Resilient cities: design for climate catastrophes
How can we adapt ourselves and our cities for the climate change future
The Earth has gone through many major natural events that have changed our human history drastically. Fortunately, humans possess biological plasticity that allows us to grow and adapt to the environment, which is the key to our survival today. As we began our civilization journey, construction is one of the biggest inventions that sheltered humans throughout history. This means our home, roads, public spaces, and many other infrastructures that form the cities we live in. However, we have yet to adapt our cities to survive natural events, especially climate changes and their imminent consequences
We saw it coming
According to a NASA article, we have witnessed the most atmospheric CO2 in the Earth’s history along with new warning changes like global temperature rise, sea level rise or ocean acidification. The changes have already happened especially since we started our industrial revolution.
Since 1880, the global temperature on Earth has already gone up by just over 1 degree Celsius. And we have started to see more and more severe impacts of climate changes around the world. Just this year, Lytton in British Columbia, Canada has seen a record-breaking temperature of 49.6C as a result of increasing wildfires in western Canada.
The town was consumed by flames that destroyed 90 percent of it, killed two and injured several others, the authorities said. — NYTimes
In the opposite scenario, coastal cities cannot get enough of water and with more frequent and disastrous flooding. A report from McKinsey has pointed out the impact of climate risks on forefront cities nested in the flooding zone. Ho Chi Minh city is a notable case study as the city is growing rapidly and developing into a climate change future.
From the 100-year flood effects analysis above, we can observe the potential of climate impacts on current and upcoming infrastructures. With this projection, the cities are facing constant combats with flooding damages in the future, both environmentally and financially. Many parts of the city will be destroyed and submerged underwater, plus, the cost of repair and replacement will soon outgrow the city’s GPD.
This is an alarm for both governments, planners, designers, and everyone else to be hyper-aware of the situation. If we can learn one thing from the Covid-19 pandemic, it would be to act fast and ready to change.
Weathering the storms
To become climate-resilient, cities must get used to more unpredictable weather and environmental issues, from heatwaves to typhoons to air pollutions and many more. This is a complex issue that requires multiple solutions from both city leaders and citizens to develop more resilient cities for climate change.
Risk assessments
To come up with solutions for our cities, we must have a good understanding of the big picture and a detailed mapping of all the problems. The very first step of coming up with a plan is having a detailed risk assessment. This is a useful and necessary tool for city leaders to make rational decisions on funding and preparing for upcoming climate risks.
A risk assessment should take into account many categories including social, environmental, financial value. For example, a 100-year flood plain study below showed us which areas of the city are more vulnerable to flood damage. Therefore, the city and planners can make a plan to save and relocate critical infrastructures as well as develop new infrastructures in more suitable locations.
While we should focus on protecting key infrastructures like power plants or transit, other values might be overlooked. For example, an article from Bloomberg CityLab talked about tree inequity between low-income neighborhoods and wealthy ones in the US:
A new analysis quantifies just now unequal tree cover is in the U.S.: Neighborhoods with a majority of people of color have, on average, 33% less tree canopy than majority-white communities
Cultural value is another overlooked factor in risk assessments. Many buildings or assets that have significant cultural or heritage values are susceptible to natural catastrophes. Unlike housings or offices, these heritage infrastructures have an invaluable history that is impossible to recreate. A good understanding and valuation of all aspects are necessary for any risk assessment.
Building resilient infrastructures
There are millions of different ideas of how better infrastructure looks like and the ideas evaluation process can be subjective from person to person. Fortunately, risk assessments are extremely effective when comes to the planning and development of resilient infrastructure.
We need to develop our future cities with research-based planning and rational design. In the past, industrial revolution has brought new and exciting inventions, however, the excitement deflected us from the potential climate consequences. Since we have learned about them the hard way, it is important to apply our lessons and build our cities in a more sustainable fashion. The results today are new green infrastructures like green roofs, passive houses, or public transits.
An exciting case study for this is the concept of ‘sponge cities’. As many cities were built near water, they are now slowly sinking and becoming the next sunken city of Atlantis. Realizing this problem, designers and planners have come up with the ‘sponge cities’ concept that helps to absorb and retain stormwater more effectively. This means preserving existing wetlands, recreating naturalized wetlands, de-paving, and creating more permeable surfaces. Plus, these actions can bring ‘curb cut’ effects such as reduce heat-islands or creating more green spaces for people to enjoy. A notable case study for this concept is the Chulalongkorn University Centennial Park in Thailand — a combination of green buildings, naturalized landscape, and creative designs.
Outreach
There are plenty of great ideas out there but it is not a simple task to deliver a project like the Chulalongkorn University Centennial Park. Not only it takes a lot of effort from a planning and design perspective, it also requires massive funding — 700 million dollars to be exact — yet nothing compares to the 10 billion dollars Keystone XL pipeline project. Our voices need to be heard by leaders and developers to help to fund more resilient infrastructure.
Even though it is good to reduce our personal carbon footprint by using eco-friendly products and services, we need a lot more than that. If one person successfully offsets his or her carbon footprint to zero, it is only reduces 0,00000001% of the global annual CO2 emission (an average person in the world produces 4 tons of CO2 compare to 36.44 billions tons world CO2 emission). We need to make effort beyond ourselves and encourage others.
The great thing is that humans are social animals, therefore, we create a ripple effect through our actions and voices. We can all be part of a resilient city and help to build them at the same time. From promoting green infrastructures to become an environmentalist, every action counts.
“The greatest threat to our planet is the belief that someone else will save it” — Robert Swan
