The Myth of the Livable City
By William E. Rees
June/July 2006
For the first time in history, more than half of humanity now lives in cities. But just how sustainable are the world’s cities—-both rich and poor?
LONDON. ROME. Sydney. Tokyo. Even for people who have never visited them, the mere mention of the world’s great cities leaves many of us itching to pull up roots and go there to experience what they have to offer. Even my hometown of Vancouver draws people from all over the world, and can justifiably bask in the glow of its on-going recognition as “the world’s most livable city.”
But there is another side to cities and their gravitational pull, which is only too evident in the swelling slums and barrios of cities as far flung as Jakarta, Lagos and Rio de Janeiro. The world is currently experiencing the greatest human migration in history—-a worldwide rural-to-urban migration that has swelled the population of the world’s cities by fifty percent, from two billion in 1985 to three billion in 2002, and which is expected to add another 2.2 billion people to the world’s cities by 2030. This means that in just three decades the urban population alone is expected to grow by the equivalent of the total human population in the early 1930s. Think about it: cities will add more people in thirty years than the planet had accumulated in the previous 2.5 million years of hominid history! And most of this explosive growth will take place in the poorest of the world’s cities, adding millions of people to their already overcrowded slums.
All of which raises a critical question: in an age of allegedly “sustainable development,” just how sustainable are the world’s cities, both rich and poor?
To some analysts, this question is silly, even meaningless. They argue that people come to cities to take advantage of economic opportunities, to better themselves (ignoring the fact that many of the rural poor are actually being kicked off their land, victims of the land consolidation demanded by “structural adjustment”). These experts agree that the barrios are social disasters but argue that slums are temporary, a transitional phase that will be eliminated by economic growth. Just look at the seeming wealth creation that has lifted so many Chinese cities from the poverty mire in the past quarter century.
Appalled by pollution? No problem, say such analysts. Once people get rich enough to care about air and water quality, they’ll deal with it. In the words of economist Wilfred Beckerman, “the surest way to improve your environment is to become rich.”
Worried about resource shortages? No issue here either, now that technology can substitute for nature and thus decouple the economy from the ecosphere. As Nobel lauriate economist Robert Solow famously put it over thirty years ago, “If it is very easy to substitute other factors for natural resources, then—- the world can, in effect, get along without natural resources, so exhaustion is just an event, not a catastrophe.”
But is escaping our natural limits really that easy? Can economic growth and technological prowess really fill all the potential potholes on the road to global sustainability? If we look more closely at the biophysical and ethical dimensions of the problem, we will see that the answer is no.
First, what do we mean by sustainability? Analysts often avoid this question because of ongoing debate over the many conflicting interpretations. This is unhelpful because we do need criteria and standards against which to measure progress. On the simplest level, then, let me propose that something is sustainable if can safely remain in its present state or maintain its present course indefinitely. Thus, a sustainable society might be one that is experiencing positive social, cultural and economic change—-i.e., development—-that does not degrade the ecosystems upon which that society is dependent. Note that development, as defined here, can occur with or without growth in the economy. (Development means getting better; growth means merely getting bigger. The fact that we have confused the two for so long goes a long way toward explaining the nature of the environmental and social problems we face.)
But how can we determine whether a society is over-using its critical ecosystems? We can begin by applying ecological footprint analysis, a quantitative tool I pioneered with my students at the University of British Columbia. The “ecological footprint” of a given population is the total area of terrestrial and aquatic ecosystems required, on an ongoing basis, to produce the resources that the population consumes, and to assimilate the wastes that the population produces, wherever on earth those ecosystems are located. Thus, a community that consumes large amounts of energy and material resources will have a substantially larger ecological footprint than an otherwise similar community that uses fewer resources.
“The ecosystems that support city-dwellers� consumer lifestyles are often located in other countries half a world away.”
How does the ecological footprint of our cities measure up? It turns out that the residents of the world�s rich cities require the life support services of five to ten hectares (twelve to twenty-five acres) of global average productive ecosystem per capita, compared to the half hectare demanded by the poorest of the poor. By this measure, in 2001, greater Vancouver’s 2.1 million residents had an aggregate ecological footprint of almost fourteen million hectares. This is forty-eight times the size of the Greater Vancouver Regional District, or about twenty times the area of the entire Lower Fraser Valley.
If this seems mind-bogglingly unsustainable, consider the world’s largest metropolis. Tokyo’s thirty-three million residents—-about a quarter of the country’s population—-have a collective ecological footprint of 142 million hectares, or 1.6 times the equivalent productive capacity of their entire country! In short, Japan could not sustain even its capital city at current material standards if it had to rely solely on the output of its domestic ecosystems. These data show that Japan—-along with most other wealthy consumer societies—-has overshot its domestic carrying capacity and is running a massive “ecological deficit” with the rest of the world.
In effect, ecological footprint analysis shows us that, while modern urbanites may reside in cities, they do not actually live there in ecologically meaningful terms. The ecosystems that support wealthy city-dwellers� consumer lifestyles are often located in other countries half a world away. For example, most of the pollution generated by China�s factory cities is attributable not to newly-urbanized Chinese, but rather to consumption by people living in high-income cities like London, New York and Vancouver. It seems that far from decoupling humanity from nature, technology serves largely to extend the scope and intensity with which humans exploit ecosystems everywhere—-and globalization gives the rich access to just about everyone else’s ecosystems.
With every increment of economic growth, the human ecological footprint expands. So it is that modern high-income cities have become ravenous parasites on the global hinterland. And to complicate matters, the separation of production from consumption renders complacent urbanites both blind to the degradation resulting from their consumer lifestyles and unconscious of their increasing dependence on a deteriorating resource base.
This is no small problem because the entire planet is in a state of overshoot. The urbanizing human enterprise, losing touch with its ecological roots, is destroying the habitat on which it depends. The average human ecological footprint is 2.2 hectares, but there are only 1.8 hectares of truly productive land and water ecosystems remaining per person on Earth. To bring just the present world population up to average North American material standards, would require four additional Earth-like planets!
Ecological footprint analysis thus provides a biophysical standard measure for sustainability—-our current “fair share” of 1.8 hectares per capita—-and this in turn suggests an ethical directive for people concerned about sustainability: No lifestyle is sustainable if it could not safely be shared by all members of the human family. Vancouverites may be justifiably proud of the region’s numerous innovative sustainability initiatives, but until we have made significant progress toward reducing our average ecological footprint from almost seven to a sustainable 1.8 hectares, this “most liveable” of cities will remain one of the least sustainable on Earth.
William Rees, PhD, has taught at the University of British Columbia�s School of Community and Regional Planning (SCARP) since 1969-70. Founder of SCARP�s Environment and Resource Planning concentration, Professor Rees is best known for inventing “ecological footprint analysis.” His 1996 book on the subject Our Ecological Footprint (co-authored with then-PhD student Mathis Wackernagel) is now available in nine languages.
To start your subscription immediately, call (306) 525-2949, email us, or subscribe online.
Readers like you keep Briarpatch alive and thriving. Subscribe today to support fiercely independent journalism.
8 Comments
Though there’s no denying the wastefulness of people and societies, I think pre-industrial cities are at an inherent advantage for sustainable practices.
The structure of the cities themselves; narrow streets, open markets, and cities otherwise built for travel on foot promote a type of lifestyle that encourages sustainable living. On the other hand, modern urban sprawls (e.g. the Puget Sound area) encourage travelling by other means. Growing up travelling by car to the grocery store, shopping, and to see friends has made many to think it’s the norm. The only people who took mass transit were those who couldn’t afford to travel by car.
I believe individual wealth is a poor indicator of sustainable living. The aforementioned points indicate how a person who (obviously there’s many factors more than this) may have had more money, a higher education, and perhaps – even more wasteful. To equate wealth or education with sustainable practices is to err greatly, IMO.
I’ll stop prior to going into an essay, but your blog entry is really interesting.
From Mitchell on Jun 6th, 2006 at 6:34pm
The soloution to this problem is obvious. We don’t have an additional four “Earth-like” planets to bring the rest of the world around to North American material standards. Nor do we need them. We in North America, and Western Europe and to a lesser extent, Asia, enjoy a higher material standard because we have WORKED for it. We’ve earned it. And layabouts in the third world should recognize that, and that it is a lifestyle they have no right to. Education is the answer. Foreigners need to be educated that some things just are the way they are, and no amount of white-guilt, ultra-high liberal taxation, or regressive recycling laws are going to re-write the natural order of things.
From Daryn Moerike on Jun 21st, 2006 at 10:20am
Daryn,
Your response fails to recognize the main point of the above article: that the North’s standard of living is built on the resources and labour — the wealth — of the South. How it got this way requires understanding the rather brutal and violent history of colonialism: “we” took it from “them,” and we continue to do so. Perhaps you find it soothing to think that “our” industriousness and “their” laziness are the sole causes of the current global wealth disparity, but this view denies the historical record.
The North’s “development” actually depends upon the South’s “underdevelopment” — our wealth is only possible because of their poverty. Increasingly, it’s the labour and the resources of those “layabouts in the third world” and “foreigners,” to use your rather offensive terminology, that make our unsustainable standard of living possible.
You state that “Foreigners need to be educated that some things just are the way they are.” If you think that this unequitable and unjust state of affairs can be maintained simply by “educating” the majority of the world’s people that the “natural order of things” is for the North to take what the South has and squander it, leaving the majority of the world’s people with nothing to eat while we go on consuming four Earths-worth of resources, I’d be curious to hear exactly how you plan to convince them.
To learn more about how the North got so rich on the backs of the poor, I’d recommend picking up the following:
Happy reading.
From dispatch on Jun 21st, 2006 at 9:34pm
“the natural order of things”
This is not a static ‘order’, but a balance that is currently imbalanced needs to rebalance. If we ignore and deny, it will rebalance violently. We problem solve now because if we DON’T the planet is toast!
From seek on Jun 22nd, 2006 at 12:16am
Daryn. How dare you! Before you spout off about how those “Lazy” people in the third world need to be educated, get off your own lazy duff and educate yourself.
First of all, as another poster above rightly pointed out, far from being the “natural order of things”, the nations of the west are wealthy overwhelmingly because we went in, concquored the lands now known as the “third world, undermined and destroyed their traditional ways of life (which were often very sustainable compared to ours), and exploited their labour and resources.
Secondly, far from them being lazy, I would submit to you that people in the third world freequently work longer and harder, for far less reward, than any of us in the rich world can even imagine. Do you think that you can run a family farm, with none of the conveniences of modern technology or very few of them, and not work from dawn to dusk? Additionally, why do you think that large multi-national companies are so fond of outsourcing production to the third world? It’s because many of those countries have, under threat of economic withdrawal from said multinationals among other threats, little to no legislation protecting the rights of workers, meaning that people are more often than not required to work longer shifts than our countries have seen in a century, often under dangerous and/or poisonous working conditions. I’m talking about people, including children, working eight, ten and even fourteen hour shifts in such conditions for significantly less than we over here accept as minimum wage. So don’t talk about third world people being lazy! If you had to live their lives, I daresay that rather than prospering, you’d be dead from exhaustion, not to mention malnutrition, within a week, a month at most.
Mr. Rees. Fascinating article. Do your books contain any suggestions which individuals living in modern cities in the North can do to lessen the size of our personal ecological footprint?
From Sarah on Jun 22nd, 2006 at 8:19pm
Umm, isn’t comparing the eco-footprints of rich city dwellers and poor country farmers a bit disingenious? Wouldn’t the relevant comparison be, say, between urban, suburban, and rural dwellers in the same country? It isn’t difficult for me to believe that we use more ‘nature’ than we should in Vancouver, but how many people take public transit (or ride their bike) to work in Lillooet? Do they live in small, efficient houses and eat mainly locally-grown vegetables? I have my doubts.
This article takes a good idea (the eco-footprint model) and misapplies it in an attempt to vilify cities. It’s about affluence – no matter where you live. Why not use the model to find an optimum density for human habitation? If each of us needs 1.8 Ha, then perhaps we should all live in suburbs…
From Jonathan on Jun 23rd, 2006 at 2:11am
While I agree with the general message of this article, Rees conflates cities with consumption. Consumption, yes, is absolutely unsustainable. But livable cities as a myth? I disagree. It strikes me as misanthropic ideology. I love living in the city, I ride my bike to work, I eat local produce, I chat with my neighbours, I have energy efficient lightbulbs throughout my apartment – a place that I share with a roommate. I think my lifestyle is far more sustainable than my so-called environmentalist friends who drive cars out into the woods and go camping and tromping through the forest.
From Wendy on Jun 23rd, 2006 at 11:38am
personally, i find rees’s focus on cities timely and important, given the fact that for the first time ever, more than half of the world’s population now lives in cities, and considering the problems that this will pose as ecosystems the world over come under increasing strain.
but yes, “cities” in and of themselves are not the culprit — country living can be just as unsustainable as city living.
sarah: on the topic of books that provide concrete steps individuals can take to reduce their ecological footprint, i would highly recommend Jim Merkel’s “Radical Simplicity: Small Footprints on a Finite Earth.”
with humour, humility, and ingenuity, Merkel offers the practical tools, the ethical justifications, and the inspiration needed to drastically reduce both your spending and your resource-consumption. it really is the sort of book that could change a person’s whole way of life.
signed,
dave (aka “dispatch,” aka briarpatch’s editor)
From dispatch on Jun 23rd, 2006 at 2:40pm