The Ecology of Cities
by Lester Brown, Washington, D.C on 09.27.06
Urbanization is one of the dominant demographic trends of our time. In 1900, 150 million people lived in cities. By 2000, it was 2.9 billion people, a 19-fold increase. By 2007 more than half of us will live in cities—making us, for the first time, an urban species. (See Chapter 11 in Plan B 2.0).
In 1900 there were only a handful of cities with a million people. Today 408 cities have at least that many inhabitants. And there are 20 megacities with 10 million or more residents. Tokyo’s population of 35 million exceeds that of Canada. Mexico City’s population of 19 million is nearly equal to that of Australia. New York, São Paulo, Mumbai (formerly Bombay), Delhi, Calcutta, Buenos Aires, and Shanghai follow close behind.
Cities require a concentration of food, water, energy, and materials that nature cannot provide. Concentrating these masses of materials and then dispersing them in the form of garbage, sewage, and as pollutants in air and water is challenging city managers everywhere.
Most of today’s cities are not healthy places to live. Urban air everywhere is polluted. Typically centered on the automobile and no longer bicycle- or pedestrian-friendly, cities deprive people of needed exercise, creating an imbalance between caloric intake and caloric expenditures. As a result, obesity is reaching epidemic proportions in cities in developing as well as industrial countries.
The evolution of modern cities is tied to advances in transport, initially for ships and trains, but it was the internal combustion engine combined with cheap oil that provided the mobility of people and freight that fueled the phenomenal urban growth of the twentieth century. As the world urbanized, energy use climbed.
Early cities relied on food and water from the surrounding countryside, but today cities often depend on distant sources even for such basic amenities. Los Angeles, for example, draws much of its water supply from the Colorado River, some 970 kilometers (600 miles) away. Mexico City’s burgeoning population, living at 3,000 meters, must now depend on the costly pumping of water from 150 kilometers away and must lift it a kilometer or more to augment its inadequate water supplies. Beijing is planning to draw water from the Yangtze River basin nearly 1,500 kilometers away.
While Tokyo still depends for its rice on the highly productive farmers in Japan, with their land carefully protected by government policy, its wheat comes largely from the Great Plains of North America and from Australia. Its corn supply comes largely from the U.S. Midwest. Soybeans come from the U.S. Midwest and the Brazilian cerrado.
The oil that provides much of the energy to move resources into and out of cities itself often comes from distant oil fields. Rising oil prices will affect cities, but they will affect even more the suburbs that many cities have spawned.
It is widely assumed that urbanization will continue. But this is not necessarily so. The growing scarcity of water and the high cost of the energy invested in transporting water over long distances may itself begin to constrain urban growth. In a world of land, water, and energy scarcity, the value of each resource may increase substantially, shifting the terms of trade between the countryside and cities. Ever since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution, the terms of trade have favored cities because they control capital and technology, the scarce resources. But if land and water become the scarcest resources, then those in rural areas who control them may sometimes have the upper hand.
The exciting news is that there are signs of change, daily indications of an interest in redesigning cities for people. Some cities are far better at planning their growth than others. They plan transport systems that provide mobility, clean air, and exercise—a sharp contrast to cities that offer congestion, unhealthy air, and little opportunity for exercise. (For more see Chapter 11, Designing Sustainable Cities, in Plan B 2.0..)
[First picture from here. -Ed.]
Water is not scarce, neither is energy. We just waste it. We need to conserve more. There should be more systems for storing and reusing grey water. Even treating it for consumption again.
Well, of course it depends from which side you look at it.
I think that what Mr. Brown was pointing out is that the end result of our current system is that water and energy are scarce, not that there's nothing to do about it and that it has to be that way.
I'm not necessarily disagreeing. Both will be scarce if we keep using them up. Water more so than energy. If energy gets scarce enough most people won't object to a few more power plants. We know what the problem is, what we need is solutions.
For most of this post,except for the last paragraph, I strongly disagree with the author. The largest magority of Japanese in or out of the city are not obese. They do not depend on cars for transportation. They only depend on producing cars to sell to fat Americans. The only people who rely on car transport are Americans. They drive in and out to their McMansions on a valuable one acre ex farmland with their SUVs every day. Why not? its'a free country. The cites all over the world could and should be healthier and safer instead the only place left for the poor.
J.C., Sr.
Water is not scarce, but clean, fresh, drinkable water is. And it takes energy to make undrinkable water safe and clean...if systems are designed correctly you can get cleaner water with less energy input, and use greywater for many tasks (cooling, watering, flushing, etc.) taking some strain off the system.
I'm not sure I agree with you when you say that cities deprive people of needed exercise. In fact, I notice the exact opposite! It seems as though cities induce people to walk quite a bit more than those people in the suburbs. I mean compare cities like San Francisco and New York City to small town and rural midwest. I think the city people tend to be far healtier, and far less overweight. In fact, I think the city dweller has better and more healthy food options available as well. Most of the people I know in, at least these two cities, dont own cars and the only people I know who do are those suburban and small town dwellers. My experience is the exact opposite of what you're describing.
I think it depends if you include suburbs in "cities" (as in "the whole urban area around cities"). In many cases it seems that the people living in the cities proper do get more exercise because they are close to things, but that there's even more people living farther away and commuting by car.
When we think about cities, we often think about NYC and Tokyo, but in the middle there are thousands and thousands of cities of 400k-800k that are made for cars, not people, with huge sprawl and not very good public transportation infrastructure.
Some of the very oldest cities, at least in the wealthier nations, are amazingly suited for modern times, i.e. New York and Tokyo. But cities that grew in the 20th century on the modern "urban sprawl" model are now unattractive because of their land use, social isolation, and traffic. The example that comes to mind is Atlanta, although I'm sure there are plenty of others.
The largest magority of Japanese in or out of the city are not obese. They do not depend on cars for transportation.
People who live in rural areas of Japan very much depend on automobiles for transportation.
They only depend on producing cars to sell to fat Americans.
6 out of 10 cars made in Japan are sold in Japan.
The only people who rely on car transport are Americans.
Also false - see Canada, Australia, New Zealand and so forth. Last I checked there were a ton of cars all over Europe, too.
Public Health journal published a study which showed that people living in suburban areas are less healthy than those living in urban areas. The authors believe the difference is due to exercise. People in cities walk. People in suburbs drive. Simple. Just because a city doesn't have designated exercise areas, or fancy tracks or fields or whatnot doesn't mean its people are not getting their daily 30 minutes!
there are several confused and contradicted issues in this article. the concentration of population and resources in one area is what allows cities to thrive, while NOT putting as great a strain on the environment. imagine if the commerce that goes on in cities were strewn out across the countryside. the idea that cars have contributed to urban growth seems wrong to me. cars have contributed to urban decline. in fact, large cities are one of the few places in this country that we find cars unnecessary.
Don't know about anywhere else, but urban growth in the UK was triggered way before the internal combustion engine arrived on the scene, so solely blaming the car seems somewhat short sighted. I think canals and especially the railways set the suburban expansion in motion, but then it isn't really the done thing to bash trains is it.
Philder, if you read closely you will see that the author agrees with you, mentioning that ships and trains were instrumental in the early growth of cities. The difference with the auto is that it led to the EXPLOSION of urban areas. Now, also consider the term 'urban area' as it includes suburbs. Automobiles, in fact, when gifted with greater efficiency (gas mileage) tend to lead to increased and more widespread suburbs, as auto owners can now drive farther, cheaper. Imagine if cars only performed at 1 mile per gallon - do you think anyone would drive them to and from distant suburbs? It's an irony that increased fuel efficiency can be instrumental in increasing consumption and creating dysfunctional urban environments (to explore this concept more fully, read Richard Register's 'Ecocities').
As for the health issue, study after study has shown city dwellers to suffer from increased stress, heart issues, pollution/toxin-related cancers, you name it. Hell, exercising outdoors in Los Angeles is WORSE for the body, due to particulate inhalation and the damages associated, than not exercising at all! Just think about what it's like to go jogging in Mexico City!
J.C. Sr, all due respect, but you clearly haven't traveled extensively in Japan. Oh my, but it a car culture indeed. And the stereotype of the tiny Japanese physique? Gone, daddy, gone. Or at least it has moved to Thailand.
Urbanization is not the cause of environmental degradation, rather, it's population growth. If all of the urbanized people lived in rural or suburban areas, we'd be in much bigger trouble. Cities are one of the most environmentally friendly places to live. Urban dwellers, use more public transportation, and less energy since they live in smaller more heat efficient space. While I agree that the rate of urbanization is alarming. What we're really seeing is continued population growth.
I don't understand why you're citing cities as if they are the problem. Where would all of the people live if they didn't live in cities? There simply isn't enough land at this point.
We need to start talking about creating sustainable, livable cities to support the population we have. And lots of free birth control and education to help stem population growth.
I choose to live in a city, because I know that by doing so I'm having less impact on the environment. Cities are going to be a big part of the solution to present environmental dangers.
Also cities are a kind of environment. They have their own ecologies. If this idea seems interesting I'd like to share some of my writing with you, I'm working on a book called "The Urban Naturalist" it will be all about the spiritual value of cities (part of that relates to ethical questions of cities and the environment) Please take a look at it here:
http://futurebird.livejournal.com/78793.html
By coincidence, the Independent (UK) has an article today on how cities are much greener that the country. It points out that, among many other things, the area of lowest consumption per capita in the UK is London (with half the consumption by most metrics of rural areas), and that if all US citizens lived in New York then the USA would be soaring well under the requirements of Kyoto. While cities may have a large footprint, they are still much more efficient per capita than rural living. In short, they are the cure for high population, not the symptom.
We shouldn't conflate "urban" and "suburban" into one conglomerate. They are two very different development structures, fueled by different lifestyles and technology. Any analysis of a combined urban-suburban area is going to yield misleading information.
What cars have done is move development out from urban areas into less dense, less heterogeneous developments. This is not urbanization. The suburban developments look VERY different from the urban areas.
KPod -
You are correct. If we are talking about a metropolitan area, then we include both urban and suburban, so my error if I seemed to lump the two as indistinguishable in my earlier comment. Yet, we don't have suburbs without the urban core, so it's difficult to not at the very least discuss the suburbs' spawning grounds and the linkages between the urban and suburban. Suburbs may not be as dense (problem), but they certainly are a type AND a symptom of urbanization. I respectfully dissent: An analysis of combined urban-suburban area is going to yield the most vital information of all.
Speaking just from my experience living in Austin, TX, what with constant "ozone action" days, and complacency with driving to places where it's "nice" to walk and bike, it's refreshing and hopeful to learn more about "transport systems that provide mobility, clean air, and exercise."
Thank you.
We shouldn't conflate "urban" and "suburban" into one conglomerate. They are two very different development structures, fueled by different lifestyles and technology. Any analysis of a combined urban-suburban area is going to yield misleading information.
This is an excellent point. Too often cities are paired with their suburbs, suburbs are a recent development, cities have been around for 1000s of years without them.
I respectfully dissent: An analysis of combined urban-suburban area is going to yield the most vital information of all.
But why? The real trouble is that we've put all of this energy in to suburbs, when, had that ebergy used to make real urban growth, land and energy use would be in a less alarming state.
I'll submit again the idea that the problem is population, not urbanization.