How livable are our cities?

Sustainable Cities LINA KRISHNAN, 05 JUN 2012 At a guess, I would say that most of you reading this are living in a city or a nearby urban centre. Given the pace of urbanization across the world today, the future of most of us is almost certainly going to continue to be an urban one. E ach year inevitably adds more people to cities; the worlds urban population is ex pected to double by 2025. This urbanization has also spread beyond the megapolis metros to satellite zones on the periphery, with the result that all our cities, from Chennai to Ahmedaba d, have begun looking like unwieldy organisms that dont seem to know where and ho w they are going to end up. A bunch of secondary towns is rushing to keep pace here growth is far more rapid and without a proper urban infrastructure or civi c services that are necessary to keep this vast urban machine running smoothly. It is imperative that can continue to live requires a conscious rgent given that much rld. this urban environment become a sustainable one so that we on it without an inevitable collapse from within, and that change in our mindset and lifestyles. This is especially u of this explosive growth is happening in the developing wo

To begin with, despite being clustered on just 2% of the earth s surface, cities use over 75% of the world s resources, impacting local and global environments enroute. A vast energy structure is required to keep them going - this energy is drawn from outside, often to the detriment of forests and rivers. So the Tehri Dam provides electricity to Delhi, while villages next door to it may not be ele ctrified. Cities also consume huge amounts but do not grow their own food, depending on hi nterlands to produce it. Typically the land required to feed a city is ten times that within the citys own borders. Thanks to a much more networked globe, it is even possible to fly food across the globe the biggest cities in India for insta nce, have practically stopped experiencing seasons, as they can access anything, anytime, provided they are willing to pay the associated costs. Not just food, even fresh water is typically transported from distant watersheds , as can be seen from Chennais ambitious water programme (the Veeranam project). In its bottled form, water is even more resource-wasteful. The United States annu al fossil fuel footprint of bottled water consumption is equivalent of over 50 m illion barrels of oil. The worrying thing is that affluent cities in Asia, Afric a and Latin America seem to be following this development model. Nowhere is this more obvious than in the car revolution. The Economist once said , the world has gone car-crazy, and the measure of a metropolis is the size of it s traffic jams. Every day adds zillions of cars to the planet, while public trans port limps behind. Given the individualized nature of work and mobility, every h ousehold has two cars; others have one for every adult! In turn, our cities have transformed their landscape to suit this boom. Flyovers, expressways, road-wide ning all the construction paraphernalia is put in place to enable more cars to d rive faster, while venerable trees disappear with green spaces turning into vast parking lots. We are rapidly losing our rivers - they are all turning into drains, unable to b ear the weight of excreta and sewage that gets dumped in them everyday. Every ci ty dumps its waste into multiple foul-smelling, noxious gas emanating landfills that are not only environmentally harmful but also destroy the ground water, aff ect communities living around, and are the breeding ground of several diseases.

It is here that governance becomes crucial. Haphazard planning creates condition s of extreme urban stress inducing homes on unsafe sites - 600 million urban dwe llers live in poor, often illegal settlements, without proper access to basic se rvices. Urban sprawl is often on good farmland. Even pollution is outsourced; fr om North to South, or by us to our children as we use up precious resources or c reate greenhouse gas emissions. All this while the urban poor exchange their rural lives for an urban existence where housing is informal, sanitation basic, water unsafe and life generally dev oid of any access to municipal help. Despite being the backbone of industry, the ir lives are often hazardous - any minute a child might be swept into a drain, r un over by a truck, or fall ill thanks to the proximity of a toxic dump or a pil e of rubbish. Yet it is these people who live in tenements and create the least environment stress and do most to mitigate the effects of consumption by others. A city like Bangalore, where half the people live in slums, would go under but f or garbage management by ragpickers who sift through refuse, usually by hand, ri sking cuts by shards of glass or contamination by toxic material, to find, recla im, and reuse what the urban rich have carelessly discarded. But cities are not all bad. Given their more compact natures, cities may even be beneficial for the global environment, given that they provide shared resources for much denser concentrations of people than is possible with dispersed suburb an or rural populations. Specifically, this translates into lower costs per hous ehold/industry, as services become available to large numbers: this includes pip ed, treated water supply, waste management, schools and hospitals, public transp ort, and emergency services. Urban density also reduces housing sprawl, with people living or working in apar tment blocks, often with organized heating or cooling or common services. Cities are also where most social networks operate - citizen groups, residents associ ations, community initiatives the whole basis of sustainable urban life at the l ocal level. Finally, cities also play an important quality-of-life role by being cultural hubs that preserve heritage, encourage the arts, and provide for expre ssions of popular culture. As Patwardhan said in his wonderful book on Pune, Its very simple to create a live able city - design it for people, not cars. To resolve the issue of environmental degradation due to cities, we need to reinvent the way we manage our cities, an d even more so, our lives. Jobs, homes, and basic services need to be closer bef ore commuting can be reduced. Promoting urban agriculture is also important: it would ensure fresh food, boost local farming and reduce food miles. Berlin has 80,000 community gardeners on municipal land, with a further waiting list of 16,000. Dar-es-Salaam, despite being one of the world s fastest growing large cities, now has 67% of its families engaged in farming. Obviously there is tremendous potential here for Indian cities to tap into. So this World Environment Day and through the coming year, let us think about ho w each one of us can do more in our capacity as individuals and citizens to crea te the pressure to make our cities more sustainable. Well compare notes next June . Until then, wish you a great environment! [for photographs and the original article, please see the link: http://thealtern ative.in/articles/how-livable-are-our-cities] Picture Captions:

Our cities are becoming megapolises. Mumbai s skyline. Pic: Wikipedia Our food comes in from all over the country, even from countries outside. Our rivers and nallas are turning into toxic dumps. Here in the picture is Yamun a, which has become a highly toxic water body. The urban poor live in squalor even as they run the engines of our city economie s. Pic courtesy: Meera Kadri We need to encourage urban farming to reduce food miles. Pic courtesy: Vinita SHOWING 4 COMMENTS Revathi Very nice, very ominous article! I m glad you pointed out that the way we are he ading towards is fraught with danger. I do hope we can reverse the trend. Hemarao23 Excellent reading! Keep it up! At school, when I gave the children stimulus to make a poetry for the theme of u rban pollution, they came out with a amazing story. A baby elephant and his fri ends want to"enjoy" the city culture. When they see the city, they become sick a nd they return to their forest. This was done by 6th std.children and we put th e words in tune. It is easier to teach the children and they become the messenge r to the adults,is what we at FACE are aiming for. Kkramaswamy In the present world with too many "days" practically one for each subject in th e whole year we make lot of noise on the subject in media and elsewhere ad forge t everything next day! This in no way belittle your essay which is excellent an d I enjoyed every word and would like to congratulate you heartily. The point I want to mae is that things getfrom bad to worse as we march along! Still let us not lose hope! Lina Krishnan Thanks folks for the feedback. I think there is hope for some reversal; whatever we can do in our small ways is useful. I don t much like special days myself; b ut they serve as reminders to input certain changes in the way we live. LOVE the idea of teaching through song!