Interview with Alexandra Delgado Jiménez: "Redesigning cities to reduce environmental impact would improve the quality of life"

Source:  theconversation.com

The coronavirus has halted what seemed like a collective awareness to achieve the longed-for ecological transition, but it is time to resume this unpostponable debate. The priority for action and change is the metropolitan areas that have emerged from uncontrolled urban expansion, whose design is irregular and dispersed. Redesigning cities to reduce their environmental impact is imperative in our time, which is becoming increasingly scarce.

More than half of the world's citizens live in cities and this percentage could reach almost 70% by 2050, according to UN forecasts. Millions of citizens travel several tens of kilometres from their homes to their workplaces every day, with the consequent problems of pollution and resource consumption that this entails. Optimisation is urgent and we need courageous policies to bring this to fruition.

About the necessary changes in the redesign of cities and how to face them I talk to Alexandra Delgado Jiménez, who is a professor and PhD in Urban Architecture and Senior Researcher of the At-the-oUTSET Group at the University of Nebrija.

In her latest article in The Conversation, she talks about how to redesign the cities that have emerged from the property boom. How important is it for ecology to face up to this change?

If we talk about ecology, cities are at the centre of the debate. They are centres of accumulation, consumption, production and even extraction of resources, as in the case of some African cities where urbanisation is not associated with industrialisation but with the extraction of raw materials for export. As far as production is concerned, in some territories such as Europe, cities play an increasingly minor role as centres of production and more as centres of decision and design in the international concert of cities. This means an increase in transport and its emissions in a hyperglobalised world as it is not produced where it is consumed.

UN estimates suggest that cities are responsible for 75 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions of CO2, with transport and buildings being the main contributors. This is compounded by the growing metrics of cities. As I commented in The Conversation article, last year, cities were already home to 55.71 percent of the world's population and the United Nations predicts that by 2050, 68 percent of the population, more than two-thirds of humanity, will be urban.

All this makes cities and urbanisation one of the major challenges of our century.

This is why strategies such as redesigning cities to reduce the environmental impact they generate represent an opportunity to improve the quality of life at a local level and life on the planet at a global level. In order to do this, it is essential to activate all urban functions, including those of production, avoiding the monoculture of uses (residential neighbourhoods, business parks, etc.). It is also important to make soft mobility (pedestrians and cyclists) viable for daily life, which means a drastic reduction in the use of private vehicles. The so-called "15-minute city" where the main needs are covered within an accessible radius without using motorised means.

How big has the "real estate boom" that you are talking about been?

The scale of the "real estate boom" in Spain is of a historical nature, it is a milestone in the modern history of our country and I think it is key to see its effects on the territory with the growth of artificial surface (dense city, low density city, motorways, etc.).

As I indicated in the recently published Sustainability Report in Spain 2020, by Fundación Alternativas, in the period 1990-2000, the average annual growth rate of the artificial surface in Spain has been 1.9%. And the average of the 23 countries in the CLC2000 programme was 0.68%, according to data from the Observatory of Sustainability in Spain. This trend shot up in Spain to 2.39% in the period 2000-2006, the main years of the "real estate boom". In the period 2006-2012 it fell again to 1.47%, a lower rate than in the first period analysed, but more than three times higher than the European average of 0.41%, according to data from the European Commission.

This means that in the period 1990-2000, the total increase in artificial surface area was 29.5% and six years later the accumulated increase for the period 1990-2006 was 52%, and for some authors, even higher, which means that in barely six years the growth of this type of soil was 21%, according to data from the Observatory of Sustainability in Spain. This shows the scale of the "real estate boom".

The uniqueness of artificialisation in Spain is that in addition to the scale, it has been focused as it has occurred especially around metropolitan areas and the Mediterranean arc.

A paradigmatic example is the Community of Madrid, which has gone from 64,808 hectares of anthropogenated land in 1990 to 126,220 hectares in 2018. This represents a growth of 94.76%, as pointed out by the researchers Córboba and Morcillo. In other words, artificial areas have doubled in less than thirty years.

Does this growth in cities have much to do with the empty Spain?

I don't like the term 'emptied', because the Spain with the smallest population is not emptied, it is full of heritage and ecosystems that work and protect us all, to name but a few. There are fewer people, valuable people, like those in my town, because it is an environment that is not always full of opportunities or services for those who live there. And this needs to be redirected.

With regard to the urban processes of growth and depletion, I believe that there would be a triple aspect, the concentration of the population in the large metropolises and coastal cities as almost endless urban strips; the increase and extension of urbanisation of the territory, in a colonisation of the territory, often of a suburban nature, of low density (single-family homes, isolated urbanisations, etc.) around the large urban centres, and finally, and derived from the above, the contraction of the rural world in terms of population, with the social, environmental and economic repercussions that this has.

Are our governments prepared to take on this change, and do you feel that they are taking it as a priority?

There is training, research and innovation in our country to take on this change. And there are issues that are becoming increasingly important, which a few years ago were unthinkable, such as low-emission areas or exemplary urban projects in terms of sustainability, promoted by public bodies.

But I believe that the city and the territory are not on the list of priorities of our governments, in general terms. It is true that there are honourable exceptions, with good practices that are shared worldwide, and with politicians who fight for their municipalities, for their territories, trying to put value without destroying. An example could be Vitoria-Gasteiz, which, with councils of different kinds, has committed itself to the continuity of the objective of being a green city.

As to whether these issues are a priority, it is obviously clear that there are more pressing problems such as unemployment, and the problems of the city and the territory, seem to remain at the bottom. But we must think that a new way of designing cities and intervening in the territory would mean more work, more quality of life and, above all, long-term benefits and benefits for the general interest.

Builders, businessmen, bankers... those who made gold from bricks in this country were many. How was it possible that such expansion was allowed to go unchecked?

In times of economic growth, with the strength of the real estate sector, urban planning has not been used to put up sufficient barriers, as we have all seen, but has even served to accompany the process, reducing limitations. Urban planning is not the cause of the "real estate boom", as is sometimes indicated, since it is only an instrument, that is giving power to the messenger. What is true is that in practice it has often been at the service of economic rather than environmental aspects, and hence the effects we have.

What is the first step in changing the situation?

Firstly, preserving and promoting the diversity of the city and the territory will be what allows more possibilities for development at a time of uncertainty in which the precautionary principle and objectives that are in the general interest must prevail. This translates into a commitment to simple but forceful strategies such as containing growth, protecting natural spaces, preserving productive land for agricultural use and rehabilitating it before it grows. And that urban interventions are focused on increasing diversity, the mix of uses, sustainability, that means promoting transformations that seek social justice.

I also believe that it is important to take into account what planning offers in order to improve the relationship between the social, economic and environmental dimensions, even if the timeframes do not respond to the immediacy of political life.

Can we, as citizens, make a contribution?

Very much, first of all, to be aware. We must realise that the challenge posed by the uncontrolled urbanisation of the territory, together with the fact that the future at world level will be more urban, means a new scenario. We cannot squander basic goods such as land, such as fertile soil, by sealing off land with great value. It makes no sense, and in many cases these changes are almost irreversible.

Territory and time are the two factors that describe how societies are in their space. In their transformations, we can observe how we live, how we consume space, territory and the environment, and the precautionary principle must prevail. I believe that we must live with the prudence of those who are going to live a hundred years.