Urban Futures: Challenges and Responses

1. Urban Futures: Challenges and Responses Professor Tim Hall Department of Archaeology, Anthropology and Geography University of Winchester tim.hall@Winchester.ac.uk Future Challenges for Cities > Cities and Environment > Detroit and Lagos > Responding to Future Urban Challenges

2. Hall, T. and Barrett, H. (2017) Urban Geography, 5th Edition, Abingdon: Routledge Plan 1. Future challenges for cities. 2. Understanding the relationships between cities and the environment: ecological footprints, global hinterlands of cities and sustainable urban development. 3. Snapshots of two cities: Detroit, USA and Lagos, Nigeria. 4. Responding to future urban challenges 5. References Future Challenges for Cities > Cities and Environment > Detroit and Lagos > Responding to Future Urban Challenges

3. Future Challenges for Cities > Cities and Environment > Detroit and Lagos > Responding to Future Urban Challenges

4. Future Challenges for Cities > Cities and Environment > Detroit and Lagos > Responding to Future Urban Challenges

5. “As the global population becomes increasingly urbanised, cities have emerged as the dominant arenas to address the grand challenges facing humanity. Problems associated with climate change, economic under-development and social inequality are essentially urban in character. And so are their solutions” (Evans et al., 2016: 1). “The complex nature of urbanization across the globe, and the seemingly insurmountable challenges of transforming urban futures require multi-disciplinary, multi-stakeholder research efforts across diverse geographies” (Friend, et al., 2016: 67). Future Challenges for Cities > Cities and Environment > Detroit and Lagos > Responding to Future Urban Challenges

6. Future Challenges for Cities • Population growth and movement; • climate change; • environmental degradation; • food and resources pressures; • economic inequalities and social divisions; • geopolitical security concerns. Are future challenges are urban challenges? “As the global population becomes increasingly urbanised, cities have emerged as the dominant arenas to address the grand challenges facing humanity. Problems associated with climate change, economic under-development and social inequality are essentially urban in character. And so are their solutions” (Evans et al., 2016: 1). Future Challenges for Cities > Cities and Environment > Detroit and Lagos > Responding to Future Urban Challenges

7. Two further issues • The majority of these challenges will be played out in existing rather than new cities and existing cities have largely developed in ways that are unsustainable. “Since it is rarely possible to make brand new cities … it is more realistic to talk about how to make existing cities better. Since any existing cities, especially those of a large scale, are entrenched and complex places, remaking them to achieve measurable improvements in either quality of life or the built environment can be a very long and challenging process” (Chen, et al., 2013: 322). Future Challenges for Cities > Cities and Environment > Detroit and Lagos > Responding to Future Urban Challenges

8. Two further issues 2. The challenges outlined earlier are deeply interlinked. “Scientists, policy-makers, and academics increasingly acknowledge the interdependent nature of built and natural environments and the consequent challenges such relationships suggest in the advancement of urban sustainability, social equity and political empowerment” (Hou, et al., 2015: 4). Future Challenges for Cities > Cities and Environment > Detroit and Lagos > Responding to Future Urban Challenges

9. Understanding the links between cities and the environment: the ecological footprints, global hinterlands of cities and sustainable urban development. “How large an area of productive land is needed to sustain a defined population indefinitely, wherever on Earth that land is located?” (Rees and Wackernagel, 2013: 159, originally published in 1996). Calgary, Canada: 100 times the area of the city limits Santiago, Chile: 16-20 times the area of the city limits Future Challenges for Cities > Cities and Environment > Detroit and Lagos > Responding to Future Urban Challenges

10. Sustainable Urban Development • Three principles of sustainable urban development: • Intergenerational equity; • Trans-frontier responsibility; • Social justice. Brundtland World Commission on Environment and Development (1987): “development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs”. “What may be regarded as needs in the cities of the North would be luxuries in those of the South” Future Challenges for Cities > Cities and Environment > Detroit and Lagos > Responding to Future Urban Challenges

11. Detroit, USA: a post-urban future? Year Population Change Rank (US cities) 1950 1,849,568 --- 5 1960 1,670,144 -9.7% 5 1970 1,514,063 -9.3% 5 1980 1,203,368 -20.5% 6 1990 1,027,974 -14.6% 7 2000 951,270 -7.5 10 2016 677,116 -28.8% 21 Decline 1950 – 2016: -1,172,452 (63.4%). Population now lowest since 1850. Demographic data Detroit metropolitan area 1950 - 2016 (Source: United States Census Bureau / Bureau of Labor Statistics) 30-40% of metropolitan neighbourhoods now largely abandoned. Future Challenges for Cities > Cities and Environment > Detroit and Lagos > Responding to Future Urban Challenges

12. Detroit, USA: a post-urban future? https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2010/jul/11/detroit-urban-renewal-city-farms-paul-harris Future Challenges for Cities > Cities and Environment > Detroit and Lagos > Responding to Future Urban Challenges

13. Lagos, Nigeria: Social geographies of climate change in a mega-city of the Global South Future Challenges for Cities > Cities and Environment > Detroit and Lagos > Responding to Future Urban Challenges

14. Lagos, Nigeria: Social geographies of climate change in a mega-city of the Global South Population 18 million (2015); Annual population growth rate 6% (1 million+ people); 70% of population slum dwellers; 12th largest urban area in the world by 2025. Climate change risks: sea level rise, storm surge, flooding, high temperatures, high rainfall intensity. Lagos' responses to climate change have been “haphazard, largely top-down, uncoordinated and fragmented” (Elias and Omojola, 2015: 74). Future Challenges for Cities > Cities and Environment > Detroit and Lagos > Responding to Future Urban Challenges

15. Lagos, Nigeria: Social geographies of climate change in a mega-city of the Global South Future Challenges for Cities > Cities and Environment > Detroit and Lagos > Responding to Future Urban Challenges

16. Responding to the challenges: Cities and Climate experiments • Mitigation: addressing the causes of climate change, for example, reducing the emission of greenhouse gases. • Adaptation: reducing the vulnerabilities of cities to the impacts of climate change, for example, building flood defences. Future Challenges for Cities > Cities and Environment > Detroit and Lagos > Responding to Future Urban Challenges

18. Responding to the Challenges: Principles • Co-ordination across multiple scales: • “pressing environmental, social, and governance problems cannot be solved by independent jurisdictions acting alone … cross-jurisdictional problems demand cross-jurisdictional solutions” (Katz, 2000: 3). Future Challenges for Cities > Cities and Environment > Detroit and Lagos > Responding to Future Urban Challenges

19. Responding to the Challenges: Principles 2. Global environmental justice: 2% of urban climate change experiments analysed located in world's least developed nations. • “It appears that the distribution of climate change responsibilities and vulnerabilities is often parallel to existing patterns of urban inequality” (CastánBroto and Bulkeley 2013: 100). Future Challenges for Cities > Cities and Environment > Detroit and Lagos > Responding to Future Urban Challenges

20. Responding to the Challenges: Principles 3. Urban environmental justice: Environmental aims aligned with social and economic aims. • “Most eco-city projects claim to incorporate environmental, economic and social aspects of sustainability. However, a number of recent publications drawing on detailed case studies of eco-city projects have found that economic concerns consistently take priority over environmental ones” (Rapoport, 2014: 141-142). Future Challenges for Cities > Cities and Environment > Detroit and Lagos > Responding to Future Urban Challenges

21. Responding to the Challenges: Principles 4. Locally specific, rather than universal, solutions. 5. New ways of experimental urban governance. Future challenges such as climate change: • “requires plural solutions, clumsy governance and flexible, learning-oriented, and adaptive institutions [which] stands in direct contrast to the core foundations of public administration theory and practice, which require efficiency, transparency, and accountability” (Friend, et al., 2016: 69). Future Challenges for Cities > Cities and Environment > Detroit and Lagos > Responding to Future Urban Challenges

22. References Caprotti, F. (2014) 'Eco-urbanism and the eco-city, or, denying the right to the city?', Antipode, 46, 5: 1285-1303 CastánBroto, V. and Bulkeley, H. (2013) ‘A survey of urban climate change experiments in 100 cities’, Global Environmental Change, 23, 1: 92-102 Chen, X., Orum, A.M., Paulsen, K.E. (2013) An Introduction to Cities: How Place and Space Shape Human Experience, Chichester: Wiley- Blackwell Evans, J., Karvonen, A. and Raven, R. (2016) The Experimental City, Abingdon: Routledge Elias, P. and Omojola, A. (2015) ‘Case study: the challenges of climate change for Lagos’, Current Opinion in Environmental Sustainability, 13: 74-78 Friend, R. M., Anwar, N. H., Dixit, A., Hutanuwatr, K., Jayaraman, T., McGregor, J.A., Menon, M. R., Moench, M., Pelling, M. and Roberts, D. (2016) 'Re-imagining inclusive urban futures for transformation', Current Opinion in Environmental Sustainability, 20: 67-72 Katz, B. (Ed.) (2000) Reflections on Regionalism, Washington: Brookings Institution Press Rapoport, E. (2014) 'Utopian visions and real estate dreams: the eco-city past, present and future', Geography Compass, 8, 2: 137-149 Rees, W. and Wackernagel, M. (2013) ‘Urban ecological footprints: why cities cannot be sustainable – and why they are a key to sustainability’, in Lin, J. and Mele, C. (eds) The Urban Sociology Reader, (2nd edition), Abingdon: Routledge, pp. 157-166