Today, a city’s value is more often defined quantitatively rather than qualitatively. Economic performance and other quantitative measures are applicable to sustainable city values, but the definition and valuation of quality of life must be approached differently. A high quality of life is just as important to a city’s global competitiveness as economic performance, and that the two are inter-connected. What is the value of the city to its various stakeholders and how can we accommodate this in city planning? Cities need to be celebrated — through the centuries they have been vitally important in the development of mankind as centers of commerce, culture and learning. It is within the urban fabric where the greatest human advancements and changes in technology have occurred. It is vital that our cities continue to strive to be places of wonderment and centers of excellence against future challenges.
With the continuing shift to urban living, cities are facing far greater social, economic and ecological pressures. Our drastically different cities must all ultimately confront the same issues of ecologic boundaries, scarcity of resources, environmental degradation, pollution, poverty and exclusion and dangers to human health.
Many forces will contribute to sudden changes and surprise in the 21st Century. Forces that will affect the city including the increasing pace of technological change, the interdependency of the global economy, and increasing environmental stresses associated with an increasing world population and migration. Climate change is one such (extra) force that will affect urban systems. Eventual (possible predictable) shocks individually or acting together can easily disrupt urban economic and social systems and threaten our quality of life and our ability to move towards long-term sustainability. Moreover the increasing complexity and interdependencies both within our economic systems and within the built environment are certain to complicate the management process. Surprises are an inevitable by-product of complexity and surprises will become an unavoidable element of urban life.
Our current urban system is highly vulnerable to disruption from major shocks, including climate change. We have used a centralized, single-purpose model for each urban system.
This conventional approach to defining urban systems is as a series of infrastructure mechanisms that transform raw resources into essential services. The potential impacts and implications of climate change are huge and cross-cutting. It therefore requires a cross-sectoral approach which needs a longterm view of urban development based on a much broader and more integrated view. By using this approach, positive synergies can be established among the different systems.
The metaphors of complex adaptive systems can meet the demands of city development in a global context. Cities (must) have the potential to change, adapt and develop spontaneous.
Cities, as any other ecological system are open, dissipative and highly complex systems, with innumerable sub-systems: economic, transport, social and educational, to name a few. Ecological systems have certain carrying capacities and so do cities, but these can be modified over time as the city changes in response to internal pressures and external stimuli. Such continuous adaptation is essential for survival. Cities cannot remain static, or return to the past. The complexity and unpredictability of the effects of climate change on social-ecological, economic systems makes it necessary to abandon the perception of a global steady state. Instead, managing complex coevolving systems for sustainability requires the ability to cope with, adapt to and shape without losing options for future development. It requires resilience – the capacity to buffer perturbations, self organize, learn and adapt, grass-roots initiatives and local participation/collaboration. Secondly it requires adaptability –the capacity to change in spatial and architectural design.
Similarly, investments in one urban system to address external impacts can help to improve resiliency in another individual systems. Effecting (a multitude of different) economic and social networks, where the latter are more or less randomly, interconnected or confronted with each other in space and time. A key aspect of this process is to understand the cause and affect chains of influences and to identify which particular systems are vulnerable to impacts.
Develop a catalyst strategy: enhancing the flows and connectedness of the city and region so that all pieces of the urban system are finely linked nodes in an integrated network. The nodal network, space of flows and the networking logic changes would extend from a regional scale to that of the block and parcel. An important characteristic of the short loops and networks is their self-managing and sharing capacity. Synergy between:
- the enhancement of the ‘QUALITY OF LIFE’ as the basis for development.
- ‘HUMAN SOLIDARITY’—expresses a sense of connectedness, technology, inclusive economics, psychological, emotionally embedded, awareness
- ‘ECOLOGICAL SENSIBILITY’, design according to biophysical and thermodynamic limits deep reverence for the natural world, complemented by the humility that comes with a deep appreciation of humanity’s place in the ecologic web.
- ‘SELF-RELIANT, INTELLIGENT ‘, closed system loops, adapt and evolve, stimuli-responsive advanced materials and resources streams, reduce/minimalism discharge of emissions at least not exceed their rate of regeneration (or assimilative capacity), biobased building materials, energy reduction/production, ambient & persuasive technologies. Reparative-upgrading, retrofitting, redesign, reprogrammed, reconfiguration.
- ‘RESILIENCE’, to change and consequences (adaptivity), enabling minor shifts in how systems function or spaces are used (flexibility), allowing changes in use of space, buildings, infrastructure (convertibility), facilitating additions or deletions (embedding redundancy, expandability).