CUNY Institute for Sustainable Cities. Global Ranking of Top 10 Resilient Cities. By Boyd Cohen, Ph.D., CO2 IMPACT and Co-Author, Climate Capitalism Resilient cities, those that are working to transition towards a low-carbon economy while also preparing to avert the worst of climate change, are gaining interest and attention from policy makers, city councils and others worldwide.
In fact, today, leaders from the public and private sector, supported by ICLEI (see below) and the U.S. Green Building Council, are launching a National Leadership Speaker Series on Resiliency and Security in the 21st Century. “The battle to prevent catastrophic climate change will be won or lost in our cities…” (C40 Cities Initiative) Cities account for up to 80% of GHG emissions globally and are home to more than 50% of the world’s population (headed to 60%, 5 billion people by 2030). Rob Hopkins of Transition Town Totnes and Transition Culture. As Lester Brown recently noted on this site, the coming decline of oil will be ‘a seismic economic event’.
So what do we do when we learn that the ’black gold’ will soon start running out? Do we grab a gun and head for the hills, or do we redouble our efforts to build strong, resilient communities and economies that are not dependent on fossil fuels? Rob Hopkins is at the forefront of the latter approach. Originally a permaculture teacher, Rob began tackling peak oil by coordinating an energy descent action plan with his students for Kinsale, the town in Ireland where he was living and teaching. The resulting document received a huge amount of interest from around the world (and can be downloaded as a PDF here), and has since given rise to the Transition Towns movement – a rapidly spreading, community-lead approach to peak oil planning, which is currently being implemented at a village, town and even city level. [Photo credit: Jersey Evening Post] How to Design Resilient Cities. “Resilient Cities: Responding to Peak Oil and Climate Change,” published earlier this year, argues that cities need to plan their future development considering their “resiliency” to changes in climate and the availability of fossil fuels.
Authors Peter Newman (Curtin University, Australia), Timothy Beatley (University of Virginia), and Heather Boyer (Harvard University) predict that in the next couple years, energy demand will outmatch oil supplies worldwide, resulting in a situation exceeding the challenges of the OPEC oil embargo in the early 1970′s. The authors argue that expanded use of cars, ever-growing urban sprawl, and poorly managed urban development could lead to a twin energy and climate crisis for cities. Newman and his co-authors focus on cities because “cities now consume 75 percent of the world’s energy and emit 80 percent of the world’s green house gases. According to Newman and his co-authors, there are seven key elements to a resilient city: Read the book Like this:
Making a sustainable city: a guide to urban planning, management and rehabilitation. Just what is a sustainable city, exactly?
The United Nations Global Compact, which runs a program focused on creating of sustainable cities, has published a framework of management principles for urban planners and municipal managers that includes case studies for issues such as water management and slum rehabilitation. There's a whole lot more than that in the roughly 137-page PDF, but those are two of the most profound problems that are addressed. The Global Compact Cities Program (or Programme, if prefer) currently works with 40 cities around the world. There are actually 13 really active programs with which the group is engaged actively. The publication means that other local governments can read about and benefit from their pilots and innovation.
In the section that describes the project in Wisconsin, the city reveals that it had more than 120 different agencies, organizations, businesses and whatevers trying to work on water quality initiatives in the city. Join Urban Animator Mary Rowe Discussion of Famed Urban Planner Jane Jacobs. Resilient Cities. Post Carbon Cities. 5 Amazing Green Cities" Grønn by på Brøset - Trondheim kommune. Brøset – towards a carbon neutral housing settlement. Framtidens byer.