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Sustainable Smart Cities

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27 views5 pages

Sustainable Smart Cities

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cherondale14
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For many years cities were described and understood as somehow separate from the

so-called “natural world.” Today, we recognize that cities are situated in broader
physical processes and entangled in ecosystems. Hurricane Katrina, Super-storm
Sandy, record heat waves in Russia and choking air pollution in Beijing remind us that
human activities can influence and exacerbate the impacts of natural forces on cities. At
the same time, issues around economic development, environmental justice and
vulnerability, and resilience remind us that cities are also impacted by a complex prism
of social and economic factors.

As natural resources become increasingly limited, cities have been forced to improve
and minimize resource consumption, as well as lessen their influence on the
environment. This is where smart cities come in: places where technology helps people
by bridging the gap between sustainability targets and urban development strategies.

While most of the world has a lot of catching up to do, some cities are already on their
way to meeting the needs of the present and future with the help of Internet of Things
(Iota) technology. We set out to investigate which cities are using innovative
technologies to both stay connected and be more sustainable.

3.6 What Could We Mean by Smart Sustainable Cities?


Smart Sustainable Cities (SSC) should be seen as an aggregate concept. As shown
in Figure 1, this means that all three parts need to be present for an entity to qualify
as a Smart sustainable city; if not, the entity is instead a smart city, a sustainable
city, a Case of smart sustainability – or something else.

Fig. 1.

Cities can be made sustainable without the use of smart (ICT) technology, and smart
technologies can be used in cities without contributing to sustainable development.
Smart tech-
Neologies can also be used for sustainable development in other cases than cities. It
is only when all these three aspects are combined, when smart technologies are
used for making cities more sustainable, that we can speak of Smart Sustainable
Cities (SSC).

This definition became the UN standard definition of Smart Sustainable Cities later in
2014-
A smart sustainable city is an innovative city that uses ICTs and other means to improve
quality of life, efficiency of urban operation and services, and competitiveness, while
ensuring that it meets the needs of present and future generations with respect to
economic, social, environmental as well as cultural aspects.

Five Developments
The following five developments that can be seen as the seeds from
Which the concept of Smart Sustainable Cities has grown.

1. Globaliza tion of Environmental Problems and Sustainable Development


2.1 Globalization of Environmental Problems and Sustainable Development
A series of UN conferences over the last forty years have highlighted the
increasingly global character of environmental problems. Until the Stockholm
conference in 1972, environmental problems were mainly seen as local issues. But
over the last 40 years, it has become increasingly clear that this is not the case.
Under the slogan “think global, act local,” the Agenda 21 action plan clearly pointed
to the importance of local implementation and action to abate global
environmental and social problems.
One of the most evident examples of global environmental problems is climate
change. Ever since 1988, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)
has explored the causes and potential effects of climate change and has in
subsequent reports sharpened their conclusions: climate change is real, and it is
being driven by human activities. Moreover, there are a number of other, perhaps
equally important global issues that need to be addressed. The rapid decline in
biodiversity, the imbalance in the cycles of nitrogen and phosphorous, and the
acidification of oceans and changes in land use are other examples of issues
where humankind has exceeded global thresholds or is on the verge of crossing
them

2. Urbanization and Urban Growth


When the twentieth century began, about 12.5% or 200 million people lived in cities.
A hundred years later those numbers had increased to 52% or 3.6 billion people .
According to these statistics,
More than half of the world’s population now lives in cities; a share that is only
expected to increase. In 2050 the urban population is estimated to account for
67% of the global population, albeit with large regional differences. In more
developed regions, 86% of the population is expected to be urban dwellers in 2050,
while in less developed regions the urban proportion is expected to be 64%.
According to UN DESA, most of the urbanization will take place through the growth
of already existing urban areas. However, contrary to what one might think, the
largest part of the growth is expected to take place in relatively small cities.

3. Sustainable Urban Development and Sustainable Cities


2.3 Sustainable Urban Development and Sustainable Cities
With more than half of the world’s population living in urban areas, this is also
where the use of energy, land and other resources is increasingly originating. The
ongoing concentration of the global population in urban areas thus implies that
these are increasingly important when it comes to addressing issues of sustainable
development. In other words, sustainable urban development has become a
prerequisite for sustainable development.

4. Information and Communication Technologies


2.4 Information and Communication Technologies
The development of Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) and urban
growth as a symbiosis.
There are two recent changes in global ICT development which are the basis for
cities to become smart. The first is the transition from wires to wireless, including both
telephones and Internet access. The second development concerns the increasing
number of devices being connected to the Internet, the transition towards an
“Internet of Things” Iota.

5. Smart Cities
To a great extent, Smart Cities is today a concept advanced by the business sector.
It is a catchword that draws enormous interest from companies involved in ICT and
infrastructure.
Most of the ICT included in the smart city concepts already exist. The novelty is
thus not so much the individual technologies, products or services but the
interconnection and the synchronization of these and the systems they include,
so that they work in concerted action. This is also where the challenge is and
what makes the market so interesting for the big companies that have the potential
to develop those broad solutions.

Green, Smart, & Sustainable Cities

One of the most pressing environmental challenges facing cities and suburbs is the
impact of polluted storm water runoff from developed land – highways, parking lots,
rooftops and other impermeable surfaces – into our rivers, lakes, and coastal waters.
The federal EPA estimates that more than 10 trillion gallons of untreated urban and
suburban storm water runoff makes its way into our surface waters each year,
degrading recreation, destroying fish habitat, and altering stream ecology and
hydrology.

The problem becomes particularly acute in cities that drain both storm water and
sewage into a common set of pipes and conveyances. When major storm events prove
more than these frequently older systems can handle, the result is “combined sewer
overflows,” a noxious mess.

With the use of green infrastructure, a set of urban design


techniques replicate the way nature deals with rainwater – using
vegetation and soils as natural sponges for runoff – rather than
relying exclusively on the concrete pipes and holding tanks of the
past.

Such techniques as green roofs, rain gardens, permeable paving,


and rainwater harvesting not only improve water quality; they also
transform rainwater from a source of pollution into a valuable
community resource. Done well, low impact development helps
to literally green the urban landscape, cool and cleanse the air,
reduce asthma and heat-related illnesses, cut heating and
cooling energy costs, create urban oases of open space, and
generate green landscaping and construction jobs.

Bios wales were the most common forms employed, with rain gardens, bio retention,
and porous pavers close behind.

Perhaps the country’s leading example of the planned adoption of green infrastructure
at a significant scale is the city of Philadelphia. Under a formal plan to meet Clean
Water Act requirements, approved by the federal EPA in June of this year, the city has
now agreed to transform at least one-third of the impervious areas served by its sewer
system into “greened acres” -- spaces that use green infrastructure to infiltrate, or
otherwise collect, the first inch of runoff from any storm. My colleague Larry Levine,
who has been working with the city, says that amounts to keeping 80-90% of annual
rainfall from these areas out of the Philadelphia’s over-burdened sewer system.

Vancouver, Canada
Tying with San Francisco for the 12th place, Vancouver runs on over 90% sustainable
energy and emits the fewest greenhouse gases per capita of any major North American
city. Vancouver has been able to achieve results thanks to their use of real-time data
and technology, which has increased connectivity, sustainability and convenience.

Smart city initiatives include accessible Wi-Fi in 755 public spaces, wired bike sharing,
electrical vehicle plug-in spots, and video feeds in busy intersections to smooth traffic.
Vancouver’s green plan has been further developed due to mandates for green
buildings, renewable energy, and sustainable mass transit.

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