MAKING CITIES WORKSUSTAINABLE GROWTH AND SUSTAINABLE CLIMATE

Photo Source- Johannesburg, Ritwajit Das, EVI

CONTRIBUTORS

RITWAJIT DAS - Sustainability Specialist, Erasmus Fellow Institute for Housing and Urban Development Studies (IHS), Erasmus University, Rotterdam and MBA (Environmental Management), IIFM Bhopal.

MAKING CITIES WORK- SUSTAINABLE GROWTH AND SUSTAINABLE CLIMATE

POLICY INSIGHT

Photo Source- Hong Kong, Ritwajit Das, EVI

GROWING CITIESParallax Error Initiative works with the governments, international de-velopment organizations and industries in public & private sector to deliver consultancy services across the spectrum of sustainable de-velopment issues such as climate change, sustainable urban devel-opment, renewable energy, energy efficiency and natural resource management.

Parallax Error Initiative has comprehensive understanding and in-sight on sustainability and functioning of cities as growth engines for development. Parallax Error Initiave has successfully demonstrated solution based models for complex, multi-facets and highly inter-

linked low carbon strategies having medium to long-term multiplier spin-offs.

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Photo Source- Ulan Bator, Ritwajit Das, EVI

PARALLAX ERROR INITIATIVE AND INTEGRATED SUSTAINABLE URBANIZATION- POLICY INNOVATION, DELIVERING EXCELLENCE AND ENVISIONING FUTURE

Making Cities Work Sustainable Growth and Sustainable Climate Cities are crucial and engine drivers for economic escalation and climate interven-tions. Urban and built areas are home to 65% of the world’s population, but contrib-ute around 85% of global economic output (1) and around 77% of global energy use and energy-related GHG emissions (2). In next 20 years, nearly all of the world’s net population growth is expected to occur in urban areas, with about 1.8 million people – close to the population of Stockholm – added each week (3). By 2050, the urban population is expected to reach gigantic figure of 2.5 billion, reaching two-thirds of the global population.

The motivation and wager for growth, qual-ity of life and carbon emissions could not be higher considering the present context. The collective urban infrastructure and its extended built-up structures we build now, including urban land infrastructures, ports, industries, transport systems, roads and buildings, will last for more than 100 years

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Photo Source- Hong Kong, Ritwajit Das, EVI

GROWING CITIES

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How we build, rebuild, maintain and enhance the world’s growing cities will be extraordinarily critical.

or more, fixing the trajectory for GHGs emissions at a critical time for reining these Given the long –tailed and long-lived nature of urban infrastructure, the way in which we visualize ideas on ur-ban development and the idiosyncrasies on how we build, re-build, maintain and enhance the world’s growing cities will be ex-traordinarily critical. It will not only determine the economic per-formance of our cities it will also affect the quality of life for urban citizens; it may also define the trajectory of global GHG emis-sions for much of the rest of the century. We need a way out how we are visualizing our cities from now on and how we must build them because the spin-offs associated with it can alter economic and climate attributes in a unidirectional way. Our cities’ ever in-creasing contribution to both economic growth and climate change, needs to be changed in a sustainable way and this change must be inculcated into policy visualization, formulation and implementation from now on, and an alternative pathway, as well as the economic and socio-political drivers required to sup-port it must be identified and scaled up.

The next big anticipated city development attributes and its exten-sion must be all inclusive and holistic. The policy makers and think tanks both at international and national level must segregate the cities into the basis of financial, demography and service types (social, political, cultural and economy).

5Photo Source- Paris, Ritwajit Das, EVI

Specific Cities - Specific Scenarios.

We focus in particular on three catego-ries of cities:

Growing cities or Emerging Cities are 285+ speedily growing middle income, mid-sized cities in China, India and other developing and emerging economies, with populations of 1–10 million, and per capita incomes of US$1,500–22,000.

Cosmopolitan Cities or Global Megaci-ties are 30+ major knowledge-, service and trade-based urban focal points and hubs with populations above 10 million and per capita incomes over US$2,000, including capital cities such as London, Beijing and Tokyo.

Established Cities or Mature Cities are 140+ prosperous, time-honoured, tradi-tional, mid-sized cities in advanced or developed countries, with per capita in-comes above US$20,000, such as Rotter-dam, Stuttgart, Stockholm and Hi-roshima.

On current trends (4), these cities com-bined will account for 60% of global GDP growth between 2014 to 2030.They will cumulatively contribute 50% of world en-ergy intensity and GHGs emission. Around 290+ emerging cities, with popu-lations between 1 million and 10 million, will account for over half of world’s eco-nomic growth and emission disburse-ment.

6Photo Source- Rotterdam, Ritwajit Das, EVI

GROWING CITIESCOSMOPOLITAN CITIES

ESTABLISHED CITIES

The question for city based authorities like (Urban Development Authorities like Mayors, Commissioners etc.), as well as for policy-makers in economics, finance, urban planning and environmental ministries, is how to plan urban development in points of parity with sustainability multipliers which will improve economic perform-ance and quality of life while reducing GHGs emissions.

An unprecedented share of urban growth in major parts of the world in-volves unplanned, unstructured urban expansion, with low densities and high rates of car use especially in developing and emerging economies. If contempo-rary development pattern and tendency were to continue, the global area of ur-banized land could triple from 2000 to 2030 (5) the equivalent to adding an area greater than the size of Manhattan every day. At the same time, the number of cars could double, from 1 billion today to 2 billion (6).

This rambling mould of expansion has huge implications and costs. It will dou-ble land used per housing unit, enhance

the costs of providing utilities and public services by 15–35% or more, and in-crease motor/vehicle travel and associ-ated costs by 20– 50% (7). In rapidly-growing low- and middle-income coun-tries, incoherent patterns can actually en-hance co-costs to four to five times, be-cause they often have to import construc-tion equipment. This rambling mould and incoherent patterns will results in supe-rior congestion, accident and air pollu-tion costs; locks in inefficiently high lev-els of energy consumption, and makes it harder to implement more efficient mod-els of waste management and district heating.

7Photo Source- Amersfort, Ritwajit Das, EVI

New modeling according from the New Economy Climate - Global Green Growth Institute sug-gested that the incremental external costs of rambling mould and in-coherent patterns of urban development in the United States are about $400 billion per year, due to increased costs of providing pub-lic services, higher capital requirements for infrastructure, lower over-all resource productivity, and accident and pollution damages (8).

Costs can frantically escalate in rapidly urbanizing countries where resources are limited compared to population growth. In China, ur-ban rambling mould and incoherent patterns has condensed produc-

tivity gains from agglomeration and specialization, and led to series of multipliers with much higher levels of capital spending more than requirement to sustain growth (9).

In 261 Chinese cities, the labour productivity would rise by 8.8% if employment density gets doubled (10). Some recent analysis re-viewed by bilateral agencies have some interesting analogies, cities around the world have noteworthy and significant opportunities in the coming 5–10 years to boost resource productivity and reduce GHGs emissions through economically attractive investments in the buildings, transport and waste sectors.

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However, without broader strate-gic and extensive structural shifts in the area of urban design and transport systems, the benefits as-sociated with those measures would quickly be engulfed by the negative aftermath of rapid eco-nomic and population expansion under business-as-usual patterns.

Photo Source- Cape Town, Ritwajit Das, EVI

In fast-growing Emerging Cities in particular, the substantiation suggests energy savings and emission reductions could be erased within seven years or less (11). Thus, to unlock a new cas-cade of sustained, long-term urban productivity improvements, we need a strategic systemic shift to energy and emissions vary widely between cities with similar income levels, depending on past infrastructure and planning decisions with direct linkages in compactness, connectedness and over all coordinated develop-ment. Barcelona is one of the city which is definitely tinkering with right ideas and correct sets of attributes right now. Cities that meet these criteria are more pragmatically productive, socially all- inclusive, resilient, cleaner, quieter and safer. They also have lower GHGs emissions – a good instance of the benefits of pursu-ing economic growth and climate change mitigation together.

9Photo Source- New Delhi, Ritwajit Das, EVI

LONG TERM URBAN PRODUCTIVITY

WHAT COULD BE A BETTER MODEL FOR URBAN DEVELOPMENT

Photo Source- Cape Town, Ritwajit Das, EVI

The substitute for disrupted entropy, unstructured, unplanned and urban expansion is a more competent urban development model, based on comprehensively managed growth which en-courages advance spatial densities, mixed and match-use of neighborhoods, walk able and pedestrian friendly local environ-ments, and – in Global Megacities and Mature Cities – the re-vitalization and re-development of urban centres injecting them with sustainability factors and brownfield sites, complemented by green spaces. This model has strong penchant for high-quality (technology, style and socio-cultural attributes) public transport systems to make the most of positively responsive compact ur-ban forms and to reduce car dependence and congestion. This model will enhance the heighten resource efficiency through “smarter” - “ITC related utilities” and buildings. It has the extraor-dinary scope and huge potential to reduce urban infrastructure capital requirements by more than USD 3 trillion over the next 15 years (12). Fast-growing Emerging Cities and small urban areas can strategically shift themselves for such an opportunity to adopt this model from the outset, learning from others’ experi-ence. Strategic shifting towards this alternative model will release and open avenues for untapped significant medium- to long-term economic, social benefits and their associated spinoffs. It will en-courage infrastructure productivity through the agglomeration ef-fects of greater well structured density, improve air quality, and deliver substantial cost savings in the transport sector. Estimates 11

Photo Source- Ulan Bator, Ritwajit Das, EVI

for the United States suggest that transit-oriented urban develop-ment could reduce per capita car use by 50%, reducing household expenditures by 20% (13).

At significantly lower fuel prices, rambling mould and incoherent pat-tern of urbanization of Houston city makes it spend around 14% of its GDP on transport compared with 4% in Copenhagen and about 7% in many Western European cities. (Notably, Houston is now mak-ing ambitious efforts to overcome the legacy of rambling mould and incoherent pattern of urbanization failure through innovative urban renewal and persistent investment in public transport systems.) (14) Adopting a compact, transit-oriented model in the world’s largest 724 cities have the promising potential to reduce GHGs emissions by up to 1.5 billion tonnes CO2e per year by 2030, mostly by reduc-ing personal vehicle use in favour of more efficient transport modes. While achieving such savings would require high – quality transfor-mative change, it would lay the foundation for even greater, sus-tained resource savings and emission bike-sharing schemes at the end of 2013, up from five in 2000 (15).

From Copenhagen, to Hong Kong, to Portland, Oregon, in the US, cities are also showing how they can build prosperity, improve air quality, reduce GHGs emissions all at once through more compact, connected and coordinated urban growth models. Stockholm re-duced emissions by 35% from 1993 to 2010 while growing its econ-omy by 41%, one of the highest growth rates in Europe (16). Curitiba is one of the most affluent cities in Brazil, but has 25% lower per cap-ita GHG emissions and 30% lower fuel consumption than the na-tional average due to its groundbreaking approach to integrated land use and transport planning (17). In fact, such a shift is already happening. Re-densification is taking place in cities as diverse as

London, Brussels, Tokyo, Hamburg, Nagoya and Beijing. More than 160 cities have implemented bus rapid transit (BRT) systems, which can carry large numbers of passengers per day at less than 15% of the cost of a metro (18). The BRT in Bogotá, Colombia, for example, carries up to 2.1 million passengers per day, complemented by a citywide network of bicycle paths that connect residents to public transport, community spaces and parks (19).

China will have 3,000km of urban rail networks by 2015 (20) Nearly 700 cities had bike-sharing schemes at the end of 2013, up from five in 2000 (21).

From Cape town, to Jo’Burg, to Rotterdam, Amsterdam, in the Neth-erlands, cities are also showing how they can transform quality of ur-ban life and simultaneously taken as an inherent example to study better growth and better climate with out compromising the growth factor associated with the cities. Stockholm reduced emissions by 35% from 1993 to 2010 while growing its economy by 41%, one of the highest growth rates in Europe.20 Curitiba is one of the most af-fluent cities in Brazil, but has 25% lower per capita GHG emissions and 30% lower fuel consumption than the national average due to its groundbreaking approach to integrated land use and transport plan-ning.

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A STRATEGIC APPROACH TO MANAGING URBAN GROWTH AT NATIONAL LEVEL

Photo Source- Hong Kong, Ritwajit Das,

It is indeed the need of the hour, for all countries to develop national urbanization strategies in conjunction with city governments, with cross-departmental representation and assigned budgets, overseen by the centre of government and/or Ministry of Finance. They should also pro-vide greater fiscal autonomy for cities, potentially linked to economic, social and environmental performance benchmarks, and consider set-ting up a special-purpose financing vehicle at the national level to sup-port cities’ efforts to become more compact, connected and coordi-nated, with appropriate private-sector participation. Existing infrastruc-ture funding should be redirected to support this transition.

Countries need to prioritize better sustainably-managed urban de-velopment and increased urban productivity as key drivers of growth and climate goals. This is especially the case for coun-tries with rapidly urbanizing populations, as the existing institu-tional arrangements where urban development occurs as an after math for other developmental programmes.

Here, we need an evolved sense of team spirit across different laterals of government and urban development authorities. There is an acute need for coordination and cooperation between na-tional and regional governments and city leaders is essential. Sev-eral countries are already making major policy changes to pro-mote more compact, mixed-use land development, restrict urban incoherence, maximize resource efficiency, and curtail the nega-tive externalities of pollution, congestion and CO2 emissions.A benchmark and high-profile example is China’s New National Ur-banization Plan, which places urban policy at the heart of Chi-nese decision-making (22).

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Photo Source- Hong Kong, Ritwajit Das, EVI

STRONGER POLICIES AND INSTITUTIONS TO DRIVE COMPACT, CONNECTED AND COORDINATED URBAN DEVELOPMENT

Photo Source- Hong Kong, Ritwajit Das, EVI

Building better, more productive cities is a long-term journey. It requires persistence in several key areas to shift away from business-as-usual urban expansion, with countries, regions and cit-ies working together. As a first step, cities should seize some of the numerous opportuni-ties available to boost resource productivity in the short- to medium term, in sectors as diverse as buildings, transport and waste management. The evidence suggests that these smaller steps

could build momentum for broader, longer-term reform, especially in capacity constrained cities. To drive the broader structural transformation of cities, governments should prioritise strengthen-ing strategic planning at the city, regional and national levels, with a focus on improved land use and integrated multi-modal transport infra-structure. Only about 20% of the world’s 150 largest cities have even the basic analytics needed for low-carbon planning.These efforts

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Photo Source- Colombo, Ritwajit Das, EVI

should be supported by regulatory reform to pro-mote higher-density, mixed use, infill develop-ment, and new measures such as efficient park-ing practices. It is also crucial to change trans-port incentives. We strongly feels that govern-ments reform fuel subsidies and introduce new pricing mechanisms such as road user charges to reduce and eventually eliminate incentives to fossil-fueled vehicle use.They should also con-sider charges on land conversion and dis-

persed development, and measures that place a higher price on land than on buildings such as land taxes and development taxes. These re-forms can raise revenue to invest in public trans-port and transit-oriented development.

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Photo Source- Colombo, Ritwajit Das, EVI

IN ADDITION, THERE IS A NEED FOR NEW MECHANISMS TO FINANCE UPFRONT INVESTMENTS IN SMARTER URBAN INFRASTRUCTURE AND TECHNOLOGY, SUCH AS GREATER USE OF LAND VALUE CAPTURE, MUNICIPAL BOND FINANCING, AND INVESTMENT PLATFORMS TO PREPARE AND PACKAGE INVESTMENTS TO ATTRACT PRIVATE SECTOR CAPITAL. THIS SHOULD BE COMPLEMENTED BY MORE EFFECTIVE AND ACCOUNTABLE CITY-LEVEL INSTITUTIONS.

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STIMULATING INTERNATIONAL COMMUNITY

Photo Source- Amsterdam, Ritwajit Das,

The international community also has a key role to play in fostering better-managed ur-ban growth, both by building and sharing knowledge about best practices, and by steering finance towards compact, con-nected and coordinated urbanization, and away from sprawl.

We feel that developing a Global Urban Pro-ductivity Initiative to promote and assist in the development of best practices in boost-ing urban productivity and support coun-tries’ and cities’ own efforts. The initiative should: build on the existing work of key in-ternational organizations already working in this field, including city networks such as C40 and ICLEI – Local Governments for Sustainability, and involve rapidly urbaniz-ing countries, mayors and business lead-ers. Key activities could include reviewing institutional options for systematic collec-tion of city-level data, developing urbaniza-tion scenarios and best practice guidance, creating an international standard for inte-grated municipal accounting, and targeted capacity-building.In addition, a global city creditworthiness facility should be set up to help cities develop strategies to improve their “own source” revenues and, where sovereign governments allow it, increase their access to private capital markets.

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Photo Source- Amsterdam, Ritwajit Das, EVI

Photo Source- Amsterdam, Ritwajit Das, EVI

Photo Source- Paris, Ritwajit Das, EVI

Only 4% of the 500 largest cities in developing countries are now deemed creditworthy in international financial markets; every US$1 spent to correct this can leverage more than US$100 in pri-vate sector finance. The new facility should build on and scale-up the existing programme of the World Bank, and assist cities in both developing and developed countries. Finally, it is crucial that multilateral development banks (MDBs) rapidly phase out the fi-nancing of investments that lock in unstructured, unconnected ur-ban expansion. The banks should work with client and donor countries to redirect overseas development assistance and con-cessional finance towards supporting integrated citywide urban strategies and investment in smarter infrastructure and new tech-nology. Greater consideration should also be given to redirecting overall MDB funding to account for the growing importance of cit-ies in economic development in rapidly urbanizing countries, as well as the scaling-up of support to help cities prepare and pack-age urban infrastructure investments.

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Photo Source- Bangkok, Ritwajit Das, EVI

STIMULATING INTERNATIONAL COMMUNITY

(1) The World Bank, 2014. World Development Indicators 2014. Available at: http://data.worldbank.org/data-catalog/world-development-indicators.

(2) The Economist Intelligence Unit, 2014.

(3) The World Bank, 2014, World Development Indicators 2014. Data cited are for GDP (con-stant 2005 international $ PPP), available in the 11 April 2014 release of the WDI.

(4) Research carried out for the Commission, New Economy Climate Report, 2014.

(5) World Health Organization (WHO), 2014. Burden of Disease from Ambient Air Pollution for 2012. Geneva. Available at: http://www.who.int/mediacentre/news/releases/2014/air-pollution/en/.

(6) International Monetary Fund (IMF), 2014. World Economic Outlook 2014: Recovery Strengthens, Remains Uneven. Washington, DC. Available at: http://www.imf.org/external/Pubs/ft/weo/2014/01/.

(7) IPCC, 2014. Summary for Policymakers. In Climate Change 2014: Mitigation of Climate Change. Contribution of Working Group III to the Fifth Assessment Report of the Intergov-ernmental Panel on Climate Change. O. Edenhofer, R. Pichs-Madruga, Y. Sokona, E. Fara-hani, S. Kadner, et al. (eds.). Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, UK, and New York. Available at: http://www.mitigation2014.org.

(8) IPCC, 2013. Summary for Policymakers. In Climate Change 2013: The Physical Science Ba-sis. Contribution of Working Group I to the Fifth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmen-tal Panel on Climate Change. T.F. Stocker, D. Qin, G.-K. Plattner, M.M.B. Tignor, S.K. Allen, et al. (eds.). Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, UK, and New York. Available at: http://www.climate2013.org/spm.

(9) The IPCC estimates that the global average temperature will likely be 0.3–0.7°C higher in 2016–2035 relative to 1986–2005. See: IPCC, 2013.Summary for Policymakers (IPCC AR5, Working Group I).

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References

(10) IPCC, 2014. Summary for Policymakers. In Climate Change 2014: Impacts, Adaptation, and Vulnerability. Part A: Global and Sectoral Aspects. Contributionof Working Group II to the Fifth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. C.B. Field, V.R. Barros, D.J. Dokken, K.J. Mach, M.D. Mastandrea, et al. (eds.). Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, UK, and New York.Available at: https://www.ipcc.ch/report/ar5/wg2/.

(11) IPCC, 2014. Summary for Policymakers (IPCC AR5, Working Group II).

(12) IPCC, 2013, Summary for Policymakers (IPCC AR5, Working Group I), and: van Vuuren, D.P., Edmonds, J., Kainuma, M., Riahi, K., Thomson, A., et al., 2011. The representative concentration pathways: an overview. Climatic Change, 109(1-2). 5–31. DOI:10.1007/s10584-011-0148-z

(13) IPCC, 2014. Summary for Policymakers (IPCC AR5, Working Group III).

(14) OECD, 2012. Medium and Long-Term Scenarios for Global Growth and Imbalances. OECD Economic Outlook, Volume 2012, Issue 1. Paris. Available at: http://dx.doi.org/10.1787/eco_outlook-v2012-1 en. A lower 2.5% annual growth rate would result in the economy being 48% bigger in 2030 than in 2014.

(15) McCrone, A., Usher, E., Sonntag-O’Brien, V., Moslener, U. and Grüning, C., eds., 2014. Global Trends in Renewable Energy Investment 2014. Frankfurt School-UNEP Collaborat-ing Centre for Climate & Sustainable Energy Finance, United Nations Environment Pro-gramme, and Bloomberg New Energy Finance. Available at: http://fs-unep-centre.org/publications/gtr-2014.

(16) United Nations (UN), 2014. World Urbanization Prospects, the 2014 revision. UN Depart-ment of Economic and Social Affairs, Population Division. Available at: http://esa.un.org/unpd/wup/.

(17) Seto, K.C. and Dhakal, S., 2014. Chapter 12: Human Settlements, Infrastructure, and Spa-tial Planning. In Climate Change 2014: Mitigation of Climate Change. Contribution of Work-ing Group III to the Fifth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

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(18) International Energy Agency (IEA), 2012. Energy Technology Perspectives: How to Se-cure a Clean Energy Future. Paris. Available at: http://www.iea.org/etp/etp2012/.

(19) The World Bank, 2012. Inclusive Green Growth: The Pathway to Sustainable Develop-ment. Washington, DC. Available at: http://hdl.handle.net/10986/6058.

(20) Climate Policy Initiative (CPI), 2014. Roadmap to a Low Carbon Electricity System in the U.S. and Europe. San Francisco, CA, US. Available at: http://climatepolicyinitiative.org/publication/roadmap-to-a-low-carbon-electricity-system-in-the-u-s-andeurope/.

(21) McCrone, A., Usher, E., Sonntag-O’Brien, V., Moslener, U. and Grüning, C., eds., 2014. Global Trends in Renewable Energy Investment 2014. Frankfurt School-UNEP Collaborat-ing Centre for Climate & Sustainable Energy Finance, United Nations Environment Pro-gramme, and Bloomberg New Energy Finance. Available at: http://fs-unep-centre.org/publications/gtr-2014.

(22) The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) estimates that in 2010, urban ar-eas accounted for 67–76% of global energy use and 71–76% of global CO2 emissions from final energy use.

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