One city today. Every city in 2030.

This is my submission for Masdar's 2015 Engage Blogging Contest, find out more about it and see all the entries here: www.masdar.ae/adsw/engage


My ideal city in 2030 is my city today, with the benefit of 15 more years of accelerating the sustainability progress that is taking root right now. This effort is still fragile, and will require nurturing and determined public will to ensure that is continues.

My city is, and always will be, a work in progress.

My city is hundreds of years old, yet there are vast areas where the buildings are brand new or development is planned. Revised building codes have ensured that my city’s new infrastructure will be much more efficient than what came before, as we move towards net-zero impacts from the high profile newly built environment.

My city is home to notable bastions of privilege as well as wide tracts visited by misfortune, with many common areas full of legendary beauty but others which are neglected and desolate. Environmental justice will move forward here in step with social justice, as we are likely to learn via a shared pain coming to this low-lying city from climate change that a city that does not work for everyone will not work well for anyone.

My city’s century-long effort at accommodating private vehicles along streets designed for a bygone era has led to legendary traffic problems. Deploying large fleets of autonomous vehicles when ready offers a glimmer of hope of reclaiming more of my city’s useful space for the people that live and work here. By 2030 we will have reached that tipping point, and will have started reclaiming the land now used for parking garages and service stations for more useful purposes such as community gardens and higher density urban amenities of all sorts.

In recent years my city has made significant progress in cleaning up its polluted waterways, in alleviating its fresh food deserts, and in improving the infrastructure for bikers, walkers and users of mass transit. These improvements often did not happen gradually, but at times accelerated greatly once a tipping point was reached. More tipping points will come in the next 15 years as residents start to see significant progress via more healthier affordable housing, walkable neighborhoods, renewable energy retrofits and other improvements, then they will demand more of the same.

My city’s publicly stated goal is to by 2030 (roughly) be the healthiest, greenest and most livable city in its nation. The criteria by which that will be measured are necessarily bold and varied: reduce energy use and greenhouse gas emissions by 50%, increase use of renewable energy by 50%, increase area of wetlands by 50%, reduce commuter trips by car to just 25% of such trips, have 75% of residents within a quarter mile of local healthy food, send zero solid waste to landfills, have 75% of landscape capturing rainwater, and many more.

All of this improvement will have to happen while the population increases by an expected 40% over this time. Meeting those goals will be hard, and progress may be sporadic and come at varying speeds, but the small successes will build on each other as we create a community that works better for all.

At its core what my city has today and what will matter most in 2030 is the vibrant determination of its people to make sure our city changes and renews itself in concert with the evolving needs of its inhabitants.

My ideal city in 2030 is a specific place, yet it could be any place, and in some ways it will have to be every place. It is mine, it is yours, the future here and of your own metropolis remains to be written. Let us create a better city in by then here, there and everywhere.

A Call to Cityzenship

In conjunction with the upcoming Abu Dhabi sustainability week, Masdar is conducting a blogging contest concerning cities and sustainability, learn more about it at www.masdar.ae/engage. With some reflection about the bigger picture of civic engagement that will be necessary to foster true change, here is my entry addressing the following question:

"How can cities contribute to the advancement of sustainable development and address issues including water, energy and waste?"

A new social contract is needed – let’s call it “cityzenship” – because no city can develop sustainably without the active participation of its inhabitants.

No man or woman is an island, and that holds true for the collections of people that have gathered together into cities for several millennia. In the past it had been easy to think our cities as entities unto themselves, vibrant ecosystems that had the power to leave the problems of the outside world outside their city walls, border or moat, so long as the people inside had their basic needs met.

That thinking is long outmoded as cities have become the living destination of choice for over half of the globe’s inhabitants. We now understand that every city, and every person in that city and beyond, is part of a bigger interconnected system that spans the entire planet. Issues of availability of water and energy and the elimination of waste are global problems that can best be administered locally, but understanding that deeper connection from city to city and person to person is crucial to allowing that to happen in a sustainable manner. To that end city dwelling must not only come with benefits and rights but responsibilities as well – explicitly spelled out responsibilities of “cityzenship” – that move beyond the current mode of disincentives for bad behavior that local governments currently employ.

Why do people choose to live in cities? Because the congregation of people and services there fill their individual needs better than anywhere else. Whether consciously or not, every individual makes a choice to stay or go in their city every single day, while the city remains; building and maintaining the infrastructure that makes it possible to meet those personal needs and make those choices possible.

Cities – via their leaders with the agreement of current inhabitants – should determine the core principles concerning sustainability that it will expect its residents and visitors to live by. These responsibilities need not be burdensome, but thoughtfully coherent and purposeful.

Cities and nations already make such demands of their people but in an inefficient, piecemeal and implicit manner, such as laws concerning maximum shower flow rates here, waste collection surcharges there, electricity billed as a constant rate that comes from who knows where, et cetera. There is little coordination that makes a “cityzen” feels as if their individual actions are part of a bigger whole, and cities can facilitate the change toward that.

Each city will define their priorities differently, but they must ask more of their cityzens, while helping them understand their actions can contribute to a greater local and planetary good. Taxes and surcharges can curb undesirable behavior of course, but let’s go the extra step too and make the positive impacts of living in concert with a city’s sustainability principles local and explicit.

Let’s tie meeting conservation or waste reduction targets to speeding up the provision of expanded community services. Construction of a new park or community center would be accelerated if certain targets were met ahead of schedule. How about rolling out free wireless internet access faster or more thoroughly if landfill diversion percentages go up faster than expected? The possibilities are numerous and can provide a visible link between individual sustainability behaviors and the responsive city that encourages them.

People choose to be in cities – to become cityzens - because they want to be part of something that is much bigger than them. Cities can more visibly and creatively let them know that is true when it comes to sustainability.

Pete Langlois

3 January 2014