Editors select news on city innovations and trends worldwide
A “Clean Revolution,” based on new information technologies and environmentally friendly ways to produce and consume energy and natural resources, is sweeping across the world. That’s the message of a report from the London-based Climate Group, in association with ARUP, Accenture and Horizon. Official title: Information Marketplaces: the New Economics of Cities.
Economic winning regions of 2011 were relative surprises – citistates such as Istanbul, Jakarta, Mumbai, Shanghai, São Paulo. Dragging on tests of GPD, employment, income and population were historic global leaders such as New York, London, Los Angeles, Milan, Paris. In fact, as the world struggled to restoke its economies, 90 percent of the fastest growing metros were outside North America and Western Europe.
Ratings of 200 major metros’ economic performance are in a new report – Metros Define A New Global Economic Order” – issued by the Brookings Institution. The site includes a handy interactive world map, yielding instant figures on any metro.
As cities lead world population growth, their responsibility for the natural environment increases. On the concern list: biodiversity in their territory. Research in Indianapolis, led by Dr Rebecca Dolan, director of Butler University’s Friesner Herbarium, showed that between 1940 and the 2006-2010 period, many of the native plant species have disappeared and been replaced by invasive ones that settlers have tracked in.
The web site www.treehugger.com warns: City planners should take care to map out ample green spaces and areas for native flora to thrive -- lest we transform our cities into homogeneous habitats, full of the same invasive species the world over.
World news focuses on Iran’s geopolitical disputes. Beneath that radar, efforts are underway to mitigate the country’s fast-growing greenhouse gas emissions -- in a nation with 60 percent of its population under 26 years of age, and a need of 1.5 million new residences per year over the next half decade.
A joint German-Iranian research initiative aims at building energy-efficient housing in a real-life pilot project, the Hashtgerd New Town in the Teheran region.
It sounds unlikely, big developers in Sweden are reportedly set to use aquifers from underneath the streets of Stockholm to heat and cool the buildings above them. As “This Big City” website reports: "Since water has an ability to store heat or cold, these aquifers work a bit like a thermos.
The idea, more or less, is to pump up cold water in the summer to cool buildings above ground. This makes the water temperature rise a small amount. This water is then pumped back down into the ground and stored until next winter, when it can be used for heating buildings. In total, this process generates about three or four times as much energy than what is required for pumping the water up and down."
In a world of growing food supply perils -- droughts, floods, broken global supply chains -- can individual cities identify routes to food self-sufficiency (or at least reduced dependence)? Given modern cities’ immense reliance on outside supplies, self-sufficiency is a long reach. But urban food production is increasing. And one study projects Cleveland could theoretically to meet up to 100 percent of its fresh produce need. Economic translation: $115 million in fewer regionally “leaked” dollars.
Lessons in creating and cultivating density in the USA's Columbus, Chicago and Indianapolis areas are featured in this Indianapolis Star article on adding life and livability to older developed-world cities. Key elements for success: focused development around transit stops. Tax credits. City purchase of homes in lightly populated neighborhoods, encouraging residents to move to denser locations.
Minutes, seconds of warning count when tsunamis threaten coastal cities – a lesson driven home by Japan’s devastating earthquake March 11. By this summer, though, the warning times may be sped up by many decisive minutes through new technology invented by Georgia Institute of Technology scientists.
Tapping information from hundreds of seismic monitoring system worldwide, the new software registers the size, location of the epicenter, how fast the tremors reverberate (which depends on rigidity of the rupturing rock), which in turn provides data on ocean depth of the quake --and thus its risk of creating a major tsunami. The likely payoff: much more rapid tsunami alerts -- within seven minutes of a major shock.
Reporting on the findings, the Economist notes: “It will then be up to local authorities to have evacuation plans in place. But they will no longer be able to say they did not see it coming.”
The economic power of the world’s top 600 cities will rise rapidly from now to 2025, the McKinsey Global Institute reports in its new “Urban World” report. Megacities will be less dominant; 125 new cities, 100 from China alone, will enter the lead 600 ranks. From $30 trillion in total GDP in 2007, the 600 cities will more than double their economic output to $64 trillion - 60 percent of global GDP -- by 2025. In a message likely to catch the attention of global corporate planners, McKinsey projects the 600 cities will have 735 million households with average per capita GDP of $32,000, including a remarkable 235 million households in developing world cities projected to have incomes topping $20,000 per annum.
What issues, 2011, lead the pack for world mayors? Top clues come from the “Mayors’ Think Tank” held at the recent MINIM real estate group’s meeting in Cannes, France. CEOs from 80 world cities participated. A summary of their thinking is captured in a just-released summary by premier urban analyst Greg Clark, ULI Senior Fellow and chairman of the OECD Local Development Forum. High on the mayors’ challenge list: their cities’ pressing need for new and upgraded infrastructure, frustrated by the toughest limits on global debt finance since World War II. Another major concern: despite rapid global urbanization and cities’ premier economic role, many nations’ governance systems remain locked in old “nation state” paradigms that unduly limit cities’ powers and finances.
