In the 1300s, people living in London – already one of the world’s biggest cities – were consuming more than one million bushels of wheat, rye and burning up to one hundred thousand tons of wood every year.James A. Galloway & Margaret Murphy, Feeding the City: Medieval
London and its Agrarian Hinterland, 1991, The London Journal, 16:1, 3-14, DOI: 10.1179/ldn.1991.16.1.
Centuries later, industrialisation and post-war urbanisation caused an exponential increase in the English capital’s resource use and environmental footprint as people sought better living conditions.
With London’s population expected to rise from 7 million today to 11 million by 2050, such problems could worsen in the absence of effective planning.
Londoners are not alone in facing such challenges.
Cities the world over are finding it increasing difficult to meet their growing appetite for natural resources without causing additional environmental stress.
An ever-growing urban population places enormous pressure on food, energy, materials, water and land systems. At a global scale, material consumption by the world’s cities – where two out of three of us will be living by the mid-century – are expected to more than double to 90 billion tonnes.International Resource Panel, The weight of cities, 2018
© 2024 Magnus Arrevad
"With a cap on resources, over consumption by one person affects the prospects of another; consuming beyond one’s fair consumption space would cause deficit and thus encroach into another’s space," says Dr Lewis Akenji, Managing Director of Hot or Cool Institute, a German-based think tank that brings science-based perspectives to issues at the intersection of environment and society.
“If not balanced, this would lead to ecological disequilibrium and social tensions,” adds Akenji, who addressed the opening plenary session at The Klosters Forum (TKF) in June.
A study by the Hot or Cool institute, of which Akenji was a lead author, shows high-income countries need to reduce their consumption-linked carbon emissions – also known as lifestyle carbon –by as much as 95 per cent by 2050 if they are stay within the 1.5°C Paris Agreement climate target. The problem extends to lower-middle income economies. There, consumption must fall by 76 per cent by the end of the decade.
“The world’s richest 10 per cent of urbanites are responsible for 50 per cent of total lifestyles consumption emissions, while the bottom 50 per cent contribute only 10 per cent. This highlights the need for equitable and sustainable consumption patterns,” he says.
The study was based on consumption-based carbon accounting, which covers both direct emissions in a country and embodied emissions of imported goods while excluding emissions embodied in exported goods. Over three quarters of resource consumption and related emissions take place in cities, despite occupying just 2 per cent of the globe’s terrestrial surface.
With a cap on resources, over consumption by one person affects the prospects of another; consuming beyond one’s fair consumption space would cause deficit and thus encroach into another’s space.
Note: Average lifestyle carbon footprint of country estimated as of 2019. The horizontal lifes indicate 1.5°C lifestyle footprint targets for 2030 and 2050 (1.5°C without/less use of CCS).
Source: The Hot or Cool Institute, 2024
Designing 1.5°C lifestyle interventions
It is clear that for cities to expand but remain within the 1.5°C target, significant changes in their planning and construction are needed.
Before addressing that, though, city planners and designers must tackle certain misconceptions.
Take efficiency.
Using resources more efficiently is positive as it reduces resource usage per unit of production Better insulated – and more energy efficient buildings - for example have lower energy usage. But efficiency improvements may be counterbalanced by increased consumption of the same product, a phenomenon known as the rebound effect. The 1.5°C lifestyles report cites a rise in consumption as a result of this effect could be as much as 30 per cent.
“We’re getting more efficient, but we’re building larger homes. All the efficiency gains are wiped out by the volume of new houses we build and the amount of consumption we make,” Akenji says.
Outright banning of certain unsustainable products is a policy that is sometimes used, but the report points out that that could backfire and gentler and more strategic changes – or “choice editing” may be more effective.
For example, Chicago banned thin plastic bags in 2015 but allowed thicker versions, which ended up boosting plastic usage, rather than reducing it. Two years later, Chicago tried again, replacing the ban with a 7-cent tax, which brought plastic bag usage down to 54 per cent from 82 per cent.
Car free city
Investing in better roads or expanding the availability of electric vehicles are also popular policies. Yet Akenji says it will only encourage people to drive more.
“We’re burden shifting, instead of solving the problem. The conclusion is we need far fewer cars on the road,” he says.
Akenji instead proposes that cities use zoning – designing compact, live-play-work pedestrianised zones – to encourage people to walk, cycle or use the public transport. In converting roads and car parks to public spaces and gardens, luxury becomes available to the wider public, rather than in the hands of private individuals.
Pedestrianised neighbourhoods not only reduce pollution and associated healthcare costs but also are proven to yield economic benefits. A study on high streets by a UK organisation Living Streets shows pedestrianisation can boost footfall and sales by up to 30 per cent, while shoppers on foot can spend up to six times more than those who arrive by car.
From Milan and Paris to London and New York, cities are reallocating street space from cars to walkers, runners and cyclists and pedestrianising neighbourhoods. “By 2035 most cities will be car free,” he says. “The momentum is already building around this.”