Global Sustainability Perspective magazine - Jones Lang LaSalle

Global Sustainability Perspective
Eco Cities
June 2012
The description “Eco” City has a strong,
optimistic, almost personal ring to it, as it
should have, being derived from the ancient
Greek term oikos meaning a “place to live.”
When Richard Register first coined the term in his 1987 book “Ecocity
Berkeley: Building Cities for a Healthy Future,” most of us would not
have foreseen the extent to which his thinking would eventually come to
influence the development of cities, nor how the changes he advocated
in the way cities are planned, used, lived and worked in would become
such imperatives. And even while the term Eco City may not yet be
wholly, comprehensively or consistently defined it has certainly entered
the mainstream and is used extensively as the backdrop for a wide
range of activities in urban sustainability.
The debate around what constitutes an Eco City has been gathering
momentum since the early nineties. Eco City summits in Montreal,
Istanbul, Shenzhen, Curitiba and others have explored philosophy,
policy and practice, while challenging thinkers like Herbert Giradet and
Mark Roseland have produced an extensive range of literature and
guidance on creating Eco and sustainable cities.
In the last five years or so it has been the likes of the ambitious and
high profile UAE Masdar City and the Sino-Singapore Tianjin Eco-city
which have gained the headlines. These showcase examples are rich
in intelligence around new technologies, innovative urban planning
processes, 21st century mobility, and funding mechanisms. They also
demonstrate the deep challenges of carbon neutrality and of proving
commercial returns.
But while these all inclusive models of urban sustainability are pushed,
pummeled and pressed to prove their durability, a huge range of
cities are testing micro models of Eco district and neighborhood
development. They are embracing in a more local way the core Eco
City principle of minimizing environmental impact and maximizing
social and economic good.
This incremental approach reflects both the difficulties of trying to create a
universal blueprint of the Eco City and the practicalities of large scale
transformation in established cities. What is clear however, is that Eco
City metrics of performance will be as important to the market as the
measurement of the value add of green buildings. Understanding risks,
returns and benchmarking one city against another, will be an important
feature in the Eco City arena. But how can we measure what is not well
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defined? This is an uncomfortable question from the purist researchers’
viewpoint, but pragmatism demands that some measures are better than
none and experience tells us that markers in the ground are important.
Companies like Siemens and their Sustainable Cities Index and Mercer with
their Eco City ranking have begun the process of measurement and
comparison. CDP Cities with whom Jones Lang LaSalle is proud to partner
are now delving very deeply into a very wide range of sustainability practices
in cities. Forty-eight cities are now filling in a very detailed questionnaire
about sustainability aspects of governance, strategy, finance, partnerships
and risk awareness amongst many other issues. The results of the survey
give a very clear insight into the different measures of challenge and
progress across cities and the very different routes they are taking
towards a sustainable future.
Our Global Sustainability Perspective comments on many of the issues
that stem from thinking about the ultimate goal – for all cities to be Eco
in the sense of working together towards a built and living environment that
gives environmental, social and economic quality now and protects it for
future generations. We look at the current gaps between the commercial
and city hall views with regards to creating a common approach to instilling
sustainable behaviors and outcomes, at the extensive activity in China, the
injection of major sustainable schemes in the London Olympics and inland
Ports in the USA and at Green City mobility in Paris.
The transformation of our cities will largely be through incremental change,
through the spread of best practice and through assessing and measuring
what works and what is, bluntly, effective and affordable. The likelihood is
that in the next few years this column will be covering the definition of not
just Eco Cities, but how we assess affordability in the light of continuing
environmental and social challenge.
For further information please contact:
Rosemary Feenan
Head of Global Research Programmes
Rosemary.Feenan@eu.jll.com