Over the past few decades, the idea of sustainable architecture seems to have become a common trend in the development of the world’s major cities. Allowing for more reasonable use of the natural resources and a way for people to coexist with nature without destroying it with the final products of the existing industries, sustainable architecture seems to be the only way out of the existing environmental problems. The emergence of green cities, which a sustainable environment has spawned, is a major breakthrough; however, despite the fact that the creation of green cities seems to be the solution to the current environmental issues, there are still certain issues to be solved.
The development of green cities has sufficient grounds to base on and is quite reasonable in the light of the current emphasis on technological development and the boost of industries all over the world, while the environmental issues remain unresolved. According to the results of the green city policy which has been conducted in several world’s major megalopolises, the local authorities have managed to stress the necessity in the arrangement of the green spaces rather successfully; moreover, the so-called environmental harmony has been discovered. According to the UNO Habitat 2008, there are three basic types of harmony that the residents of big cities must strive for, i.e., spatial harmony, social harmony, and environmental harmony. UNO Habitat emphasized that “A city cannot be harmonious if some groups concentrate resources and opportunities while others remain impoverished and marginalized” (UNO Habitat, 2008, p. x), which means that, to achieve full growth and impeccable development, the city authorities have to focus on the environmental harmony as much as they do on the social aspects of people’s lives. However, the given statement raises a number of essential questions. There is no reason to deny that most cities are already pushed to the breaking point with developing their industries in order to take the top position, sweeping the competitors away and retaining its high position; hence, certain cities might not be able to find enough resources to sustain the environment and at the same time remain on top of the economic ladder, which means that the idea of harmony between the four constituents which have been listed above can possibly become a failure. To their credit, though, the members of the UNO Habitat have taken into account the above-mentioned limitation of their solution, adjusting their theory to the countries which have low economical standards. According to the UNO Habitat, each of the existing dominant cities has the above-mentioned elements in a misbalance:
In many cities, wealth and poverty coexist in close proximity: rich, well-serviced neighborhoods and gated residential communities are often situated near dense inner-city or peri-urban slum communities that lack even the most basic of services. (UNO Habitat, 2008, p. xii)
Therefore, according to UNO Habitat, before turning a certain major city into the so-called green city, there is a reason to check if the basic services which the local authorities must offer to the population are provided and whether the aforementioned facilities follow the existing standards. Hence, the UNO Habitat placed the harmony between the results of the environmental policies, the social issues in a certain city and the spatial concerns, i.e., the “spatial or territorial disparities and inequalities in the access to housing and basic services” (UNO Habitat, 2008, p. xv). On the one hand, the given approach seems rather reasonable, since, throwing the existing funds solely on the environmental issues is most likely to cost certain cities decay in other spheres, such as economics or social development. In addition, it seems that the UNO Habitat did not focus much on the urban trends and the tendencies which could be observed in larger cities, paying attention rather to the means of reaching harmony between the economical, political and environmental elements in big cities. In an attempt to right the wrongs which the previous report had, the UNO Habitat issued its next paper on the trends which megalopolises seemed to have at the time, which were a major breakthrough and the herald of a completely new era for the world’s largest green cities. It is important that the 2010 report specifies the exact problems and changes within the world cities, such as the urban divide, the tendency for the big cities to have their population scattered all over their vast territories, etc.
Speaking of the UNO Habitat’s attempt, to sum up the major achievements and the greatest concerns of the green cities policy in 2010, one must give the UNO Habitat credit for devoting its issue entirely to the world’s largest megalopolises. In addition, in contrast to the previous issue, which was rather general, the 2010 paper points at exact problems which stand in the way of making green cities green and at the same time retaining some scraps of economical dominance. When reading the review of the existing state of the world’s green cities in 2010, one can feel that the UNO Habitat has finally realized what its basic goal is, and has finally focused on the issues which are really crucial to the problem of making cities greener and more environmentally friendly. It is not that the previous paper which UNO Habitat offered was something to sniff on – on the contrary, it did provide a detailed account of the existing elements of big cities’ harmony; however, it did feel a bit all over the place. Starting with the world’s megacities in 2007 and what they are going to look like presumably in 2025, the paper then skipped to the pessimistic observations of the 1990ies and 2000ies, which made the report a tad confused. Quite on the contrary, the analysis of 2010 offers figures and data which are fully related to the state of big cities. All in all, the developers of the green cities project have progressed considerably. While in 2008 the researchers have only decided on what makes city harmonious and proved that the idea of green cities is worth existing, in the 2010 report, the results of the green city policy are already evident. In addition, the reports addressed such issues as the versatility of the megalopolis society: “A society cannot claim to be harmonious if large sections of its population are deprived of basic needs while other sections live in opulence” (UNO Habitat, 2008, p. x) and “the urban divide between “haves” and “have nots” opens up a gap […] which can produce social instability or at least generate high social and economic costs not only for the urban poor, but for society at large” (UNO Habitat, 2010, p. viii). When speaking about unifying the multi-layer urban society, however, one has to admit that the green city project developers have made a huge step backwards in implementing their ideas. Indeed, it is obvious that a society cannot be homogenous – on the contrary, its multiple layers serve their specific purposes, making the society a clockwork mechanism. Without its different substrata, society is most likely to stop functioning. Therefore, the UNO idea of making the society of green cities more homogenous can possibly fall flat in the future or lead to some drastic changes. Analyzing the given change in the UNO attitudes towards the green city policy, one can assume that this change must have been triggered by a lack of understanding of the way in which a megalopolis society is built and the delicate balance in which its elements are arranged.
After all the attempts which have been made by the UNO to implement the idea of green cities and stumbling upon a number of obstacles, such as the misbalanced economic state that did not allow for giving the environmental issues much focus, the 2012 UNO account of the current situation and plans for the future seem much more realistic since it is evident now that the organization knows the key problems which it will meet on its way and will have to overcome. Since the previous record showed that large cities need to get their priorities in line and that the environmental issues can be solved only once the economical and political concerns are out of the way, the idea of green cities’ prosperity came to the forth. It is rather reasonable that from the concept of merely making cities cleaner and less polluted, the UNO Habitat came to the complex idea of having the many elements of a city’s prosperity in balance. Moreover, it is important to stress that the UNO did not deny any of the original premises of their concept, but, on the contrary, stretched these premises to the point when they embraced every single element that adds to the well-being of the citizens. Starting with the necessity to spread environmental awareness and stating the results of the existing issues within the world’s largest cities as well as smaller towns: “In many cities, national economic policies and investments are mostly the results of government decisions and budget allocations” (UNO Habitat, 2008, p. xi) and the attempts to define the very concept of green cities as “resilient and inclusive towns and cities” (UNO Habitat 2010, p. v), the UNO finally came to developing the strategy for the further course of actions. Therefore, it can be considered that the idea of green cities has evolved greatly over the past few years. The UNO has also addressed one of the most controversial aspects of the whole environmental awareness idea, which is mainly what should be the focus of the government in the case of a crisis, the environment or the economics. In addition, it was very successful that the UNO finally managed to tie in the necessity for cities to develop their environmental strategies and the effect which the latter can have on the city’s economics: “However, responses to global crises must also allow for a vigorous role for cities” (UNO Habitat, 2012, p. 11). Therefore, it can be concluded that at present, the course for improving the existing situation with the green cities has been set. However, if diving deeper into the issue of turning the world’s megalopolises into green cities, one will see that there are much more problems to it than proving its necessity.
Despite the fact that there are a number of obstacles in the way of the implementation of the green cities program, the UNO seems to have managed to come up with a decent and very detailed strategy concerning every point of greening the world’s major cities. For instance, it is quite surprising to see that the aspect of the environment and the public space has been taken to a completely new level. According to the report offered in the research by Simpson and Zimmermann, the idea of making public spaces greener and at the same time keeping the city’s infrastructure intact has been recently updated: “Urban development planning increasingly focuses upon the spatial environment in terms of the revitalization of districts and city centers, urban public spaces and the interconnection of fragmented urban landscapes, and to develop a conscious and welcoming image of humane livability within the urban experience” (Simpson & Zimmermann, 2012, p. 40). It is truly remarkable that in such a short amount of time, the UNO came from simple concepts ranking ecology in regards to the rest of the concerns that large cities have to complex ideas of how to rearrange cities with minimum changes and the maximum positive impact on the environment. Compared to the previously described endeavors to introduce the concept of green cities to the public, the idea offered by Simpson and Zimmermann already is a legitimate problem solution that has been successfully introduced into a number of cities and will be to even more of them in the future. Therefore, one can observe grandeur changes in the green city project. Of course, it must be admitted that the practical solutions that Simpson and Zimmermann’s offer are very flawed, which is quite understandable, for the idea of green cities is relatively young, and there was not much that could have been done in the timeslot from 2000 to 2012. In addition, it is quite impressive that the authors deal with the transportation issue as well, since the latter poses quite a number of threats to the environment with all the pollution and the CO2 emissions that it causes: “Sustainable urban transport research and practice have focused on specific problems such as pollution, road safety and on various measures and their effects” (Simpson & Zimmermann, 2012, p. 39). Even though Simpson and Zimmermann stress that a more integrated approach is required to figure out to what extent the transportation issues impact the environment, it is still quite impressive that the transport issue has finally been mentioned in regard to its impact on nature.
However, despite all the positive aspects of the research offered by Simpson and Zimmermann, it is still clear that some of the concerns for the environment remain unresolved, such as the aforementioned transport pollution issue. One has to give credit to the existing research, though, for highlighting not only the negative aspects of using oil-powered transport but also the fact that there is no alternative to the petrol cars at present and the fact that, once banning the latter from using, one will inevitably observe the city’s decay (Simpson & Zimmermann, 2012, p. 40); this is a very legitimate point. However, the solutions that Simpson and Zimmermann offer still have problems. For example, the idea of creating “affordable, attractive, comfortable and sustainable buildings” (Simpson & Zimmermann, 2012, p. 39) seems a perfect solution, yet, sadly enough, the change of attitudes towards the environment, which the given approach requires, is quite hard to make, as the researchers claim (Simpson & Zimmermann, 2012, p. 40). Hence, the aspect of sustainable architecture, which will be further on developed into a new concept (Sassi, 2012) is introduced.
Stretching the idea of green cities to the concept of green urbanism, Timothy Beatley offered a renewed approach to the problems that urbanism has posed to humankind in terms of environmental sustainability. In addition, one of the many merits of the given research is that it does not threaten the readers with false alarms about the rapid decrease of the existing mineral resources, but states clear-cut problems which need to be solved in the nearest future: “How cities sustain themselves as access to resources beyond their boundaries diminishes is one of the greatest challenges for the future” (Beatley, 2012, p.185). Therefore, it can be considered that the concept of green cities has made humankind aware of the existing problems and that at present, the reasonability of green cities approach has become fully reasonable; moreover, it seems that the green cities strategy is currently the only way to sustain the environment and at the same time retain the same economical and social status for the world’s largest cities (Beatley, 2012, p.185). Finally, the fact that Beatley finally brings the issue of an ecological footprint up and tries to define the reasonable boundaries of the latter is worth mentioning. The moment at which the boundaries for people’s habitat are defined can be considered the pivoting moment in the development of the green cities concept, because Beatley eventually brings the audience to think not about how to make people’s impact on nature milder, but how to keep it to the minimum, without spreading cities further until there is not a single untouched spot left on the planet.
Another important issue concerning the green city concept that Beatley mentions is the fact that each of the world’s largest cities requires a unique approach in the implementation of the above-mentioned idea. According to Beatley, the major resources of each city, as well as its infrastructure, the main weaknesses and the key assets, are to be analyzed before getting down to making the city green. As a matter of fact, Beatley reconsiders the entire idea of the green city; while the UNO Habitat considered a green city the one which is “safer, greener and better serviced” (UNO Habitat, 2008, p. 35), Beatley broadens the concept, pointing out that “in a green city, green areas are diverse and functional, from an ecological as well as experiential point of view” (Beatley, 2012, p. 115). Therefore, in 2012, the idea of a green city is not making the entire city be buried in verdure, but turning the megalopolis more environmentally friendly (Cohen, 2010). It is clear that the current point of green city development is not yet the point of destination and there is much more to discover; however, the provided solutions as they seem rather adequate responses to the current environmental concerns.
Reference List
Beatley, T, 2012, Green cities of Europe: global lessons on green urbanism, Island Press, Washington, DC.
Cohen, N, 2010, Green cities: an A to Z guide, SAGE, Thousand Oaks, CA.
Sassi, P, 2012, Strategies for sustainable architecture, Taylor & Francis, New York City, NY.
Simpson, R & Zimmermann, M., 2012, The economy of green cities: world compendium on the green urban economy, Springer, Bonn.
UNO Habitat 2008, State of the world’s cities 2008/2009, UNO, Geneva, SZ.
UNO Habitat 2010, State of the world’s cities 2010/2011, UNO, Geneva, SZ.
UNO Habitat 2012, State of the world’s cities 2012/2013, UNO, Geneva, SZ.