Module 7 begins with the concept of urban landscapes and then looks at different aspects of urban development with an emphasis on transportation and urban design. These two topics are important to study together because of how closely interconnected they are. The designs of the urban areas we live in influence our choices of transportation. Likewise, our tastes for transportation influence the designs of our urban areas. And both transportation and urban design have large impacts on the environment. Next, the module briefly reviews the environmental impacts of urban form focusing on a few major contributors. Following the discussion of urban environmental problems, the module ends with an examination of what cities can do to become more sustainable and resilient with real-world examples.
By the end of Module 7, you should be able to:
As you read through this module, look for ways that these key concepts are integrated in the topics we will cover here as well as previous modules.
There is a Written Assignment associated with Module 7. For assignment due date, check Canvas.
Requirement | Location | Submitting Your Work |
---|---|---|
Reading Assignment: Liberating Cities from Cars | Urban Design and Transportation | No submission |
Written Assignment: Sustainable Cities | Written Assignments [1] | Submit in Canvas |
If you have any questions, please post them to our Course Q & A discussion forum in Canvas. I will check that discussion forum often to respond. While you are there, feel free to post your own responses if you, too, are able to help out a classmate. If you have a more specific concern, please send me a message through Inbox in Canvas.
In Module 2, we learned that in geography landscapes are defined as the combination of environmental and human phenomena that coexist together in a particular place on Earth's surface. Urban areas are some of the most striking examples of human-environment landscapes. They involve the highest levels of human activity and are often heavily shaped by environmental factors.
Let’s start by examining New York City, the largest city in the United States and one of the largest cities in the world. (Tokyo is usually considered to be the world’s largest city.)
The landmass at the center of Figure 7.1 is the island of Manhattan. The Hudson River is towards the top and the East River is towards the bottom. The left edge shows the Hudson and East Rivers converging at New York Harbor. Across the Hudson from Manhattan is New Jersey. Across the East River is Brooklyn, which is on the tip of Long Island.
New York Harbor is one of the best natural ports in the world. Ships of all sizes can enter a space largely free from oceanic turbulence and dock along a remarkably long total length of coast. New York City emerged as an important port town in colonial times and remains a shipping center to this day, as can be seen from the rectangular shipping facilities protruding out into the rivers in various places. As the island located in the center of the navigable space, Manhattan emerged as the center of development within what is now the New York City metropolitan area.
There are other great harbors along the eastern coast of the United States, such as Boston Harbor and Baltimore Harbor:
It is no coincidence that all three of these excellent natural harbors became major US cities. Their environmental advantages over other locations initiated development that persists to this day. There is an environmental explanation for why New York ended up becoming the largest city in the United States instead of Boston or Baltimore. To see it, we need to observe the environment at a broader scale. Take a close look at the eastern part of this topographic map (Figure 7.4), and be sure to "Click to Enlarge East Coast":
Note the Appalachian Mountains running continuously from Georgia through Maine (and beyond into Canada) with one major exception: the route from New York City north along the Hudson to Albany and then west between the Catskills in southeastern New York and the Adirondacks in northern New York. The Hudson is a very wide river and remains navigable through Albany. In the 1800s, the Erie Canal was built in the corridor between the Catskills and Adirondacks. This connected the east coast with the Great Lakes and, in turn, the interior of the country. New York City thus became the center of trade between the US interior and the rest of the world. As the interior grew in importance, so did New York.
Many other important world cities emerged because their excellent natural harbors were used for ports. Here are some examples.
Rio de Janeiro has one of the most spectacular urban landscapes in the world. Figure 7.8 shows a beachfront lined with tall buildings at the mouth of the Guanabara Bay. The Atlantic Ocean is just to the right of the image. The large, steep mountain in the middle is Sugarloaf Mountain (Portuguese: Pão de Açúcar). Rio de Janeiro was founded by the Portuguese and became an important port for trade with Brazil’s interior. Figure 7.9 offers another view of the city:
This image looks towards the Atlantic coast. It shows several mountains and some tall buildings along the coast. In the foreground is a dense collection of smaller buildings draping a hillside. This hillside area is Rocinha, the largest favela (slum) in Rio de Janeiro and one of the largest in the world. Slums are often located on hillsides where building conditions are weaker and access to the center city is worse. If you look carefully at Figure 7.9 (zoom in on the full-size image of Rocinha [16]), you’ll see many buildings in Rocinha in which the upper floors are architecturally different than the lower floors. These upper floors are simply tacked on top of the lower floors in an ad hoc fashion. All this renders Rocinha and other hillside favelas vulnerable to mudslides. The favela mudslides in Rio de Janeiro raise environmental justice issues similar to those discussed in the Module 5 section on development's downsides.
Another urban landscape heavily defined by water is Venice, Italy. Venice is noteworthy for being entirely car-free. All travel is via either walking or boats.
Urban landscapes may appear to be dominated by human activity. As the images in this page show, the environment is often a major factor in urban form. For example, the locations of natural harbors affect where major port cities end up. But human factors still play major roles. The human role is especially vivid in cities that were built from scratch in order to serve as a political capital, including Washington in the United States, Brasilia in Brazil, Abuja in Nigeria, Canberra in Australia, and Islamabad in Pakistan. These cities emerged as they did largely for social reasons instead of environmental reasons. For example, the location for Washington was chosen to be between the political north and south. When examining an urban landscape, it is important to consider both environmental and social factors and to recognize that cities are parts of human-environment systems.
For the remainder of this module, we’ll focus on a few aspects of cities that are of great importance to sustainability.
Why are there cities? Why do large numbers of people cluster near each other? Sometimes the reasons are predominantly environmental, such as the people who cluster at natural harbors to work at ports. Other times, the reasons are predominantly social, such as the people who cluster at political capitals to work in government. But whatever the reason, cities invariably exist so that people can interact with each other in person. Interacting with each other in person requires transportation. We travel from home to work, shopping, entertainment, and civic spaces.
Transportation is, thus, fundamental to the proper functioning of a city. A city is more likely to succeed when people can get around town easily, quickly, inexpensively, and safely. Transportation is important to cities, but cities are also important to transportation. Indeed, our transportation choices are heavily influenced by urban design. To see this, we’re going to look at three types of neighborhoods: pedestrian-oriented neighborhoods, streetcar suburbs, and automobile suburbs.
Please read the article "Liberating Cities from Cars [19]" on the Planetizen website.
As you read this, think about your answers to the questions below:
Let’s start by looking at Acorn Street on Beacon Hill in Boston:
Beacon Hill is just north of Boston Common, which we studied in Module 4. It is, thus, immediately adjacent to downtown Boston, where there are many places to work, shop, and seek entertainment, among other things. One can easily walk to all of these places. But look at the photo. This urban area is also designed in a way that makes walking easy and desirable. Beacon Hill was developed mostly in the 1800s when walking was the transportation mode of choice. Today, Beacon Hill is a very wealthy neighborhood. Many people there can afford cars, but they often choose not to use them because walking is a more attractive option.
Now take a look at another part of Boston: Jamaica Plain.
This image shows Centre Street in Jamaica Plain, about four miles southwest of Beacon Hill and downtown Boston. Notice the rail line going through the middle of the street. This is for a streetcar – the “E” on Boston’s Green Line. This type of neighborhood is called a streetcar suburb because it was designed for residents to commute into the city via streetcar. Similar streetcar suburb neighborhoods exist in many cities across the United States. These neighborhoods were built mainly in the early 1900s. They are more sparse than neighborhoods built mainly for pedestrian travel, but they are dense enough to keep houses within walking distance of streetcar stops. Likewise, they’ll almost always have sidewalks. There are often small “main street” style stores near the streetcar stops. People might shop at these stores on their way to or from work.
As an interesting side note, the E no longer goes through this part of Jamaica Plain. In 1985, it was “temporarily” replaced by a bus line. Whether to bring the E back here is a controversial issue in the neighborhood. Elsewhere in the country, many streetcar systems have been dismantled. In at least some cases, the automobile and bus industry appears to have played a role in the change. Today, bus lines often run where streetcar lines once did, though many people in streetcar suburbs frequently use automobiles. The choice between cars and public transit is a collective action problem.
Now let’s switch over to another city, Rochester, NY. As with Boston, Rochester has a variety of neighborhoods that feature a variety of appearances. Here is one neighborhood towards the outer edge of the city:
This image shows an example of an automobile suburb. Automobile suburbs are neighborhoods designed for residents to commute into the city via automobile. As can be seen from the photograph, these neighborhoods are sparser than neighborhoods designed for walking or for streetcar transit. These neighborhoods often have no sidewalks because they are built with the assumption that people will not walk along the streets. Furthermore, offices, shopping and other destinations will often be in separate areas that are difficult to access without a car. For these reasons, almost all trips in automobile suburbs are made via car.
As the above discussion suggests, where we live has a large impact on what type of transportation we use. If we live in a pedestrian-oriented neighborhood like Beacon Hill, we’re a lot more likely to walk to get to places nearby and to take transit to go further away. If we live in a streetcar suburb, we’re likely to use a mixture of transit, walking, and cars. If we live in an automobile suburb, we’ll probably take cars almost everywhere we go. Two main factors in the impact of urban design on transportation choice are urban density and use mixture.
Urban density is, in rough terms, the amount of urban development per unit area. Higher density can be achieved via taller buildings and narrower streets. It can also be achieved by putting more development in a given square foot of floor space, sidewalk space, etc. For example, when a single-family house is converted into two apartments for two families, urban density is increased with only minor tweaks to the building. Pedestrian-oriented neighborhoods tend to be higher density, and automobile suburbs tend to be lower density. Higher densities generally have lower environmental impacts, though there are some exceptions. For example, shorter buildings don’t require elevators.
Use mixture refers to the mix of types of end uses found within an urban area. A mixed-use area will have many different uses. Residences, office areas, shopping, entertainment, and the government will all be close together. This reduces the distances required for transportation and makes it easier to walk or bike from place to place. It can also help certain types of businesses. For example, many downtown business districts are very single-use areas and restaurants there are only open for lunch. In some cases, apartment buildings are opening up in the area, which helps more people walk to work and also brings customers to the restaurants at different hours. Pedestrian-oriented neighborhoods tend to be more mixed-use, and automobile suburbs tend to be more single-use. In general, mixed-use areas will have lower environmental impacts than single-use areas.
The health of people living in cities is affected by many factors. One important factor is the amount of exercise that they get. This, in turn, can be heavily influenced by urban design. When we drive everywhere, we don’t get any exercise unless we go out of our way for it. When we walk and bike everywhere, we get a lot of exercise just by getting around town. This is much healthier for our bodies. Even taking transit gives us some exercise because we have to walk to and from the transit stops. It is thus no surprise that people who live in pedestrian-oriented neighborhoods and streetcar suburbs are on average healthier than people who live in automobile suburbs. Of course, the urban environment does not completely determine what exercise we get. It’s entirely possible to be very healthy in an automobile suburb or very unhealthy in a pedestrian-oriented neighborhood. But promoting resident health is another reason to favor high-density, mixed-use, pedestrian-oriented development.
“Urban segregation is not a frozen status quo, but rather a ceaseless social war in which the state intervenes regularly in the name of “progress,” “beautification” and even “social justice for the poor” to redraw spatial boundaries to the advantage of landowners, foreign investors, elite homeowners, and middle-class commuters” (Mike Davis, 2006, Planet of the Slums, p. 98)
Many of the ways that cities have been planned contribute to inequities such as educational quality and occupational opportunity. Well-known federal policies such as redlining and Jim Crow laws may no longer be legal, but the effects of these segregationist practices endure in cities today, impacting various dimensions of life including access to quality education, economic prospects, and good health. And while these overtly racist policies no longer exist, other less-obvious practices still contribute to differential access to resources, the built environment, and social opportunities within cities and their suburbs. As you read the following material, consider the cities you know and think about the different opportunities that residents might have based on where they live within those cities. Social inequalities in metropolitan areas stem from past as well as continuing practices that determine where and what types of roadways and transit opportunities are implemented or improved, assign specific uses (e.g. industrial, commercial, or single family or multi-family residential) to certain neighborhoods, and influence where parks and greenways get built or streetscapes maintained.
From the time of reconstruction after the U.S. Civil War until 1968, Jim Crow Laws in the Southern United States enforced racial segregation in places such as parks, public transit, and schools, among many other places. While Jim Crow laws were enacted in Southern states, residential covenants in other states kept people of color from moving into certain neighborhoods. For example, in Minneapolis one of the city’s first segregated residential areas stated that residences “shall not at any time be conveyed, mortgaged, or leased to any person or persons of Chinese, Japanese, Moorish, Turkish, Negro, Mongolian, or African blood or descent.”
Beginning in the 1930s, the U.S. government, through the Home Owners Loan Corp (HOLC), the Federal Housing Administration (FHA), and the Veterans Administration (VA), created color-coded maps for every metropolitan area in the United States. These maps divided cities into areas based on the risk of making loans and assigned colors for risk, with red being “hazardous.” Areas where African-Americans lived were systematically marked red and deemed too risky to insure for mortgages. Additionally, the FHA openly argued in their Underwriting Manual that racial groups should not be integrated, even stating that highways would serve as a good barrier for keeping white and Black communities separated.
Legacies of exclusion still persist from Jim Crow Laws, racially-based covenants, and redlining. These practices of the past continue to impact opportunities for people of color of today. Please watch this short, seven-minute video on housing segregation and some of the impacts past policies have on access to resources today.
Required video: Housing Segregation and Redlining in America: A Short History, NPR Code Switch (6:36 minutes)
Redlining, racially-based covenants, and Jim Crow laws may no longer be legal means of segregation, however, less obvious strategies of exclusion persist in urban and suburban environments today. The design of cities and the built environment determines how residents can use and benefit from the city. Some factors that contribute to who lives where include the presence of sidewalks, access to public transportation, or even residential restrictions allowing only single-family homes to be built in certain areas. These less obvious forms of segregation impact who can access certain places based on car ownership or economic factors. Highways are also a tool used as a physical barrier separating neighborhoods by race or class. Using urban design and the built environment as tools to regulate public behavior and activities are not limited to the United States.
Haussmann’s Paris
In the 1850s, Emperor Napoleon III hired Georges-Eugène Haussmann to build grand boulevards through Paris’ most densely populated neighborhoods. In an effort to eradicate squalor and improve the health and appearance of Paris, Haussmann widened many of Paris’ streets and created a uniform design for the exterior of buildings. Today we think of these large, grand streets and the unique architecture of the center of Paris as emblematic of the city, but Haussmann also argued that his strategies prevented civil unrest and armed uprisings in Paris’ dark, crowded center-city. The wide streets would enable the military to easily navigate through the city, preventing Paris’ tightly built quarters from easily erecting barricades and serving as fortifications in uprisings. There may have been a military argument to these design changes, but the main effects of Paris’ widened streets decreased population density, increased rents, and forced low-income residents to relocate to outer suburbs.
Moses’ New York
Just as Haussmann shaped contemporary Paris, Robert Moses is credited with shaping New York City’s built environment. One of Moses’ greatest critics, the historian Lewis Mumford, wrote, “In the twentieth century, the influence of Robert Moses on the cities of America was greater than that of any other person.” Moses pushed through the building of almost 500 miles of urban highways, including the Triborough Bridge. He also built parks and playgrounds and developed beaches such as Jones Beach State Park for public use. His vision for an automobile-oriented city influenced cities across the country, ushering in a mode of urban planning focused on automobile use. Similar to Haussmann, Moses’ vision of a city had little sympathy for poorer residents and people of color. He used strategies such as building bridges too low to allow for public transit buses, thus limiting the access of poorer residents to places such as the newly developed public beaches. Often poorer residents were forced to relocate for the building of urban highways.
For an extensive history of Robert Moses’s impact on New York, and politics in general, read Robert Caro’s biography The Power Broker [25], which is available through the Penn State Libraries.
Systemic racism and classism also have implications for biodiversity and the ecological health of cities. Read this passage from the University of Washington [26] discussing a review paper written by scientists from three universities:
“For example, several studies the authors included found fewer trees in low-income and racially minoritized neighborhoods in major cities across the U.S. Less tree cover means hotter temperatures and fewer plant and animal species. Additionally, these areas tend to be closer to industrial waste or dumping sites than wealthier, predominantly white areas — a reality that was put in place intentionally through policies like redlining, the authors explain.
Fewer trees, over decades, has led to pockets of neighborhoods that are hotter, more polluted, and have more disease-carrying pests such as rodents and mosquitoes that can survive in harsh environments. These ecological differences inevitably affect human health and well-being, the authors said.”
You can read the full review paper here: https://science.sciencemag.org/content/369/6510/eaay4497 [27]
https://belonging.berkeley.edu/segregationinthebay [28]
https://cityobservatory.org/most_segregated/ [29]
https://dsl.richmond.edu/panorama/redlining/#loc=5/39.1/-94.58 [30]
Cities have many different impacts on the environment. Furthermore, different types of cities will have different environmental impacts. Here we consider some major contributors. As you read about these contributors, think about how they might be interconnected with one another.
A transportation mode is a way of getting around, such as walking, driving, bicycling, bus, or subway. Non-motorized transportation – walking, bicycling, etc. – is almost always quite a lot more efficient than motorized transportation. Bicycling is actually more efficient than walking because there is less friction with the ground. Walking can achieve the equivalent of about 350 miles per gallon of gasoline; cycling can achieve the equivalent of about 700 miles per gallon of gasoline. However, the difference between the two is smaller once the energy required to produce and recycle/dispose of the bicycle is factored in. And of course, the energy here comes not from gasoline but from whatever food is being eaten by the person walking. The overall environmental impact, then, depends on what types of foods are being eaten.
The efficiency of a car, bus, or train depends heavily on how many people are in it. A bus at average and maximum passenger loads gets about 40 and 330 miles per gallon per passenger, respectively. Note that this does not factor in the energy consumed by the passengers’ bodies as they sit or stand in the bus. Trains can be even more efficient than buses because their metal wheels and rails have less friction than buses’ rubber tires on pavement. Furthermore, trains can move larger volumes of passengers. A bus or train with one passenger will consume a lot more energy than a car with one person in it. This means that cars are not necessarily the least efficient option.
Have you ever been stuck in traffic? Did you enjoy it? Most people don’t. We would rather get to our destination sooner.
If you live in an area where both cars and transit are options, then you may face a collective action problem. In this scenario, regardless of what everyone else does, you’ll reach your destination faster if you drive. However, if everyone takes transit, then everyone will reach their destinations faster than if everyone drives. This is because transit can move more people along a street per unit of time. It’s like using a big fire hydrant hose to move water instead of a little gardening hose. Transit can do this because, in a bus or train, people can sit or stand right next to each other, whereas in cars there’s a lot more space between each individual person. Furthermore, when streets get crowded, there can be more people taking transit, meaning that the transit system can run vehicles more frequently and people have to wait less time for them.
Given what you know about collective action, how would you solve this problem?
Buildings are perhaps the single biggest contributor to the environmental impacts of cities. There are major impacts throughout the lifecycle of a building. When buildings are constructed, they tend to require a lot of natural resources for the building materials and energy for the construction process. Then, once they’ve been built, they use a lot of energy for heating, air conditioning, lighting, and appliances. Finally, when the building is no longer desired, something must be done with the building materials.
One way to reduce the environmental impact of buildings is to use less building per person. When people live in smaller residences and work in smaller offices, their buildings will have lower environmental impacts. Apartment buildings can save a lot of energy in heating and air conditioning because apartments share walls with each other and thus don’t lose as much heat to the outside. Smaller residences also discourage people from buying lots of stuff because there is less space to put the stuff. This avoids the environmental impacts of manufacturing the stuff.
The U.S. Green Building Council [31] (USGBC) has implemented the LEED® [32] program since 1998 to encourage sustainable building design, construction, operation, and maintenance. LEED stands for Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design and serves as a "yardstick" to measure the sustainability of structures by the design and construction industry. A LEED-certified building is often referred to as a green or sustainable building. If a building meets sustainability criteria, it receives LEED certification on one of four levels (LEED Certified, Silver, Gold or Platinum, from the lowest to the highest level). The rating is based on the points a building can earn for sustainable building site selection, maximized water use efficiency, minimized energy use and effect on the atmosphere, and advancements in indoor environmental quality (e.g., material, mechanical, and lighting performance).
For example, Penn State's (UP campus) Stuckeman Family Building, home of the School of Architecture and Landscape Architecture, is a LEED Gold complex thanks to its sustainable features such as an exterior construction of recycled copper and durable brick, rainwater harvesting and recycling for landscape irrigation, intelligent lighting control system, and energy-efficient motorized windows that take advantage of natural ventilation (Probing Question: What is a LEED building? [33]).
Cars, buses, power plants, factories, and fireplaces all put pollution into the air, affecting the health of everyone who breathes the air in. All else equal, cities with more of these activities will have more air pollution. But all is not always equal. Some urban areas have more air pollution even when they have the same amount of polluting activities. Here, the environment can be a big factor.
One way that a city can have worse air quality is if it is in an area with a temperature inversion. Usually, air along the surface is warmer because it receives warmth from the ground. Colder air is more dense, which is why we use hot air balloons to go up into the sky. When warmer air is along the surface, that air rises and mixes with the colder air above. This pulls pollution from the ground into the air above where it won’t be breathed in by people, thereby cleaning the surface air that we breathe. A temperature inversion is a scenario in which colder air sits along the surface and warmer air lies above. When colder air is along the surface, it doesn’t rise up into the sky and mix with the air above. Thus cities with temperature inversions tend to have worse air quality.
Temperature inversions are usually found in cities with a source of colder air and mountains that trap the cold air in. One example is Los Angeles, which receives cool air in from the ocean. Another is Salt Lake City, whose surrounding mountains also make for famous ski resorts. Here is a photograph from the ski slopes of the Alta resort. Mountains in the background can be seen poking up above low-lying clouds and smog, the result of a temperature inversion.
Here’s a view from a different site, showing the city in the valley below:
Here, we’ll look at some examples of how sustainable urban development has been achieved.
Recall the "Cycling as a social norm in Copenhagen" video in Module 4. We have seen that getting people to choose transit can be a collective action problem, and the choice of transport mode can be supported or constrained by urban design. Here's another video (7:22 minutes) showing the efforts that have been made in Copenhagen to ensure that cars do not interfere with people. This approach known as traffic calming has been highly popular in Copenhagen despite it being located in cold, snowy Denmark.
By now, Copenhagen’s traffic calming program has been so successful for so long that people often take it for granted that Copenhagen just is this way. Walking and, in particular, cycling have become very deeply embedded in Copenhagen’s culture. This can be seen in the popular blog Cycle Chic [40], which looks at the fashions of Copenhagen cyclists. The idea of bicycle chic has spread to other parts of the world, including the United States. All this helps establish walking and cycling as a social norm in Copenhagen, such that people there would find it unusual to drive places.
You may have never heard of it before, but Curitiba, Brazil has the best bus system in the world. The city today has about 2 million people, about the same size as Phoenix, Arizona. Indeed, Curitiba and Phoenix have had about the same population for the last 200 years. But while Phoenix was designed predominantly for the automobile, Curitiba was designed for the bus. Curitiba chose the bus because it could not easily afford to build a subway system. By designing the city around the bus, it found it could get subway-quality performance for a fraction of the cost.
At the heart of Curitiba’s bus system is a series of bus rapid transit routes on dedicated streets going into the city center. These bus lines have stations where passengers pay before getting on the bus, expediting the process considerably. During peak hours, buses run about one minute apart from each other, so riders don’t have to wait a long time. Curitiba zoned the bus lines for high-density development to increase the number of people who could easily ride these buses, thereby making them more effective. Check out the 8:03 minute video below for further details about Curitiba's public transit system.
In the American imagination, the South American nation of Colombia is commonly associated with the drug trade. But Colombian drug cartels are fading. Meanwhile, Colombia has been very active in sustainable development. In one example of this, its capital city, Bogota, has emerged as the world leader in weekly car-free events known as Ciclovias.
The Bogota Ciclovia happens every Sunday and holiday. Cars are forbidden or significantly restricted on 120 km (75 miles) of streets. In general, the presence of automobiles on our streets is a threat not only to the environment but also to children and anyone else wishing to use the streets. The streets can then be used safely and comfortably for cycling, walking, and skating. The streets also feature dances, aerobics, and other outdoors activities. The Ciclovia is a way for people from all walks of life to get some exercise and fresh air. Today, similar events can be found across the world, but none are as large as Bogota’s. Watch the following 9:41 minute video about the Bogota Civlovia.
Urban farming can take a variety of forms but, conceptually speaking, it refers to crop and livestock production within cities and surroundings. Urban farming (also known as urban agriculture) takes advantage of every inch of private or public space and can involve anything from rooftop farming to balcony gardening, from farming in parking lots to farming along roadsides. Urban farming plays a large part in contributing to sustainable urban development. As more and more people are living in cities, urban agriculture is emerging as an attractive means of supplying urbanites with food. At the same time, urban farming is an important strategy for reduction of hunger and poverty, improvement in resident health, and climate change mitigation and adaptation.
Detroit (and the state of Michigan generally) makes a good case study for urban agriculture. Watch minutes 16:29-22:05 of the PBS video below to see how urban farming helps communities in food deserts (places with no grocery stores offering fresh produce) access more affordable and healthier food and allows people to make a living by selling their food in local markets.
Urban farming can take place basically anywhere. Check out the 3:24 minute video below to find out how people are growing food in recycled car tires in Haiti. On one side, urban farming is a response to food and livelihood insecurity. On the other side, urban farming grows a greener future because food grown locally requires less transportation (or fewer food miles) and therefore reduces ecological footprint.
Earlier in this course, we learned that the Green Revolution was, in part, an effort by capitalist countries in the Cold War to get Third World countries to side with them. The Soviet Union was also active in providing agriculture aid to Third World countries such as Cuba.
The world’s largest urban agriculture program comes from Cuba. When the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, Cuba lost its source of aid and thus faced food shortages. As a way to cope, Cuba turned to urban agriculture as a way to feed itself. This agriculture is performed almost entirely without artificial fertilizers and pesticides, simply because Cuba lacks access to these inputs. In some ways, this makes Cuba’s national agriculture system more sustainable and less vulnerable to disruptions in the supplies of these inputs. On the other hand, this system involves more labor and lower yields than is often found elsewhere. Still, as with Cuba’s overall development, much can be learned from its agriculture system.
Check out this Youtube video by Kitchen Gardeners International (6:05 minutes).
From previous pages, we learned that urban design involves collective action if a city is to be developed in some coordinated fashion. Likewise, the urban sustainable development process involves a mix of government regulations, private market forces, and community self-organization.
On this page, we conclude our unit on sustainable development by discussing the process of transitioning from less sustainable to more sustainable development.
In the sustainable development modules, we (the course designers) have attempted to show that sustainable development can also be enjoyable development. To see this, recall the end uses of sustainable development. Foods that have lower environmental impacts are often also healthier and tastier. High-density, mixed-use urban developments often have vibrant culture and aesthetic beauty. Non-motorized transport (walking, biking, etc.) also gets us exercise, making us healthier and happier. We see this time and time again: sustainable development is pleasant development. It would seem to be a win-win situation: people today get to live nice lives, and the environment and future generations benefit in the process. This observation is in stark contrast with the idea that protecting the environment requires arduous sacrifices. Perhaps sustainable development is not that much of a collective action problem after all.
If sustainable development is such a good idea, then why don’t we see more of it? There are many reasons for this, but one idea is at the center: the challenge of transition. Regardless of how nice sustainable development might be when we get there, the process of transitioning there from where we are now is difficult. Because the transition is so difficult, we don’t do it as much as we could or perhaps should. The difficulty of the transition can be expressed in terms of the idea of system resilience from Module 2.
The difficulty of the transition has two main parts. One involves physical infrastructure. Our farms, buildings, and roads are largely set up for an unsustainable type of development. Transitioning to sustainable development would require rebuilding a lot of this. That’s a lot of work! Even if more sustainable infrastructure ends up being eventually more pleasant or less expensive to operate, it is often more expensive over the short-term. Indeed, discussions of sustainable development often highlight the concept of the break-even point, which is the point in time in the future in which an investment in more sustainable physical infrastructure breaks even. Before the break-even point, the investment loses money (or whatever else is being counted). After the break-even point, the investment makes money/etc. For example, we might spend more money constructing a more energy-efficient building, but over the course of the building’s lifetime, we save money on energy costs.
The other part of the difficulty of the transition is cognitive. Simply put, our minds require some transition, too. Part of the cognitive transition involves learning some new things. If we’re going to eat foods with lower environmental impacts, then we need to learn to use some new recipes or restaurants. If we’re going to use different transportation modes, then we need to learn how to use those. But part of the cognitive transition goes beyond learning. This involves habits and social norms. We might know full well how to cook a meal or get around town in a more sustainable manner, but we still find ourselves in the habit of doing the same things we always have been doing. Changing habits can be a very difficult thing to do. Or, we might be able to change our habits, but find ourselves in social circumstances in which the new habits are not considered normal. Maybe your friends are all going out for hamburgers or buffalo wings and would tease you if you ordered a vegetarian option. Maybe your family doesn’t want to move to an area where you and they could walk everywhere. In scenarios like this, it’s entirely possible that the other people in your social group would be more positive and accommodating after they went through a cognitive transition of their own. Either way, it remains the case that social norms can make transitions to sustainability – or to anything else, for that matter – more difficult. The same can be said for the other aspects of cognitive transition: learning and habits.
The challenge of transition makes achieving sustainable development quite a lot more difficult. But the challenge also opens up opportunities. Today, many people are employed in various aspects of sustainable development largely to facilitate the transition. Whether you’re in engineering or advertising, farming or law, or virtually any other profession, there are opportunities to help with the transition to sustainable development. Succeeding with this involves understanding the interconnections between your profession and sustainability.
And with that, our sustainable development unit comes to an end.
Our third and final unit, global environmental change, explains why the transition to sustainability is so important. In short, the fate of the global human-environment system is at stake, including our very survival. So, while sustainable development can be pleasant, and the transition can be difficult, the transition is also quite important. Arguably, nothing at all is more important.
Cities and transportation are central to contemporary development because they enable large numbers of people to come together for specific purposes. Food is important because everyone eats it, and agriculture is important because it's how we get most of our food. This module was designed to present urban transportation and farming in a systemic, geographic perspective with emphasis on their sustainability. Urban landscapes are heavily dominated by human activity but are nonetheless influenced by environmental features such as the presence of ports. Urban design in turn influences which modes of transportation we use, as seen in urban areas designed for pedestrian, public transit, and automobile transportation. Cities and transportation impact the environment in several ways, including energy use and air quality. By minimizing food transport and carbon footprint, urban farming makes cities less fossil-fuel dependent and more environmentally-friendly. Finally, there are efforts in cities around the world to transition towards sustainable development.
The transition to sustainability can be difficult. The transition is often more difficult than the end result of being in a more sustainable state. Transitions to sustainability can involve transitions in both physical infrastructure and in our own minds. The challenge of the transition is an important aspect of sustainable development, one which can present opportunities for those interested in pursuing sustainable development in their lives.
Links
[1] https://www.e-education.psu.edu/geog30/node/466
[2] http://www.solopassion.com/node/1233
[3] http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:US_Navy_110603-N-SH953-005_USS_Constitution_sails_into_Boston_Harbor_during_an_underway_Battle_of_Midway_commemoration.jpg
[4] http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Baltimore_Inner_Harbor_Panorama.jpg
[5] http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/
[6] https://www.e-education.psu.edu/geog30/sites/www.e-education.psu.edu.geog30/files/transport/east_coast.jpg
[7] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:USA_topo_en.jpg
[8] https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:PortOVan.jpg
[9] https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Bobanny
[10] https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Main_Page
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[12] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Port_of_Hamburg#/media/File:Landungsbr%C3%BCcken,_Hamburg.JPG
[13] http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:View_of_Rio_de_Janeiro.jpg
[14] https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0/deed.en
[15] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Rocinha_rio_de_janeiro_panorama_2010.jpg
[16] http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/6e/Rocinha_rio_de_janeiro_panorama_2010.jpg
[17] https://www.flickr.com/people/gnuckx/
[18] https://creativecommons.org/share-your-work/public-domain/cc0/
[19] https://www.planetizen.com/blogs/109934-liberating-cities-cars
[20] http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4079/4741547920_888e4ce600.jpg
[21] https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/2.0/
[22] https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/
[23] https://www.urbandisplacement.org/redlining
[24] https://www.youtube.com/user/npr
[25] https://catalog.libraries.psu.edu/catalog/1228478
[26] https://www.washington.edu/news/2020/08/13/systemic-racism-has-consequences-for-all-life-in-cities/
[27] https://science.sciencemag.org/content/369/6510/eaay4497
[28] https://belonging.berkeley.edu/segregationinthebay
[29] https://cityobservatory.org/most_segregated/
[30] https://dsl.richmond.edu/panorama/redlining/#loc=5/39.1/-94.58
[31] http://www.usgbc.org/
[32] http://www.usgbc.org/leed
[33] http://news.psu.edu/story/141369/2010/09/28/research/probing-question-what-leed-building
[34] https://sustainability.psu.edu/campus-efforts/operations/green-buildings/
[35] http://www.flickr.com/photos/63146967@N00/523905540
[36] http://www.flickr.com/photos/63146967@N00/
[37] http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/
[38] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:SnowbirdHiddenPeak1.jpg
[39] http://www.streetfilms.org/copenhagens-car-free-streets-and-slow-speed-zones/
[40] http://www.copenhagencyclechic.com
[41] http://vimeo.com/streetfilms
[42] https://vimeo.com
[43] https://player.pbs.org/viralplayer/2276862085/