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
