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The Mega Cities, The Smart Cities, The Sustainable Cities
Robert W. FOSTER , USA Key Words: Mega cities, homo sapiens , artificial intelligence, the internet of things, infrastructure, e-systems, interconnectivity, climate change, sustainability. Introduction Modern science dates the Agricultural Revolution to about 1 2 ,000 years ago. Homo sapiens , hunters and gatherers for the previous 1 50 thousand years more or less, began to cultivate wheat which bound them to the land due to seasonal demands of planting, nurturing, harvesting and storage of grains. Instead of roaming over large areas they began to settle into shelters and eventually into villages. The success of the new paradigm of living resulted in collective labor arrangements that led to community security and social cooperation. A logical extension of industry and commerce was development of the city which, in turn has led to innovation, invention, social advancement and, in some views, prosperity. Social scientists, historians and anthropologists may differ as to the value of urban life to the advancement of homo sapiens , but the studies continue and predictions persist. What is the ultimate future of the city – will it prosper to a point of security and happiness for all, or will the city, by concentrating all its environmental and biological risks into ever more clustered areas spell the end of civilization as we know it? In short, is the city sustainable? In fact cities have become the preferred living arrangement for a majority of the World’s population, evolving into what are called Mega Cities. The marvel of the internet in this digital age with its possibilities of instant communication and immediate control of most or all functions of homo sapiens now in the 21st^ century, are expected to develop the Smart Cities for a majority of us which in turn will make urban sustainability possible a mere 12,000 years after we had begun living and working together: the Sustainable City. The Mega Cities A mega city is defined as an urban area of 10 million population or more. The Economist magazine’s “ Pocket World in Figures, ” 2016 Edition, listed 33 mega cities of the world from Bangalore, India at 10.1 million, thirty-third on the list, to number one Tokyo, Japan at 38. million. The United Nations, in The Worlds’ Cities in 2016 , reported that in 2014 54% of the world’s people lived in urban areas, up from 34% in 1960. The tipping point, according to most authorities, occurred in 2007 when there were more urban dwellers than rural residents in the world: the so-called “urban millennium.” The United Nations organization, DESA, predicts that by 2050 66% of the world’s population will live in urban areas. Some scientists see this trend to the cities negatively for its concentration of the huddled masses and slum conditions and its The Mega Cities, the Smart Cities, the Sustainable Cities (10586) Robert W. Foster (USA) FIG Working Week 2020 Smart surveyors for land and water management
effect on the environment with concentrated air and water pollution. UN ECE reports that cities account for 80% of the world’s GDP but 70% of global greenhouse gases. Edward Glaeser, in Triumph of the City, claims that cities are the healthiest and richest places to live. New Yorkers (18.6 million) live longer and have a lower incidence of heart disease and cancer than other Americans, for instance. “Urban growth is a great way to reduce rural poverty,” he says and “cities aren’t full of poor people because cities make people poor, but because cities attract poor people with the prospect of improving their lot in life.” Cities have been “the engines of innovation since Plato and Socrates,” he argues and points to Florence, the site of the Renaissance and Birmingham that gave us the industrial revolution. Alex Krieger, in City On A Hill, quotes two authors’ opinions contrary to Glaeser’s optimistic view of the cities: “(T)o the few the great city gives all, to the millions it gives annually less and less,” wrote Clarence Sein in Survey Graphic. Steven Johnson, in The Ghost Map suggested that the very idea of building cities on the scale of London was a mistake citing tuberculosis, typhoid fever, infant mortality and other evils of crowding and unsanitary conditions of the city. The 2016 World Bank Land and Poverty Conference addressed the issue. Paul Romer, an NYU professor and keynote speaker at the conference, offered his views on the role and future of the expanding cities. His main thesis was that land must be set aside for arterial work – roads, grid, infrastructure – before the expansion of the city; that land should be held until roads are needed. In other words, as he said, “Let them come and they will build it.” In the early years it will be messy until water and sewer systems are built, but let people build. If corridors are protected, even bad use of the adjoining land can be retrofitted, but you can’t retrofit roads over built-up areas. Romer is especially irked by what he calls an artificial scarcity of land due to over-regulation, inflated land values and political barriers. (He doesn’t like zoning.) Scarcity creates hoarding of land and inflated costs. The solution is to make land available without limit. People will not be squatters if they have the opportunity of access to land. Containment, i.e., artificial barriers to growth, is wrong. People should be attracted to the city according to Romer. There is more potential wealth for city dwellers than in rural areas. If people leave the farm and move to the city there will be fewer people doing the farming and the income of those left behind will be greater. It is win/win according to Romer. It should be noted that both Paul Romer and Edward Glaeser are economists, not social scientists, environmentalists, planners or politicians. Their views on the management of city growth may not be widely accepted. But their ideas are intriguing and worth thinking about as the world turns inexorably to the cities. So, what has all this to do with the so-called “smart cities” of the future and are the smart cities sustainable? The Mega Cities, the Smart Cities, the Sustainable Cities (10586) Robert W. Foster (USA) FIG Working Week 2020 Smart surveyors for land and water management
A somewhat more implicit concern is over the provenance and use of the large amounts of personal data to be collected by e-systems in urban management, and to the extent to which all this “big data” becomes available to commercial interests and the ubiquitous “corporate intelligence.” In response the European Union has adopted the General Data Protection Regulation in an attempt to keep companies from collecting and sharing personal data without an individuals’ consent. In the United States, the state of California has recently passed a new Consumer Privacy Act intended to grant consumer privacy while giving consumers a process to delete their personal data from various platforms. The more active and compelling use of the IoT and AI systems may be in the urban traffic management and control systems. The passive systems, like traffic light controls and best-route messaging to drivers will be accepted by the public with little incident or objection. However, the systems that involve direct control of cars and trucks, external to the vehicles themselves, are likely to be problematical. The most sophisticated system in the most critical of transportation units – aircraft - have proven to be subject to failure due to a variety of issues, including faulty input of situational information, system sensitivity and operator failure. All three of these “issues” contributed to the recent crashes of Boeing’s 7 3 7Max aircraft resulting in 346 deaths of crew and passengers. Such failures in urban traffic control systems may amount to less dramatic events and the occasional fender-bender but public trust and reliance is sure to suffer. As for autonomous vehicles in urban environments, the success of these systems will depend upon an exclusivity of self-controlled units on the roads and highways. A mix of driver-operated vehicles and autonomous units is a guarantee for failure. Even with flawless operating and safety systems in the autonomous vehicles (AVs), there is no algorithm capable of dealing with inattention, impatience, impetuosity or road rage of the in-control human driver. Highways and urban streets should be restricted to AV traffic and where vehicles are driven and controlled by humans AVs should be banned. The Sustainable Cities UN Sustainable Development Goal #11: “Make cities inclusive, safe, resilient and sustainable.” For smart cities to attain sustainability there are several conditions that must be satisfied.
- The expansion of infrastructure into new neighborhoods must be anticipated and provided for; Paul Romer has called for the setting aside of land for arterial growth and utilities, for instance.
- Affordable housing for low and moderate income workers must be provided in the city and public transportation must be available to allow workers to reach centers of employment from their homes dependably and at reasonable cost.
- Privately owned and operated cars must be banned from city streets. All in-city traffic must be controlled and limited to public transportation, commercial delivery services and regulated ride-sharing services, including autonomous vehicles with no “drivers in control” at the wheel.
- All power generation must be from renewable energy sources. There is to be no more carbon-based generation of electricity whether for mechanical uses in buildings, heating or transport. The wind and sun will provide adequate power for the cities when battery The Mega Cities, the Smart Cities, the Sustainable Cities (10586) Robert W. Foster (USA) FIG Working Week 2020 Smart surveyors for land and water management
storage systems have been developed to the necessary capacity. Until then city services cannot be considered sustainable. (Nuclear power may provide the interim source of electricity generation, where politically acceptable. New systems, e.g., fuel cells, will no doubt appear in time.)
- Expansion of the city must follow carefully planned urban design allowing for appropriate density and location of residential, commercial, industrial, educational and research/development institutions.
- Commercial investment and expansion should be encouraged according to the capacity of city services and utilities.
- Public/private/partnership arrangements should be encouraged to provide financial investment and support where the ever-present shortage of public funding inhibits the expansion of public services and utilities.
- In order to be considered sustainable cities must prepare for natural events such as sea level rise (for coastal cities) earthquake occurrence (with restrictive building codes) evacuation routes (in case of massive destruction from fire or storm) and so on.
- Institutional determination is vital in order to enact the necessary policies. The December, 2019 issue of Civil Engineering , a publication of the American Society of Civil Engineers, published an editorial stating that “Cities are leading the effort toward a more sustainable and resilient world …” and called for commitment to a “human-built and nature- based infrastructure that will thrive and survive in the post-climate change world.” At an ASCE International Conference on Sustainable Infrastructure in November, the executive director of Global Covenant of Mayors (GCOM), a coalition of city leaders, reported that nearly 10, cities around the world have agreed to “do what they can to reduce their carbon footprints and build climate-change resiliency into their infrastructure projects.” The commitment of organizations like GCOM is what it will take to move us toward a world- wide development of sustainable cities but the effort will not be easy. In a new program called Global Climate City Challenge, launched by GCOM and the European Investment Bank (EIB), 145 cities in the southern hemisphere have applied for financial support for climate-change infrastructure project support. Only 20 of those provided the necessary information to secure consideration by the EIB. To date only 6 cities have received funding from EIB. Observations Public and political will plus institutional support will be required for the development of sustainability of the cities; there are tenacious and persistent obstacles. For instance, the UN Atlas of the Oceans reports that 8 of the top 10 largest cities of the world are located on the coasts of the seas and that 44% of the world’s population live within 150 km of the coasts. Jeff Goodell, author of The Water Will Come, draws attention to a 2017 report by the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association that predicts global sea level rise of one to more than eight feet by 2100. According to Goodell 145 million people, globally, live at or less than 3 feet above current sea level. Faced with such a future what does sustainability of the cities mean? Does it mean relocation on a massive scale? Or does it mean a redirection of public funds away from civic concerns like education, public health, clean energy and expansion to emergency projects employing barriers, levies, gates and pumps to hold back the sea? Goodell recounts The Mega Cities, the Smart Cities, the Sustainable Cities (10586) Robert W. Foster (USA) FIG Working Week 2020 Smart surveyors for land and water management
Sein, Clarence. 1925. Survey Graphic. Wikipedia. The Urban Technologist. 2016. http://theurbantechnologist.com. The Worlds’ Cities in 2016. UN.org UN Atlas of the Oceans. www.oceansatlas.org UN Economic Commission for Europe. Unece.org/housing/urbandevelopment.html. Biographical Notes Robert W. Foster is a Registered Professional Surveyor and a Registered Professional Engineer (Civil) with over 50 years experience, having graduated from the University of Vermont in 1955 with a B.S. in Civil Engineering. Mr. Foster has specialized in offering professional consulting services in arbitration, dispute resolution, and litigation involving surveying and civil engineering issues. He is a past member of the Dispute Resolution Panel of Neutrals of REBA Dispute Resolution, Inc., a subsidiary of the Real Estate Bar Association of Massachusetts. Mr. Foster is a past president of the American Congress on Surveying and Mapping and an Honorary President of the International Federation of Surveyors. He has provided professional testimony in litigation involving property disputes, appeals of permit denials, eminent domain proceedings, and professional negligence. He has testified before the United States Congress and the Massachusetts legislature on pending legislation and budgetary matters. Mr. Foster grew up in Burlington, Vermont. Following his graduation from UVM he served for three years in the U.S. Air Force where he completed pilot training. He and his wife, Margot and their three sons relocated to Hopkinton, Massachusetts in 1959; he was employed by Schofield Brothers of Framingham, a consulting engineering company until his (semi)retirement in 1990. He may be reached at [email protected]; + 508 - 435 - 3304; P.O. Box 752, Hopkinton, MA, USA The Mega Cities, the Smart Cities, the Sustainable Cities (10586) Robert W. Foster (USA) FIG Working Week 2020 Smart surveyors for land and water management
