What is needed to achieve sustainable cities?
As said by the World Bank (WB 2006) and highlighted in the WUF´s 6 background document: "by placing equity and fairness as central elements of an efficient development strategy, developing countries will be better able to reach sustainable growth and development trajectories”. With this statement, developing cities are facing a new way of developing and should be focus on placing equity as one of their main goals, is not just to build roads and highways so that cars can, in theroy, move faster, but the city has to think on behalf of the people mainly through investment in green spaces for the enjoyment of inhabitants and visitors as well as dignifying and making more sustainable the mobility and public transport. So, equity and investment on public spaces are goala to achieve sustainable cities, what else is needed? Picture: people enjoying public space in Medellin, Colombia
Arq. Ramiro Campana, 4 July 2012Yo vivo en Quito, Ecuador, una ciudad muy bonita, necesitamos más infraestructura para bicicletas. A pesar de la topografía complicada es una ciudad que en algunos sectores puede ofrecer una solución más ecológica a la movilización.
Carlos A Moreno from Colombia, 5 July 2012You are right Ramiro, there is need for more bicycle infrastructure in our cities. Bogota has around 340 km but unfortunately the last two mayors did not invest too much on preserving and/or constructing more bike paths. Hopefully the new mayor (since January) will put cycling on the agenda, we´ll see what happens. I think that topography and weather is not an excuse for not cycling, we can see Denmark with hard winters people still cycle. Today there is an urgent need to promote in our cities sustainable transport means such as cycling and walking.
Paulo Emilio de Oliveira Silva, 7 July 2012Carlos and Ramiro I live in Sao Paulo, Brazil. The first impression when you arrive is: a forest of buildings and streets. When you are living in Sao Paulo for some time you'll see that trees are missing, rivers are polluted, thousands of cars and buses on streets and roads. Solving these problems means taking care of the city. People should learn who to take care of it. Government should invest in public transport with quality like subways, buses, trains. Also invest in cycling. and walking.
Carlos A Moreno from Colombia, 9 July 2012Hi Paulo. I´ve never been to Sao Paulo but as you describe it, and also heard, is a city with no green areas (except one or two big parks?). I can also imagine the traffic in that enormous city. I totally agree with you, there is need for not only governors to take care of the city investing in public transport and in promoting non motorized transport. Als citizens should appropriate of their city and try to use these alternatives trasnport means.
Tak Fu Lam, 10 July 2012Government should have a right strategy and determination. Nowadays, most of the government put the economic development as first place and use the GPD as the indicator. However, the way to drive the GPD growth is to consume more which means to deplete more limited resources and create more pollution. So what a government needs to do is to adjust its strategy that focus less on economic development but put the attention on environment and society. A very good example is the kingdom of Bhutan where is the happiest country in the Asia. Their government emphasize on the quality of life instead of standard of living. The government aims at developing a fair society with nature environment while the economy can fulfill the basic need of the citizens.
Carlos A Moreno from Colombia, 10 July 2012You are right Tak Fu, the way governments measure GDP is mainly on the consume. So the more a country consumes, the best for the GDP. But it is time to change this mentality and start thinking on behalf of the citizens. As presented in the background document of the WUF 6, the quality of life is seen not as the GDP of the citizens but in a critical dimension, as “the provision and management of high quality public spaces. It will analyze the benefits associated to public spaces in promoting more sustainable development”.
Anna Leidreiter from Germany, 12 July 2012Thanks for this important question Carlos. I believe that mobility, creation of urban space, energy and resource efficient redevelopment are only part of the story of creating truly sustainable cities. Because so much damage has been done to our ecosystems espescially in cities we need to move towards builing regenerative cities. Above all else we need to address the relationship between cities and the ecosystems beyond their boundaries on which they will continue to depend even if major redevelopment initiatives are taken within cities. This brings us back to the ecological footprint concept.
The regenerative development of cities is a comprehensive approach that goes beyond established concepts of sustainable development. Cities need to proactively contribute to the replenishment of the run-down ecosystems – including farm soils, forests and marine ecosystems – from which they draw resources for their survival. And while cities continue to burn fossil fuels, they also need to find ways of assuring that their carbon dioxide emissions are reabsorbed through ‘bio-sequestration’ in soils and forests.
I believe that this is the only way to achieve sustainable cities.