Cities Can Turn Green

Economic progress is seen as an enemy of the environment by many. But, like popular beliefs that good food tastes bad and beautiful women are stupid, evidence does not support this view. Virtually all environmental economists and scientists agree that our economic and environmental goals are in harmony. Cities across the world are now playing a greater role in proposing and implementing environment-friendly policies. The environment ministry recently proposed that municipal by-laws should have a simplified green code. If this happens, construction companies would not need clearances from the central government.

Cities have a major role in formulating and implementing environment-friendly policies. Municipal governments influence land use, and provision of transportation, water supply, and sewerage. But, the co-operation of central and state governments is important in many of these segments which are important in formulating green policies, especially in energy. The success of many cities like Copenhagen prove that a national-level framework may be necessary. This is even true of India, because state and central governments have a greater influence than municipal governments.  

Even though most city governments have green policies, few are successful. The two reasons such policies fail are because a city is too complex to be planned top to down. Secondly, there is no coordinated strategy for greenness. This is, again, especially true of Indian cities. Why? There are five major aspects that contribute to the greenness of cities, and there has to be great synergy between land use, transport, water supply, waste collection and energy.

Land use

In Mumbai, open spaces are a luxury. Mumbai has 1.1 square metre open space per person, and this is the lowest in the world. But, it is impossible for Mumbai to have more open space per person without high-density buildings. This is because when more floor space is built on a certain plot of land, less land would be needed to build residential, commercial and industrial buildings. Such decisions are largely made by markets in most major cities because land use restrictions do not constrain construction activity much. When less land is needed, there will be more open spaces and greenery. Mumbai's famous Sanjay Gandhi National Park, for example, is spread over 104 square meter but, a land-scare city like Mumbai cannot afford to have such a large park. In fact, Mumbai is the only city in the world which has such a large park in its metropolitan area. 

Geography matters too. In cities built on a narrow peninsula, such as Mumbai, people have a strong preference for living in tall buildings. Whereas in a city like Delhi, the preference is less pronounced. This also seems to be important when land is scare, if more land has to be unlocked for building more parks or increasing tree or forest cover. In a city like Chennai which is prone to flooding, the challenges city governments face are different. In the simplified green code proposed by the environment ministry, natural drainage and rain water harvesting system are among the conditions buildings have to meet, if their size ranges from 5,000 to 20,000 square meter.

Transportation

The integration of land use and transportation are important too.  In cities like Hong Kong and Copenhagen, for example, parking regulations and transportation networks are planned in conjunction with the density of buildings and land use. In Amsterdam, for example, 25 per cent of the trips are made by bicycle. This has always not been so. There was a decline in cycling not very long ago. But, since the mid-70's the government build cycling lanes and allowed mixed-use development. The point is not that cycling should be encouraged over other forms of transport. The point is that in cities where more people walk or bicycle to work, streets should have provisions for the same.

Roads in Delhi and Mumbai are far more congested than many global cities. This is partly because of low integration between land use and transportation. To put it more clearly, this is partly because there are not enough tall, mixed use buildings in the central city, near metro stations. In urbanized European Union, the estimated cost of such poor integration is nearly 0.75 per cent of the GDP. In Buenos Aires, it is 3.4 per cent. In Delhi and Mumbai, which are very dense and congested, the costs are likely to be a much higher fraction of the GDP. If this were not so, carbon emissions would have declined, and energy usage would have been lower. There would have been walkable urban centers, like in Copenhagen where this was a major agenda. Improvement in transportation system is expected to cut down 1, 35000 tonnes of carbon per year by 2025, and this is 11 per cent of Copenhagen's carbon reduction goal.

In London, congestion pricing has lowered car usage in central London by 16 per cent, and carbon dioxide emissions by 19.5 per cent. Congestion pricing was introduced in 2003 in London, and from 2001 to 2013, bus usage rose by 60 per cent. In Hong Kong, 57 per cent of the jobs are within 500 meter of metro or railway stations. In London, it is 43 per cent, and in New York, it is 37 per cent. Although data is not available for Indian cities, it is certainly much lower. According to former World Bank researcher Alain Bertaud, though Paris density was 1/5th of Mumbai, within 10 kilometer of Mumbai's CBD, there were 2 million people when within the same distance of Paris's CBD, there were over twice as many people. This is the result of poor land use-transport integration.

Water Supply & Waste Collection

Water supply and waste collection are two areas where most major cities have made great progress. But, this is not true of developing cities in general, and Indian cities in particular. In fact, most diseases in India are either water-borne or related to air pollution. Construction activity is also a major source of water pollution. This is partly because of insufficient privatization of water supply because certain parts like Meghalaya which receive among the best rainwater supply in the world have suffered from water shortage at many points. Most Indian cities do not have a proper sewage system. Land-use policy plays a crucial role in this too, because when people cannot build up, they build out, leading to greater congestion, and more polluted water. Solid waste landfill and wastewater are also major sources of greenhouse gas emissions.

Energy

Electric mobility and energy consumption are major aspects of environment-friendly growth. In fact, these two are related to land use and transport because energy usage per person is less in central cities than in suburbs because of less car usage, shared use of air conditioners and other appliances. It is expected that electrifying road transport will lead to greater mobility, and cars that emit less carbon.