YOUR GUIDE TO THE FUTURE

Urban parks can promote city dweller’s quality of life as it provides a medium for various social activities. It also beneficial for city dweller’s physical and mental health and improve the sense of community. Inhabitants of Anyang City in South Korea has a strong park-going culture, with a survey indicating that 75% of the respondents has more that one year experience of visiting the parks regularly.

Urban agriculture gains relevance as it not only provides direct benefit in food security but also has other embedded environmental benefits. A study investigated Rooftop Kitchen Garden (RTG) as one urban agriculture initiative to assess and quantify the benefit of the urban agriculture at household level in South Delhi, India.

Compared to conventional green roofs that only installed vegetation or other green infrastructure, multilayer green roofs are an innovative tool that combine the green infrastructure with blue infrastructure with a rainwater harvesting system.

New demographic trends, changing households need and evolving home-ownership outlook has accelerated urban expansion in Europe to accommodate the citizens’ need. On the European policy level, major concerns regarding urban expansion and social integration became evident in the late 1980s through the “Green Paper on Urban Environment”, published by the European Commission.

China has strong restriction on urban expansion as the growing concern of farmland loss that threatens their food security. There are various ways that have been implemented in urban areas in China to limit land conversion to urban areas throughout the years. One example is the Quota System, that puts a cap on land conversion in terms of location, rime and construction purpose.

With rapid urbanisation, cities seem to expand their area to meet the needs of housing of the growing population. Yet, this urban expansion occasionally goes out of hand with oversupply of housing and depletion of green area that leads to various environmental deterioration.

Limiting urban development through legal and governmental approach is one way to control land expansion. Schiappacasse et al. (2021) introduces another approach that can not only hinder urban expansion but also promote social integration.

Incentives and disincentives in Development Control can promote or discourage certain adaptation and mitigation objectives. In the long term it can encourage behavioural and investments towards climate-friendly urbanisation as opposed to the business-as-usual model of development that depletes our natural resources.

Whether they are premeditated or unintentional by the policy makers, in the process of land use and development control, there may be regulation or procedure that deter sustainable urban development. UN Habitat listed some of the most common in zoning law and urban management practice that incentivise the unsustainable city development.

Developing infrastructure and providing services for urban inhabitants require massive financial resources, including the aim to climate-proof the city. Through the study of numerous cities globally, UN Habitat provide examples that other cities can adopt to enhance municipal finance by generating diverse portfolio of income stream.

To ensure that new developments are located in appropriate locations, consistent with the urban design guidelines, have the necessary service and facilities, as well as consistent to the environmental protection; Development Control can become a powerful tool that urban planners use to manage city development.

Green spaces play a critical role in improving environmental quality in urban areas. It acts as a carbon sink that reduces the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere, mitigating the Urban Heat Island Effect as well as reducing air pollution, providing shade/cooling, rainwater catchment and biodiversity support.

Buildings are responsible for the 32% of total global energy use and emits significant share of Green House Gas emission (GHG). How we design neighbourhood can substantially reduce the emission and energy use those urban buildings use. Designing the neighbourhood into urban form that minimise trapping the solar radiation and allows for wind access (ventilation) is one way to do it.

Urban areas play a critical role in reducing the amount of GreenHouse Gas (GHG) emission as it generates 70% of human induced GHGs. Smart Cities can take up this role by designing their cities that integrate climate mitigation into their urban planning process, building design, construction as well as through their services & infrastructure.

The urban forms of a city, which is defined as “the patterns and spatial arrangements of land use, transportation systems and urban design elements, layout of streets and buildings, as well as the internal configuration of settlements”, significantly determine the amount of energy used by that city.

Due to the concentration of people, economic activities, social and cultural institutions; urban areas have higher vulnerability to climate change-related disasters. Millions of urban dwellers around the globe have already experienced this direct existential threat.

Following the Climate Risk and Vulnerability Assessment, the next step is to identify and prioritise adaptation options. City must first identify and create catalogue on all adaptation options that for their specific context. New and innovative adaptation strategies are required to cope with the novel and unique challenge of climate change.

City of Ithaca, New York sets out an ambitious vision to be eliminate or offset all carbon emission by 2030. This 2019 vision is followed by a US$ 100 million plan to climate proof this municipality. One method that the policymakers in Ithaca use to help achieve the ambitious goal is to create a Digital Twin of the city.

Every year thousands of tonnes of electronics, furniture, household appliances and clothing pieces are thrown by urban dwellers. Many of these items were not being processed properly or recycled and ended up in the landfill. These items are also likely being tossed just because they are slightly damaged.

Increasing temperature is one of the effects of global climate change that threatens the livelihood in Ahmedabad, India. Extreme temperature put the citizen to risk of heat wave and numerous heat-related illnesses. With heat as one of disaster that significantly affect the quality of life, Ahmedabad implemented “Heat Action Plan” in 2015, that include mitigation and early warning system to extreme heat events.

The limitation of land area pushes Singapore to think innovatively in its efforts for sustainable energy provision. As a city-nation that is located on the equator with all year-round sunshine, Singapore is pushing solar technology as one of its sustainable energy sources.

Cities are noisy. With various social activities and traffic, noise level in urban areas can reach a point where it is detrimental to our physical and mental wellbeing. The Municipality of Berlin developed a tool to help its citizens locate places of quiet in their neighbourhood, called Hush City Mobile Lab.

The advancement of technology in every aspect of our daily life has also brought negative externalities of the accumulating electronic waste or e-waste. Tretavathan and Sharp (2020) in their study introduce a Social Enterprise called Substation33, which has a mission to reduce the number of electronic wastes that end up in the landfill while also contributing to the community through capacity building programs.

The collection and management of e-waste is crucial to reduce the amount of toxic material released to our environment. Effective waste management also has a potential to retrieve valuable materials to be reused and recycled such as gold and copper. Kang et al. (2021) proposed a smart e-waste collection system that could be applicable at household level in the city.

Encouraging technological advancement and urban innovation in Smart Cities has a significant impact in the improvement of ecological environmental quality and promote high quality growth. A case study in China found that this strategy has resulted in the reduction of exhaust gas and industrial wastewater by approximately 20.7% and 12.2% respectively.

A study on smart cities in Nottingham, Stavanger and Stockholm proved that Smart City Project may serve as a catalyst in creating a more sustainable urban energy use and management. The study found a link that although a local smart city initiative does not aim specifically to improve the urban energy sustainability, it still encourages cities to achieve a more sustainable way to manage their energy system.

To cope with increasing temperature in cities, Livesley et al. (2021) proposed small-scale solutions that cities can use to increase thermal comfort to not only humans but also fauna living in the urban environment.

The idea of compact cities claims to provide people with everything they need within the community, from stores, schools, employment, public service, and other amenities in a densely built urban area. However, this concept received many critics to how much they contribute to the environmental, social, and economic benefit to the community.

UN defines water security as the capacity to safeguard sustainable access to adequate quality of water for human well being and socio-economic development while ensuring protection against water borne pollution and water related disaster and preserving the natural ecosystem.

Challenged with massive growth and pressure from various human activities, providing clean and save water is one of the serious issues cities must tackle. Better water management that ensures the availability of water more efficiently is urgently needed.