I Made a List!

I've recently resolved to make this blog clearer and more accessible. I will make an occasional effort to refocus this blog on how we understand the systems and forces that shape cities. Of course, cities have everything to do with everything, and so there will be relatively long stretches of posts that are concerned with a particular topic. This past month, and year, I've been hashing out my thoughts on how cities interact with the environment.

I did write a post last week on whether or not we should establish environmental priorities at all, and for the sake of clarity and discussion, I decided to make a Top Ten list. Since lists are made for checking, I'm also hoping to provoke an outcry about any omissions. Everyone should have a pet environmental issue! Here's my list:

Top Ten List: Environmental Priorities in Cities

Critical concerns:
1. Global warming
2. Disease and public health
3. Crime and security

Operational goals:
4. Equity
5. Limits to consumption
6. Integrated planning processes

Physical needs:
7. Water quality
8. Materials
9. Transportation
10. Air quality

I will annotate each of these entries in the future, but let me explain the structure of my selections a bit further. This list would also probably change substantially depending on what country, profession, institution or class you belong to. This is also more of an argument about cities in general (today), rather than about any particular city (yet). Different economies, geographies or histories all lead to different cities, but for our purposes we can discuss features common to most cities, such as the scale of municipal government, economies, technology & infrastructure, and culture. This preliminary list loosely groups urban environmental concerns according to their criticality, that is, critical limits that fundamentally threaten their existence, operational goals or concerns -- that is, what are we planning cities for? -- and, finally, the specific physical needs of people in cities.

One could argue that to conduct urban planning at all, we must decide what we're planning for. However, in my humble yet frustrated opinion, this is precisely what we lack: a timeless vision for what the sustainable city might look like, how it might function, and how it might be both resilient and open to inevitable change.

For those of you looking for alternative global lists, the World Resources Institute wrote a report on the Urban Environment in 1996-7, portions of which are available online, and the World Bank wrote an urban environmental strategy paper in 2001, available here in pdf format.

For lists specific to particular cities, the NRDC put out a New York list on last week on Earth Day. The EPA has a specific urban environmental program for Boston, Hartford and Providence here. There is a Los Angeles list of urban environmental priorities by Progressive LA, and Seattle spells out their sustainability priorities here.