"There is nothing unnatural about New York City" - David Harvey, 1996

While pouring through papers over the last couple of days, a phrase has stuck in mind, something that I would like to share with you;

"There is nothing unnatural about New York City" - David Harvey, 1996 

David Harvey's iconic catch phrase seems to resonate as I watch a mouse and a spider scavenge over food scraps in a heap of rubbish on a walkway beside my University in London(see picture below). Even in a polluted and waste strewn metropolis like this, wildlife finds a niche in the ecology of the city. What exactly is all this rubbish doing on the floor, and what is it that prevents us from seeing ourselves and our city as part of the larger environment too?

A picture I took of the rubbish soon after the spider and mouse made an escape.

Further pondering begs a much broader question, one of more urgent inquiry. What impact do cities like the one I study, work and live in, have on the global environment, and what can be done about it? Throughout this blog I will be inspecting this very question.

The lowdown:

Globally, cities act both as the main contributors to, and arguably leading innovators in tackling global environmental change. Over 50% of the world population live in cities, accountable for 80% of greenhouse gas(GHG) emissions, not to mention the concomitant contaminants, waste traffic and environmental degradation that accompany the vast majority of urban activities. With the proportion of urbanites expected to rise to 75% by 2050, and with the global population expected to surpass 9 billion by that time, understanding how cities impact the global environment and how we can reform urban spaces and policies accordingly seems of crucial importance in securing our urban future.

Corporate Greening

While urban landscapes have become focal points in recognizing the planetary impacts of our species and offering spaces for reinvention of our relationships with environments through ideological and technological exchange, the notion of sustainable cities, has attracted corporate attention, as this video suggests:

Oversimplified?

Challenges for urban planning and policy making in realizing these promised dreamboats of sustainable cities are vast. Cities impact the wider global environment, such as through GHG emissions, in a varied way, and this is a complex issue. Technical factors, such as power generation, urban design and waste processing and geophysical factors, such as climate, resource access and gateway status demonstrate just some of this complexity.

For example, Geneva and Toronto, able to readily access hydropower resources, have significantly lesser impacts than say, Prague, which sits close to some of the thickest coal seams in Europe. Technological access imbalances explain how a simple lack of methane capture capacity in Bangkok and Capetown compared to London has led to a 1 teCO2 per Capita increase in their net emissions, accountable solely to their relative waste disposal sectors alone. Population density presents additional variation, showing that GHG emission from urban ground transportation are inversely related to population density(see figure 1).

Figure 1: GHG emissions from ground transportation fuels are inversely related to population density

Clearly, then, this isn't a straightforward issue to comprehend, and a purely corporate approach may not be the most effective way to achieve equitable and sustainable cities. However, within the body of this blog I hope to explore how cities impact the 9 planetary boundaries, and some of the projects and debates around implementing change in urban practices in creating sustainable urban environments.