A Shift in Attitude
In our quest for relief to current urban problems the first shift may not be in the type of transport, but our ideas of what a city should be. And if we can do that, our experts say, we can conquer not only congestion, but perhaps sprawl, traveling time, and yes, even that sense of disassociation we have within our communities.
Says Rees, “Certainly we need to put people ahead of cars. We have for far too long tried to accommodate drivers as though driving were the only activity that matters. Cities like Copenhagen – which has slowly but steadily reduced the space devoted to parking and driving over a forty year period – show one way to go. There are probably others, but until we shake off the dead hand of the ITE (Institute of Transportation Engineers) ‘standards’ used to guide development, we will never know.”
Schipper looks at the problem philosophically. “The point is the emphasis must shift from asphalt and parking lots to civilized places! The agora (in ancient Greece, the marketplace and gathering place) is wonderful. If people don’t care where they are as long as there is a Starbucks, that’s really sad.”
All our experts agree that the development of neighborhoods – real, fully functional neighborhoods where people live, work, play, and do much of their socializing within a comparatively small sphere – is essential.
Quality Urban Energy Systems of Tomorrow (QUEST), an Ottawa-based network of citizens from the energy industry, environmental groups, governments, academia and consulting communities, pulls no punches when it comes to the city of tomorrow. “For a community or city to be sustainable, we believe that increased densification and mixed-use neighborhoods will be needed. The current model with downtown office cores and suburban bedroom communities encourages increased transportation and consequently energy use and greenhouse gas emissions. The city of the future needs to be designed through an energy lens that addresses land use, waste management, water management, transportation, and energy use.”
New Urbanism: The Efficient City
The QUEST concept may be idealistic, yet its themes are common amongst those who look beyond old school urban principles and towards what has tritely become known as New Urbanism, essentially the promotion of walkable neighborhoods. Says Rees, “We can achieve much greater densities by permitting mixed uses, redeveloping low density areas and relying on walking, not driving. Huge amounts of land within cities are used ineffectively – or not at all. We just have to be much smarter about land use.”
The problem with idealism, of course, comes when putting those ideals into practice. And in that our experts agree once more – it’s going to be tough.
Rees references his current hometown of Vancouver, Canada. “In Greater Vancouver, a plan to develop regional town centers was developed, but not properly implemented as too many office parks were permitted. Fortunately, the regional out-of-town shopping malls that are now failing in large numbers can be retrofitted to become real urban places. Most large urban areas are polycentric – with a range of centers having their own hinterlands. Detroit failed because it relied on one industry, but also because it failed to become multicultural. Technology is much less important than attitudes – and policies.”
He concedes it’ll be a long process that certainly won’t be fulfilled within the decade between now and 2020. “Politicians generally lack vision, and people lack the opportunity to innovate. We need lots of experiments, which means failures as well as successes. If we do not risk failure we cannot learn. Most politicians are risk averse.”
Powering Home of the Future
Energy within our homes is another key concern, but one that seems somewhat less dire if we shift our urban planning focus toward the close-knit New Urbanism neighborhood model. Indeed, the QUEST concept seems to hinge on just that. According to the organization’s manifesto, “The QUEST vision builds on progress that has been made on energy-efficient appliances, eco-efficient buildings, district heating systems, renewable energy technologies, waste heat utilization, waste recycling and landfill gas capture, net zero energy homes, green roofs, and many more innovations that have paved the way for radical changes in the way quality energy services can be provided.”
The organization views integration as the biggest change, but sees a New Urbanism future where “individual homes and buildings will be connected to those around them, enabling them to take advantage of the excess energy produced.”
The Milk Man Model
And what of solar and wind power, both of which are seen by some as powerful new allies in the home of the future? Golden, clearly a believer in the potential of hydrogen as it applies to automobiles, is no less enthusiastic about its role in our homes. “Solar is incapable of producing more than a fraction of our power needs. The best way to be green is to have clean fuel delivered for onsite conversion in a fuel cell,” Golden says, a so-called Milk Man model. “You can have solar on your roof, but you’re fighting against square footage here. To be fully green, we need to have fuel delivered to homes and cities.”
Likewise, Rees sees wind and solar as being just a part of the urban energy solution. “Photovoltaic film (a technically superior method of harnessing the sun’s energy) could change that. But low-tech solar water heaters on roofs are common in Europe. Here codes often do not permit them. Geothermal has huge untapped potential. But simple energy efficiency gains like better insulation and windows have still to be implemented widely.”
The Year 2020: Just Scratching the Surface
In this series, we’ve tried to focus not on the distant future, but on the future that most of us will experience – that of the next decade. In Parts I and II, we did just that. Ultimately, though, the implementation of any real change to our cities, our neighborhoods, and the way we move amongst them will likely take much longer than that. This is a complex, highly fluid, sophisticated subject that involves modifications to so much of our everyday lives. We’ll be well on our way to something better and something far more sustainable by 2020, but we won’t yet have arrived. We hope you enjoy the journey.
Check out Part I and Part II in our series about life in the year 2020.
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