Abstract
Cities affect our lives in profound, self-reinforcing ways: they can be a source of economic innovation, a pathway for poverty reduction, a brake on logarithmic demographic growth, and a solution to climate change—or they can reinforce economic isolation, heighten environmental impacts, and engender social strife. They represent 80 percent of global economic output and 70 percent of total energy and greenhouse gas emissions. Cities are the superstructure for the culture, lifestyles, aspirations, and well-being of half of the world’s population today and an estimated 70 percent by 2050. If they fail and become matrixes of gridlock, poisonous air, economic segregation, and environmental pollution, the planet will follow. If they succeed in lifting the next generation into sustainable productivity, integrating immigrants and working families into the next economy and living lightly on the land, they will contribute significantly to a civilized and sustainable future.
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Notes
- 1.
Figure of 80 percent from Global Commission on the Economy and Climate, Better Growth, Better Climate; The New Climate Economy Report (Washington, DC: World Resources Institute, 2014); 70 percent from World Bank, Systems of Cities: Harnessing Urbanization for Growth and Poverty Alleviation (Washington, DC: 2009) and from Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, “Summary for Policymakers,” in Climate Change 2014, Mitigation of Climate Change. Contribution of Working Group III to the Fifth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (New York and Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press, 2014); population shares from UN-Habitat, Realizing the Future We Want for All: Report to the Secretary General (Nairobi: 5 July 2012).
- 2.
Chris Busch and CC Huang, Quantitative Insights into Urban Form and Transportation Solutions (San Francisco: Energy Innovation: Policy and Technology, LLC, 16 October 2014).
- 3.
Figure of 90 percent from World Bank, Systems of Cities; 86 percent from Chris Busch and CC Huang, Cities for People: Insights from the Data (San Francisco: Energy Innovation: Policy and Technology, LLC, April 2015); Global Commission on the Economy and Climate, Better Growth, Better Climate.
- 4.
One twentieth to one hundredth from World Bank, Systems of Cities; per capita emissions from World Bank, Table 3.8 in World Development Indicators 2015, http://wdi.worldbank.org/tables; 2050 target from Deep Decarbonization Pathways Project, Pathways to Deep Decarbonization (New York and Paris: Sustainable Development Solutions Network and Institute for Sustainable Development and International Relations, September 2014).
- 5.
Global Commission on the Economy and Climate, Better Growth, Better Climate; Busch and Huang, Quantitative Insights into Urban Form and Transportation Solutions.
- 6.
Busch and Huang, Quantitative Insights into Urban Form and Transportation Solutions; Shlomo Angel, Planet of Cities (Cambridge, MA: Lincoln Institute of Land Policy, 2012).
- 7.
Busch and Huang, Quantitative Insights into Urban Form and Transportation Solutions; Peter Calthorpe, “Weapons of Mass Urban Destruction,” ForeignPolicy.com, 13 August 2012.
- 8.
Calthorpe, “Weapons of Mass Urban Destruction.”
- 9.
Ibid.
- 10.
Ibid.
- 11.
Ibid.
- 12.
Ibid.
- 13.
Ibid.; 1.2 million from Busch and Huang, Cities for People: Insights from the Data. Figure 7–1 from Global Commission on the Economy and Climate, Better Growth, Better Climate, 35.
- 14.
Calthorpe, “Weapons of Mass Urban Destruction”; World Health Organization, Global Status Report on Road Safety 2015 (Geneva: 2015), 110.
- 15.
Ibid.
- 16.
Ibid.
- 17.
Ibid.
- 18.
TOD results from author’s personal communication with partners in China, 2015.
- 19.
Busch and Huang, Quantitative Insights into Urban Form and Transportation Solutions.
- 20.
Jinan from Busch and Huang, Cities for People: Insights from the Data; population growth from Calthorpe, “Weapons of Mass Urban Destruction.”
- 21.
Calthorpe, “Weapons of Mass Urban Destruction.”
- 22.
Centro Mario Molina and Calthorpe Analytics, Zona Metropolitana del Valle de Mexico. Regional Scenarios and Modeling: Project Description and Work Plan (Mexico City: June 2013); World Bank, Systems of Cities.
- 23.
World Bank, Systems of Cities.
- 24.
Ibid.; Barney Cohen, “Urbanization in Developing Countries: Current Trends, Future Projections, and Key Challenges for Sustainability,” Technology in Society 28, nos. 1–2 (2006): 63–80.
- 25.
World Bank, Systems of Cities.
- 26.
Centro Mario Molina and Calthorpe Analytics, Zona Metropolitana del Valle de Mexico.
- 27.
Mexico gross national income from World Bank, Table 1.1 in World Development Indicators, http://wdi.worldbank.org/table/1.1; Centro Mario Molina and Calthorpe Analytics, Zona Metropolitana del Valle de Mexico.
- 28.
Figure of 20 million people from Centro Mario Molina and Calthorpe Analytics, Zona Metropolitana del Valle de Mexico; middle class and wealthier from David E. Dowall and David Wilk, Population Growth, Land Development, and Housing in Mexico City (Berkeley, CA: University of California at Berkeley, Institute of Urban and Regional Development, 1989); segregation from Peter M. Ward, “Mexico City,” New York 159 (1998): 1–86.
- 29.
Figure 7–3 from Centro Mario Molina and Calthorpe Analytics, Zona Metropolitana del Valle de Mexico, 20.
- 30.
Ibid.
- 31.
Ibid.
- 32.
Ibid.
- 33.
Centro Mario Molina and Calthorpe Analytics, Urban Planning Modeling Scenarios: Mexico City Metropolitan Area (Mexico City: 18 August 2015).
- 34.
Ibid.
- 35.
Figure 7–4 from Ibid.
- 36.
Ibid.
- 37.
Ibid.
- 38.
Ibid.
- 39.
Ibid.
- 40.
Ibid.
- 41.
Figure 7–5 from Ibid., 31.
- 42.
Ibid.; Calthorpe, “Weapons of Mass Urban Destruction.”
- 43.
Busch and Huang, Cities for People: Insights from the Data; Global Commission on the Economy and Climate, Better Growth, Better Climate.
- 44.
Busch and Huang, Cities for People: Insights from the Data; Global Commission on the Economy and Climate, Better Growth, Better Climate; Centro Mario Molina and Calthorpe Analytics, Urban Planning Modeling Scenarios: Mexico City Metropolitan Area.
- 45.
Busch and Huang, Quantitative Insights into Urban Form and Transportation Solutions; Calthorpe, “Weapons of Mass Urban Destruction.”
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Calthorpe, P. (2016). Urbanism and Global Sprawl. In: State of the World. State of the World. Island Press, Washington, DC. https://doi.org/10.5822/978-1-61091-756-8_7
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