The Future of Cities

The Future of Cities: A Conversation with David Miller and Tom Bridges on the Future of Cities, Climate Change, and Resiliency

By Carly Berke

On Wednesday, October 31st, the Initiative on Cities hosted an event with David Miller, the North America Director for the C40 Cities Climate Leadership Group, and Tom Bridges, the Director of UK Cities Advisory at Arup and the Leeds Office Leader.

Miller and Bridges discussed the implications of an increasingly urbanized world and the role that city leaders will play in pushing forward sustainable, inclusive development policies. According to Miller, as of 2008, the world officially became urbanized – more of the population lives in urban areas than rural. Research offered by Bridges, in addition, indicated that five billion people will live in cities by 2030, with 662 cities each containing a population over one million. Moreover, industrial output has seemed to surpass population growth – in the past 25 years, the global urban population has more than doubled, but its ecological footprint has multiplied by five fold. If anything, this discrepancy reflects the magnitude of economic growth that has occurred and, more importantly, the expense at which our economic growth has come.

“[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,” began Bridges. “And while some cities are pioneering new, imaginative, sustainable and inclusive solutions, many are not.”

Many claim that globalization has made the world “flat”, but Bridges argued that globalization has, in fact, made the world “spiky”. More wealth, innovation, and opportunity is concentrated in fewer places – according to Bridges, there is more venture capital invested in the Cambridge Innovation Center than the entirety of the United Kingdom. However, despite the concentration of wealth in urban areas, urban poverty is growing in severity. Urban growth has been 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 and face the consequences of 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, out of a population of 60 million, nearly 14 million people live in poverty – four million of whom are 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 cites a study that found that high-paid, high-skilled technical professional jobs have increased, and low-skilled elementary occupation jobs have increased, but jobs in the middle have not experienced the same growth and are actually 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 all of the population and stimulates career mobility and sustainable growth.

On the free market side, inclusive growth is rooted in trickle down economic theory, while those with a more liberal approach argue for redistribution. But Bridges and his team in Leeds took a different approach to growth and produced a plan that strategizes to get more people involved in the economy as a means to induce growth. His plan has identified 12 ideas that focus on promoting inclusive growth, including investment in children, career progression, sustainable infrastructure, and productivity innovation.

Moving forward, Bridges identified several steps that can be taken to implement inclusive growth strategies, which include:

1. Correcting urban districts to ensure appropriate urban density at a “human scale” and adequate walking ability
2. Building a wider range of homes in accessible locations
3. Investing in public transit systems
4. Helping people and places respond to economic change, which entails preparing younger generations to enter the workforce and providing viable opportunities for young workers
5. Fighting urban poverty
6. Investing in urban resilience to protect against climate disaster
7. 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.”

This idea was reiterated by David Miller, who then came forward to discuss his perspective on the future of cities, particularly regarding 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 try to help mayors and city governments 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 is the former mayor of Toronto, where he served from 2003-2010. He then went on to work as the Director of the Canadian division of World Wildlife Fund before becoming the North America director for the C40 Cities Climate Leadership Group in 2017. Nearly 100 mayors from megacities from around the world have joined the coalition and are working 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 and saw a tremendous effort by city governments to commit to 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 also made an Equity Pledge that promised that urban climate policy will be inclusive and help those most vulnerable to climate change, and 25 cities 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.”

An important development that Miller cited, the one that might be key to to generate the momentum for sustainable development, is the weakening link between carbon and economic growth.

“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 their faith in city leaders to do what it takes to make their cities resilient. 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.