Herbert Girardet - Future of Cities Forum

Beyond Sustainable Development -
Towards the Regenerative City
Source: Nakicenovic
2009
Shanghai
Urban growth and impacts
• From 1900 to 2000 human numbers increased four fold
– from 1.5 to 6 billion; 7 billion by 2012
• The global urban population has now grown 15 fold to
over 50 % of the world population
• By 2030, 60% of the world population, or 4.9 billion
people, are expected to live in urban areas, 3 times
more than the world’s entire population in 1900
• In developing countries, as villagers move to the city,
per capita resource consumption typically increases
fourfold
• Cities, located on 3-4% of the land surface of the earth,
use 80% of its resources, and discharge the bulk of
solid, liquid and gaseous wastes
NASA arctic ocean image August 1980
NASA arctic ocean image August 2012
Megacity Regions between 10 and 33 Million
33,000,000
x Metro Manila
32,000,000
x Hong Kong-Shenzhen 15,800,000
20,550,000
x Los Angeles
15,250,000
Mexico City
20,450,000
x Kolkata
´15,100,000
x New York City
19,750,000
x Mumbai
19,200,000
x Jakarta
18,900,000
x São Paulo
18,850,000
x Tokyo
Chongqing
x Seoul
Delhi
18,600,000
x Osaka-Kobe-Kyoto17,375,000
x Shanghai
16,650,000
16,300,000
Moscow
15,000,000
Greater Cairo
14,450,000
x Buenos Aires
13,170,000
x London
12,875,000
Beijing
12,500,000
x Karachi
11,800,000
Cities as ‘entropy accelerators’
• Modern cities, largely powered by fossil fuels, are
entropy engines, with major systems implications
• As such they are self-limiting systems that
accelerate entropy (disorder) and climate change
• The way they currently work – as linear-input/
output systems – they undermine their own longterm existence
• The challenge in an urbanising world is, above all
else, to find new ways to assure compatibility of
urban systems and earth systems
Urban agriculture
IBA Emscher Park
IBA Hamburg
London 2013
Lanzhou, Gansu Province
Transforming Seoul
Adelaide
Adelaide 2013
• 30% electricity supply from wind and solar
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120,000 PV roofs on 600,000 houses = 250 MW peak
PV roofs on most public buildings
Solar hot water systems mandated for new buildings
3 million trees planted on 2000 ha for C02 absorption and biodiversity
15% reduction of C02 emissions since 2000
Water sensitive urban development
180,000 tonnes of compost made from urban organic waste
20,000 ha of peri-urban land used for vegetable and fruit crops
Reclaimed waste water and urban compost used to cultivate this land
Large scale-building tune-up programmes across the city region
60% carbon emissions reduction by municipal buildings
Construction of Lochiel Park Solar Village with 106 eco-homes
• Thousands of new green jobs
Thank you for listening!