Building A Sustainable Environment

Sustainable development means improving the quality of life of a population within the capacity of Earth's finite resources. The needs of the present generation must be met, particularly those of the poor, without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.

Humans can now be classed as an urban species! Occupying two percent of the world's land surface, humans use 75 percent of its resources and discharge a similar amount of waste. The vital issue is how people manage these cities into the twenty-first century.

Technology has both facilitated the expansion of cities and enhanced the quality of life for its inhabitants. This has indirectly led to many increasing economic, social and environmental problems. The positive aspects of technology include job creation and easier transport for people. You can read more about the development of transport in this scene about railways in the nineteenth century:

Urban development
Rome was the first giant city in world history. It grew to an estimated population of between three-quarters of a million to one and a quarter million by the fourth century AD. Only a few cities in history – Constantinople, Tokyo, Beijing – came close to that size.

Rome was a microcosm (i.e. a small-scale example) of what cities would later become, holding the record for the next 700 years. Its administrators were forced to devise complex systems to deal with food supplies on an international scale, water supplies over long distances and local waste disposal. There were even urban traffic management systems in the city! All these innovative management systems were designed to improve quality of life.

The area that a city needs to support itself (known as the ecological footprint) has associated sustainability issues. Technology was playing a critical role in supporting cities such as Rome even in this early historical period: aqueducts, sewage systems and increasingly sophisticated ship building are all examples of this technology.

How can sustainability be measured?

Measuring sustainability is a key aspect for any decision maker, and achieving targets and monitoring of policies depends on indicators. Single and combined or multiple indicators may be used. The largest organisation globally involved with assessing sustainability indicators is the United Nations.

The UN definition of a sustainable city is as follows:

A sustainable city […] is a city where achievements in social, economic, and physical development are made to last. A sustainable city has a lasting supply of the natural resources on which its development depends (using them only at a level of sustainable yield). A sustainable city maintains a lasting security from environmental hazards which may threaten development achievements (allowing only for acceptable risk).

In summary, the UN suggests 23 key urban indicators and nine qualitative data subsets to assess sustainability (from the Istanbul Summit).

Key indicators are both important for policy and relatively easy to collect. They are either numbers, or percentages and ratios, for example on topics such as water consumption, air pollution, wastewater treated or crime rates.

Qualitative data or checklists give an assessment of areas which cannot easily be measured quantitatively. For example community involvement in planning can be quantified and is. Often known as 'bottom-up' involvement, it comprises local people participating in decisions about their environment. This will be particularly important in cities with diverse or marginal ethnic and cultural groups.

Problems in data collection

Data is dynamic and often difficult to collect – not to mention an expensive process! Here are some of the main problems with data collection to measure sustainability. Overcoming these problems is vital for any city planner:

• lack of city-based data, may only be available nationally
• lack of contemporaneous data, meaning it may not all have been gathered at the same time/date
• large number of organisations holding the data – some of whom may be biased towards certain types of data
• different indicators selected by city authorities
• inaccuracies in data collection
• rapid change in statistics as cities evolve
• cost in gathering data – which will penalise cities in LEDCs (Less Economically Developed Countries)