GFHS
Committed to Sustainable Cities and Human Settlements for All
In Special Consultative Status with ECOSOC
Search
NameDescriptionContent
Home>>Text
Serge Salat: International Green Model City Standards for Achieving Urban Prosperity and Implementing the New Urban Agenda
Source:
|
Author:gfhsforum
|
Published time: 2017-01-11
|
752 Views
|
Share:
Serge Salat, President, Urban Morphology
and Complex Systems Institute, Paris, France
Cities occupy less than 3 percent of the land surface, and yet house half of the world’s population. They consume 75 percent of natural resources, and account for 60-80 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions. The energy and materials that are consumed by cities must be disposed in some form, and they do so in vast quantities of solid, liquid and gaseous waste. In other words, cities are dissipative structures of intense energy and material consumption as well as waste production (UN-Habitat 2012). But this makes cities potentially the most effective agents of change. Cities hold the keys to energy sustainability. Increasing concern of climate change has resulted in falling costs for renewable energy technologies, and at the same time resource intensive technologies are becoming more expensive. For change to happen we do not have to wait for future technologies to emerge, a lot can be achieved using existing technologies, smart urban planning, energy conservation and improvements in efficiency. This transformative change is embodied in the 10 principles and the 15 categories of the International Green Model City Initiative. Applied in a systemic way, they allow achieving city’s prosperity and implementing the New Urban Agenda.
Implementing the New Urban Agenda and enhancing Urban Prosperity
UN Habitat City Prosperity Initiative, which provides a framework for implementing the New Urban Agenda, has conceptualized city prosperity along 6 dimensions: productivity, infrastructure, quality of life, equity and social inclusion, environmental sustainability, governance and legislation. The City Prosperity Initiative framework provides a wealth of new analytical tools based on spatial indicators. New indicators such as street connectivity, public space, agglomeration economies provide clear spatial recommendations that help increase value judgment and support decision- making.
In the world’s cities with a very solid prosperity index, the six dimensions of Urban Prosperity are well developed overall, with very little variations among them. The strong integration and homogeneous balance of all the dimensions show that these cities have achieved a good synergy between urban planning, urban governance and finance for the collective interest. It allows them to be ‘hubs’ of prosperity thank to the high production of goods and services within a safe and secure environment.
85% of cities with a solid prosperity index are in Europe, including 14 European Cities in the top 20 most prosperous cities.
According to Paul Romer, World Bank new chief economist, collective action is required first to get the public space that allows urban mobility and interconnection. Urban planning and collective action have had much more influence in Europe than in any other region of the world. European prosperous cities have a specific shape integrating public transportation and intensity of land use, which encourages agglomeration economies and knowledge spill-overs based on intense concentrations of jobs and firms highly accessible by transit, thus reducing transportation costs for people and offering them a high quantity of jobs opportunities, either through accessibility to hundreds of thousands - an even millions of jobs in New York and London – in a less than 30-minute transit ride, or through a good local job-resident balance. Even when high densities are concentrated in the center, these cities comprise several sub-centers very closely and tightly linked by public transportation, such as in New York City, London, and Tokyo. Transit-Oriented Development is a planning approach which allows applying in emerging cities the spatial planning principles that have made the success of the most prosperous European and Asian cities.
Prosperous cities’ urban fabric is based on a dense network of well-connected streets of variable widths (most of them less than 20-m wide and many of them less than 12-m wide). Street patterns are often grids that define short blocks of about 1ha sometimes narrow and elongated. New York City blocks, for example, are only 60-m wide. Many street intersections (80 to 120 per km2) create a vibrant pedestrian streetscape with streets designed as places for people. There are at least 18 km of street length per km2 and 30% of the land is for streets and public spaces. Public space is the matrix of urban life and creates economic value such as in urban regeneration projects in London (King’s Cross) or New York City (Hudson Yards).
These cities have also set up ambitious action plans for energy reduction and have developed some of their neighbourhoods with a circular economy approach. Among the top most prosperous cities, Japanese cities such as Tokyo and Osaka, as well as Hong Kong and New York rank also very high. These cities share the same morphological features as prosperous European cities. The most prosperous of these cities (Oslo, Copenhagen, Stockholm, Helsinki, Paris, Vienna, in this order) have significantly decoupled economic growth from CO2 and GHG emissions. Leading green cities across Europe are demonstrating that continued economic and population growth can occur without a commensurate increase in a city’s environmental footprint. This ‘de-coupling’ of economic prosperity from increasing levels of resource consumption impact is increasingly seen as a fundamental component of a sustainable future. This has worked because these cities’ spatial structure has been shaped in an efficient way by planning. It is thus an urgent priority to plan in an efficient way the cities that we need for urbanizing 2 billion people more. Once urban development takes place and some division of land into public space and private space is established, it almost never is changed.
International Green Model City Standards and Urban Prosperity
There is growing recognition that, when well planned, the city structure can bring co-benefits to the overall ecosystem. International Green Model City Initiative has put together standards for city development, which in their 3.0 version integrate in a comprehensive and innovative way spatial planning and green urban systems planning. For Habitat III in Quito in October 2016, IGMC standards principles, categories, and scoring have been updated to reflect progress in the New Urban Agenda preparation process as well as the latest policy guidance and development tendency in China and other developing countries. Updated IGMC standards are grounded in 10 Key principles: Green, Resilience, Efficiency, Prosperity, Equity, Inclusiveness, Health, Innovation, Identity, and Happiness.These principles are put into action through 15 categories, compiled by over 50 international experts who were convened by GFHS and UNEP, and were updated for Habitat III. These principles and categories are consistent with the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and the New Urban Agenda, and embody a commitment to sustainable cities and human settlements for all. IGMC initiative has already been registered at the United Nations secretariat as an important commitment to Rio + 20, and has become a substantial action to implement 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and the New Urban Agenda at local level.
The application of the IGMC standards is made through fifteen categories. These fifteen categories provide guidance, recommendations, best management practice and performance indicators. They are comprised of proven approaches for planners, developers, industry, businesses, local officials and citizens; each category has indicators relevant to stakeholders for measuring performance.
The IGMC standards provide a method to quantitatively assess the progress of a city or an urban project towards the implementation of the fifteen categories. It assesses the extent to which a city or an urban project leverages infrastructure investment, land use, and urban planning and design to support economically efficient urban growth that creates healthy communities, while minimizing GHG emissions and environmental pressure.
Implementing the New Urban Agenda and enhancing Urban Prosperity
UN Habitat City Prosperity Initiative, which provides a framework for implementing the New Urban Agenda, has conceptualized city prosperity along 6 dimensions: productivity, infrastructure, quality of life, equity and social inclusion, environmental sustainability, governance and legislation. The City Prosperity Initiative framework provides a wealth of new analytical tools based on spatial indicators. New indicators such as street connectivity, public space, agglomeration economies provide clear spatial recommendations that help increase value judgment and support decision- making.
In the world’s cities with a very solid prosperity index, the six dimensions of Urban Prosperity are well developed overall, with very little variations among them. The strong integration and homogeneous balance of all the dimensions show that these cities have achieved a good synergy between urban planning, urban governance and finance for the collective interest. It allows them to be ‘hubs’ of prosperity thank to the high production of goods and services within a safe and secure environment.
85% of cities with a solid prosperity index are in Europe, including 14 European Cities in the top 20 most prosperous cities.
According to Paul Romer, World Bank new chief economist, collective action is required first to get the public space that allows urban mobility and interconnection. Urban planning and collective action have had much more influence in Europe than in any other region of the world. European prosperous cities have a specific shape integrating public transportation and intensity of land use, which encourages agglomeration economies and knowledge spill-overs based on intense concentrations of jobs and firms highly accessible by transit, thus reducing transportation costs for people and offering them a high quantity of jobs opportunities, either through accessibility to hundreds of thousands - an even millions of jobs in New York and London – in a less than 30-minute transit ride, or through a good local job-resident balance. Even when high densities are concentrated in the center, these cities comprise several sub-centers very closely and tightly linked by public transportation, such as in New York City, London, and Tokyo. Transit-Oriented Development is a planning approach which allows applying in emerging cities the spatial planning principles that have made the success of the most prosperous European and Asian cities.
Prosperous cities’ urban fabric is based on a dense network of well-connected streets of variable widths (most of them less than 20-m wide and many of them less than 12-m wide). Street patterns are often grids that define short blocks of about 1ha sometimes narrow and elongated. New York City blocks, for example, are only 60-m wide. Many street intersections (80 to 120 per km2) create a vibrant pedestrian streetscape with streets designed as places for people. There are at least 18 km of street length per km2 and 30% of the land is for streets and public spaces. Public space is the matrix of urban life and creates economic value such as in urban regeneration projects in London (King’s Cross) or New York City (Hudson Yards).
These cities have also set up ambitious action plans for energy reduction and have developed some of their neighbourhoods with a circular economy approach. Among the top most prosperous cities, Japanese cities such as Tokyo and Osaka, as well as Hong Kong and New York rank also very high. These cities share the same morphological features as prosperous European cities. The most prosperous of these cities (Oslo, Copenhagen, Stockholm, Helsinki, Paris, Vienna, in this order) have significantly decoupled economic growth from CO2 and GHG emissions. Leading green cities across Europe are demonstrating that continued economic and population growth can occur without a commensurate increase in a city’s environmental footprint. This ‘de-coupling’ of economic prosperity from increasing levels of resource consumption impact is increasingly seen as a fundamental component of a sustainable future. This has worked because these cities’ spatial structure has been shaped in an efficient way by planning. It is thus an urgent priority to plan in an efficient way the cities that we need for urbanizing 2 billion people more. Once urban development takes place and some division of land into public space and private space is established, it almost never is changed.
International Green Model City Standards and Urban Prosperity
There is growing recognition that, when well planned, the city structure can bring co-benefits to the overall ecosystem. International Green Model City Initiative has put together standards for city development, which in their 3.0 version integrate in a comprehensive and innovative way spatial planning and green urban systems planning. For Habitat III in Quito in October 2016, IGMC standards principles, categories, and scoring have been updated to reflect progress in the New Urban Agenda preparation process as well as the latest policy guidance and development tendency in China and other developing countries. Updated IGMC standards are grounded in 10 Key principles: Green, Resilience, Efficiency, Prosperity, Equity, Inclusiveness, Health, Innovation, Identity, and Happiness.These principles are put into action through 15 categories, compiled by over 50 international experts who were convened by GFHS and UNEP, and were updated for Habitat III. These principles and categories are consistent with the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and the New Urban Agenda, and embody a commitment to sustainable cities and human settlements for all. IGMC initiative has already been registered at the United Nations secretariat as an important commitment to Rio + 20, and has become a substantial action to implement 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and the New Urban Agenda at local level.
The application of the IGMC standards is made through fifteen categories. These fifteen categories provide guidance, recommendations, best management practice and performance indicators. They are comprised of proven approaches for planners, developers, industry, businesses, local officials and citizens; each category has indicators relevant to stakeholders for measuring performance.
The IGMC standards provide a method to quantitatively assess the progress of a city or an urban project towards the implementation of the fifteen categories. It assesses the extent to which a city or an urban project leverages infrastructure investment, land use, and urban planning and design to support economically efficient urban growth that creates healthy communities, while minimizing GHG emissions and environmental pressure.
Copyright © Global Forum on Human Settlements (GFHS)