Urban areas can improve the state of the planet and the quality of life of its inhabitants if their planning wisely utilizes energy, water, food and mineral resources.
- To enable sustainable living, cities should be designed according to the circular principles of nature, including optimal use of solar radiation and use of waste as a resource.
- Innovative facilities promote these principles, incl Park 20/20 in the Netherlands and NASA's sustainment base in California.
- "Positive cities" allow people to live and work in the same neighborhood, produce an efficient economy and promote a safe, dignified and creative life.
More than half of the world's inhabitants live in cities, and they exert increasing pressure on the planet. Cities produce up to 70% of the world's carbon dioxide emissions, use enormous volumes of water, degrade water quality and produce mountains of waste. The cities determine the direction of the development of the planet. And they are growing fast. The most updated United Nations estimates state that by 2030 five billion people will live in cities. Almost half of them will lead their lives in homes, schools, workplaces and public parks that do not yet exist.
The challenge in establishing cities that will preserve my life as much as possible Sustainability is a tremendous challenge. But cities are also an inspiring possibility because they may play a crucial role in creating solutions for a sustainable world. Cities are engines of innovation and entrepreneurship. As social networks of urban leaders demonstrate, municipalities are powerful actors, pooling efforts, setting the environmental agenda and assuming global leadership. From huge cities to small towns, mayors and local councils, investors, economists and urban planners are responding to the urgent need to design and re-plan the basic factors that make up life in rapidly growing cities - and they are doing it from the ground. How they reimagine the urban landscape and plan the nature of urban growth will profoundly affect the future of life on Earth.
Many cities take important measures to reduce air and water pollution. They try to do "less bad". But increasing efficiency alone is not enough to move us to a positive future. If cities can not only be more efficient but also do "better", by converting waste back into nutrients to produce food, for example, they can move us towards the future we desire, not just reduce our negative impact. We must do better, not just less bad.
To formulate a clear vision that will facilitate how we must reimagine the city and its relationship with its rural environment, it is useful to copy the operating system of the natural world. In essence, natural systems operate using the energy they receive for free from the sun. They interact with the earth's geochemistry to maintain viable and renewable biological systems. Human systems, including cities, that operate according to the same laws will be able to approach the efficiency of living systems.
These laws can be summarized in three key principles: compare the waste with the food; Use solar energy as much as possible and cultivate versatility.
There is no waste in nature because every living being contributes to the general health. A tree produces fruit that falls on the ground and feeds other living things. Bacteria and fungi feed on the organic waste, both of the tree and of the animals that eat its fruits. In doing so, they break down nutrients found in the soil that the tree can utilize for its growth. The waste that one creature excretes is the food of another creature. Nutrients constantly flow in cycles of regrowth, Cradle to cradle, from birth, to death to decay and rebirth. Waste = food.
Our cities are currently built in a one-way flow. Biological nutrients (such as food and wood) and technological nutrients (such as metals and plastics) enter the system at one end, are utilized and then discarded. After some valuable materials that can be recycled are removed from the waste, such as metals, paper and some types of plastic, it flows on and is discharged from the other end of the system on its way to landfills or incinerators. It's a "take, make and throw" process. But just as we were able to redesign some consumer products so that they can be disassembled, recycled or used again, we can also design cities in a similar circular fashion: take, create, re-take, recreate, restore.
In a circular city, waste becomes a resource. Sewage, for example. In a one-way city, treatment plants process food scraps and human waste, which also include valuable minerals, such as phosphates for example, and release the effluent into the rivers as waste. Farmers purchase more phosphates from Morocco or other distant countries (like Israel) to make new fertilizers from them to grow more food in lands that have lost their minerals. In a circular city, sewage treatment plants become fertilizer producers. The carbon, phosphate and nitrogen flowing out of these facilities are considered future assets to the land and not pests in the nearest river. Circular cities use waste water as a resource of phosphates from which they produce fertilizer for parks, vegetable gardens located on the roofs of the city and agricultural farms and forests that surround it. This process eliminates the need to import more phosphates from distant sources and transport them overseas. This also reduces the energy use and carbon emissions associated with phosphate mining and transportation. company Austria, which develops technologies for the recovery of nutrients in Vancouver, Canada, is one of the pioneer companies in the extraction of the mineral called phosphate Stravit To produce fertilizer from sewage sludge.
Eliminating the concept of garbage affects all systems, so a circular city plans the use of the materials that enter it in terms of "next use" and not in terms of "end of use". For example, new technologies operating in clean facilities make it possible to generate profits from the processing of cell phone printed circuits and the recovery of the rare metals found in them for reuse in electronic products.
A second key principle of nature, which can create "positive cities", is that the sun is the source of energy for everything, and sometimes, as in Reykjavik, the capital of Iceland, geothermal energy can also be used. Trees and plants produce food from sunlight: an elegant and efficient system that utilizes the Earth's only permanent source of energy. Buildings can tap into this solar energy source through direct conversion of sunlight into energy, and through passive collection of solar radiation for heating and natural lighting purposes. You can also take advantage of the winds, which are actually thermal currents driven by the power of the sun. Combined, geothermal, solar and wind energy can generate enough electricity in an economically viable manner to meet the demands of cities, counties and even entire countries. Cities like San Francisco are already making significant progress toward meeting their commitment to fully use renewable energy over the next 15 years.
The third key principle - versatility - is found in all healthy ecosystems. Each living creature reacts to its immediate environment in a unique way, which works in cooperation with other creatures to maintain the system. Each organism is suitable for its place, and in each system the most suitable creatures thrive.
City planners who strive to create such an adaptation, carefully handle the local ecology. They appreciate the geology, hydrology, vegetation and climate. They combine natural history and cultural history. through a combination of "the web of clues"This rich, designers discover suitable patterns and patterns for the development of the landscape. In doing so, they create possibilities for positive life-supporting growth.
Ultimately, we want a city that will be planned in such a way that allows people to live and work in the same neighborhood. If residents can dismantle cell phones in a clean facility that fits well into the urban fabric, there is no need to relegate the plant to bad areas on the outskirts of the city. A positive city does not need zoning based on concerns about hazardous or health-damaging activities. Factories can exist in quiet residential neighborhoods and provide jobs for people who live within walking or biking distance. These employment opportunities, in turn, greatly reduce the need for travel and transportation: a huge source of wasted resources and time. And if fresh and healthy food grows on the roofs all over the city, like it grows on a roofThe new soap factory Of the company Method In the district South Side of Chicago, so not only could local organic trash be made a resource for food growing systems, but the people working on these rooftop farms could also live in the neighborhood.
Imagine that everything we produce will be a tribute to life support, an inspiration to joy and a source of harmony with nature. Buildings act like trees: they capture carbon dioxide from the air, produce oxygen, distill water, provide a habitat for thousands of species and convert solar energy into all the thermal and electrical energy they need, and sell the excess to the neighbors. Buildings that contain muddy areas and botanical gardens in their territory exhaust nutrients from wastewater and purify the remaining water for use in kitchens and bathrooms. Fresh air, flowering plants and daylight are everywhere. Buildings and communities work together as a life support system.
With such a vision before our eyes, we can imagine that food and materials are produced around the city in the rural environment using technologies produced in the city. The city returns the garbage as raw material that re-feeds the system. Everything moves in renewable circles, from city to village, from village to city, in natural and cultural networks that flow biological and technological nourishment: the hardware and software of the 21st century. The metabolism of a positive and living city allows human settlement and the natural world to thrive together. If we want to make our cities truly sustainable and useful systems, we must accept these things as they are, as a strategic truth for our planners.
It is tempting to deploy principles for a utopian future. But are the existing cities really able to implement them today? Several recently constructed industrial facilities demonstrate how.
The renovation and expansion of Ford Rouge Center In Dearborn, Michigan, they transformed the huge and historic manufacturing complex into cars and trucks to model for industrial sustainability. The master plan includes a green roof with an area of 40 dunams, which serves as the heart of a system that combines wetlands, porous paving, live fences and biological purification facilities. The project transformed a 100-year-old industrial site into a vibrant bio-ecosystem that collects stormwater, cleans it, and slowly releases it into the nearby Rouge River in a way that supports the health of the watershed. Local shorebirds returned to nest at the site a week after construction was completed.
Another model is NASA's new Center for Science and Computing, called Sustainability Base, meaning "Sustainability Base", located at the Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, California. In principle, the facility can provide all of its own heating, air conditioning and energy needs, and even remain in excess, using solar and geothermal sources in combination with a fuel cell and an advanced energy management system. The waste water is purified on site.
Development Park 20|20 In the award-winning city of Hofdorf in the Netherlands is another model. It is a diverse series of buildings and open spaces, the construction of which is being completed these days in an area of about 110 dunams. People can easily reach the park by plane, train, bus or bicycle. Green areas, squares, public gardens and promenades along the canals provide a connection to the wider community. The size, structure and orientation of each building is optimized to capture the sun's energy and light. The buildings throughout the park integrate energy, water and wastewater management systems and act as one organism.
Can these success stories be extended to entire cities? Inspiration comes from quite fascinating places. One of them is the city of Curichiba in Brazil.
Curichiba's transformation began in the 70s of the 20th century, at the initiative of the legendary architect and urban planner Jaime Lerner, who was mayor during three different terms of office from the 70s to the 90s. During his first term, Lerner realized that the poor city, which at the time had several hundred thousand inhabitants, needed better public transportation. Since a subway or heavy rail system cost far too much money, he turned to the Volvo company to produce 270 Swedish articulated buses, in a local factory, thus providing the residents with jobs. The city hired local professionals to build covered roadside bus stops, which were given the name tubes (named after their tubular shape), from which residents can travel anywhere for a uniform price. Instead of paying the fare with a token after boarding the bus, a slow process, Lerner must pay them in advance at the station. This made it possible to get on the bus quickly, shorten stopping times and streamline the entire system.
As a result of the rapid increase in the population of Curitiba, garbage began to accumulate in narrow alleys that trucks could not enter. Lerner created a program that taught the children how to separate trash and how to guide the families back home. In exchange for the sorted garbage, the residents received tokens for a bus or fresh food. Lerner paid them in the currency of mobility. Suddenly, everyone was using public transportation. Today, 85% of Curitiba's residents use buses and 90% recycle. Curitiba recycles 70% of its trash, one of the highest rates in the world.
This creative thinking continued. Instead of building one public library in the city center, the municipality created a network of 50 small "lighthouses of knowledge" throughout the city and neighborhoods so that every child was within walking distance of a library. Local builders, of course, built the brightly painted buildings. The libraries work in conjunction with the municipal schools and offer thousands of books and free internet to citizens from the age of three to 80. These and other measures have turned the city into an integrated system of life and work.
And now imagine Manhattan if it had a similar vision: local food growing on the roofs of its hundreds of schools and hospitals, providing not only nutrition but also jobs. Children could use their optical sensors, known as eyes, to sort trash, remove plastic items and bring them to recycling centers so they don't end up in the ocean, and receive toys in return. Clean factories break down the plastic into reusable monomers. Everything is powered by solar energy, and materials flow in continuous cycles of biological and technological nourishment.
We strive to achieve a "good life" for all people: a safe, dignified and creative life. Positive cities are places where this can happen. If they are planned and managed according to this principle, everything will be better. We must insist on the right of humans and nature to exist side by side, to combine the city with its surroundings.
Cities are indeed planned entities, but they are also living organisms. As the late French anthropologist said many years ago Claude Levi-Strauss, cities are something "that are lived and dreamed of." As creators of living places, we cannot avoid throwing ourselves onto the landscape. But when we dream of ideal cities, when we weave together the human with the geological, we begin to see more clearly the true nature of the place where we live, its spirit. Then, as we shape the nature of our cities, we can create places that celebrate not only human creativity but also our rich and harmonious relationship with the living earth. We can forge a new geography of hope.
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