Smart-city plans address climate change
CITIES are defined as ‘smart’ when substantial investments are made in human and social capital, including both traditional and modern services, all of which is meant to ensure sustained economic development and a high quality of life.
A global awareness that our natural resources are finite, together with the anticipated impacts of climate change and a growing population that is placing increasing burdens on cities has pushed the ‘smart city’ concept onto centre stage.
There appears to be a collective paradigm shift on how we think about utilising scarce resources in a smart or meaningful way. At a built environment metropolitan level, there are six core systems, comprising people, business, transport, communication, water and energy.
In a smart city, therefore, these six core systems and other key services would be managed harmoniously to support the smooth operation of critical infrastructure, while providing for a clean, economic and safe environment in which to live, work and play.
Globally, there is an outpouring of initiatives from cities, regional blocs, international institutions (such as the World Bank and OECD) on smart city concepts.
According to the World Bank, 75% of the infrastructure that will exist in 2050 is yet to be built, so the actions taken now will shape urbanisation patterns and quality of life for many decades.
South Africa’s National Development Plan (NDP) has identified all the components of a ‘smart city’ as key developmental points that will position the country as a globally competitive location.
Some of these include the establishment of effective, safe and affordable public transport, producing sufficient energy to support industry, while reducing carbon emissions and interventions to ensure environmental sustainability and resilience to future shocks.
A smart city is one that recognizes the foundational role played by the natural environment in supporting social development and economic growth, and in adapting to climate change.
In eThekwini Municipality, the city’s natural assets are recognized as ecological infrastructure (naturally functioning ecosystems that deliver valuable services to people) and their identification, protection and management is therefore a key part of the municipality’s business.
The Energy Efficiency Demand Side Management (EEDSM) Programme was also initiated by National Government for the purpose of achieving greater energy efficiency.
The programme is funded by National Treasury and focuses on reducing energy consumption in municipalowned and operated infrastructure.
To date R115-million has been spent on eThekwini-owned facilities. These include traffic and building lighting. The major cities in the country have embarked on significant initiatives in the transport and ICT sectors to enhance movement and communication.
The eThekwini Municipality has installed considerable fibre optic cable in the last 15 years connecting over 450 municipal offices to the corporate network, which has resulted in almost R10-million savings per year on data, increased productivity, and provided free public internet Wifi at eThekwini libraries.
The smart city scenario is not without its challenges, especially for South African cities still feeling the impact of apartheid planning, poverty,
Current efforts focus on the following:
Environmental planning to protect ecological infrastructure– The Durban Metropolitan Open Space System is a network of connected open spaces designed to identify and protect the municipality’s key ecological infrastructure.
Adapting to climate change – Programmes such as the ‘Umgeni Ecological Infrastructure Partnership’ and the ‘Wetland Rehabilitation for Climate
lack of employment opportunities and low skills levels. The eThekwini municipal region is also 60% rural, which means that a huge social burden is placed on the urban centres as people continually migrate there in search of employment.
The focus to implement smart ideas for urban areas may also ignore the potential to seek sustainable initiatives in rural regions.
Smart city concepts rely heavily on the application of information communication technologies (ICT) that may incur huge set-up costs which may be quickly rendered obsolete, given the dynamic pace at which things change in this sector.
This may place a financial burden on cities to constantly adhere to these technological changes over time.
Another challenge is the high level of big data collection and analysis required for smart city planning. These may have negative impacts on privacy, due to predictive policing and may infringe basic human rights.
Smart cities will need a highly literate population with technological savvy. Until all are techno-savvy, what happens to those who are not?
Answering the question: What could cities do to become smarter?
The IBM Institute for Business Value presents an excellent set of recommendations in its ‘A Vision for Smarter Cities’.
Firstly, it mentions that there is recognition that cities must work seamlessly across their own organisational boundaries and partner with other spheres of Government, as well as with the private sector and civil society.
Secondly, cities need to be more than just focused or efficient; it will require the next generation of city to emerge - one based on smarter systems that are interconnected and where people and objects interact in entirely new ways.
Thirdly, the smart city must target all the inter-relationships between systems and requires a holistic strategy that addresses all factors.
The eThekwini Municipality has several smart city initiatives on the go. These include energy, transport, ICT and learning.
In many instances, the city strives to address the injustices of the past in tandem with smart city concepts that relate to skills enhancement, land reform, alternative energy sources for human settlements and industry and to ensuring that historically disadvantaged townships are synergised with the main-stream economy.
The eThekwini Municipality’s Energy Office (EO), established in 2008 is mandated to address climate change mitigation and is considered a leader in this sector at a Local Government level and is currently involved in a comprehensive suite of activities:
The EO has determined that the municipal region emitted approximately 29-billion tons of carbon dioxide equivalents (tCO2e) from transport, industrial, residential and commercial activities during 2012.
The EO has introduced key measures to decrease emissions in order to reach the targets set in the eThekwini Municipal Energy Strategy of 2008.
These include the Durban Climate Change Strategy that aims to provide guidance for the city as a whole, to mitigate against and adapt to climate change. Another project relates to the eThekwini Eco-Industrial Park that aims to establish an eco-industrial park that will serve as a dedicated commercial and industrial zone within the Cornubia development.
This project has two objectives, namely to develop a climate-neutral eco-industrial park within eThekwini that promotes cleaner production, pollution prevention, energy efficiency, renewable energy and inter-company partnering and, in addition, to promote the green technologies and services sector to supply directly into the broader Southern African Development Community (SADC) region.
Another initiative of the EO relates to wind re-powering. This is a collaborative exercise between the Bremen Overseas Research and Development Association (BORDA) and the Municipality. It involves the transportation and installation of two 150kW turbines from Bremen to Durban. They will be used to assess the impact of wind energy on the local grid infrastructure and to better understand the environmental impacts of wind energy within the local context,
environmental spheres cumulatively contribute positive towards sustainability. In this regard, the ‘Sustainable Horizons’ project aims to develop an integrated indicator system that can help to show progress towards a viable and improved future in the eThekwini Municipal Area.
Understanding the systems context of sustainability: Developing a Resilience Strategy – Durban’s involvement in the Rockefeller Foundation-funded ‘100 Resilient Cities Programme’