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The Climate City


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inequality through the air quality of our cities. The chapter reviews the key drivers and impacts of air pollution in cities around the world and investigates how poor air quality often visits the greatest harm upon poor communities and communities of colour. It argues that addressing air quality can have massive climate and equity co-benefits, and it explores how to maximize these benefits using examples of cities in the Global North and Global South that have successfully tackled this invisible adversary. It concludes with an in-depth look at an innovative solution in the city of Seoul and extrapolates lessons relevant to all cities.

      In The Just City (Part III), Jenny Bates asks the question “Will air pollution on a death certificate for the first time mean nine-year-old Ella’s tragic death leads to cleaner air and better health for others?” London has a serious air pollution problem, as I became aware of as I worked for Friends of the Earth covering London. For too long, despite the great work of some, there wasn’t enough public awareness or action. But with Sahara dust, Dieselgate, legal actions, campaigning, and more, it has risen up the agenda, alongside climate change. The solutions are clear, including the need for cleaner and also fewer vehicles, not adding to the problem such as with road-building or airport expansion, and updating our standards to align with WHO guidelines – they just need implementing. In a post COVID world this is all the more important and will also benefit the economy. Ella’s death could help lead to a better London.

      In Chapter 22, The Invested City, Colin le Duc puts cities at the forefront of the transition to a more sustainable form of capitalism. Capital allocation is increasingly a function of risk and return, as well as explicit impact considerations. Cities act as hubs for the financial system itself, but also for how new technologies and innovations are tested and implemented. Cities play a crucial role in mainstreaming sustainable investing and enabling environmental, social, and governance (ESG) factors to be fully integrated into capital allocation decisions. Additionally, in areas of critical societal needs such as building, transport, food, and energy, cities are incubators of new, innovative, sustainable models that can be tested and perfected to become mainstream solutions. Generation Investment Management’s Chairman Al Gore often says: “The ‘Sustainability Revolution’ is upon us, it has the magnitude of the Industrial Revolution and the speed of the Digital Revolution.”

      In Chapter 23, The Financed City, James Close reminds us of the challenge that 70% of emissions come from cities and over 50% of the world’s population live in cities. Cities are the foundations of our modern society and economy. As a result, they are central to managing the transition to a low-carbon, resilient future.

      Cities will need to transition from their historic trajectory of high-carbon development to address climate change. Cities are well equipped to make this transition because they are dense, homogenous, and concentrated in terms of both population and infrastructure. Their long-term plans need to be informed by a compelling vision of the future and the mobilization of capital at scale for investment in businesses, communities, and infrastructure.

      Net-zero carbon cities are an important aspiration. Net-zero cities will also need to reduce consumption-based emissions by adopting circular economy principles so they can eliminate their contribution to climate change. A clear vision and systemic approach reduces risk and decreases the cost of capital, supporting climate-smart investment, sustainable development, and a people-centred approach.

      In Chapter 25, The Open City, Professor Peter Bishop shows us that “an open city” is spatially diverse, is generous, and celebrates its public spaces, parks, squares, and streets. They are places where citizens meet, exchange goods and ideas, debate, linger, play, and celebrate. This is where the civic life of a democratic society takes place. You can judge the health of a city by its open spaces. Public space is not a commodity, and the market will not provide it (except under very limited conditions). It is public – that is, communally owned and maintained for the use and enjoyment of all. It needs to be protected, managed, and cared for. Where it is lacking it needs to be provided, not as a luxury but as a necessity for urban living. At the time of writing, a global pandemic is causing many individuals to relearn the value of public services and community spirit and value clean air, parks, open spaces, and gardens. This chapter traces the theory and practice of providing public spaces in the city as an essential ingredient of the richness and messiness of the twenty-first-century city.

      In Chapter 26, The Natural City, Carlo Laurenzi considers a range of disparate issues from asking how an artificial phenomenon, like increasing urbanization, on a planetary scale, can ever be compatible with the natural world. Architectural trends, natural geomorphological forms, and planning issues are seen under the microscope of whether they, in reality, help or hinder cities becoming more natural. Parallels are drawn between human migrations and the associated social diversity this brings to our cities, and how these compare with recent biodiversity winners and losers, as well as how terms about unwelcome visitors enter our language, discussed alongside questions about land-use and food growing. Controversial subjects like children’s education and the individual’s right to keep pets are not avoided, along with issues around health, and mental health in particular, as seen under the prism of achieving a natural city. London is used as a canvas to paint strategies and to examine what works and why; and hopefully some of these ideas will have relevance beyond the UK capital. The barriers to achieving a natural city are not centred, for once, around money or technology, but the political and social will to make it happen.