Urban Processes Contributing to Environmental Change

The characteristics of cities that most affect environmental quality are (Anas, Arnott, and Small 1998; Leitmann 2003; Sánchez-Rodríguez et al. 2005; Simon 2007, UGEC Website):

2.3.1. Economic Development, Lifestyle, and Consumption

The largest producers of greenhouse gasses per capita are Western industrialized countries like the United States, Europe and oil-producing nations in the Middle East. The combination of wealth and access to resources (often artificially cheap or locally abundant) creates a change in lifestyle based on consumption. Consumption begets production and production beget resource depletion.

2.3.2. Demographic Change and Migration

Rural to urban migration is a primary driver of demographic changes in the developing world. Latin America already experienced a major rural exodus in the 20th century. In the 21st century, the population shift to cities will occur primarily in Africa and Asia. There are several factors of migration to urban areas in the developing world, the most notable of which is economic opportunity. The development patterns of poorer countries follow in the footsteps of developed nations from the past two centuries by focusing on urbanization, spurred by industrialization and surge in relatively low-wage, high-labor jobs. The growth of cities in developing regions comes at the cost of falling investment in agriculture and rural areas. The lack of investment and oppor-tunity in rural areas compounds the shortcomings of those areas that first made cities attractive, further motivating the rural exodus.

Figure 24: R egional U rban Populations Source: World Bank Development Indicators.

2.3.3.Urban Form and Function - Spatial Structure

Longley (2002) writes that technology allows “greater complexity in the way that urban systems function and empowers researchers to measure and monitor this increased complexity” and that it may “improve the foundations to models of urban spatial distribu-tions.”

The form of cities historically has followed function. Cities grow and develop according to the local needs of their citizens and local industry, as well as about the region in which it sits.

The location of cities is an essential part of sustainability goals. Cities traditionally develop along main trade routes, bodies of water, and transportation hubs. In the 17th century, New York City's early streets were designed perpendicular to the shore on the island for greater access to the seaports. In the 18th and 19th centuries, Chicago developed as a main connecting hub for rail from the East Coast to the expanding West. In the 20th century, many cities particularly in the United States and Europe developed disconnected from traditional transportation methods and

were marketed as satellites of cities connected through grand highway systems. New technologies allowed for the realization of diverse theories of urban form; many of which turned out to be unsuccessful in the long-term.

The 21st-century revitalization of cities is in some ways a reaction to the 20th-century urban renewal policies that nearly decimated the core of most cities in the western world. Re-urbanization in the United States is (according to some city planners) a chance to correct the American development paradigm, shifting to a more equitable and sustainable urban paradigm.⁵ The decline of the city was not an analogous phenomenon in the developing world.

Latin America over the 20th century grew from a predominately rural society to the most urbanized region in the world. Growth in the developing world as whole has occurred at a more rapid pace than ever experienced in North America or Europe. Rural exodus, in particular, has funneled many rural inhabitants into cities looking for employment opportunities. Since many of the countries experiencing rapid urbanization in the past half-century are not nearly as wealthy as Western developed countries, policymakers are faced with little time and few resources to plan properly out urban growth to successfully absorb new residents.

In many ways, the rush to develop obscures opportunities for developing countries to create unique and sustainable urban growth paradigms. An increase in information, like in the

5 The equitable and sustainable development of cities through densification and valorization of urban areas is a growth paradigm that resembles, at a micro-scale, the improved environmental conditions of wealthier nations in relation to developing nations. American cities revitalize former industrial spaces and low-income neighborhoods for urban renewal projects aimed at attracting wealthier and younger individuals back to the city. The fact that an undesirable neighbor-hood is revived through adaptive re-use, to include “cleaner” businesses and homes, does not mean that undesirable land use like industry was not just relocated, rather than eliminated. The same applies for poor populations – the increase in average income at a certain gentrified neighborhood does not guarantee that the former poor residents were taken out of poverty; it usually means they were displaced to another less desirable poor neighborhood.

form of spatial information, can bring to light the non-traditional opportunities for urban devel-opment. One of the characteristics of informal settlements, especially in Latin America, is the small-scale inventiveness of individuals in resource-scarce regions. The same kind of creativity is more easily implemented at larger scales of urban planning through better documentation.

The function of the city in wealthy countries has changed since the Industrial Revolution.

They are no longer the nuclei of production or manufacturing, but the centers of information and creativity. Western countries have been able to seize opportunities to create sustainable and clean urban utopias because global manufacturing centers have shifted to Asia. While the new urbanite in Western countries leaves the suburb for the city for culture, convenience, and access to jobs requiring high levels of qualification, the rural migrant in China or India moves to cities to find industrial jobs. Chinese cities along the Yangtze River Delta are planned to maximize density and access for workers to reach manufacturing centers.

A great irony in new urbanization is that a startup headquartered in a city like Brooklyn may occupy a remodeled warehouse space for designing products manufactured in a far larger (less charming) warehouse in Suzhou, China. This image speaks not only to globalization and shifts in production and consumption but serves also as an example of the Western paradigm being utilized at a larger and often distorted scale elsewhere in the world. By intensifying a proven unsustainable paradigm, environmental degradation is accelerating in the regions of the world most vulnerable to the adverse effects of global environmental changes.

2.3.4. Land Use and Land Cover and the Urban Ecosystem

Urban land use generates unique ecosystems by affecting biogeochemical cycles at local, regional, and global scales (Pouyat et al. 2007). It is important to clarify that urban and nature are not antithetical conditions. A city is not necessarily devoid of nature, and undeveloped areas are not necessarily devoid of civilization. Cities involve complex interactions between the built environment and the natural environment. Urbanization displaces or removes native flora and fauna, often lowers biodiversity, net primary productivity, and nutrient and material cycling (Al-berti 2005). At the same time, there are natural systems that only occur in places that are modified by human activity. The effect of the built environment can also be adjusted to create optimal environmental conditions in cities. Examples include green building legislation, like that in To-ronto’s Municipal Code, requiring green roofs and sustainability standards for new construction to enrich the urban ecosystem.

2.3.5.Institutional Structure and Operational Dysfunction

“Information to support the management of cities is traditionally channeled and aggregated up the vertical information highway from a local, operational level to a policy level. In developed countries, urban growth and its characteristics can normally be measured through information derived from the land administration functions. However, in the meg-acities of the developing countries, informal settlements are the norm, growth is rampant and administrative structures are limited. The traditional source of change information is not readily available there.” (FIG 2010)

The proper functioning of spatial information systems is integral to the success of new digital technologies informing sustainable policy. “Operational dysfunction” is a term used by FIG (2010) to describe situations where the flow of spatial information is not maximized. This common

situation occurs when multiple government agencies hold non-accessible spatial information in isolated databases so that the data is not integrated with other databases and is not readily available for agencies or individuals that may have a use for it.

Investment in technology must be accompanied by investment in human capital (i.e. edu-cation, training) to properly analyze data for productive intelligence generated from better infor-mation. The sophistication of spatial information technology growth does not reach its full poten-tial without the refinement of analysis. Researchers and specialists must also keep pace with the growth in spatial data technology. To make the most of technological advances, training in anal-ysis and data management must be a priority at local and national scales.