cities – decarbonization of the electric grid, reducing energy usage in buildings and transport, and electrification of everything. Many of the technologies that will enable the implementation of these actions already exist and have been proven to work on a large scale, but there is always room for innovation!
In Chapter 21, The Just City (Part I), Hayley Moller explores the interlocking challenges of public health, climate change, and economic inequality through the air quality of our cities. The chapter reviews the key drivers and impacts of air pollution in cities around the world and investigates how poor air quality often visits the greatest harm upon poor communities and communities of colour. It argues that addressing air quality can have massive climate and equity co-benefits, and it explores how to maximize these benefits using examples of cities in the Global North and Global South that have successfully tackled this invisible adversary. It concludes with an in-depth look at an innovative solution in the city of Seoul and extrapolates lessons relevant to all cities.
In the same chapter, The Just City (Part II), Jane Burston and Matt Whitney show us how London’s fight for clean air is based on data. How do we solve an issue like air pollution? It is an almost universal issue: billions of people are breathing dirty air and millions are dying prematurely each year as a result. The solutions to air pollution are within grasp. A shift to clean energy and sustainable transport can improve air quality and bring real improvements to people’s health, almost overnight. But adoption of these solutions must accelerate. Improving air quality will not only improve health, but also drive down the carbon emissions that can help to avoid the climate crisis. Air pollution is often invisible – it is highly damaging to health long before it forms smogs thick enough to be visible to the naked eye. But data can make it visible, and in doing so illuminate the sources and solutions needed, as well as the consequences of inaction. This chapter reveals how measuring air quality is on the verge of a revolution. Technological innovation is promising a shift in how cities measure air quality, enabling a new understanding of the issue and helping policymakers to design effective solutions.
In The Just City (Part III), Jenny Bates asks the question “Will air pollution on a death certificate for the first time mean nine-year-old Ella’s tragic death leads to cleaner air and better health for others?” London has a serious air pollution problem, as I became aware of as I worked for Friends of the Earth covering London. For too long, despite the great work of some, there wasn’t enough public awareness or action. But with Sahara dust, Dieselgate, legal actions, campaigning, and more, it has risen up the agenda, alongside climate change. The solutions are clear, including the need for cleaner and also fewer vehicles, not adding to the problem such as with road-building or airport expansion, and updating our standards to align with WHO guidelines – they just need implementing. In a post COVID world this is all the more important and will also benefit the economy. Ella’s death could help lead to a better London.
In Chapter 22, The Invested City, Colin le Duc puts cities at the forefront of the transition to a more sustainable form of capitalism. Capital allocation is increasingly a function of risk and return, as well as explicit impact considerations. Cities act as hubs for the financial system itself, but also for how new technologies and innovations are tested and implemented. Cities play a crucial role in mainstreaming sustainable investing and enabling environmental, social, and governance (ESG) factors to be fully integrated into capital allocation decisions. Additionally, in areas of critical societal needs such as building, transport, food, and energy, cities are incubators of new, innovative, sustainable models that can be tested and perfected to become mainstream solutions. Generation Investment Management’s Chairman Al Gore often says: “The ‘Sustainability Revolution’ is upon us, it has the magnitude of the Industrial Revolution and the speed of the Digital Revolution.”
In Chapter 23, The Financed City, James Close reminds us of the challenge that 70% of emissions come from cities and over 50% of the world’s population live in cities. Cities are the foundations of our modern society and economy. As a result, they are central to managing the transition to a low-carbon, resilient future.
Cities will need to transition from their historic trajectory of high-carbon development to address climate change. Cities are well equipped to make this transition because they are dense, homogenous, and concentrated in terms of both population and infrastructure. Their long-term plans need to be informed by a compelling vision of the future and the mobilization of capital at scale for investment in businesses, communities, and infrastructure.
Net-zero carbon cities are an important aspiration. Net-zero cities will also need to reduce consumption-based emissions by adopting circular economy principles so they can eliminate their contribution to climate change. A clear vision and systemic approach reduces risk and decreases the cost of capital, supporting climate-smart investment, sustainable development, and a people-centred approach.
In Chapter 24, The Adapted City, Adam Freed puts cities on the front lines of the climate crisis, dealing with the catastrophic impacts of climate change-driven heat waves, coastal storms, droughts, and wildfires. But it’s not just climate change that is putting people at risk; it is also decades of poor urban planning and design. The shape and form of our cities will help decide how well we can withstand today’s extreme weather and what lies ahead. The chapter looks at the practical actions cities around the globe are taking to adapt to rising temperatures, too much water, and too little water, and the changes needed to scale up these actions to address the urgent reality of the risks we face. It outlines six key principles for mayors and city leaders to embrace to protect their residents from climate change, and it highlights several case studies that provide a roadmap for urban leaders on how to accelerate the breadth and scale of their work.
In Chapter 25, The Open City, Professor Peter Bishop shows us that “an open city” is spatially diverse, is generous, and celebrates its public spaces, parks, squares, and streets. They are places where citizens meet, exchange goods and ideas, debate, linger, play, and celebrate. This is where the civic life of a democratic society takes place. You can judge the health of a city by its open spaces. Public space is not a commodity, and the market will not provide it (except under very limited conditions). It is public – that is, communally owned and maintained for the use and enjoyment of all. It needs to be protected, managed, and cared for. Where it is lacking it needs to be provided, not as a luxury but as a necessity for urban living. At the time of writing, a global pandemic is causing many individuals to relearn the value of public services and community spirit and value clean air, parks, open spaces, and gardens. This chapter traces the theory and practice of providing public spaces in the city as an essential ingredient of the richness and messiness of the twenty-first-century city.
In Chapter 26, The Natural City, Carlo Laurenzi considers a range of disparate issues from asking how an artificial phenomenon, like increasing urbanization, on a planetary scale, can ever be compatible with the natural world. Architectural trends, natural geomorphological forms, and planning issues are seen under the microscope of whether they, in reality, help or hinder cities becoming more natural. Parallels are drawn between human migrations and the associated social diversity this brings to our cities, and how these compare with recent biodiversity winners and losers, as well as how terms about unwelcome visitors enter our language, discussed alongside questions about land-use and food growing. Controversial subjects like children’s education and the individual’s right to keep pets are not avoided, along with issues around health, and mental health in particular, as seen under the prism of achieving a natural city. London is used as a canvas to paint strategies and to examine what works and why; and hopefully some of these ideas will have relevance beyond the UK capital. The barriers to achieving a natural city are not centred, for once, around
