URBAN AWAKENING
The world’s megacities are expanding fast, but it’s not too late to turn them into more healthy and sustainable living environments.
The rapid growth of cities in developing countries is one of the greatest economic, social and environmental challenges facing the world today. The huge wave of rural-to-urban migration over the last few decades is forcing policymakers to come up with sustainable ways to accommodate rising populations.
According to the United Nations, 30% of the global population lived in cities and urban areas in 1950, but by 2014 the number jumped to 54%, or about 3.5 billion people. By 2050, that figure is expected to rise to 6.5 billion, meaning two-thirds of the world’s population will reside in urban areas.
Figures from the UN Development Programme showed that in 1990, there were 10 megacities with 10 million or more inhabitants. In 2014, there were 28 such cities that accommodated 453 million people.
The rate of urbanisation is most rapid in Asia at 48%, and Africa at 40%, with Asia now accommodating roughly 53% of the world’s urban population.
Urbanisation comes with a high cost when infrastructure development is unable to keep up with rapid and unplanned growth. Other economic, social and public health challenges abound, from providing fresh water supplies and adequate sewage treatment to controlling air pollution.
Bangkok, one of the world’s megacities, is facing the same fate as most other megacities. The most recent official census data from 2010 showed a population of 8.2 million, of whom 5.3 million are listed as Bangkok residents on their household registry; most of the rest come from other provinces.
Most informal estimates put the true population of Bangkok above 10 million, while some estimates put the daytime population as high as 15 million, when those commuting from nearby areas to work in the city are counted. Population density, at 5,258 people per square kilometre, is ranked 38th in the world. Sixteen of the world’s most densely populated cities are in Asia, led by Mumbai with more than 29,000 people per sq km.
Some of the world’s leading experts in the field gathered in Bangkok recently to discuss the challenges of urbanisation, at a forum held by Magnolia Quality Development Corporation (MQDC).
The time has come to promote a culture that “puts well-being and sustainability at the centre of personal and professional life”, said Raj Tanta-Nanta, the president of DT Group of Companies, the parent company of MQDC. DT in turn is owned by the Chearavanont family of the Charoen Pokphand Group.
“This change is vital amid global issues such as ageing populations, accelerating climate change, rising urbanisation, declining energy resources, and fading quality of life,” Mr Raj told the International Well-being and Sustainability Forum.
MASTER PLAN MATTERS
Toby Blunt, a senior partner and deputy head of studio at the architecture firm Foster + Partners, stressed the importance of turning cities into sustainable places to cope with the challenges posed by rising populations.
Humanity is living in a time of exponential growth and people are constantly migrating toward city centres. If cities continue to be the same as in the past, they won’t be able to cope with surging numbers of people, he said.
A master plan that employs holistic and systematic thinking is crucial in making a city sustainable.
“Planning a city requires a large master plan that has been well thought out. If you don’t have the right scale, you can’t invest appropriately,” said Mr Blunt.
A good master plan, for example, can contribute to sustainability by raising the quality of life and cutting energy demand by reducing the use of cars, whether petrol-fuelled or electric-powered.
Citing one of his company’s projects — the carless “Masdar City” in Abu Dhabi — Mr Blunt demonstrated that even in a hot desert climate, a well-planned city can have lively, walkable streets and be an environmentally friendly place that puts sustainability at its core. In Masdar city, infrastructure will be situated underground to replace the use of automobiles and make it possible for residents to live on land without being disturbed by pollution.
As an architect, Mr Blunt aims to create buildings that offer a better atmosphere and environment for people to live and work in. To achieve that, he uses technology to simulate the virtual mapping of the city his team is working on, to develop a master plan that contributes to sustainability, such as incorporating shading elements in buildings, creating narrow streets that are shaded, and public spaces where people can gather to enjoy activities.
Slums, on the other hand, are another challenge arising from urbanisation. Residents in the poorest and most congested areas of large cities often have limited access to sanitation and energy sources. Slums are home to 828 million people but there are ways to maximise the quality of life of people in such areas, Mr Blunt maintained.
“[One way to do so] is to balance [development] with the needs of people who have been living there for a long time and clear the unused land and build accommodation, then move new people in without pulling away the community they created,” he said.
Pointing to the direct relationship between energy use and density of a city, he added: “Cities are planned around and formed around having to travel in car. By taking away the need to travel and minimising the need of travelling by car in particular, we can dramatically reduce the amount of energy use.”
A circular economy — a system in which materials are recycled and many are converted into energy — will result in dramatically reduced waste and pollution.
Another way to conserve energy and make cities sustainable is “relying less on the idea that we need to drive food in all the time”, he said.
Agriculture consumes a large amount of energy, and one extremely energy-intensive aspect of the food involves moving food into and out of cities. More cities could be producing their own crops through methods such as hydroponic and vertical farming, he added.
Singh Intrachooto, a professor of architecture at Kasetsart University, said efforts to achieve sustainability must go beyond a focus on humans, with coexistence with other species taken into consideration as well.
Even though many big cities have suitability plans, real sustainability cannot be realised without “a balance between the heart and the brain”, he said.
“It’ s difficult as long as we are adding more buildings. We cannot sus- tain the world through the methods that we have been implementing,” said Prof Singh. “To achieve real sustainability, we also have to care for other things such as animals, plants and other environmental aspects.”
To Mr Singh, true sustainability means abandoning “human-centric” approaches. In property development, for instance, it is essential to make homes for each site’s original inhabitants, and that includes its plants and birds.
Bangkok, for instance, has an urgent need to increase green areas as various studies have exhibited that living close to nature is beneficial to health, as it helps reduce the risk of diseases.
John Spengler, a professor at the Harvard TH Chan School of Public Health, said solutions for sustainability lie in living in harmony with nature, as it is a fundamental component of well-being.
“Health is definitely affected by the environment,” he said, noting that “bringing the forest back into the city” is one way to promote the transformation to sustainability.
“Nature has been scientifically linked to greater attentiveness, creativity and cognition. It reduces our stress and is an important fundamental to humans.”
The therapeutic effects of exposure to nature can be observed in human physiology, mood, cognition and socialisation, he pointed out.
We need to redefine sustainability as the strengthening of capital assets, namely natural capital, human capital, and social capital JOHN SPENGLER Harvard TH Chan School of Public Health
“Researchers [from Harvard] found that women who lived in areas surrounded by more green space had 12% lower mortality rates than women who lived in less green spaces,” he said.
Prof Spengler also noted that since humans spend 90% of their time indoors, building materials need to be safe to decrease toxicity of our indoor environment. “Attention has to be paid to indoor environmental planning as well.”
Furthermore, conception of sustainability needs to be reframed, in his view. “We need to redefine sustainability as the strengthening of capital assets, namely natural capital, human capital, and social capital.”
OLDER AND HAPPIER
Advances in health care in recent decades have dramatically prolonged life expectancy, especially in the developing world, and that leads to another big challenge: How can we grow sustainably into an ageing society together and how can we prepare to meet the needs of an ageing population?
Thailand is greying more rapidly than many of its Asian peers. The United Nations classifies the country as an “ageing society” (one-tenth of the population above age 60), on track to become an “aged society” (one-fifth of the population above 60) by 2025. The Mahidol University IPSR working group on population projection estimated the 60-plus demographic at 11.56 million or 17% of the population of 66.15 million.
Most experts agree that Thailand still lags many countries in terms of providing care for the elderly. Urban environments in particular need to be more inclusive for older people, according to Dr William Reichman, the president and CEO of Toronto-based Baycrest, a leading eldercare centre.
“We must make sure that for an ageing population we provide adequate care that is suitable for them,” he said. “Growing old doesn’t have to mean shrinking. We are trying to give people an opportunity to grow.”
As more and more people will become residents of elder-care facilities, Dr Reichman said such facilities need to be equipped with the fundamentals needed to keep them healthy.
“[We need to give] older adults more control over their environments. They need to think that coming to live in elderly-care facilities is to grow.”
Homes for the elderly, he said, need to provide opportunities for people to make their lives better and create an environment that works as an enabler of happiness. Natural lighting and care programmes that address the biological consequences of ageing such as sensory deficits and cognitive changes, mental health and emotional needs, all need to be included in the environment.
“Putting them in boxes called nursing homes” is not the solution, he said. “Older people are just like us. They need the outdoor environment; they need access to children and animal.”
Elder-care properties need to feel like homes and not institutions, he added. “It’s not like we are putting them away. They need to still feel a sense of connection to their family and their community. It’s a place where you can nest and gain connectivity to the greater community”
For Dr Reichman, another pressing challenge is to imagine the structure of the healthcare system and how to better deliver services and treatments.
“People need to control their own health. We need to focus on wellness and prevention, not just going to doctors when you are sick,” he said.
The healthcare business needs to be reframed from the conventional framework that involves services being delivered from a hospital. This, he said, is unsustainable and not fair to older people and the people who provide care for them.
“We must bring health care to the community where people live,” he said.
However, participants at the forum agreed that achieving sustainability in all aspects of urban life will require a full generation of impact-makers to be successful. It also means a commitment to ensure that every aspect of urban planning is based on sustainability if society is to be truly transformed.
Sustainability means nothing when it is only a buzzword. It needs to be ingrained at the very core of how we conduct our lives.
“We need sustainability to evolve from a trend to a habit,” Prof Singh noted.