Urban Sustainability and Urban Resilience

Cities hold a significant potential to make a rapid change toward reduced resource consumption and waste production, greenhouse gasses included. Yet, an ongoing reliance on traditional building codes will however not result in the change needed. Innovative governance tools hold more potential.

Cities are where we consume most of our finite resources and where we produce most of our waste, up to 40% of all energy is used in cities, close to 45% of all raw materials are used to develop and maintain cities, close to 40% of all waste is produced in cities, as well as close to 35% of all global greenhouse gasses. This resource consumption and waste production causes significant environmental stress and adds to a changing climate.

A wide range of technological solutions is now available to help reducing cities resource consumption and waste production, such as local renewable energy solutions and improved building designs.

Over the last decade also, much social know-how has developed about how citizens can use their cities more efficiently, for instance by switching off their appliances when not in use, which could save at least 10% energy consumption.

Such technology is now cost-effective to implement. Behavioural change often does not cost anything — except some effort. The gain of such technology and change is momentous: together cities could reduce global carbon emissions by 15%, which would significantly contribute to keep the earth’s future temperature in check.