness creates huge income and wealth differentials, and increasingly intractable social challenges associated with poverty. Inclusiveness without competitiveness does not result in wealth creation. Increased competitiveness is animated by a supportive environment for innovation in well endowed research institutions with strong commercialization and technology transfer capacities, which, in turn, feed place-specific cluster development, particularly in new economy sectors.
Enhancing productivity is key to competitiveness and must be prioritized in long-term economic sustainability planning. In balancing competitiveness with inclusion, and sustainability along other dimensions – i.e. social, cultural and environmental – policies promoting productivity must also be assessed with reference to their impact on quality of life and equitable wealth creation. Enhanced productivity within that context is fostered by the development of educational centres of excellence, which facilitate increases in overall levels and quality of higher education, while also prioritizing recruitment, and providing access to those with barriers to employment and economic participation (for reasons of income, ethnicity, language, or disability). These initiatives create the potential for a community to capture – within its economy – the gifts, energy, and creativity of a more diverse workforce.
Enhanced productivity also requires top quality business schools and scientific research institutions within a community. It is further facilitated by access to capital made possible by increased local venture capital investing by pension and insurance funds, and Crown Corporations. Retaining only a small portion of this capital and investing it in local development projects would create a tremendous engine for local economic development.
Inclusiveness in the economy is encouraged by a flexible system that allows Canadians to acquire appropriate adaptive skills and knowledge, specialized programs geared to changing workforce demographics, workforce integration for immigrants and aboriginal people moving to urban centres, and the fostering of credential recognition for new Canadians.
In addition, inclusiveness must go beyond the facilitation of wage earning opportunities for marginalized people. Firstly, it must focus on the creation of quality jobs. Quality jobs are important to provide all Canadians with a standard of living that allows them to achieve their goals and flourish. A quality job is one that lifts the spirit – that makes you want to wake up in the morning excited about going to work – and which offers good wages and benefits, career advancement opportunities, empowerment through participation, and financial security through the sharing of created wealth. Research shows that companies that create quality jobs have workers with high levels of job satisfaction and personal commitment, low worker turnover, reduced recruitment and training costs, and – they perform better.
Secondly, it must also move to the inclusion of marginalized people in the process of wealth creation. Economic sustainability requires that income and wealth disparities be reduced. Economies of the industrialized world have been marked in the past generation by dramatic increases in income and wealth gaps between the highest and lowest groups, creating increasing social challenges, particularly associated with poverty. Trend reversal will require more than the facilitation of wage-earning opportunities for marginalized Canadians, such as: the intentional fostering of wealth creation through various forms of asset building, including employee ownership plans, social enterprise development (including worker cooperatives), and matched saving asset building programs. Further, research shows that companies in which employees share in that wealth creation outperform companies where employees do not, therefore, enhancing economic growth while fostering economic sustainability. In short, a concept of economic development for our cities which binds competitiveness with inclusiveness is not simply a strategy for avoiding social challenges, but a strategy which increases productivity, enhances competitiveness, and fosters economic growth, resulting in both increased, and more equitable, wealth creation.
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