{"id":17167,"date":"2013-10-04T21:23:00","date_gmt":"2013-10-04T21:23:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/leedpoints.com\/?guid=5725bd698c0eabc1a878ea3548bd23fb"},"modified":"2013-10-04T21:23:00","modified_gmt":"2013-10-04T21:23:00","slug":"report-future-proofing-cities","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/leedpoints.com\/green-building-blog\/report-future-proofing-cities\/","title":{"rendered":"Report: ‘Future Proofing Cities’"},"content":{"rendered":null,"protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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One of the defining challenges of our time is how to reconcile the need for rapid growth and poverty alleviation in many parts of the world with the need to avoid irreversible and costly environmental damage. This is a challenge that will be played out in the world’s cities. <\/p>\n

More than half of the world’s population already live in cities and this is expected to reach 75 per cent by 2050. Cities occupy a mere 2 percent of the earth’s land, yet account for 60 to 80 percent of energy consumption and 75 percent of carbon emissions. Natural hazards such as flooding and drought, temperature extremes, and tropical cyclone activity already impact cities and these will be exacerbated by climate change. Flooding recently cost Bangkok’s economy US$39 billion and 5 million people there could be at risk of flooding by 2070. <\/p>\n

The growth of cities puts additional pressure on resources and environmental assets such as forests, water, and air that support the needs of their inhabitants. People living in cities are particularly at risk from changes in the price of and disruption in the flow of resources such as energy, water, and food. Around 44 million people – many located in urban areas – were pushed into poverty by food price increases in 2010, and risks to food security are likely to intensify with population pressures, water scarcity, and climate change. <\/p>\n

Given that 95 percent of this urban expansion is projected to take place in the developing world, it is cities in developing countries which will be at the front line of managing this challenge. Over the next 20 years, the urban populations of South Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa are expected to double to over 3.5 billion people. <\/p>\n

Cities in the developing world are particularly vulnerable to environmental risks. Our estimates suggest that just in India alone, nearly 70 million people still live in multi-dimensional poverty within the 59 cities with populations in excess of 750,000. This leaves a significant number of people highly vulnerable to the stresses and shocks associated with climate hazards, resource scarcities, and degradation of ecosystems such as forests. These risks will ultimately damage the future economic growth potential of cities and impact on their ability to reduce urban poverty. <\/p>\n

Future proofing is about utilising and developing the capabilities of cities to respond to the risks associated with climate change, resource scarcities, and damage to ecosystems in a way that catalyses inclusive urban development.<\/p>\n

The central message of this report is that the earlier cities in developing countries take steps to future proof their urban development, the better. There is an important – but closing – window of opportunity for many cities to act now before they are locked into unsustainable and unsuitable development pathways. <\/p>\n

Moreover, a strategy based on “grow first, tackle environmental risks later” is unlikely to be effective given the risks to economic growth and the urban poor from depletion of natural resources, climate change, and global population pressures. We are already witnessing the brake that environmental constraints are having on growth with environmental degradation costing countries as diverse as Pakistan, Nigeria, and Ghana up to 10 percent of their GDP, and the costs of congestion alone in cities such as Dakar (Senegal) already in excess of three per cent of GDP. <\/p>\n

The good news is that city level policies developed to respond to environmental risks can generate wider economic and social benefits as well as environmental ones. Many cities have a degree of autonomy which allows city policymakers to act more nimbly than national policymakers in delivering integrated responses to environmental risks. They can also work closely with regional and national policymakers to create the right policy frameworks for action. <\/p>\n

Cities in developing countries are also in a unique position to act to future proof their development. Cities are natural magnets for driving the sort of innovations required to respond to environmental challenges derived from a concentration of people and economic activity which generates a fertile environment for new ideas, technologies, and processes.<\/p>\n

Atkins<\/a> and UCL’s Development Planning Unit<\/a> in partnership with the UK’s Department for International Development<\/a> (DFID), have built on our collective work on urban areas and the environment to explore how cities in the developing world might better assess – in a holistic way – the environmental risks relevant to them and the combinations of policies likely to be most effective in promoting inclusive urban development. <\/p>\n

This report outlines a five stage future proofing approach to help cities develop programmes of investment which meet their multiple objectives and utilise and build on the institutional capacities they have available.<\/p>\n

The foundation for the work has been an integrated assessment of the risks, vulnerabilities, and capacities of 129 cities across 20 countries spanning Asia and Africa, and the development of five urban typologies to group these cities based on the most significant environmental risks they face. This covers cities from across DFID’s extensive country footprint with: (i) populations in excess of 750,000 people to allow for collection of available population data from relevant international agencies; and (ii) availability of other comparable data. <\/p>\n

This work is intended as a pilot, but to our knowledge it is the first time that typologies have been developed for a significant sample of cities in developing countries, while adopting a holistic approach. These typologies are used to help point the way towards the universe of policy solutions likely to be applicable to different types of cities. <\/p>\n

The work was developed to begin to address a number of gaps in our knowledge which are making it more difficult for cities in the developing world to act on the environmental risks relevant to them and to target finance at the interventions likely to have the greatest impact. In particular, there are few integrated assessments of the environmental risks and solutions relevant to cities (especially in the world’s poorest countries). The majority of studies focus on measures to address one or two risks such as carbon emissions or flood risks, and provide insufficient attention to issues such as potential resource scarcities in energy, water, and food, and the need to safeguard natural habitats and biodiversity. The overwhelming focus tends to be on risks rather than giving equal attention to identifying opportunities and solutions. <\/p>\n

Most policy guidance is also inadequately tailored to the specific challenges facing cities with different characteristics. The guidance that exists typically provides policies to, for example, green a city, without considering their relevance to different cities based on the risks they face and their vulnerability and capacity to respond to risks. Additional attention is also needed to identify which solutions can generate social and economic benefits, alongside environmental ones; this is crucial if cities are to build support among communities and city stakeholders for sustained programmes of action. <\/p>\n

A list of over 100 policy options for future proofing are therefore presented. This identifies which policies are likely to be most relevant to different city types. It also identifies how these policies might be integrated, the extent to which they deliver wider social and economic benefits, and how challenging they are to implement given their governance, planning, finance, and delivery requirements. The analysis shows there are a significant number of policies which can balance environmental, social, and economic objectives and can be implemented by most cities. These policies can form the heart of any urban development strategy. <\/p>\n

As part of this process, Atkins developed an urban risk database. This allows us to better understand the multiple and interconnected risks facing cities from climate hazards, resource scarcities, and damage to ecosystems. This is combined with metrics capturing the vulnerability of cities to risks and their capacity to respond to risks. It also provides an overview of urban scale and dynamics in terms of city size and ecological impacts, climate and physical geography, and urban form.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[12175,8609,12176,12177,3294,12178,12179,2941],"class_list":["post-17167","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-green-building-posts","tag-climate-apaptation","tag-climate-resiliency","tag-future-proofing-cities","tag-international-sustainable-development","tag-sustainable-buildings","tag-sustainable-urban-development","tag-urban-growth","tag-white-papers"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/leedpoints.com\/green-building-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17167","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/leedpoints.com\/green-building-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/leedpoints.com\/green-building-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/leedpoints.com\/green-building-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/leedpoints.com\/green-building-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17167"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/leedpoints.com\/green-building-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17167\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/leedpoints.com\/green-building-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17167"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/leedpoints.com\/green-building-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17167"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/leedpoints.com\/green-building-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17167"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}