Sustainable cities aim to reduce their environmental impact and dependence on surrounding areas by implementing changes such as growing food, reducing waste and pollution, and generating energy within the city. Examples of sustainable practices include green roofs, solar panels, and better public transportation.
A sustainable city is a city that has been designed with environmental concerns in mind. A large percentage of the human population worldwide lives in cities and urban areas, underscoring the need for sustainable practices in these environments. Sustainable cities aim to change the way they operate for the benefit of future generations, ensuring they do not place strain on resources that will cause those resources to vanish before future generations have the opportunity to benefit.
Sustainability is a complex subject. At a basic level, it involves practices that are designed to be sustainable over the long term, meaning that people can continue to use these practices without harming the environment, and possibly with some benefit to the environment. At the city level, sustainability encompasses a wide variety of changes, all aimed at reducing the environmental impact of the city as a whole. These changes may include changes in individual lifestyles made by citizens and changes in city-wide policy.
One of the goals of a sustainable city is to reduce needs and dependence on surrounding areas. As well as being environmentally friendly, this can also be cost-effective and can allow a city to be safer in the event of a natural or civil emergency. Reducing dependency on surrounding areas includes growing food in a city, reducing water needs and reusing water as much as possible, and generating energy within the city. The city can become independent from the surrounding area, reducing the stress on peripheral communities.
A sustainable city must also think about what is spreading in the surrounding environment. Sustainable cities want to reduce waste in addition to reducing pollution. This is especially important in cities with limited processing capacity for things like waste, as such materials can be pushed out to surrounding communities unless the city takes responsibility for them.
Some examples of things a sustainable city could implement include: green roofs, roof gardens, solar panels, bike paths, better public transportation, water recycling, centralized recycling plants, energy efficient heating and cooling systems for large buildings , reuse of building materials, changes to the workweek that reduces congestion, tighter air quality controls, permeable pavement, wind energy, and community service programs. These changes may not have immediate effects and can take years or decades to implement, but over time they can have a cumulative benefit. Simply installing green roofs in a sustainable city, for example, can radically reduce the temperature rise commonly associated with cities.
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