One could start the discussion on urban sustainability by an oft-repeated quote, which, for most people, would sum up the situation of our cities and planet: “One thing is sure. The earth is now more cultivated and developed than ever before. There is more farming with pure force, swamps are drying up and cities are springing up at an unprecedented scale. We’ve become a burden to our planet. Resources are becoming scarce, and soon nature will no longer be able to satisfy our needs.” Now consider the fact that this was written by Tertullianus in 200 AD. Quintus Septimus Florens Tertullianus was a Roman theologian and a prolific writer. His concern for the cities in ancient Rome could as well be breaking news in tomorrow’s newspapers.
SUSTAINABILITY – THE GLOBAL IMPERATIVE?
‘Sustainability’, just like ‘Liveability’, is a broad term with no universally agreed-upon definition, especially in the context of cities. Although sustainability is seen as a universal imperative, people understand and define it in very different ways across the world. Cities have been the melting pot for ideas and reinventing themselves over the ages and it is not surprising that the idea of sustainability is now emerging from cities across the world. The meaning of the term is taken loosely and ranges from general affordability to availability of green spaces, air and water quality, transportation and business friendliness of the city. This reflects the varying concerns citizens have across the cities. Notwithstanding a precise definition, the ideas relate to notions of environmental sustainability, quality of life, a ‘sense’ of place as well as the physical well-being of communities.
Although, no discussion on sustainability can start without referring to the Bruntland Commission’s definition of sustainability: the ability to meet “the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs”. This definition is limited in the presupposition of a society with a high standard of living and sufficient income and resources to afford it. What does this augur for the bustling cities in emerging economies, where a majority of the citizens are struggling to meet a basic minimum standard of living?
In unplanned areas of these cities, infrastructural services such as piped water, rainwater drainage and solid waste collection are missing. Are these settlements sustainable? Clearly the quality of life needs to improve in these cities and the demand for resources will increase.
PEOPLE, PROFIT AND THE PLANET
A recent global ranking of cities threw up the usual suspects from Europe and South East Asia. Frankfurt, London and Copenhagen lead the pack followed by Amsterdam, Rotterdam, Berlin, Seoul, Hong Kong, Madrid and Singapore. On the other hand, some of the fastest growing cities like Jakarta, Wuhan, New Delhi and Nairobi are ranked amongst the least sustainable of the 50 listed cities.
This ranking was done based on three factors related to People, Profit and the Planet. Surprisingly, environmental sustainability, as is commonly understood, with its focus on energy consumption and renewable energy share, recycling rates, greenhouse gas emissions, natural catastrophe risk, drinking water, sanitation and air pollution, is just one of the factors determining overall sustainability. The other two being: (a) profit, addressing the issues of business performance, transport infrastructure, ease of doing business, the city’s importance in global economic networks, property and living costs, GDP per capita and energy efficiency, and (b) people relating to transport infrastructure, health, education, income inequality, work-life balance, the dependency ratio and green spaces.
This definition puts the developing countries and their teeming cities at a disadvantage, where profit and planet take a back seat to just meeting people’s basic requirements. According to United Nations’ estimates the largest urban expansion will take place in the developing world cities, which are projected to absorb most of the world’s population increase of more than two billion people, between now and 2050. The cities at the bottom of the sustainability list, therefore, are battling with a completely different set of challenges driven by a large population, often in extreme poverty, where just making cities safe, providing affordable housing and even basic drinking water and electricity for large informal settlements is a challenge. These cities, often because of lack of resources, score very well in terms of per capita resources use and overall environmental impact. By virtue of being dense, they often also have a much higher intensity of infrastructure utilization and efficiency. Sustainability for these cities needs to be evaluated with different criteria, ones that focus on the people in the city and their quality of life.
These concerns have been universal. As far back as 300 B.C. in Book IV of the Republic, Plato says, “Any city, however small, is in fact divided into two, one the city of the poor, the other of the rich. These are at war with one another.” Sustainable development has always implied economic and social progress with the least environmental impact. Ancient cities were naturally limited by resources available within a reasonable distance. These limits of distance and therefore availability do not exist anymore. The idea therefore of environmental sustainability, or of limiting consumption to the resources available locally is only limited by affordability. The decisions of an individual building in terms of siting, size, design, material use and operations are often left to the owner, who has no reason to be cognizant of the larger issues of urban sustainability.
SUSTAINABILITY – ONE BUILDING AT A TIME?
Another way to look at urban sustainability is from the perspective of the smallest units: its buildings.
The effect of decisions taken at the building level scales up as one goes from an individual building to the neighborhood, district, city and finally the regional level, with a direct impact on urban resources and energy flows.
The increasing scale of impact can be quite staggering. For example, there are many building level interventions that can reduce water use, including installing low-flow faucets, toilets, showers and washers and repairing leaks. One can also incorporate strategies to capture and re-use rooftop water, which can be used for irrigation, flushing and other end-uses at the building level. Water, thus saved at the unit level, will result in reduced size of water tanks and pumping systems in the building, further resulting in reduced fresh-water supply and waste-water discharge requirements at the neighborhood level and significantly smaller water-related infrastructure at the city level, finally leading to a more sustainable and resilient region. A similar analogy can be used for energy, waste and material impacts of buildings in a city.
Building codes and standards related to energy, water, transportation and other factors with an environmental impact, have been used as a means to regulate the resource use of buildings. Such codes, especially for energy efficiency, have moved towards ever-increasing stringency and wider applicability.
Energy Conservation Building Codes (ECBC) are one of the most effective ways of reducing energy use and Greenhouse Gas (GHG) emissions in buildings. The first ECBC in India showed a saving potential of over 40% in lighting and air conditioning for most new buildings. The saving potential can be even higher for buildings that operate 24 hours a day.
Green buildings employ a number of these approaches to go beyond the code in order to reduce energy and water use, reduce waste and improve overall resource efficiency while providing a healthy and comfortable space for the occupants. Although the minimum performance codes are a big step forward for the current business-as-usual efficiency levels in buildings in most developing countries, there is potential to further improve on the performance levels. This can be seen in a number of new high-performance buildings that exceed the code requirements by as much as 40% within an acceptable payback period and initial investment limits. The codes and standards can be led by the demonstrated performance of such buildings. The Japanese Top-Runner programme for appliances, for example, sets the new minimum standards to be at par with the best in the class efficiency level every 3-5 years.
TOWARDS NET-ZERO – LOCALLY AND GLOBALLY
In this quest, many countries and cities are focusing on reducing the environmental impact to the minimum possible, moving towards a goal of net-zero buildings. Targets for net-zero energy, water or even carbon, have been set for many self-sufficient communities. Net-zero or nearly-zero energy use buildings, for example, have integrated renewable energy systems that produce as much energy as the building uses through the year. Such buildings are likely to draw energy during the peak periods from the grid and give back excess energy produced when the building energy demands are low.
Although the idea is attractive for its simplicity, there are also concerns that making each building an independent island may not always be the optimum solution for the community or the city. A net-zero energy building, for example, will require electricity from the grid at the time when the demand is at its highest and utilities typically struggle to meet the peak demand. On the other hand, the building is likely to supply excess energy to the grid at a time when there might not be enough demand for it.
Even though decentralized systems are more resilient and resource efficient, overall performance, operation and maintenance of certain systems can be more efficient as well as cheaper at aggregated scales. Electronic and toxic waste management, for example, is easily done at large specialized units, whereas organic waste is better managed at a building level.
Sustainable urban design practices such as compact development and mixed uses of buildings can enhance infrastructure efficiency such as energy and water distribution, street lighting and transportation.
Integrated thinking could connect the building systems to the larger district scale, for example, through the use of renewable energy micro-grids and central district heating and cooling systems. This will enable opportunities for improved resource management, production and storage, with significantly lower cost, improved performance and resilience.
Many countries have chosen the path of addressing the problem at the national level, by setting a net-zero target. Last year, 94.5% of Uruguay’s electricity came from a renewable mix of wind, solar, biomass and hydropower. Going a step further, renewable energy also makes up 55% of the country’s entire energy mix, which includes transportation fuel, compared to 12% globally, and around 20% in Europe. Costa Rica is another example, where the government has set a target of 100% renewable energy by 2021 not including transportation. Iceland has tapped its geothermal sources to meet 85% of its heating and – with the assistance of hydropower – 100% of its electricity needs through renewable sources, making it the world’s largest green energy producer per capita. Closer home, Bhutan generates surplus electricity through hydro, supplemented by imported power from India during the dry season.
At the individual city level as well, hundreds of cities have now set a target for procuring 100% renewable energy and many have already realized this. Over 6,000 European cities have signed up voluntarily to the Covenant of Mayors, a commitment to go faster and further than the European Union’s 2020 target for emissions reduction targets.
MEASURING SUSTAINABILITY
The efforts to quantify and compare buildings, neighborhoods and cities on their sustainability features have resulted in a proliferation of rating systems. In most cities in the world, it is now common to see high-end buildings, while in a few cities, ratings have been mandated for all new buildings coming up. Such comparisons and ratings work well at the building level when focusing on easily quantifiable measures like energy, water, indoor air quality and features related to day lighting and building materials use. Commercial buildings, offices, hotels, hospitals, malls and large retail, have become standardized globally not only in terms of the functionality, services and comforts they provide, but also in the form and expression. Rating systems have been able to thrive wherever such buildings have come up and have been able to reduce the resource impact, at least on the drawing board.
International standard-setting bodies are also grappling with the issues and a new standard called the Sustainable Development of Communities: Indicators for City Services and Quality of Life (ISO 37120) is currently being piloted by over 30 cities.
One common, and often criticized limitation, of rating systems is the narrow focus or the boundaries that are inherent, which don’t really reflect the reality. Building systems and their interaction with the urban surroundings are dynamic and context sensitive.
There are a few emerging rating systems that address larger planning issues, as well as social and economic parameters for quantifying urban sustainability; they are not as popular or easily applicable in a generic way. Urban sustainability is, to a large extent, driven by the lifestyle of the residents and the use of natural resources for day-to-day operations. Any matrix for quantifying sustainability at that level would need to include parameters for cost of living, social mix, opportunities for individual and collective growth, as expressed through urban design, density, transportation, energy mix and food habits.
Although it is interesting to rank the sustainability of cities, especially in a given region with a similar quality of life and services, without some parity for such concerns it is futile to compare cities either in terms of resources impact of the entire city or on a per-capita basis, which often tilts in favor of the dense emerging cities.
CHAMPIONS OF URBAN SUSTAINABILITY
Expectedly, given the nebulous definition of urban sustainability, the agents of change vary from place to place. While local governments appear to be the most obvious choice for championing sustainability, their influence may be limited by their more immediate concerns, which vary considerably from city to city. The demands on public funds are often driven by community needs rather than environmental concerns.
The public-sector influence on buildings is the result of interactions between the policies at the city, sub-national region and country level. For example, there are different government departments, responsible independently for energy, water, environment, transportation, river development, railways and urban development in India.
Unless a national priority is accorded to sustainability in general, and urban sustainability in particular, it is impossible to have a coherent approach and optimized efforts.
Even though the country has set ambitious goals, they may not be aligned between policies and actions, especially when decisions about buildings and cities are taken. Budget approvals for public projects for example, are based on typical construction practices and a special individual effort is required to make a case for sustainable buildings.
One area where governments have found an easy way to drive the cause of profits and the planet is by providing incentives for green buildings. Numerous examples have shown a spurt in green buildings wherever the city has put in financial, fiscal or other direct benefits such as increased floor space for such buildings.
The decisions of the private sector actors are driven by economics, public policy and social norms, as well as the missions, visions, leaders and policies of individual firms and households. The results vary depending on the efforts put in by the building owners, investors, architects and construction firms. Building occupants and civil society organizations, such as consumer and environmental advocates, are not actively engaged in decisions impacting urban development or even individual buildings. But they nonetheless have the most significant influence over issues related to sustainability.
EFFICIENCY AND SUFFICIENCY
Clearly, if we go with the people-centric idea, where Desmond Morris describes the city as not a concrete jungle, but a human zoo, the residents of such a zoo will be the largest factor affecting its sustainability. Individual lifestyle therefore will drive the granular scale while macro-economic and environmental efforts are already looking at increasing efficiency of production, management, waste reduction and consumption. Indeed, a sustainable city cannot be viewed as connected parcels of land with spectacular sustainable architectural projects. The entire city infrastructure and its connected environs beyond the municipal limits needs to be regarded and managed as one sustainable urban system.
While the debate rages on, it is important to note that sustainability is now firmly a topic of discussion on any urban agenda and elections are being lost and won on its platform. Urban sustainability will manifest itself as a socio-political imperative and not just a purely environmental one. The journey has started, and to quote Lao-Tzu: “A journey of a thousand mile must begin with a single step.”
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