OUR FUTURE: Sustainable Cities – Turning Ideas into Action
WORLD URBAN FORUM
by Randall Anthony Mang
They are coming from all over the world – more than 8,000 delegates from countries rich and poor – to address one of the most complex and important issues of this era: urban sustainability.Welcome to the Third Session of the World Urban Forum (WUF3) – a UN event designed to spark action among governments, academia, industry, civil society and the public vital to sustainable urban development.
The world’s urban challenges and opportunities are equally profound. More than half of the planet’s population already lives in cities. Over the next 35 to 40 years, as the Earth’s inhabitants swell by an expected 2.5 billion people, 96 per cent of that growth
will be in urban centres.
WUF3 commissioner general Charles Kelly says, “This growth means that half the urban infrastructure that will exist in the world must be built in the next 40 years. How we go about this task will tell us a lot about the kind of world we’re going to live in tomorrow.”
What is known, says Mr. Kelly and others concerned, is that the status quo approach to urban development doesn’t work. “We can’t continue to construct buildings that cost more to heat than they cost to build. We can’t build massive transportation corridors to accommodate cars but which divide cities into largely inaccessible areas. We can’t spread cities outward to greener pastures leaving poverty-stricken dead zones in our downtown cores,” says Mr. Kelly. “If we have learned anything over the past 30 years it is that the physical and the human environments cannot be separated.”
The notion of sustainability is itself complex. “In developing nations, it can mean bringing essentials such as good governance systems, potable water and proper sewer systems to communities,” says John Wiebe, CEO of the GLOBE Foundation, host of WUF3. “In wealthy nations, sustainability can mean finding a balance between economic, social and environmental goals.” Mr. Wiebe says to achieve global sustainability, best practices must be shared and adopted by cities large and small.
Since leaving his post as B.C. Premier in 1996, Mike Harcourt has become one of Canada’s leading sustainability proponents.
“We have a long way to go in Canada to be sustainable. We are a consumptive society and one of the largest consumers of energy,” says Mr. Harcourt, who presently serves as chair of the Prime Minister’s External Advisory Committee on Cities and Communities, says, “We don’t have lecturing rights over others, but we’re not badly positioned either.”
He says that with our technology, people skills, trong economy and low debt load, Canada could move down the sustainability path, “if Canada puts in place recommendations that would lead to more sustainable cities.”
In addition to benefiting Canada domestically, Mr. Harcourt says such action would enhance Canada’s position globally by giving Canada a greater role in sharing solutions with the developing world, “the respectful way that Sustainable Cities: PLUS Network has with cities.”
For Vancouver, the World Urban Forum is timely. City planning director Larry Beasley says Vancouver has been making strides in sustainability since the ’90s, action galvanized by Vancouver’s opportunity to showcase its achievements in 2010 when it hosts the Winter Olympics.
Mr. Beasley remains concerned about Vancouver’s ongoing challenges, in particular poverty and drugs in its Downtown Eastside, and the city’s need for ongoing improvements to affordable housing and public transit.
Yet, this city has much to be proud of. Its award-winning highdensity core has been carefully developed with green spaces and mixeduse facilities that equally welcome head offices as they do families. Vancouver is set to become North America’s first city to have a building code based on a minimum Silver LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) standard.
Mr. Beasley says co-operation is key to motivating change. “We have a responsibility like every community in the world to build cities that are more sustainable. But that’s not good enough for a developer who has to deal with the day to day.
“We don’t implement something that’s outrageous or uneconomic. We say, ‘Let’s see how far we can go together,’ and work through the issues.”
Patrick Condon of the Design Centre for Sustainability at UBC would like to see Vancouver’s sustainability practices permeate the Greater Vancouver Regional District (GVRD). He notes during WUF3, 300 designers from around the world will contribute to a giant sustainability map for the GVRD.
“We’re trying help provide the citizens of the region a vision of sustainability that they can get behind – one that’s worth working for and fighting for.”
Mike Harcourt says this will build on foundations such as the Cities PLUS (Cities Planning for Long-term Urban Sustainability) plan for the GVRD, which earned Canada a first place win at the International Sustainable Urban Systems Design Competition in 2003. While officially recognized by the GVRD, action on Cities PLUS remains largely forthcoming.
He says, “I hope that the WUF will provide the catalyst to cause us to act in bold ways – deal with services to people in our cities and communities; deal with safety and security; deal with air pollution and environmental needs.
“We can drive that action agenda so that we can make the world a better place. We can accelerate the UN Millennium Goals. We can do it, rather than talk about it.”
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