The sustainable mind-set

This was also a contribution on www.commentvisions.com

Today, nearly 80 percent of carbon dioxide emissions – the main cause of global warming – emanate from cities, and the number is expected to grow as the world’s population over the next few decades moves towards the 9 billion mark and congregates increasingly in urban centers. To change this potentially disastrous course policymakers and business leaders are key movers, but it is also vital that architects, engineers, planners and others involved in creating and changing cities have to step up to the challenge and ‘walk the talk’. It is crucial to shift focus from environmental sustainability being about problems and sacrificing things, to sustainability being about creating better places to live – a ‘bright green’ mindset, as Alex Steffen from WorldChanging has named it. This mindset should be the key driver for progress, and one could say that it is already happening. 

Because, just as the climate change problem was not created in one day, it cannot be fixed overnight. Mindsets and strategies, however, have the potential to change fast. When we think of sustainable cities, we need to go full circle because the complexity of the challenges as well as the solutions needed is so vast. We must factor in the environment and resources – as well as social diversity and economy. All aspects of sustainability are needed to create unified solutions. Decision-makers, business-leaders, planners in the cities that in the most promising way are working for a sustainable vision, do not just view green initiatives through an environmental or even economic lens – they are fundamentally concerned with creating livable, functional communities that meet the needs of their inhabitants. On http://www.sustainablecities.dk we have collected more than 140 best-practice cases on sustainable urban development initiatives from around the world. What we clearly see is that the most successful cities are those that combine efforts to reduce carbon emissions in the future with a focus on improving livability for their citizens today. Indeed, there is no sustainability without livability; the two are inextricably linked. The point is to get these things combined, to use he one for the other. If we look at some of today’s best examples of sustainable urban planning, we see this combined commitment to livability, sustainability, and patient planning at play. 

In the future, the most successful cities will be those that combine efforts to reduce carbon emissions in the future with a focus on improving livability for their citizens today. And it will be the cities that take a long-term view in formulating plans and policies, and work to make them relevant to their own particular situations. They are able so create support for a commitment to reshaping a common urban future and to explore the opportunities that will arise.

Clearly, the typical European city (if it exists?) cannot turn sustainable over-night, not even in a few years or in a decade. Still, European cities in general have the advantage compared to say U.S. cities, that they were largely planned before car ownership became the norm. In contrast, U.S. cities experienced their great expansion during the 1950s when urban planners designed cities in which individuals would largely own and drive their own automobiles. As a result, transport emissions per capita are almost three times as high in the U.S. as in most European countries, such as Germany, the United Kingdom and France. But no matter their size, population, history or geography, the dynamic ecosystems we call cities will require detailed action plans to meet their goals; planning is by far the best way to have an impact. Long-term low-carbon emission plans are required. Clearly, new technologies and innovations are required (a ‘bright green strategy’), but technological fixes cannot bear the burden alone; it has to be combined with changing behaviour, and perhaps most importantly, changing mind-sets.