Cities 5 Enabling green cities

The previous sections of this chapter confirm that the greening process is complex, fragmented and multi- layered. Enabling green cities is and will continue to be equally complex and piecemeal in the near future. There is no single silver bullet that can help shift cities to a green agenda but those that are flexible and diverse will be in a strong position.

This section addresses the key barriers that constrain the adoption of green policies in cities and puts forward a number of practical suggestions on the way forward, based on enabling best practices found in metropolitan regions across the globe. While a “one-size- fits-all” model is neither envisaged nor proposed, it is argued that there are common barriers and constraints in cities in developing and developed countries that need to be overcome before green development can take hold. It further suggests that a combination of political restructuring, policy innovation, market stimulation and consumer participation is essential to enable the gradual transition towards green cities in the coming decades.

Before identifying key constraints, it is important to

recognise that the shift to environmental responsibility – in cities, as in all other aspects of the green economy debate – is not just a technical issue, but one that has deep cultural and political ramifications. Hence, governance and democratic accountability, together with a dynamic involvement of the private sector, need to be given equal attention in the discussion about implementation as innovations in policy, planning and regulation. Green city solutions will not be realised overnight by classic top-down or bottom-up approaches, but by the actions of a coalition of actors from the national, state and local levels, from civil society and its multiple subdivisions, from the private sector and institutions including universities, not-for- profit foundations and interest groups who share a commitment to advance the green economy in cities.

5.1 Barriers and constraints

This chapter has argued that there are compelling reasons why the green economy model can be adopted in cities across the world. Section 4 identified examples of best practice in cities across both advanced and developing nations, but they are a drop in the ocean with respect to the vast majority of new urban development in Africa, Asia and the Americas. Today, most cities are adopting fundamentally non-sustainable practices as

■ Risk aversion – individuals, corporate and government organisations are resistant to any change that does not demonstrate immediate improvement in economic well-being, quality of life or enhanced status within the community;

■ Perverse policies – these produce underpriced goods and services, thereby encouraging overconsumption. Such policies include subsidised road infrastructure;

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a result of a combination of the following barriers and constraints, which vary in significance according to geographical location and position with the economic and political development cycle:

■ Fragmented governance – lack of coordination between policy frameworks that promote green economy measures at supra-national, national, regional and metropolitan levels;

■ Affordability – even cost-effective green measures may be out of the reach of poorer cities, leaving them saddled with more wasteful urban infrastructure;

■ Lack of investment – despite wider acceptance of the relevance of the green economy to well-being, the private and public sector have not prioritised green investment in basic city infrastructure (such as green planning, public transport and housing strategies);

■ Negative tradeoffs – without effective policy intervention and infrastructure investment, (which promote productivity and resource efficiency) green city strategies can lead to greater congestion (of people and traffic), higher land values and costs of living;

■ Consumer preferences – when given a choice consumers may not be willing to adopt new models of urban living that require changes in individual and collective patterns of consumption (e.g. high-density apartment living, public transport use);

■ Switching costs – high short-term transition (welfare and capital) costs for businesses that shift from brown to green, leave many companies without adequate compensation to make the investment;

■ Vested business interests – industry dynamics in construction, road-building and infrastructure are resistant to change that challenges existing business models and threatens the potential of short-term return on investment;