Going green: Many cities get red marks for poor planning

Arti Mulchand, Straits Times 26 Jun 08;

TOO many cities are built for cars, not people.

They rely too heavily on fossil fuels, leading to high emissions of the greenhouse gases that cause global warming.

Bad planning on how to use land adds to the litany of environmental sins.

The result: These icons of urbanisation fare rather badly on their climate-change report cards.

Giving this assessment was Mr Jeremy Harris, a former mayor of the city and county of Honolulu.

He was speaking at a discussion on environmental sustainability and climate change at the World Cities Summit, which ended yesterday.

'The challenge we face is monumental... We can't develop the new cities of the future by using the failed paradigms of the past,' he said.

His four-pronged strategy as mayor of Honolulu for over a decade included building cities with people in mind, being smart in growth design and preserving agricultural land and open spaces.

The transport system, for one thing, is designed to minimise car use and promote the extensive use of bicycles. City buses are even equipped with bike racks so residents can take their bikes with them when they travel around the city.

Residential, work and community spaces are planned so people do not have to travel too far to work, or even to shop, he said.

The city also has an extensive recycling programme, turning glass into asphalt and green waste into compost, among other things. It also reprocesses cooking oil as fuel for city vehicles.

Technology has also been aggressively harnessed to allow for integrated planning and to boost efficiency.

Geographic Information Systems (GIS), for example, provide a three-dimensional view of the entire city - all its buildings, transport systems, topography, demographics and even sewers.

Even the maintenance and repair of the island's water infrastructure is GIS-based - every storm-drain manhole cover has a barcode so that field workers, equipped with handheld computers, know exactly what needs to be done.

The measures are backed, too, with strong buy-in from the community, as well as the 'expertise and enthusiasm of civil society', he added.

All that, while the city budget stayed flat.

'A lot of people said we could not afford to do it. But we could not afford not to,' he said.

Some of his fellow speakers also pointed to examples of sustainability at work, and measures that supply solutions instead of adding problems to the climate-change issue.

In Mexico City, for example, an improved bus-based rapid transit system has not only sped up travelling time, but led to reductions in greenhouse-gas emissions of 35,000 tons a year, said Mr Robert Bradley, director of International Climate Policy from the World Resources Institute.

The impact of global warming would also be dire, Mr Harris said, flashing a photograph of a water-inundated neighbourhood of Waikiki should sea levels rise by a metre.

'When you live in a coastal city, this is real,' he added.

Singapore's National Environment Agency chief executive Lee Yuan Hee, who also spoke at the session, agreed.

'We have no hinterland to turn to. We do not have a second chance,' he said.

To that end, Singapore has commissioned its first long-term climate-change impact study, which will be ready early next year.

What cities really need to do is to reflect the true economic cost of a business-as-usual approach, concluded Mr Harris, using the subsidised price of petrol as an illustration.

If its true price is reflected, solar energy, for one thing, would surface as far more cost-competitive than many think it is.

'We can no longer afford, as a civilisation, to operate under this fraudulent book-keeping,' he said.