On Wednesday, October 31, former Mayor of Toronto David Miller and Arup Director of Cities Advisory Tom Bridges joined the Initiative on Cities to discuss city resiliency and inequality in the face of climate change. Miller and Bridges explored the implications of rapid urbanization and the increasing social, economic, and environmental pressure of the growth of urban populations.
David Miller, the North American Director for C40 Climate Leadership Group, discussed the combination of urban inequality, climate-related natural disasters, and growing unrest among urban populations and how these are catalysts for change at the city government level. Miller and C40 work with mayors around the globe to develop and implement climate mitigation policies that focus on inclusive economic growth. Miller is optimistic for city leaders who have pledged to enact these policies.
Tom Bridges, the Arup Leeds Office Leader and Director of Cities Advisory, reflected on the growing trends in cities. While there is an increase in high-skilled, high-paid jobs and an increase in low-skilled, low-paid jobs, the middle sector has essentially started to disappear, leaving an increasing number of urban residents trapped in low-income jobs and incapable of protecting themselves from climate-related disasters. Economic growth comes at the expense of lower-income workers, further contributing to class division.
Miller and Bridges examined the implications of an increasingly urbanized world and the role that city leaders will play in pushing forward sustainable and inclusive development policies. According to Miller, as of 2008, the world officially became urbanized with the majority of the population residing in urban areas. Bridges’s research indicated that, by 2030, five billion people will live across 662 cities, each containing populations over one million. Moreover, industrial output has surpassed population growth. In the past 25 years, the global urban population has more than doubled, while its ecological footprint has multiplied by fivefold. If anything, this discrepancy reflects the magnitude of economic growth that has occurred and, more importantly, the expense at which vulnerable populations bear the consequences.
“[Cities] are the potential solutions to the challenges we face for climate change, but also some of the points of the most severe vulnerability to effects of severe weather,” Bridges said. “While some cities are pioneering new, imaginative, sustainable and inclusive solutions, many are not.”
Although many claim that globalization has made the world “flat,” Bridges argued that globalization has made the world “spiky.” Wealth, innovation, and opportunity are concentrated in fewer places. According to Bridges, venture capitalists invest in the Cambridge Innovation Center than the entirety of the United Kingdom. However, despite the concentration of wealth in urban areas, urban poverty has increased. Urban growth is comprised primarily of unsustainable, resource-intensive sprawl that has left 800 million people living in impoverished settlements and slums. Additionally, cities bear the brunt of climate change: storms, floods, droughts, and debilitating heat—disasters that do not discriminate by nature but inherently hit hardest the poorest and most vulnerable communities in cities.
Bridges himself has spent over two decades working in urban planning, economic development, and inclusive growth. In the UK, nearly 14 out of 60 million people live in poverty, including four million children. In Leeds, where Bridges is based, the problem is not rooted in unemployment or lack of jobs, but rather growing disparity between job sectors and the increasing “low-pay, low-skill” job trap.
Bridges cited a local study: while “high-paid, high-skilled” technical and low-skilled elementary occupation jobs have increased, jobs in the middle have not experienced the same growth and are, instead, decreasing.
“The lungs on the ladder of career progression are moving apart, if not being taken away altogether,” said Bridges. “Too many people are getting stuck in those low paying jobs, and we’re seeing the shrinking of the middle class in many of our UK cities.”
As a result, Bridges works to research and implement inclusive growth that accounts for the whole population, stimulating career mobility and sustainability.
While economic liberals seek inclusive growth through the trickle down theory, political liberals advocate for redistribution. But Bridges and his team in Leeds took a different approach: they strategized to increase participation in the economy as a means to induce growth. His plan has identified 12 ideas that focus on promoting inclusive growth, including youth investment, career progression, sustainable infrastructure, and productivity innovation.
Moving forward, Bridges identified several steps that can be taken to implement inclusive growth strategies, which include:
- Correcting urban districts to ensure appropriate urban density at a “human scale” and adequate walkability
- Building a wider range of homes in accessible locations
- Investing in public transit systems
- Helping people and places respond to economic change, such as preparing younger generations to enter the workforce and providing viable opportunities for young workers
- Fighting urban poverty
- Investing in urban resilience to protect against climate disasters
- Empowering cities to take the lead
“The solutions to these issues aren’t going to lie in Washington or Westminster. We need cities to take the lead,” said Bridges. “Cities, city leaders, and city mayors understand the issues of their places better than politicians hundreds of thousands of miles away.”
David Miller reiterated this idea, discussing his perspective on the future of cities through his work with C40, a global coalition of mayors who have committed to addressing climate change within their cities. With the increasing severity of storms and the growing income disparity between urban populations, Miller and his team support mayors and city governments to develop climate change mitigation policies that account for inclusive economic growth.
“The issues of inequality are sometimes more complicated because national and provincial state governments have a role,” said Miller. “But mayors understand that they can deliver significant actions on equality—and they will.”
Miller served as the Mayor of Toronto from 2003-2010. After serving the Director of the Canadian division of World Wildlife Fund, he became the North American director for the C40 Cities Climate Leadership Group in 2017. Nearly 100 mayors from megacities from around the world have joined the coalition and work to implement healthy, inclusive sustainable policy.
Miller highlighted the commitments made at the recent Global Climate Action Summit hosted by Jerry Brown and Michael Bloomberg in California this past September, a conference that welcomed subnational governments and businesses. The summit demonstrated the tremendous effort of city governments mitigating climate change and addressing urban inequality.
73 global cities committed to Deadline 2020, a C40 initiative based on research by Arup. Deadline 2020, in addition to refining waste management, energy, employment, and water systems, asks cities to be carbon-neutral by 2050 and for emissions to peak by 2020. In comparison to national and state governments, the commitment made by cities to Deadline 2020 is a significant pact that will hopefully set the precedent for other governing bodies to continue implement climate mitigation plans.
30 cities signed an Equity Pledge, promising that urban climate policy will be inclusive and help those most vulnerable to climate change. 25 cities also signed Towards Zero Waste Declaration, which addresses waste management and consumption patterns.
26 cities signed the Green & Healthy Streets Declaration, in which each city promises to construct a specific carbon-free zone in their city. The goal is to demonstrate to residents how wonderful a walkable, livable, green and carbon-free area is. The declaration also includes a commitment to invest in clean public transport, such as electric buses.
Other commitments include the Zero Emission Building Declaration, which was signed by 23 cities, four regions, and 12 businesses who all pledged to build zero emission buildings, which Miller hopes is a trend that will spread rapidly across cities. His goal and prediction is that the impact of climate change, combined with the economic inequality between the higher and lower classes, will be the impetus for urban residents to force their cities to become green.
“Greener cities are perceived to be better places to live. If we have cities that are dealing with their waste better, have cleaner buildings, greener transport, they are going to be places where people are happier,” said Miller. “They are going to be better places to live.”
The weakening link between carbon and economic growth might be key to to generate the momentum for sustainable development. “We’re now seeing the link between economic development and the sue of carbon being broken,” said Miller. “We don’t have to rely on carbon-based models for prosperity.”
The future is daunting, of course, and to consider the implications of global urbanization and rising inequality is a fair incentive to get spooked. But if Miller and Bridges emphasized anything, it was their hope for the future and faith in city leaders to do what it takes to build resiliency. Despite the imminent environmental disaster that lurks on the horizon, now is the time for global citizens to stand up for the issues that affect them and hold their local, state, and national governments accountable. City leaders have already made extraordinary efforts to commit to climate mitigation plans and address urban inequality, and Miller and Bridges both firmly believe that the changes we must make in our world will start at the heart of our beloved cities.