Draft 1: Cases of Sustainable Cities

Articles:
https://www.iberdrola.com/environment/sustainable-cities
Cite:
“Cities play a fundamental role in the fight against climate change: They are able to lead the energy
transition towards low carbon development based on efficiency and renewable energy.”
Factors that define a sustainable city:
- Recution of CO2 emission (improvement of air quality)
- Promote renewable energies (conservation & protection of naturl resources)
- Sustainable mobility (+use of public transport)
- Circular economy
Pillars according to Sustainable Cities Index (ARCADIS & UN-HABITAT):
- (People) Social: citizen’s quality of life
- (Planet) Environment: factors related to the city’s “green label”
- (Profit) Economic: economic and environment health assessment for businesses
Results of the SCI 2016:
- Zurich: 1st place
- Singapore: 1st in Asia
- Stockholm: 3rd place

https://www.unenvironment.org/regions/asia-and-pacific/regional-initiatives/supporting-resource-
efficiency/sustainable-cities
Cite:
“Cities generate over 80 per cent of gross domestic product in many countries in Asia and the
Pacific and are engines of economic growth that have lifted millions from poverty.”
Main challenges for cities:
- Environmental degradation
- Traffic congestion
- Inadeuate urban infrastracture
- Lack of basic services:
o Water supply
o Sanitation
o Wate management

“Maintaining economic growth, while creating sustainable livable cities for all, is the biggest urban
challenge facing Asia and the Pacific today.”
SDG11 for cities:
- Acces to housing and basic services
- sustainable transport system
- sustainable urbanization
- access to public spaces
- sustainable buildings
- per capita environmental impact of cities
- policies towards climate change
- resource efficiency
- disaster risk reduction
Main work areas for UNEP:
1- Sustainable consumption and production roadmap for cities covering all the sectors
2- Upstream interventions through policy, technology and financing to reduce and manage
pollution and waste

“Asia Pacific cities contributes

enormously towards the emission of
greenhouse gases. They are also highly
vulnerable to the consequences of
climate change” and this have a
significant impact in their economies.
“Private sector participation through
various mechanisms such as public-
private-partnerships will help to
improve the level of investments and
efficiency of urban environmental
management.”
Indexes/Reports:
https://www.arcadis.com/media/1/D/5/%7B1D5AE7E2-A348-4B6E-B1D7-
6D94FA7D7567%7DSustainable_Cities_Index_2018_Arcadis.pdf
Cite:
The SCI is based on three main pillars: People, Planet and Profit. In its 2018 edition they found that:
- The Profit pillar (economic factor) is essential to bring sustainability to a long-term
dimension
World’s most suatinable city in 2018: London (UK)
- High scores in People and Profit
- Challenges: afordability and congestion
- Planet: score is in the upper quartile and its main challenges are the common ones for other
large cities (air quality and waste management)
Completing the top 5:
- 2. Stockholm (+planet)
- 3. Edinburgh (+people)
- 4. Singapore (+profit)
- 5. Vienna (+planet)
On the top 20 we can mainly find European metropolis, some Asian cities and some US cities.
The bottom 10 is composed by Asian and African cities, and it is the profit pillar that lowers their
scores and puts them in that position.
Latin American cities like Santiago (Chile), Sao Paulo (Brasil), Mexico City, and Buenos Aires
(Argentina), are on the top of the bottom quartile, and generaly perfom better in the people and
planet pillars.

Determinants for good ranking in:

- Planet:
o low carbon energy infrastructure
o significant green spaces
o investment in low carbon transport infrastructure
- Profit:
o extreme disparities in income
o employment
o tourism
o ease of doing business
o Output
o Innovation infrastracture
- People:
o Affordability
 o Health
o Education
o digital infrastructure

“Sustainable cities can be thought of as places that are planned and managed with consideration for
social, economic, environmental impact, providing a resilient habitat for existing populations,
without compromising the ability of future generations to experience the same.”
Planet Sub.Index

 SDGs
o Clean water
o Sanitation
o Clean Energy
o Climate Action
 Top 10 cities are distinguished by:
o Lots of green space
o Below average air pollution
o Effective waste manegement
o low-carbon infrastructure
 Upper quartile is composed by Europan or North American cities, and 4 from Canada
 Stockholm is the leader:
o Investment in sustainable infrastracture
o Low emissions
o Good air quality
 Waste mangement is an
important challenge for
latin american cities
represented in the index,
however they are not
found in the bottom half.
https://s3.amazonaws.com/sustainabledevelopment.report/2019/2019_sdg_index_euro_cities.pdf
Cite:
This Index provides an overview of the European cities’ performance on SDGs, and in 2019 the
cities that led the dashboard were located in Northern Europe – this include cities like Oslo,
Stocholm, Helsinkiand Copenhagen. European cities genearlly perfom well in SDGs 2, 3, 6, 8 and
9.
However, these cities’ main challenges continue to be the environmental goals represented in SDGs
12-15. For instance, the emission of CO2 per capita are ranked highest in the world for the cases of
European cities, with large variation among them. Also, air pollution represents major challenges as
well in most cities. In fact, “concentration of particulate matter (2.5) in the air varies from 5.5
µg/m3 in Stockholm to 30.2 in Milan.”
  Copenhagen and Stockholm have set for themselves ambitious CO2 emmisions targets
 These 2 factors plus housing overburden contains these cities advance, specially on SDGs
11 and 13.

Top 4 of the 2019 SDG Index and Dashboards Report for European Cities (prototype version) is
made up by Copenhagen, Helsinki, Oslo and Stockholm. They ar characterized by:
- Low levels of povery and income enequalities
- High levels of access to public services
- High levels of quality in public services
- More than half of the energy consumed comes form renewable energy (not Helsinki)

https://s3.amazonaws.com/sustainabledevelopment.report/2019/2019USCitiesReport.pdf
Cite:
“US cities are at the forefront of the sustainable development challenge. They contain 80% of the
country’s population, and therefore have the capacity to make or break SDG achievement (US
Census Bureau 2016).”
- This report has used in the majority of cases the Metropolitan Statistical Area (MSA),
rather than using ciy limits, this terms are used interchangeably though.