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Environmental Catastrophe or New Global Ecology?

With the population of urban areas expected to grow substantially in coming decades, researchers are pondering ways to plan with climate change in mind.

Published November 1, 2002

By Margaret W. Crane
Academy Contributor

Image courtesy of .shock via stock.adobe.com.

In 2007, for the first time in history, the number of people living in cities will equal the number of rural dwellers, according to the most recent report of the United Nations Population Division of the Department of Economic and Social Affairs. Virtually all of the world’s anticipated population growth during the next 30 years will be concentrated in urban areas. And almost all of that growth will take place in less-developed regions.

The urbanization of early 19th-century Europe begins to look like a modest blip compared to the unplanned, unchecked growth of cities in the developing world today. Between 2000 and 2010, cities in Africa will have grown by another 100 million people, while those in Asia will have swelled by 340 million. Taken together, that’s the equivalent of adding another Hong Kong, Teheran, Chicago or Bangkok every two months.

Concerned about the coming dominance of urban areas over the world’s environment, a small but growing number of scientists have begun to focus on the city itself as simultaneous driver and subject of environmental change. In their view, the sheer quantity of people piling into cities calls for a shift of focus away from issues related to the physical environment alone and toward a more integrated approach to the broad question of urban ecology.

A New Vocabulary and Conceptual Framework

Roberta Balstad Miller, PhD, director of Columbia University’s Center for International Earth Science Information Network (CIESIN), believes scientists need a new vocabulary and a new conceptual framework to tackle the complex dialectic between physical environmental change, mushrooming cities, poverty, and rising human expectations across the globe.

“We already know a great deal about each discrete sector in the urban environmental mix,” said Miller. “Beyond atmospheres, oceans and the natural historical origins of environmental change, scientists also have investigated the interlocking issues of clean water, waste disposal, energy and land use. What we haven’t done is connect the dots that will allow us to respond to the big picture: How can cities become less vulnerable to environmental stressors? What can we learn from the environmental successes as well as the environmental problems of the great 20th-century metropolises?”

These questions form the backdrop of a new research project at the Earth Institute of Columbia University – provisionally called the Twenty-First Century Cities Project – that will examine environment and sustainable development issues in major cities worldwide. The project will focus initially on four cities: Fortaleza, Brazil; Accra, Ghana; Chennai, India; and New York, United States.

“We’re keeping New York in the mix,” said Dr. Balstad Miller, “because it affords an opportunity to study the impact of rapid urban growth over a long period of time, and also because there is so much research on the environment of New York under way at Columbia.”

Toward Sustainable Cities

The Brundtland report (Our Common Future, 1987) defined sustainable development, the theme of this summer’s Johannesburg Summit, as development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability to satisfy the requirements of future generations.

It’s a concept most governments agree on in principle. But with cities expanding at the rate of 10 percent per year, largely owing to massive migration fueled by poverty and conflicts in rural areas, sustainability can look like a remote ideal instead of a real-world possibility. In Johannesburg, 100 world leaders and nearly 50,000 delegates turned their energies to the challenge of bringing sustainable development back down to earth.

The Summit’s participants queried the model of urban development based on automobile-driven sprawl. They asked themselves whether it is possible for new cities laboring under a chronic shortage of resources to develop sewage and waste disposal systems in time to prevent serious outbreaks of communicable disease. They looked at the plight of unemployed urban youth and the need to find ways to cool down the social tinderbox of frustration and poverty. And they discussed the strengthening of governance – the management of society – to help smooth the expansion of cities and check chaos.

In a speech to the Megacities Foundation, British architect Lord Richard Rogers said that, above all, cities must be a vehicle for social inclusion. “This is no utopian vision,” he said. “Cities that are beautiful, safe and equitable are within our grasp.”

The Role of Sustainability

Utopian or not, the question of sustainability colors Balstad Miller’s research, and is the ultimate motivation behind the Twenty-First Century Cities Project. “Ecosystems are being bisected by highways,” she said. “Forests, wetlands and prime agricultural lands are being lost to urban development. Less land is available for indigenous animal and plant populations, whose genetic diversity is at risk. And yet we can’t halt urban growth. We need to develop sustainable approaches to a process that’s not about to go away.”

Balstad Miller, an urban historian, studies cities at three levels: The environment of the city itself, exemplified by the quality of its air, water and sanitation systems; the environment of the region, such as the city’s impact on regional weather patterns and its surrounding forested and agricultural areas; and global networks of cities as the nexus of decision-making, economic integration, and growth.

Oddly enough, she added, the real demographic story isn’t taking place in megacities like Tokyo, Mexico City, Mumbai and Sao Paulo. The number of cities with 1 million or more inhabitants grew from 80 in 1950 to more than 300 by 1990, and is projected to reach 500 by 2010. Most of the world’s urban population actually lives in the 40,000-50,000 urban centers with fewer than 1 million inhabitants, according to the United Nations Centre for Human Settlements. These urban agglomerations are a relatively new subject for those who study the complex relationship between environment and urban development. What these scientists learn may be crucial for our common future.

Also read:The Impact of Climate Change on Urban Environments

About Dr. Roberta Balstad Miller

Roberta Balstad Miller, PhD, is a senior research scientist at Columbia University and director of the University’s Center for International Earth Science Information Network (CIESIN). Dr. Miller has published extensively on science policy, information technology and scientific research, and the role of the social sciences in understanding global environmental change.

As chair of the National Research Council’s Steering Committee on Space Applications and Commercialization, she recently completed two book-length reports on public-private partnerships in remote sensing and on government use of this new technology. In addition to her many research interests, she is a published translator of the poetry of Jorge Luis Borges and N.P. van Wyck Louw. Dr. Miller was recently elected a Fellow of The New York Academy of Sciences.


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