10 Simple Ways to Futureproof Our Cities

14/06/2017

barrysays

We are all waking up to the fact that the world we live in is changing very fast. Technology, business and social structures are rapidly evolving to meet new challenges. But cities are slow to respond. They take time to plan, finance and construct. And by the time they are built they are already out of date. In fact, using past metrics to plan future development is appearing to be a redundant model and a very costly one at that. Akin to businesses, we need to adjust the ongoing planning of our cities to an unknown, but very different future, to provide shock absorbers to change and to flexibly align our development thinking to that unknown future. It’s important that a new vision of much better living places than we have at present acts to guide us however and that we understand the urgent need to throw out the business-as-usual planning approaches that have brought us to this rather desperate point.

Conference: World Sustainable Built Environment Conference 2017 Hong Kong
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Image: www.wsbe17hongkong.hk

​I just attended the World Sustainable Built Environment Conference 2017 in Hong Kong. This is a chance for the world’s development experts to gather together at the most influential meeting of its kind, bringing together green building advocates, policy makers, academics and industry practitioners from all over the world to exchange and inform. I have to say that, surprisingly, I came away noting a strong sentiment of bullishness regarding the development sector’s ability to meet the urgent and overwhelming level of change needed to redress the balance of a world in socio-economic and political meltdown.

OUR NEED TO CHANGE 

Image: Ernst & Young

​Lingering silently however, in the background of discussion throughout the conference sessions, was the Donald Trump effect, and his huge decision to pull the United States out of the COP21 Paris Climate Agreement. Not so long ago I would have felt that this was the end of the road in the move towards a hopeful future for my kids, but if anything, it could perhaps mean the opposite.  There was a tangible sense at the Conference that the train of change has already left the station and that even the US president won’t be able to stop it moving to its destination. Not only that, his presidential actions seem to have caused enough alarm worldwide, that leaders, policy makers and business shakers, particularly in the US, realise that as a compensation they need to redouble their efforts to adapt to even more rigorous targets than those set by Paris. Talk was no longer of whether it was going to be possible to meet targets, but rather of what should be new, more challenging ambitions, how to achieve rapid and dramatic changes through paradigm shifts in lifestyle, policy and technology. Business-as-usual approaches appear to be dead. We are entering a period of massive transformation, innovation and integration. 

OUT WITH THE OLD IN WITH THE NEW 

Shaping the Future of Urban Development & Services Initiative, Global Survey on Urban Services (October-December 2015) Image: World Economic Forum

Radical new approaches to city life are urgently necessary to meet the “New Urban Agenda”. Cities and metropolitan areas are fast becoming the major drivers of national economies, and those cities that transform better and faster are going to lead not only those national economies but world economies, benefiting from attracting visionary businesses and hosting a smarter, highly qualified workforce that wants to live and work in the best of quality environments. 

What should cities be doing immediately then, to equip themselves sufficiently for the unknowns resulting from the rapid urban transformations in progress and how should they futureproof today’s investments so that they are relevant for tomorrow? Here are 10 simple, low cost and effective ways to act immediately to shift our cities to the real needs of both today and tomorrow.

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TEN SIMPLE FUTUREPROOFING STRATEGIES

Image: www.financialexpress.com

1. Put Wellness First
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It’s a longstanding fact that healthy, happy populations are more productive and reduce the massive costs of healthcare and social services. We have created dirty, polluted, inefficient cities, built around economics not people. It’s time to prioritise wellness and social prosperity over and above individual and economic factors in reshaping our living places. We need safer streets, cleaner air, and less stress within a fairer society model. A shift in values of what is really important in life must highlight the true worth of long term security, health and wellness above all other matters.

The flooded Wuhan in 2016, an illustration of irrational urban expansion. (image: Reuters)

2. Develop in the Right Place
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Sea levels are rising, storms and flooding are more common than ever, yet in the grab for cheap, developable land, especially for housing, expansion is continuing in high risk – low lying flood areas both coastally and inland. The potential costs of disaster are going to far outweigh the short-term benefits. Cities are starting to undertake disaster risk assessment and it’s essential in shaping more enlightened thinking about where it makes sense to develop. Furthermore, adopting “Low Impact Development” models, which aim to minimise deterioration of environmental quality must become the norm.

Green space left over after infrastructure development . Hung Hom Interchange. Image: Google

3. Tear Up Existing Plans

It’s immediately time to stop implementing development based on the principles of building costly infrastructure frameworks of roads, sewers and drains and then filling in the left-over gaps with zoned development. This is backwards planning. Governments need to take a huge step away and rethink how we really want cities to work, positively planning where things should be and then working out how to best connect them. People need to live, work, study and recreate close together. Separating work from homes creates journeys, and journeys are inefficient and create congestion. Mixed development communities create variety, are vibrant day and night, create identifiable neighbourhoods that bind people and encourage stability. Ensuring affordable housing is included at the heart of cities, is a key aspect of this. The availability of affordable housing in proximity of mass transit and linked to job distribution, has become severely imbalanced in this period of rapid regional urbanization and growing city density. Affordable housing shortages in inner cities might lead to the deprivation of vital workers like police officers, fire-fighters, teachers and nurses, all unable to find affordable accommodation near their place of work. 

The Emerald Necklace Park System Boston (image: mauricio.carvalho)

4. Connect ‘Green and Blue’ Space

Green infrastructure, not road infrastructure, should form the framework of any new development areas. Green space needs to be at the heart of cities, not an afterthought and it all needs to be connected in order to allow flora and fauna to thrive and allow people to move comfortably through it. Cities need green networks without being severed by roads or buildings. Re-planning to link existing green space and waterways with newly created environmental corridors, the bigger the better, should be a starting point in upgrading our cities.

The world's first passenger drone, already operating in Dubai, makes it possible to travel without roads. (image: DroneFlit)

5. Restrict Urban Roads and Adapt Them.
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This is an easy one. The sharing economy is ringing the death knell for the private motor vehicle in cities. The small particles given off by brake and tyre dust are a huge health burden, not to mention those from exhaust fumes. What’s more, there is just no space for so many private vehicles and one thing we can clearly predict is the soon to arrive automated, multi-faceted transport solutions of the close future. Cities will need space for comfortable, safe walking and biking whilst allowing for small electric commercial vehicles on the ground and in the air. Automation will bring efficiencies, safety and a new set of mobility rules. Building new roads in and around cities at this time is just burning money and extending inefficient use of land and money needs to be put into adapting transport infrastructure Stopping new road building, adapting them to new uses and starting to remove them completely will promote more liveable cities and hasten a rethink of how our cities should operate.

Self-informed public urban conveyors in such design as the bubble car are predicted to be the future of transportation. (image: dezeen.com)

6. Remove Parking
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Parking generates car journeys and roads facilitate them. Off-street parking is typically dull urban space, hostile to pedestrians and provided at the expense of other, more productive investments. Where building density is low, parking is land intensive and where density is high, parking is capital intensive, making its cost substantial in either case. Parking tacitly subsidizes automobile ownership since cars are parked most of the time and ownership is easier if a car can be cheaply and reliably stored when it is not being driven. Traffic congestion rightly earns tremendous attention, but parked cars shape daily urban life even more so.

Image: Hexun.com

7. Encourage Aging in Place.
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With an aging population demographic, it’s worrying how young generations are going to be able to manage to support our older family members. It’s a well-researched fact that people worldwide would prefer to stay in their homes as they get older. In the US for instance, 90 percent of adults over the age of 65 report that they would prefer to stay in their current residence as they age. [1] The elderly find change challenging. Governments must work out how to carry out urban regeneration without displacing communities and real estate companies must start to meet the requirements of the aging population and their desires to stay within their communities and close to their families and caregivers. They must be more innovative in the product mix they put into market and increase the flexibility

The metropolis of Shanghai enjoys a skyline dominated by high-rises. (image: reddit)

8. Accept Density
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With more and more people moving to cities there is a danger of them sprawling out of control. Low density city suburban sprawl creates its own problems in that it is very land inefficient, leads to increased infrastructure costs, does not promote efficient transport solutions and can be socially derelict.  As world populations increase, cities must become more compact, with high-density neighbourhoods created able to support social and community vibrancy, high quality yet cheap public transport services and a movement to the use of shared facilities and their upkeep. Tomorrows cities are going to have to be taller, but they can also be greener and also be great living places.

New rainwater management eases the burden on the existing sewage system and rainwater pumping stations, exemplified by Qunli Stormwater Wetland Park, Harbin by Kongjian Yu (image: Asla.org)

9. Celebrate Water

The realisation that water is a valuable resource must sink in fast. City rivers have been sent underground into concrete channels and storm drains, but these can be “daylighted” and re-integrated into urban greening and amenity corridors. Rainwater should be slowed, collected and stored back within the ground, rather than putting pressure on engineered solutions that are rapidly insufficient. Our new cities must become super sponges, developed to avoid flash floods whilst being able to adapt street spaces with pools and rivers for cooling, irrigation, cleaning and just sheer delight! 

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"Passive" housing in Changxing County, Zhejiang province. Compared with traditional buildings, it can save 90% of the energy used in heating and cooling. (image: thepaper.cn)

10. Monitor Standards
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Green building technologies are commonplace, inexpensive and should be standard. Creating and continually raising thresholds for ALL buildings, neighbourhood developments and interior decoration to meet ever greener standards should be a basic requirement. Monitoring of building performance and urban public space in terms of heat gain, energy and water use, air quality, use and health are essentially needed to be introduced in order to learn how to continue to create better urban places to live.   

Barry Wilson is a Landscape Architect, urbanist and university lecturer. His practice, Barry Wilson Project Initiatives, has been tackling urbanisation issues in Hong Kong and China for over 20 years. (www.initiatives.com.hk). ​

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2017/04/11
Share And Share Alike

2017/03/08
A Bridge Too Far?

2016/12/07
No Stopping Rapid Change

​2016/10/27
Wars of the Road

Reference:
[1] Beyond 50.05: A Report to the Nation on Livable Communities: Creating Environments for Successful Aging. ARRP

What is the New Urban Agenda?

​It is an outcome document agreed upon from the Habitat III cities conference in Quito, Ecuador, in October 2016. It is intended to guide the urbanisation efforts of nations, cities and regional leaders, as well as international development funders, United Nations programmes and civil society.

​Why is the New Urban Agenda Important?
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Its intention is to strongly guide how our world changes over the next 20 years.  Inevitably, it will also lay the groundwork for policies and approaches that will extend, and impact, far into the future. 

What does the New Urban Agenda cover?
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It seeks to create a mutually reinforcing relationship between urbanisation and development, whereby they work in tandem towards more sustainable development.

​It offers guidelines on a range of “enablers” that can further cement the relationship between urbanization and sustainable development. When implemented, they result in better outcomes for patterns of land use, how a city is formed and how resources are managed. 
The three key operational enablers are referred to as the “three-legged” approach: 

• local fiscal systems, 
• urban planning, and 
• basic services and infrastructure.

What priorities guide the New Urban Agenda?

​The world majority has now become urbanised, lending extra urgency to the New Urban Agenda. Core issues of adequate housing and sustainable human settlement are the focus as the number of people worldwide living in urban slums continues to grow. 
There is also an increasing recognition that cities have morphed into mega-regions, urban corridors and city-regions whose economic, social and political geographies defy traditional conceptions of the “city” and have become the major drivers of national economies.

What are the key factors of the New Urban
Agenda?
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• the relationship between the environment and urbanisation;
• risk reduction;
• urban resilience; 
• ensuring the safety and security of all urban residents, 
• equity in the face of globalization; 
• democratic development; 
• respect for human rights; ​

Key importance on figuring out how to set up a global monitoring mechanism to track all of these issues and concerns.