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#Written by David Tam, Carmelo Ragusa, and Jason, 1996.#
#davidkftam@netscape.net Copyright 1999#
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David Tam, Carmelo Ragusa, Jason
Healthy Cities Summary
======================
INTRODUCTION
============
A healthy city is a city that is environmentally, socially, economically,
culturally, and politically healthy.
It includes the following characteristics:(1)
-a stable & sustainable ecosystem
-a safe & clean physical environment of high quality
-meets basic needs (food, water, shelter, income safety)
-a high degree of participation and control by the community
-a diverse, vital, & innovative urban economy
-a high health status
-accessible & appropriate health care for all
Why are healthy cities important?
-their great size & intensity magnify their environmental impacts
-by the year 2000, cities will hold 50% of the world's population
-environmental damage caused by cities are disproportionate to their size
(on a global perspective)
Modern view of the city:
-cities are resource & energy hungry
-they draw upon the global hinterland
-involves input of energy and materials, and the output of goods, services,
& pollution
CURRENT ENVIRONMENTAL PROBLEMS OF CITIES
========================================
1)High input of energy & resources, and high output of waste
2)Air/water/land pollution
3)Unsustainable growth of suburbia
-high land consumption, transportation costs, energy usage
4)Improper land use
-e.g. cities built on prime farmland
-1/3 to 2/3 land taken up by roads for cars
5)High population leads to an increase in:
-size
-traffic
-noise
HOW TO SOLVE THE PROBLEMS: PREVENTIVE APPROACHES
================================================
Preventive Actions:
------------------
1)Environmental impact assessment
- a MAJOR preventive engineering approach
- analyzes a development beforehand to study its ecology
2)Increase density
-reduces energy use, transportation needs
-result in better, more efficient public transportation
-low density areas consume more water than high density areas
-low density areas consume 2X as much energy as high density areas
*-must find an optimum density because of economies and diseconomies of
scale
3)Increase public transit
-reduces traffic, pollution, energy use
4)Alter layout of city (many different theories)
-e.g. concentrated decentralization
-alter shape, size, internal ordering
-encourage mixed land use
-change internal economic, social, spatial organization
-spatial ordering can significantly reduce energy demands;
-can also increase economic efficiency, improve social fabric
-Estimates of reducing energy consumption by 150% if cities are
fundamentally changed
5)Practice industrial ecology
-reduces resource/material consumption
-leads to reduced waste output
6)Improve natural environment
-greening of the city (e.g. planting trees)
-e.g. Douglas Fir tree annually removes 10 Kg of sulphur dioxide from air
without harm to itself
7)Education of the public
-changes society's attitudes and values
-can orient society towards a more healthy city
8)Enforce stricter environmental laws which are preventive in nature
-e.g. require companies to fully analyze the effect of a chemical on the
environment before it is introduced into a production system
-e.g. require detailed environmental impact assessments before developments
take place
Preventive Theories:
-------------------
1)The guiding principles of sustainable development:
Theses principles are values for guiding preventive approaches.
a)inter-generational - considers future generations
b)intra-generational - considers current generations
c)transfrontier responsibility - e.g. pollution knows no boundaries
2)Must use concept of wholes to:
-analyze a city as a whole
-analyze the earth as a whole (with cities making up a part of the whole)
3)Ecology
-all actions interrelated
-must treat preventive approaches using ecology
-must remember effects cities have on regional & global environment
4)Top-down approach:
-establishing global initiatives for environmental management
-necessary for global issues related to healthy cities
-e.g. transborder pollution, ozone depletion, global warming
5)Bottom-up approach:
-decentralization of power from federal to local gov'ts
-necessary for local issues related to healthy cities because local gov'ts
are more aware of local problems
-requires strengthening community involvement, awareness, action
-deals with local problems such as traffic congestion, noise bylaws
BARRIERS
========
Barriers to the Theory:
----------------------
1)Lack of education of politicians and the public
-they do not realize there are preventive approaches
-they do not realize the ecology of healthy cities
-they do not take appropriate actions
2)Cultural
-ignorance by living in city
-e.g. do not see the effects city activities have on another region
Our culture looks for short-terms gain instead of long-term gains.
-results in the search for short-term traditional solutions
-results in lack of awareness of long-term preventive approach
3)Division of labour in the management of cities
-prevents those in positions of power from realizing preventive approaches
-focus on traditional solutions
Barriers to the Actions:
-----------------------
1)Economic
-priorities such as high unemployment take more precedence
-lack of financing of preventive actions
In 3rd world countries, pressures such as:
-poverty, debt load, disease have higher priority
2)Social priorities
-poverty , poor housing, high crime have higher priority
3)Cultural
-flight to suburbia is a barrier to creating higher density areas
-our "automobile" culture is a barrier to increasing public transit
-our "disposable society" culture encourages the use of more energy and raw
materials
4)Political
-lack of cooperation & communication between local, regional,
international gov'ts
-loose environmental laws are not preventive in nature and do not enforce
preventive practices
5)Historical
-altering an old city's spatial organization is difficult because of
long-established land uses
REFERENCES
==========
(1)Tsouros, Agis D. ed. World Health Organization Heathy Cities Project:
------------------------------------------------
A Project Becomes a Movement. Milan: Sogess, 1990.
----------------------------
Graham Haughton and Colin Hunter. Sustainable Cities. London :
Jessica Kingsley Publishers, 1994. ------------------
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Sustainable Cites Report - Engineering, Society, and Environment
================================================================
PREVENTIVE APPROACHES
=====================
From the environmental perspective, the goals of the preventive
approaches are to reduce energy and raw material input, and waste and
pollution output. We focused our approaches on industrialized countries. We
divided these approaches into 2 sections: preventive actions and preventive
theories.
PREVENTIVE ACTIONS
------------------
ENVIRONMENTAL IMPACT ASSESSMENT:
Environmental impact assessment is a major preventive engineering
approach. This procedure analyzes a development beforehand to study its
ecology. It studies the impact the development has on the local and regional
environment. If the impacts are negative, they can be dealt with before
construction of a project actually begins. The design of the project can then
be altered to eliminate the potential negative impacts. This saves potential
costs of fixing problems once development is complete. Clearly, this
preventive approach uses negative feedback loops, and not end-of-pipe
solutions. For example. When an oil refinery was built near the Taj Mahal,
environmental impact assessment was not used. (Haughton and Hunter 1994:242)
As a result, they built the oil refinery upwind from the sacred landmark.
This resulted in air pollution damaging the Taj Mahal. Now, they have to deal
with problems such as installing and maintaining scrubbers, restoring the
landmark, making the temple more pollutant resistant, and altering the
refinery operations to produce less pollutants. If environmental impact
assessment was used, they would have seen the potential problems. They would
have located the oil refinery downwind from the temple. Of course, other
considerations would have been taken in the initial design of the refinery to
eliminate problems before they occurred. This could have been less expense
and better for the environment.
INCREASE DENSITY:
Increasing population density applies only to industrialized countries
and not developing countries. Developing countries are in fact past their
optimum density levels, and signs of this are obvious from the levels of
poverty, inadequate housing, inadequate sanitation, lack of medical care, and
disease outbreaks. For industrialized countries, the current cultural habits
are to shift towards the suburbs. These low density are environmentally and
possibly economically inefficient. Low density areas can consume as much as
twice the amount of energy as high density areas. (Haughton and Hunter
1994:13) This comes mainly in the form of energy needed for transportation and
individual home heating. Another fact is that low density areas consume more
water than high density areas. (Haughton and Hunter 1994:85) This is due to
activities such as our addiction for the perfect lawn. We use a lot of water
by watering our lawns, gardens, and washing our cars. If the density of a
city is increased, energy consumption would decrease, and so would
transportation needs, because people would not need to rely on automobiles as
much. For example, many of the suburbs of Toronto are low density areas. Car
use in these cities and towns are extremely high. If the density was
increased, car use could potentially decrease, reducing energy inputs, and
pollution output. However, this solution is not a simple as it seems because
of the interrelatedness of the approaches. Other preventive approaches must
be used in conjunction with this particular approach to solve the problem.
Underlying this preventive action is the idea of a unique optimum density for
each city due to economies and diseconomies of scale. In some cases, overly
dense areas create demands and supplies which are not beneficial. Each city
has its own optimum density, which would bring about the greatest
environmental sustainability. Increasing density also creates better and more
efficient public transit.
INCREASING PUBLIC TRANSIT:
Increasing public transit is an obvious preventive approach to solving
traffic and pollution problems resulting from automobiles. It also reduces a
city's energy consumption. The city of London, England was able to reduce the
number of automobiles entering the city by 10 % - 15 % during peak times by
increasing public transit use. (Haughton and Hunter 1994:282) Fares were
reduced by 25 %, leading to a 16 % increase in public transit use. Also, in
terms of the economic benefits, the cost of the program was estimated at 75
million pounds, but it resulted in a savings of 171 million pounds. This
preventive action is intimately tied to increasing density and changing the
layout of the city. In contrast, the traditional approach to solving traffic
problems would be to widen our roads and build more highways, a positive-
feedback loop.
ALTERING THE LAYOUT OF THE CITY:
Altering the layout of the city could potentially bring energy-demand
variations of up to 150 %. (Haughton and Hunter 1994:13) There are many
different theories related to the most sustainable layout of a city. These
theories include concentrated decentralization, decentralized development,
concentrated centre development, and balanced regional hierarchy.
(Haughton and Hunter 1994:287-295) Concentrated decentralization involves
medium-sized high density communities which are connected to each other by
good public transport. This theory allow for the benefits of both high
density and low density communities.
Altering the city's layout involves altering its shape, size, and
internal ordering. Altering the internal ordering involves rezoning areas and
it also involves mixed-land use. The current zoning pattern is to locate
residential areas as distant from commercial and industrial areas as possible.
This practice had merit in the past when cities were factory-based. Rezoning
a city to allow people to live and work in the same community would reduce
transportation needs, and therefore energy consumption. This idea of rezoning
also incorporates mixed land use. Mixed land use would bring residents and
stores into the same building. The idea of having shops on the ground floor
and apartment lofts on the upper levels of buildings is gaining popularity in
Toronto's downtown area. Old abandoned factory buildings are being renovated
and converted for this purpose. Creating a sense of local community, and
revitalizing the city core are some of the goals in the rezoning and mixed
land use policy. As a result, altering the layout involves not only the
physical layout, but also the internal economic and social layout as well.
The side effects of such reordering can also increase economic efficiency and
improve the social fabric of the city.
PRACTICE INDUSTRIAL ECOLOGY:
Cities are major consumers of energy and raw materials, and major
producers of pollution and waste. Practicing industrial ecology would have
direct impacts on these aspects of a city. On a simplified basis, using this
preventive approach involves analyzing the interrelationships of the
manufacturing processes and reducing the input and output factors.
GREENING THE CITY:
Not only does greening the city help to clean our air and water, it also
helps to promote the idea of healthy cities. City dwellers seldom have
firsthand experience of the impacts on the surrounding environment. By
bringing nature closer to the city dwellers, a better appreciation for the
environment can be developed. In other words, hopefully, the cultural
attitude of the population towards the environment would change. These
actions have close links with education of the public.
EDUCATION OF THE PUBLIC:
By educating the public, we can change a society's attitudes and values,
and increase awareness of the problems. Encouraging more community
involvement empowers a community to take effective action. Through this, we
can orientate society towards a healthier city. The City of New York has seen
the value in educating the public. In their green city program, environmental
education for all ages is just one of their many activities. (Haughton and
Hunter 1994:304-305)
ENFORCE STRICTER ENVIRONMENTAL LAWS WHICH ARE PREVENTIVE IN NATURE:
It is not adequate to only impose stricter laws on pollution levels. It
is necessary to force industries to use preventive approaches rather than only
end-of-pipe solutions. For instance we can require industries to use
environmental impact assessment. For example, we can require companies to
fully analyze the effect of a chemical on the environment before it is
introduced into a production system. An example of such laws were brought up
in Professor Kahn's lectures. European countries such as Germany have or will
pass legislation which require companies to be responsible for their product
from cradle to grave.
PREVENTIVE THEORIES
-------------------
These preventive theories are the basis for the preventive actions. They
are the ideas behind the actions.
GUIDING PRINCIPLES FOR SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT:
There are 3 guiding principles to sustainable development.
These principles are values for guiding our preventive approaches. (Haughton
and Hunter 1994:17) These values are: (1)inter-generational responsibility,
which cause us to consider the needs of future generations; (2)intra-
generational responsibility, which cause us to consider the needs of the
current generation; (3)transfrontier responsibility, which cause us to realize
that pollution does not recognize national boundaries. These values aid in
the development and in the use of the preventive actions.
THE CONCEPT OF WHOLES AND ECOLOGY:
The city can be considered a living whole, so we must analyze it
accordingly. In an even broader level, we can consider the earth as a whole,
and cities consisting as elements of this whole. We must keep in mind the
effects cities have on the regional and global environment. The preventive
actions mentioned have certain levels of enfoldedness onto each other. All
actions and effects are interrelated and we must treat preventive approaches
using the idea of ecology. In other words, we can not implement only one of
the preventive actions and expect to achieve a healthy city. All of the
preventive actions must be taken to some degree in order to head towards a
healthy city. Similarly, we must realize that we can not pinpoint the causes
of an unhealthy city to one specific factor, e.g. high density. We must zoom
out of our specialized professions and try to deal with unhealthy cities using
a holistic approach. We should not rely only on technological solutions. The
real solutions are technological, social, economic, political, and cultural in
nature.
THE TOP DOWN APPROACH:
The top-down approach involves international bodies such as the U.N. and
the WHO. These governments are needed to set policies on global issues such
as global warming, ozone depletion, and acid rain. They develop the theories
and set the values and goals behind the preventive actions. These policies
can then be passed down to the regional and local levels where preventive
actions are taken.
For example, the World Health Organization began the Healthy Cities
Project in April of 1986. (Hancock 1993) Since its inception, its popularity
has steady increased, as well as the number of cities who participate in its
projects. A wide variety of activities based on creating a healthy city have
resulted. Health in terms of the environment, economy, society, and culture
are promoted. This body has developed a number of theories, guiding
principles, values, ideologies, and policies for creating healthy cities and
for preventive actions. By next year, the organization plans to have a
network of 45 participating cities.
THE BOTTOM-UP APPROACH:
The bottom-up approach advocates decentralizing power from federal
governments to local governments. This approach may seem to contradict the
top-down approach, but in fact it complements it. It is based on the idea
that the local community and government are more aware of local problems and
can take action as seems fit. The theories behind the preventive approaches
which have a global impact must still be developed and agreed upon by the
international bodies using the top-down approach. Local governments and
communities need to develop policies and guiding principles for local issues
such as traffic problems, smog, and local water pollution. This approach
requires the strengthening of community involvement and awareness through
education.
==============================================================================
Bibliography
============
A better prospect for city life. 1991. World Health Organization Technical
-------------------------------
Report Series 807:1-65.
Hancock, T. 1993. The evolution, impact and significances of the healthy
cities/healthy communities movement. Journal of Public Health Policy
14(1):5-18. -------------------------------
Haughton, Graham and Colin Hunter. 1994. Sustainable Cities. London:
Jessica Kingsley Publishers. ------------------
The World Health Organization, 1975. Methods Used in the USSR for Establishing
-----------------------------------------
Biologically Safe Levels of Toxic Substances. Geneva.
--------------------------------------------
Sabourand, A. 1992. "A better prospect for city life". World Health Forum
13(2-3):232-236. ------------------
Tsouros, Agis D., ed. 1990. World Health Organization Healthy Cities Project:
-------------------------------------------------
A Project Becomes a Movement Review of Progress 1987 to 1990 Milan: Sogess.
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