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 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.
