Urban Design: The Key to Combating Climate Change

The Urban Challenge in Climate Change

As we grapple with the increasingly urgent issue of climate change, it's becoming clear that our approach needs to evolve. While the developed world recognizes the need to push harder towards eliminating emissions, we often find ourselves overwhelmed by the scale of the problem. In our search for solutions, we tend to gravitate towards simple answers. This has led us to focus primarily on replacing fossil fuels with clean energy sources.

However, this narrow focus on clean energy production might actually be hindering our ability to solve the climate crisis. The reason lies in the rapid urbanization of our planet. By mid-century, we're projected to have around 8 billion people living in or commuting to cities daily. This unprecedented level of urbanization presents both challenges and opportunities.

The Energy Dilemma

To power cities for 8 billion people at the standard of living currently enjoyed in the global North would require an enormous amount of energy. It's questionable whether we can produce that much clean energy. Therefore, if we're serious about fighting climate change in an urbanized world, we need to look elsewhere for solutions.

Cities as Opportunities

The solution may be closer than we think, because the cities we build are opportunities in themselves. Every city largely determines the amount of energy used by its residents. While we tend to think of energy use as a matter of individual behavior, in reality, vast amounts of the energy we consume are predetermined by the type of communities and cities we live in.

Density and Emissions

There's a direct relationship between urban density and the amount of emissions residents produce, particularly in transportation. Denser areas tend to have lower emissions, which isn't hard to understand. In general, we substitute mobility for proximity throughout our lives. We get in cars and travel from place to place, using mobility to access our needs. But when we live in denser communities, we suddenly find that the things we need are close by. When the trip you don't need to take in the first place is the most sustainable trip, our lives suddenly become more sustainable.

Strategies for Sustainable Urban Development

Increasing Density

It's possible to increase the density of our existing communities. Some places are doing this with new eco-districts, developing entirely new sustainable neighborhoods. However, in most cases, we're reworking the urban fabric we already have. This involves strategies like:

• Infill development: Making intelligent small changes to where buildings are located
• Urban adaptation: Creating different types of spaces and uses in place of what's already there

We're increasingly realizing that we don't need to increase density across the entire city. What we need is an average density that rises to a level where we don't use cars as much. This can be achieved by significantly increasing density at specific points, imagined as tent poles that raise the density of the entire city.

The Tipping Point

When we do this, we can have some places that are very dense interspersed with a broader texture of places that are perhaps more comfortable, and still achieve the same results. We might find that there are places that are extremely dense and still use cars, but broadly speaking, we see that when we group many people together under the right conditions, there's a tipping effect where people simply stop using cars as much.

Increasingly, people, if surrounded by places that make them feel good, don't seek the aid of the car. This represents a massive energy saving because what comes out of the tailpipe is just the beginning with car emissions. We have car production, car destruction, parking, highways, etc. When you avoid all of that because people aren't really using them, you can reduce transportation emissions by up to 90%.

The Pedestrian Revolution

People are embracing this change. Around the world, we're seeing more and more people adapting to pedestrian life. People are saying they're moving from the idea of a dream home to a dream neighborhood. When you add to this the kinds of communications we're starting to see, what you discover is, in fact, even more possible space.

Technology and Urban Navigation

Some of these are transportation approaches. The Mapnificent map shows how far you can go from home in 30 minutes using public transportation, including some walking. It's not perfect yet, but technology is advancing, and we've started to crowdsource this navigation. As we heard earlier, we're learning how to embed information in objects. Things that have no wires at all, we're learning how to include in these navigation processes.

Rethinking Consumption and Ownership

Part of what we're discovering is that what we thought was the main point of manufacturing and consumption - to have some things - is not actually the best way to live in densely populated areas. What we're discovering is access to the functioning of things.

The Power Drill Example

My favorite example is the power drill. Who here has an electric drill? I have one too. The average electric drill in a home is used between 6 and 20 minutes in its entire lifetime. Why do we buy these drills that have thousands of hours of working capacity, use them once or twice to make a hole in a wall, and then forget about them? Our cities, I'll leave it to your imagination, are piles of this excess capacity.

From Products to Services

As we try to understand new ways to use this capacity - like ice sculpting or fighting the mafia - what we discover is that, in reality, turning these products into services with access when we need them is a more intelligent system. In fact, space itself is becoming a service. We're discovering that people can share the same spaces, do things with empty spaces. Buildings are becoming bundles of services.

Energy-Efficient Building Design

We have new designs that help us take mechanical things we used to spend energy on - like heating, cooling, etc. - and turn them into things that avoid spending energy. So we light buildings with daylight. We cool them with air currents. We heat them with sunlight. When we use all of these, in fact, we discover that in some cases, energy use in buildings drops by up to 90 percent.

The Heater Removal Effect

This brings about a tipping effect that I call heater removal. Very simply, if a building doesn't need a heater, it saves on the initial investment. These things are cheaper to build than their alternatives.

The Green City Misconception

If we're going to have truly sustainable cities, we need to think a little bit differently. This is one way. This is Vancouver's campaign about how green their city is. And many people have embraced this idea that a sustainable city is covered in greenery. So we have views like this, or like this, or like this. These are all beautiful projects, but they're missing an essential point.

Beyond Surface Greenery

It's not about the leaves on top, but about the system underneath. For example:

• Do they collect rainwater so that we save on water use? Water consumes a lot of energy.
• Do they perhaps include green infrastructure that allows you to collect the water that comes out of our homes and clean and filter it and use it for the street trees?
• Do they connect the ecosystems that surround us, for example, those that connect us to rivers and allow for restoration?
• Do they allow for pollination, pollination routes that allow bees and butterflies etc. to return to our cities?
• Do they take the waste that's collected from food, clothes and so on, and return it to the soil to close the carbon - take the carbon out of the air in the process of using cities?

The Promise of Sustainable Urban Design

I would suggest to you that all of these are not only possible, but they're happening now, and it's a very good thing. Because right now, our economy in general functions as Paul Hawken has said, "by stealing the future, selling it in the present, and calling it GDP." And if we have 8 billion or 7 billion, or 6 billion people, living on a planet where cities are stealing the future, pretty soon there won't be a future.

But if we think differently, I believe that, in reality, we can have cities that are not only zero-emission but have endless possibilities as well.

Conclusion

The challenge of climate change in an increasingly urbanized world is daunting, but it also presents unprecedented opportunities for innovation and sustainable living. By rethinking our approach to urban design and development, we can create cities that not only reduce emissions dramatically but also enhance the quality of life for their inhabitants.

Key strategies include:

1. Increasing urban density strategically
2. Promoting pedestrian-friendly environments
3. Leveraging technology for efficient navigation and resource sharing
4. Shifting from ownership to access-based consumption
5. Implementing energy-efficient building designs
6. Integrating green infrastructure that goes beyond surface aesthetics

By embracing these approaches, we can transform our cities from major contributors to climate change into powerful tools for combating it. The future of our planet may well depend on how we design and live in our urban environments.

As we move forward, it's crucial to remember that sustainable urban design is not just about reducing emissions - it's about creating livable, vibrant communities that work in harmony with natural systems. By doing so, we can build cities that not only survive but thrive in the face of climate change, offering endless possibilities for future generations.

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