“Per­haps more so than ever before, the shape of cit­ies, how much land they occupy, how much energy they con­sume, how their trans­port infra­struc­ture is organ­ised and where people are housed – in remote, segreg­ated envir­on­ments behind walls or in integ­rated neigh­bour­hoods close to jobs, facil­it­ies and trans­port – all affect the envir­on­mental, eco­nomic and social sus­tain­ab­il­ity of global society.”

“Cit­ies are not just con­cen­tra­tions of prob­lems – which they are – but they are also where prob­lems can be solved.” Ricky Bur­dett and Phil­ipp Rode, “The Urban Age Pro­ject” in ‘The End­less City’

In an urban age, cre­at­ive, inclus­ive, sus­tain­able cit­ies can make all the difference.

Cit­ies which take best advant­age of their entire tal­ent pool, use their resources wisely, develop in har­mony with their sur­round­ings and encour­age ima­gin­at­ive think­ing have a clear advant­age. To attract tal­ent and eco­nomic activ­ity to them they must offer qual­ity of life, oppor­tun­it­ies for social engage­ment and per­sonal devel­op­ment. The chal­lenges they present are in their size and their sheer num­ber of inhab­it­ants — which, if man­aged poorly, can have a cata­strophic impact — but within these chal­lenges lie oppor­tun­it­ies for innov­a­tion and new indus­tries to help us pre­pare for an evolving world.

Urb­an­isa­tion is occur­ing rap­idly, with 1.2 mil­lion people mov­ing into cit­ies every week around the world. | Photo by Jess Scully

The num­bers:

50% of people lived in cit­ies in 2007 vs 14% 100 years ago. It is estim­ated that 75% of the global pop­u­la­tion will live in urban areas by 2050.

This urb­an­isa­tion is occur­ring at a very rapid rate. It is estim­ated that 120,000 people are mov­ing into cit­ies every week in Asia.

The chal­lenges:

Hous­ing becomes more expens­ive with increased demand, so many urban poor are liv­ing in slums where water and san­it­a­tion facil­it­ies are inad­equate and liv­ing con­di­tions are crowded and unhealthy. They may be far from their sources of income and essen­tial amen­it­ies. In Asia and the Pacific, two out of five urban dwell­ers live in slums, com­pared with three out of five in Africa.

Cit­ies occupy 2% of the earth’s sur­face, yet urban areas account for 75 per cent of all energy use and for 80 per cent of all green­house gas emissions.

Cit­ies are vora­cious con­sumers, and are also vul­ner­able to the effects of this con­sump­tion. Many major Asian cit­ies are near water bod­ies – on the coast or along rivers and lakes – mak­ing them vul­ner­able to nat­ural dis­asters such as floods, often exacer­bated by the pres­sures of devel­op­ment and cli­mate change.

Cheonggyecheon, Seoul | Photo by annamatic3000 on Flickr

The pos­sib­il­it­ies:

“Cit­ies are the lever to sus­tain­ab­il­ity in this cen­tury.” Marc Alt

While the pres­sures cre­ated by their size are ser­i­ous, cit­ies offer the most diverse pools of know­ledge and skills to solve prob­lems and tackle projects.

Cit­ies are often com­prised of resi­li­ent and adapt­able forms: large num­bers of com­munit­ies, sup­ply chains and eco-systems that can evolve to deal with change and, at best, present new ways of doing things.

High dens­ity allows us to con­cen­trate resources, so that small changes and invest­ments in infra­struc­ture in a rel­at­ively con­fined area can have a big impact.

And while cit­ies have heavy foot­prints, indi­vidual city dwell­ers often have a lighter impact on the envir­on­ment than their rural coun­ter­parts, par­tic­u­larly where there is access to effi­cient pub­lic trans­port and well-planned housing.

“Well-designed and well-governed cit­ies can com­bine high liv­ing stand­ards with much lower green­house gas emis­sions.” — David Dod­man, Inter­na­tional Insti­tute for Envir­on­ment and Development

How cre­at­ive cit­ies can help:

“The World Bank, in its latest World Devel­op­ment Report, states that cit­ies in the Third World grow so fast because they cre­ate eco­nomic oppor­tun­it­ies and pos­sib­il­it­ies. Wages of people in cit­ies are much higher than the wages of their unskilled rural com­pat­ri­ots.” - John Howkins, Cre­at­ive Ecologies

Cre­at­ive cit­ies are not just a place for the “cre­at­ive class” or cul­tural indus­tries. Rather, cre­at­ive city is a place that seeks to unlock the poten­tial of all res­id­ents. As described by Charles Landry in his series of intro­duct­ory videos pos­ted on CCEA, a cre­at­ive city provides an envir­on­ment that encour­ages ima­gin­a­tion, invent­ive­ness and resi­li­ence. These qual­it­ies foster entre­pren­eur­ial and artistic ingenu­ity and the kind of cross-disciplinary prob­lem solv­ing skills that could help us devise solu­tions to the chal­lenges we face.

Ghost Forest by Angela Palmer in Tra­fal­gar Square

What do sus­tain­able cit­ies look like?

“Blam­ing cit­ies misses the point that well-planned and gov­erned cit­ies are key to de-linking a high qual­ity of life from high levels of con­sump­tion.” — Nabil Habayeb

Peter Mad­den from Forum for the Future says cit­ies need to be:

• Live­able. As tal­ent is mobile, they need to be able to attract people. They need a pub­lic realm that works, trans­port that gets them around, and to be afford­able enough to live in.
• Smart. “Embed­ded intel­li­gence” will use digital tech­no­logy as a layer of city infra­struc­ture, to man­age resources and move­ment, and to con­trol it in real time for efficiency.
• Resi­li­ent. Cit­ies will need decent­ral­ised sys­tems of energy and food pro­duc­tion to make them stable and secure.

Each city will take a dif­fer­ent path towards achiev­ing these goals, but there are some qual­it­ies and pri­or­it­ies which should factor in these decisions. As com­munit­ies, we need to think about:

1. Dis­tances trav­elled between home/work/amenities, and how we make these journeys
2. How we main­tain and build our hous­ing stock
3. Where and how we source our food
4. How we use our urban spaces

We’ll be explor­ing some of these ideas and their rel­ev­ance to cit­ies in East Asia over the com­ing weeks. We’ll look at trans­port ori­ented devel­op­ment and walk­able cit­ies, waste pro­cesses and their altern­at­ives, includ­ing re-cycling, re-use, and “social cyc­ling”, con­struc­tion and retro-fitting of our homes and work­places, the issues of food policy and attempts at urban farm­ing, green spaces and urban hab­it­ats, water, energy and the impact of the shapes cit­ies take.

Cre­at­ive cit­ies in our region and around the world are devel­op­ing their own solu­tions, and we want to share their exper­i­ences with you to help start a dis­cus­sion about the future of our cit­ies. We can decide if our cit­ies will add to the prob­lem or con­trib­ute to the solu­tion, if they will con­tinue to be vora­cious in their habits and vul­ner­able to their weak­nesses, or if they will become the fruit­ful, effi­cient, self-sustaining eco-systems they have the poten­tial to be.