Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
the city, and to maintain and enhance the quality of the built environment as a key to which
cities emerge as the new centres of innovation and affluence.
Cities account for 75 per cent of global energy consumption, and nearly 80 per cent of
Greenhouse Gas (GHG) emissions come from cities burning fossil fuels. Many of the world's
great cities are located on the coast and on river estuaries, making them vulnerable to floods
and these cities are growing faster than other cities. In certain countries, a high proportion of
the total population are at risk of flooding, including Bangladesh (46 per cent of the population),
Egypt (38 per cent of the population) and Vietnam (55 per cent of the population). Cities are
robust and durable - and in the past they have lasted longer than many countries - but this
stability might change in the future.
This is the background against which this topic is set, but its scope is more modest than
that of providing the answer to the future of cities. Our emphasis is on the instrumental role
that transport can and should play in the sustainable city. Sustainability is, of course, a nebulous
term, with many interpretations and different meanings to different people: 'an astonishing
collection of claims and concerns brought together by a variety of actors. Yet somehow we
distil seemingly coherent problems out of this jamboree' (Hajer, 1995, pp. 1-2). We focus on
the environmental dimension of sustainability, and in particular with regard to transport's
future contribution to CO2 reduction targets. The perspective taken is that cities have great
potential to provide a very attractive way of life in terms of opportunity and social interaction,
including with relatively short travel distances. In some of the leading cities urban living is
becoming very fashionable, with a strong renaissance in the built environment and public
realm. But there is a common frustration in terms of the actualisation in many other cities,
where attractive urban living is often beyond the reach of many; where the frequent desire is
to suburbanise, and city centre living is not seen as being attractive; where there is a better
quality of life to be had beyond the urban area. Certainly the current trends in transport are
not sustainable in environmental, social (including health) and economic terms (Banister,
2005). The aggregate trends do not help: more than 1 billion vehicles populate the world
today, and we are accelerating towards 2 billion cars by 2020 (Sperling and Gordon, 2009).
A key question is whether the planet can continue to sustain them. The answer is: not as we
know them. And, unfortunately, many of these issues are of the 'wicked problem' variety
(Rittel and Webber, 1973), meaning that there are few definitive and clear solutions.
The desire to move towards sustainable travel is becoming increasingly ubiquitous, with
almost all jurisdictions adopting this as a policy objective. Often the reality is very different,
and policy actions remain little more than statements of intent. Achieving sustainable travel
behaviours, across the majority of cities, is still a distant dream. The end goal is in the
development of a high quality and inclusive urban life, and sustainable transport has to be an
important partof the means to achieve this.
The classic starting point is from Colin Clark (1957): that transport can be the 'maker and
breaker of cities'. This is taken as our starting point - that transport systems, if designed well,
can support the sustainable city. As part of this, we hope to take an 'outsider's view' of the
role of the car in contemporary society, taking a long, hard and - if this is possible - an
objective look at its benefits and also its adverse impacts. Our inspiration is something akin
to the road trip of Ilf and Petrov (Wolf, 2007), a travelogue across the United States in 1935,
involving a classic and loving satirisation of (the then) evolving motorisation trend as a central
part of American life. The motor car had come to be supported by extensive advertising, the
developmental structure of cities, and was viewed as contributing in a significant way to the
growth of the US economy. It reflected and was part of the simple ideology of 'the American
