Insights · September 6th, 2012
This is Part 2 of Chapter 3 of our book on the future of cities, being written with Dennis Walsh. Our plan is to publish a new book blog nearly every day for the next couple of months. We will publish them both here on futurist.com and on dothefuture.com. Later we will compile the blogs into an e-book.
We are debating the eventual title. We started with two choices: “Downtown” and “Shine…The Rebirth of American Cities.” Which do you like? We hope you will find the subject of interest and follow this book in serial form. A reader has suggested, “City Transformation?” So far, “Downtown” with a subtitle is leading. What do you think?
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CHAPTER THREE – Part 2
by Dennis Walsh and Glen Hiemstra
This is a great day to be alive, don’t let it pass you by. The economy may be down, but in tough times, you’ve got to draw a line. What goes on around us should not limit us. The truth is it shouldn’t, but it does.
No mayor in America brags about his city shrinking. No council member wants to hear that her ward no longer exists. It’s like admitting defeat. But the reality is declining cities are less desirable for everyone for many reasons.
Shrinking cities aside, the population of the United States could hit 420 million by 2050. If that happens, there are serious questions about how the infrastructure is going to handle the strain. How bad is the situation? Considering much of that infrastructure is buried and records of the locations of all the underground pipes and cables are often unavailable or incomplete, we know it’s not good.
An inefficient electrical grid causes losses billions each year for U.S. businesses. And what about water? Dams are aging. Some wastewater systems are more than 100 years old. The EPA estimates a million miles of sewer underground across the U.S. Raw sewage spills accidentally from systems designed to carry only sewage, not waste water. Waste gurgles from manholes and rushes down streams and rivers somewhere in the country every day. The U.S. needs to spend some two trillion dollars to rebuild its infrastructure. No one really thinks that is likely to happen in the face of budget deficits.
Our nation’s economy and our quality of life require highways. Next to safety, congestion is a critical challenge facing our highway system. Americans spend over 4 billion hours a year stuck in traffic. The problem is more obvious in urban areas, where decaying transportation systems cost the American economy billions of dollars in lost time and fuel every year. U.S. transit systems are rated poorly by the American Society of Civil Engineers. It seems transit use is increasing faster than any other mode of transportation even as transit funding is on the decline. An estimated 25% of nearly 600,000 bridges in the U.S are rated substandard. Think of what that could mean; closures, even collapse.
In cities themselves poor construction and development practices can make earthquakes more deadly than they need to be. The 2012 earthquake that killed more than 220,000 people in Haiti is a perfect example. Port-au-Prince has nearly three times as many people — many of them living in poverty — and more poorly built shanties than it did 25 years ago. Had the same quake hit in 1985 instead of 2010, the death toll would likely have been far less. In February, an earthquake 500 times stronger than the one that struck Haiti hit an area of Chile that was less populated, better constructed, and not as poor. Chile’s bigger quake caused fewer than 1,000 deaths.
Not all cities are declining. We’ll read about those later. Cities often prosper when they reduce inequalities. They are learning to transform a potentially negative environmental impact to a positive one. These cities are part of the solution, the answer to the demands and challenges of the future.
Groups of people have recognized the urgency for infrastructure investment for sustainability, even as Tea Party activists have been advocating disinvestment. That political movement wants nothing to do with smart growth or sustainability. And above all, nothing to do with the United Nations’ Agenda 21, a two-decade old document addressing sustainable development in the cities around the world. And that raises some interesting questions about civic engagement that may take some soul-searching.
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[Glen Hiemstra is the Founder of Futurist.com, and curator of Dothefuture.com. Dennis Walsh is a sustainability futurist from Canada best known for his work as the first publisher of green@work. Contact us through futurist.com]
