There is a growing consensus that climate
change represents one of the greatest challenges to the project of civilization
we have ever faced. Not only would abrupt climate change be ecologically
devastating, it threatens to be a significant new source of war and conflict. In order that some of the causes and consequences of this
threat may be partially addressed, the urban planning literature has in recent
years promoted various schemes for "sustainable cities." Frequently
cited elements of the sustainable city include increasing urban density,
building mass transit, improving cycling infrastructure, building
"green" structures and investing in renewable energy. The form of the city is seen as a vital
means of reducing energy consumption and the production of greenhouse gases. Sustainability
has become one of our era's most deeply embedded meta-narratives.
Yet these and other conceptions of the sustainable city and sustainable development in general have come under some criticism, not so much in terms of their practical merits but for the ideological deficiencies and unwarranted assumptions common to the literature in which they are espoused. For example, architect Jeffrey Inaba criticizes so-called “sustainable” architecture for inspiring minimal scrutiny and resulting in “regressive urban environments”. On socio-political grounds, Guy & Marvin (1999) note that the literature's emphasis on technological solutions brings with it a concomitantly narrow conception of contemporary social relations, while Adrian Atkinson in his Cities Afer Oil series finds that, owing to the profound distributive issues at stake "there are philosophical/moral issues to be considered...before it is possible to think of physical (planning) solutions" (p. 203).
Peter Marcuse framed this problem succinctly when he observed (1997) "sustainability is not enough", and indeed is, strictly speaking not even desirable, as the conditions of the poor both “cannot be sustained [and] should not be sustained” (p. 106). An especially common fault with this discourse, according to Guy & Marvin (1999) is its "singular" vision of what a sustainable city would look like, and reducing it to a list of so-called "best practices," the realization of which requires a prescribed set of technological advances which are regarded with "determinist and celebratory" praise (p.270).
Sustainable city discourse is also criticized for its sheer inadequacy in the face of the actual threats facing humanity. Adrian Atkinson warns in his aforementioned Cities After Oil series that we are facing nothing short of societal collapse when globalization breaks down as energy supplies dwindle, forcing a dramatic reduction in scale of all human activities. Yet, he argues, all attempts to articulate a "sustainable city" have failed to meet the challenges he describes. Atkinson shows how sustainable city discourse has emerged from an Occidental world view of progress that mediates against the adherence to natural limits. All current trends, he believes, point to an exhaustion of fossil-based energy sources and an inexorable collapse of modern society. A few generations following such a collapse might render unrecognizable any vestige of our civilization as we know it, a fate for which the sustainability discourse has done little to prepare us.
The threat that
dramatic climate change poses to our global civilization is such that we need
to consider whatever ameliorative measures we can. However, because spatial
planning intimately connects to multiple levels of social and power relations
it is essential that changes to the city undertaken under the exigencies of
crisis are done so in such a way that we avoid to the extent possible injustice
and other unanticipated negative consequences.
Michael Dudley
(This posting is adapted from a paper given at the 39th conference of the International Society for the Comparative Study of Civilizations, Kalamazoo Michigan, June 4th 2009).
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