We can now say with considerable certainty that as the 21st
century unfolds, climate change will have an increasing impact on
the environment and human society worldwide. As much as we might
like to avoid thinking about it, most prudent people now understand
that we must plan and prepare for a carbon-constrained future.
We also know that there is a strong global trend towards
urbanisation. Two hundred years ago the world's urban population
was around 3 per cent. One hundred years ago, it was 14 per cent.
According to a UN report (Global Environmental Outlook 2: Past,
Present and Future Perspective, 2002), about half of the world's
population now lives in urban areas; every week, over a million
people leave their rural lives behind for the uncertain promise of
the city.
Climate change and urbanisation are two major drivers of change
in the 21st century. The ways in which these trends interact and
how we respond to them will be of great consequence to the
wellbeing of human populations and all life.
There are plenty of reasons for concern. Urban populations
consume more energy and other resources and export more carbon and
waste per person, causing disproportionate harm to natural
ecosystems. In many cases, cities are particularly vulnerable to
the effects of climate change such as rising sea levels, increased
storm surges, and temperature extremes. Large cities create their
own 'urban heat island' - the heat given off from the city itself
can make it warmer than the surrounding countryside. The health of
many other vital environmental resources, including forests,
oceans, rivers, and wetlands, that provide essential ecosystem
services - such as stormwater management, air purification, and
reduced heating and cooling - are also in jeopardy.
However, there are also solid reasons for hope. Cities
facilitate the peaceful exchange of ideas that drive social and
economic innovation. Urban communities provide concentrations of
human talent to envision and redesign sustainable and resilient
cities, and the financial and technical resources to support these
changes. When viewed as nested systems, central cities, the
greater metropolitan communities that surround them, and the
natural bioregions in which they are located, may prove to be the
most effective forms and levels of organisation for creating,
testing, refining and replicating innovative and ecologically
appropriate solutions.
Innovations that emerge from one urban community can be adapted
by different communities in ways that reflect the opportunities and
needs of their particular bioregions. Through this process the
original idea may becomes stronger and more robust, encouraging the
next cycle of innovation. To a large extent, we can choose whether
our cities become ecological sinks that suck up the resources of
the countryside, or ecological arks where humanity gathers to sort
out how best to respond to climate change and other environmental
challenges.
A number of cities around the world are already demonstrating
impressive leadership as they seek to become more sustainable. They
include Amsterdam, the Netherlands; Bogotá, Columbia; Copenhagen;
Denmark; Curitiba, Brazil, Reykjavik, Iceland; and Vancouver,
Canada. Several cities in the United States have also accepted the
challenge of becoming sustainable cities.
One way to encourage cities to take sustainability seriously is
to stage a competition to determine the 'greenest' or 'most
sustainable' city. In the US, the most widely reported competition
was created by SustainLane, a company that develops sustainability
websites. The objective, explained SustainLane's CEO James Elsen,
is "to get citizens as interested in sustainability as they are in
their sports teams".
Portland, a medium-sized city located in the state of Oregon in
the Pacific northwest corner of the country, captured the top spot
in 2006 and again in 2008. The second and third-ranked cities (who
held their positions in both polls) - San Francisco and Seattle -
also lie on the West Coast. Next, in 2008, came Chicago, New York,
Boston, Minneapolis, Philadelphia, Oakland (down from fifth in
2006) and Baltimore. In 2008, a similar ranking conducted by
Popular Science also anointed Portland as the greenest city in the
USA.
(The next four cities on that list: San Francisco, Boston,
Oakland and Portland's closest neighbour, Eugene, Oregon.)
Cut out of the forest, Portland offers views of snowcapped Mt
Hood and its famous volcano neighbour, Mt St Helens. Two rivers
wind through town - the central city straddles the Willamette
River, while the mighty Columbia River separates Portland from its
northern neighbour, Vancouver, USA, in Washington state. As of July
2007, Portland's population was slightly over 568,000, while the
greater Portland-Vancouver metro area approached 2.2 million
people.
Some of the key sustainability features of Portland include:
• An extensive light rail network, bio-diesel powered buses and
an aerial tram as part of a multi-modal transit system;
• Close to 450km of on-street bike lanes, bike boulevards and
paved trails - bike commuting has experienced three straight years
of double-digit growth;
• Neighbourhoods consciously-designed to be
pedestrian-friendly;
• A strong commitment by Portland State University to research
and implement sustainability practices;
• City Repair, an organisation that helps neighbourhoods move
their plans through city bureaucracy, coordinates meetings,
provides experienced natural designers and builders, and helps find
materials and funds;
• Portland's watershed management plan, including: a
proliferation of 'eco-roofs' on houses and buildings, featuring a
waterproof membrane, drainage material, a layer of soil and a cover
of plants; permeable streets and parking lots that allow rain to
soak into the ground; rain gardens and green streets with curbside
bioswales to remove silt and pollution from run-off; and
• The conversion of a waterfront freeway into a three kilometre
'greenway' park
ECONOMIC BENEFITS
Portland's reputation as a sustainable city is attracting
businesses that brand themselves around sustainability. Building
sustainably in particular has become an export industry for
Portland - its green designers, building engineers and construction
companies are known and consulted by clients around the world.
Gerding Edlen has already become the largest builder of condos in
downtown Los Angeles and the largest sustainable builder in the
nation. The city's largest architectural firm, ZGF Partnership,
designs sustainable buildings from New York to Beijing.
Seven years ago, the city and several partners launched a Green
Investment Fund to support innovations by the local green building
industry. So far, the fund has invested nearly $3 million in
innovative approaches to waste reduction, water conservation,
on-site stormwater management and reuse, energy conservation and
on-site renewable energy generation. Now city leaders want to
create a World Sustainability Center to house research and
development facilities, the city's sustainability programs, green
businesses and nonprofits, and academic offerings. "It's certainly
part of our branding efforts to distinguish ourselves as being at
the top of the pack," City Commissioner Dan Saltzman explained. "It
would give people coming here a place where they can see what we're
all about, as well as give businesses a place where they can share
information with each other."
Portland's Office of Sustainable Development launched a new
service for the city's small businesses. Sustainability experts at
the Business for an Environmentally Sustainable Tomorrow (BEST)
business centre provide a one-stop service to make it as easy as
possible for small businesses to both achieve their sustainability
goals and enhance their bottom line. Services begin with a
comprehensive sustainability audit and a tailored set of
recommendations. Next, the BEST staff work with the business owners
and employees to identify a clear path to implementation and
connect them with service providers.
As impressive as the emergence of green businesses has been in
Portland, equally intriguing is the growth of local entrepreneurs
and the increasing number that are targeting the local community as
their nearly exclusive market. Portland has long held a spot near
the top among US cities for start-up entrepreneurs. However,
similar to the recent appeal of 'eating locally', clothiers and
other creative craftspeople are building a livelihood by using
local raw materials, including recycled materials, into useful
products for their neighbours, friends and other local consumers.
The entrepreneurs see value in their social connections to their
suppliers and their consumers, in much the same way that the CSAs
and farmers' markets function.
TACKLING CLIMATE CHANGE
In 1993, Portland became the first local government in the US to
adopt a plan to address climate change. In 2001, the county that
surrounds Portland joined the effort to create the Local Action
Plan on Global Warming. The plan set an aggressive goal of reducing
carbon dioxide emissions to 10 per cent below 1990 levels by 2010.
It identified key strategies to reduce greenhouse gas emissions in
six areas: land-use planning; transportation; energy
efficiency; renewable energy; solid waste and recycling; and urban
forestry.
Fifteen years later, local greenhouse gas emissions are now less
than one per cent above 1990 levels - a key benchmark of the
international Kyoto Protocol - and emissions have declined in each
of the past four years. According to Portland's Office of
Sustainable Development, emissions in Portland and the surrounding
county have fallen 12.5 per cent per capita since 1993, an
achievement likely unequalled in any other major US city. Per
capita emissions in the US have increased slightly over the same
period, with total greenhouse gas emissions up 13 per cent.
Achieving the goal of 10 per cent below 1990 levels remains a
significant challenge, so Portland is attempting to accelerate its
local contribution to climate change efforts. For example, the city
council has said it is committed to powering all of its city
facilities and operations with 100 per cent renewable energy. It is
also exploring an aggressive set of proposals to reduce the
negative environmental impacts, especially the carbon emissions, of
all buildings, even further.
Under these proposals, the city would first provide substantial
financial incentives for new construction that meets the highest
energy efficiency and green building standards. The incentives
would be financed by a carbon fee charged to new buildings that
only meet existing minimum code. New buildings meeting moderate
performance thresholds, such as providing 30 per cent less energy
consumption than code, would be exempt from the carbon fee.
Second, the city would assure that useful information about
every building's performance would be available to owners,
managers, tenants, prospective buyers and the real estate industry.
A building performance rating would be required for all residential
and commercial buildings, likely at the time of sale or lease.
Third, the building community and its trade allies would receive
training and assistance to minimise the number of buildings liable
for a carbon fee. The city is also working on a proposal to create
an innovative funding scheme with public and private financing to
support energy efficiency upgrades in thousands of homes and
hundreds of commercial buildings annually. Portland's sustainable
economic development manager explained: "In order to have any hope
of meeting greenhouse gas reduction targets, we would need to
increase energy efficiency work in this city by a factor of ten
immediately and we'd need to do it for 20 years."
PORTLAND'S TRANSFORMATION
Portland's rise as a vibrant and innovative role model of
sustainability is extraordinary by any standard. It is even more
astounding if you knew the Portland of the 1950s and early 1960s.
As one of our university colleagues who grew up here put it,
Portland in those days was "a strikingly dull and derivative city,
only a restaurant or two above a logging town".
Why did Portland reach the top spot in sustainability rankings
of US cities? The authors of SustainLane's study conclude that
people in the city "collectively identify with having a high
quality of life more than those in most cities". Portlanders "work
hard at being involved in city policy boards, projects and
practices that impact sustainability".
There are many reasons for the city's about-face, from an active
and activist citizenry, to policy developments at the local and
state government level (both individually and jointly across the
northwestern region of the country) as well as its geographic and
climatic position in the 'Cascadia' bioregion.
But it is the fact that the city's establishment is open to new
ideas that we find most encouraging.
As Portland's mayor Tom Potter explained when he accepted
SustainLane's trophy as America's most sustainable city: "In
Portland, the local governments are leaders for sustainability but
it's really the grassroots actions from the neighbourhoods and
businesses that make this a special place. The City is buying
renewable power and conservation energy, and so are tens of
thousands of residents. The City has a green building policy, but
it's the builders and developers and buyers who actually change the
market. It's the people who shop at the farmers' markets, the
growers who manage their farms sustainably, the folks who choose to
bike to work, and all those day-to-day decisions that are making a
huge difference."
