Chapter 11 - Livable Cities

Today, I will be covering three quotes from Chapter 11 of Margaret Robertson's book, Sustainability Principles, and Practice. The impact that sustainable and liveable cities around us is incredibly important for us. A majority of people are now choosing to live in cities rather than in the rural countryside. This is for a variety of reasons, but if cities and more urban living are going to be the primary habitat for people, then we need to ensure they are built sustainably and responsibly so that they don't pollute and enhance the lives of both the planet and the people.

"New developments are almost always based on the assumption that people travel in automobiles every time they move from one place to another." 

- Robertson, M (2017) p.209

The section in which Robertson touches on Sprawl, which is what we tend to think of as urban sprawl, is most commonly what we would think of when a city is mentioned. Large concrete cities that are heavily dependant on cars for daily routines are not part of being sustainable. As the quote by Robertson details above, any new sprawl-like developments are always going to assume and account for vehicles in the area, to a large extent. Until there is a new method of convenient, inexpensive, and reliable transportation. The cities today are part of a vicious cycle where people move there with cars, architects build around the plan of ever-increasing vehicle/people populations, and the cycle repeats. Liveable cities that have more sustainable measures like encouraging biking, pedestrian walkways, and active-lifestyles are the only logical step moving forward. Existing cities need to be renovated with sustainability and avoidance of sprawl in mind.

"Planning healthy, sustainable communities requires the integration of top-down pro-fessional skills from multiple disciplines with bottom-up, community-driven thinking and decision-making."

 - Robertson, M (2017) p.211

I like this quote from the text because it really tells us the amount of care and thought that has to go into creating a city with sustainability in mind.  The process starts from the top to the bottom, plans need to be made first-hand by the community about whether or not measures such as the ones listed in the book are worth the cost and time to develop them. Fully integrated systems that all benefit one another such as rainwater collection feeding into use for irrigation throughout cities would make them a lot more worthwhile.

The benefits range from helping keep the environment cleaner, but also in helping people's moods by increasing the amount of greenery they see, to also helping drive down water costs and electrical ones. So many tangible benefits could be gained by creating a green-focused city, but it will indeed take a lot of planning and money to get completed to that level.

"Coastal cities will face increasing intensity of storm surges and rising sea levels which will inundate whole neighborhoods. Some inland cities will face increased flooding, perhaps together with water shortages."

 - Robertson, M (2017) p.221

This paints a grim picture of the possibility people will likely be facing in the near future if no dire action is taken by leaders in an effort to reduce the level of climate change and adapting sustainability-focused cities. Coastal cities such as Naples, Miami will be some of the first directly impacted by the rising seawater as a result of climate change, A large percentage of people in Florida are impoverished and unlikely to have any other options to move if a climate-related disaster occurs. Due to this reason, our government needs to take responsibility and move forward with plans to reduce waste and pollution as well as implement sustainable city planning.

Photo References:https://www.statista.com/chart/5852/the-worlds-most-sustainable-cities/
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2017/06/29/climate/southern-states-worse-climate-effects.html