The Future of Urban Living
If mankind will continue to prosper, as it has up until this point, people must make sacrifices in order to address climate change. Humanity will not push nature to destruction; humanity will push nature to the point that nature will push back. This is already made evident by the rapid and devastating succession of hurricanes; a phenomenon linked directly to climate change. Although many people are well aware of the impending issue of climate change, they still fail to change their damaging habits in order to solve the problem. There are three mindsets that prevent people from shifting their lifestyles in a way that climate change will be stalled: the belief that ‘it will not affect me’, the idea that ‘I may change my habits, but no difference will be made by one person’, and perhaps the most damaging of all, the belief held by urban planners that ‘to make urban communities environmentally friendly is too expensive’. While this may be true in the short term, in the long term, repairing the damages to urban environments caused by climate change related natural disasters will be far more costly than instituting practices that will prevent those disasters in the first place. When planning urban environments, civil engineers must shift their priorities from short term savings to the prevention of climate change caused natural disasters, which, in turn, will ravage those very urban environments that they attempted to save money constructing. Although it is important to acknowledge that there is a problem with the way that urban planners tend to stay away from environmentally-friendly cities due to increased expenses, it is equally important to acknowledge the cities that have been built in environmentally friendly ways, and to use these cities as references. One such city is Copenhagen, named “European Green Capital” of 2014.
What makes Copenhagen so successful when it comes to reducing its impact on the climate? Of utmost importance, of course, is that the government and its citizens all acknowledge climate change as an impending problem, and avoid falling into the complacent aforementioned mindsets. What practical solutions have they implemented, however, is a different question. A fundamental building-block of Copenhagen’s eco-friendly initiative is partnerships between the government and private organizations such as universities and companies. Additionally, not only does the government partner itself with private institutions, it also makes a deliberate effort to make all citizens feel as though they are a part of the solution. This makes people living in Copenhagen, in general, much more willing to adopt more environmentally friendly habits. The government accomplishes this through communicating to citizens what they can do to help reduce the footprint of Copenhagen; recycle when they can, carpool when possible, avoid buying non-sustainable goods, etc. This is an effective strategy because, in Europe, about 40% of carbon emissions are a byproduct of decisions made directly by individuals. Furthermore, Copenhagen strives to be a very bike-friendly city. This is also an effective strategy in terms of net reduction in carbon output because 21% of global carbon emissions are released from the exhaust pipes of cars. By targeting some of the most prominent sources of climate change, Copenhagen became a model of an environmentally friendly city.
The endeavor of making Copenhagen the “European Green Capital”, which is actually an award, was certainly not easy. There are many difficulties that are associated with making a city environmentally friendly. When the Copenhagen government reached out to private institutions, many of those private institutions likely had reservations about sacrificing potential profits in order to lower the city’s environmental footprint. Additionally, any government sponsored initiative will almost surely fail if the people, whose cooperation is necessary, do not agree with the cause. In other words, if people don’t believe that climate change is real, they will obviously not do anything to prevent it. Furthermore, to convince people to bike to places rather than to drive was a particularly difficult task. Lastly, it is simply human nature to prioritize the short-term over the long-term. Due to this unfortunate aspect of mankind, making cities environmentally friendly, an endeavor which will create short-term expenses, but prevent a massive long-term problem, is not one which many people would naturally gravitate to. Despite all of these challenges to the endeavor of making Copenhagen an eco-friendly city, the city was named the “European Green Capital” by the European environmental commission.
What were the solutions to these difficulties with creating an eco-friendly city? In regards to convincing private institutions to conform to environmentally geared standards, or to aid the government with environmental research (as was the case with the North Harbour project which included a ‘Green Laboratory’), the government created a sense of responsibility within the community. In doing so, private institutions who did not conform to environmental standards out of a sense of responsibility did so out of fear of backlash for not fulfilling what the public perceived to be its responsibilities. This also applied to individuals and their daily habits. To convince people to prefer travel by bike rather than car, however, was particularly difficult. To do so, the government started a health initiative which proposed biking as a method to stay healthy. Furthermore, the government suggested that biking was not only just as fast as travel by car in the congested city environment, but also saved money on gas. When these methods were not as effective, the government even went as far as shifting city infrastructure in such a way that cars became less and less convenient while bikes became more and more popular.
The Copenhagen government managed to create one of the most eco-friendly cities in the world. So what? What were the results? Contrary to popular belief, they were very significant. Qualitatively, people throughout the globe were inspired to make efforts to decrease their impact on the climate. More significantly, however, governments from all over the world saw what could be done to make a city eco-friendly, and also saw what accolades could come with becoming eco-friendly. This incentivized cities throughout the world to follow the example of Copenhagen. The eco-friendly shift of Copenhagen contributed to the catalysis of a world-wide movement to deal with climate change. On the quantitative side of things, the results are more indicative of just how effective Copenhagen’s eco-friendly initiative was. By 2010, 35% of all citizens biked rather than drove. By 2025, Copenhagen aims to reduce yearly carbon emissions by 375,000 tonnes through the integration of climate into energy supply, by 50,000 tonnes through greener transport, by 50,000 tonnes through energy efficient buildings, by 20,000 tonnes through influencing the choices of individuals on a daily basis, and by 5,000 tonnes through climate friendly urban development. Copenhagen is already well on its way to fulfilling these goals.
Copenhagen was a milestone. Since it was named the “European Green Capital” in 2014, it was followed by Bristol in 2015, Ljubjana in 2016, and Essen, which is the greenest city of 2017. All of these cities built their environmental success off of the strategies employed by Copenhagen in 2014. This trend embodies how Copenhagen was a building block to global environmental awareness. While many people believe that the situation is hopeless, and that the human nature of prioritizing short-term benefits over long-term well being is too ingrained, Copenhagen is a shining example that disproves such a thought. People living in Copenhagen shifted their lifestyle and made personal choices that were less convenient in the short-term, but that helped spare the environment in the long-term. Moving forward, however, humanity needs to realize that just a few cities shifting towards climate-friendly urban habits is not enough. The next steps are to adopt this eco-friendly urban initiative on a much wider front. Want to help save the planet through eco-friendly urbanization? Start a local initiative to make your town or city one that can perform its daily functions without damaging the climate. All urban environments have to adopt the tactics of Copenhagen and the other “European Green Capitals” if humanity is to save itself from nature’s backlash.
Works Cited
anastasia_pantsios. “Top 10 Greenest Cities in the World.” EcoWatch, EcoWatch, 27 June 2016, www.ecowatch.com/top-10-greenest-cities-in-the-world-1881963132.html.
“Copenhagen.” Wikipedia, Wikimedia Foundation, 28 Oct. 2017, en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copenhagen.
http://www.climatechangechallenge.org/Resource%20Centre/Climate-Change/3-what_causes_climate_change.htm#3.
“2019 – Oslo.” European Green Capital, ec.europa.eu/environment/europeangreencapital/winning-cities/2019-oslo/.