Background to Sustainable Cities

Abstract

A review of the major schemes that attempt to define sustainability illustrates the multi-dimensional nature of the concept and the difficulty of creating precise measurements. The variation in the degree of sustainability in major cities as shown by the Siemens Green Index and leads to questions about how these levels can be improved. This chapter focuses on the broad resource use and negative externality problems facing cities and solutions adopted, primarily in the case of water, sewage, manufacturing and transport facilities. Less easy to solve are the problems stemming from the use of fossil fuels, which cause health problems in cities and help to increase the amount of atmospheric greenhouse gases. The greater use of renewable energy sources could reduce the scale of this problem but despite recent progress they are unlikely to contribute to 50 % level of total energy generation at a world scale by mid-century, because of problems associated with each type of renewable energy. A summary of the various policies adopted in the manufacturing and power generation sectors to reduce carbon emissions, ranging from regulations, taxes, new technologies, carbon taxes and cap and trade systems etc., illustrate how many countries and cities are tackling this problem. But on current trends the total effect is still too small to avert climate change.

Climate change is the biggest crisis our civilization faces.

(A. Gore, March 31, 2014)