July 2017 – Promoting Urban Sustainability in the Arctic

What Does a Sustainable City Look Like?

July 30, 2017July 30, 2017UncategorizedLeave a Comment

Over the past year, as Arctic PIRE researchers worked to develop an appropriate set of indicators by which to measure urban sustainability in Arctic cities, the team wrestled with notions of “Arctic,” “urban,” and “sustainability,” for none of which is there a single, universally accepted definition. “Arctic” was settled on as being the region above 60˚ North, as a sort of average of the many geographical and geopolitical parameters that are used to define the Arctic. “Urban” is defined functionally as a densely populated area that serves diverse social, cultural, economic, and political functions, and has a minimum population size of 12,000 people. “Sustainability” is perhaps the most difficult to pin down, as noted by the volumes of research grappling with the concept. How should sustainability be defined, particularly as it relates to Arctic cities?

The 1987 Brundtland Commission definition of sustainability as “meeting the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs” has guided research and served as a driver for countless initiatives, though the definition is incredibly broad, and plenty of other definitions have been proposed. In the urban context, the UN Sustainable City Program defined the sustainable city as one that is able to retain the supply of natural resources while achieving economic, physical, and social progress, and remain safe against environmental risks that could undermine development. For Arctic cities, along with others, climate change presents a significant environmental risk to both development and the preservation of natural resources. As the Arctic faces these unfolding environmental changes, Arctic cities are facing similar challenges to other global cities in achieving economic, physical, and social progress. A sustainable Arctic city will be one that can meet its social, cultural, environmental, and political needs, alongside economic and physical objectives, while ensuring equitable access to all services by residents, without draining the city’s resources (Rogers 1997).

Brent Toderian, an urban planner and urban sustainability expert, proposed eight pillars of a sustainable city that represent some of the broader sustainability ideas but also outline concrete representations of sustainability in an urban environment, applicable to all cities, including those in the Arctic.

A Complete walkable community in which mixed use facilities and mixed housing meet the varied needs of residents and various price points to ensure affordability, and the community is designed to protect the natural features.

A low-impact transportation system that prioritizes cycling and walking, and incorporates many alternatives to single-person automobile use.

Green buildings that use green design such as LEED, and include many multi-family dwellings.

Flexible open space that accommodate both community and ecological needs including natural habitat, recreation, and space for growing food.

Green infrastructure that addresses the supply and management of energy, water and waste, and includes innovative and financially viable heating and cooling options.

A healthy food system that includes community garden space and food outlets, as well as preserving social and cultural food celebration, and incorporates other creative food-producing outlets.

Community facilities and programs that support a healthy lifestyle for community members of all ages, that promote safety and well-being, and that foster community connection.

Economic development including opportunities for business, investment, and employment, and includes a range of commercial facilities.

These pillars help to envision what a sustainable Arctic city would look like, and to begin to measure cities’ progress towards these ideals.

The Link Between Urban Density and Sustainability

July 12, 2017UncategorizedLeave a Comment

The city center in Luleå, Sweden, is a tree-lined pedestrian- and bicycle-only thoroughfare lined with shops and restaurants. The city buildings are, with few exceptions, only a few stories tall. At the periphery stand a few apartment buildings, each four to five stories tall, and most in the same iconic colorful batten on board construction as the houses in the surrounding neighborhood. On a weekday, the city hums with life: commuters headed to work on city buses, shoppers with their pull-behind wheeled carts, young parents following toddlers on stride bikes, and a gaggle of middle-school-aged girls headed to the beach. Gingerbread rooflines and lush green spaces throughout and surrounding the city lend a quiet storybook charm to the city.

Luleå is a low-density city, and many of the city’s residents live in neighborhoods well beyond the city center. The sprawl of Luleå is partly due to the topography—the coastal city encompasses a number of islands and peninsulas and has developed around the numerous inlets and lakes, but increasing the density of the city center would decrease the breadth of sprawl and concentrate a greater percentage of the population in the city. Would increasing the density of Luleå’s city center, however, decrease the quality of life for the city’s residents? Does an increase in density necessarily decrease green space, community space, or other spaces that contribute to the well-being of a city’s residents? These are important questions to consider, as density is a key quality for sustainability in terms of resource use in urban centers, but excessively high density or poorly managed density can negatively impact the health and social sustainability of a city.

Poorly managed density leads to overcrowding. There may be a minimum threshold of square footage of dwelling space per person required to not be considered overcrowded, but generally overcrowding is linked to management and perception. Population density in a stadium is not perceived as problematic, but a much lower level of density feels intolerable in highway traffic. The perception and tolerance for density or overcrowding is informed in part by cultural factors: levels of acceptable density are perceived differently in Kolkata and Stockholm. Overcrowding can be thought of as the stress experienced because of too high a population density in a given set of circumstances (Kutner 2016). Overcrowding, rather than population density, can lead to increased tension between residents and sometimes result in violence. From a management perspective, overcrowding is the result of inadequate management and provision of resources such as water, electricity, and housing.

In Jakarta, Indonesia, high population density has led to overcrowding because of inadequate infrastructure (IRIN 2010; Hamer 2014). Without sufficient clean water sources, adequate roads and transportation networks, or sewage treatment, the quality of life for residents is extremely low, and the city has been ranked as one of the worst in Asia for ease of doing business. Recent efforts to improve transportation through increased rail transit has thus far been stymied by lack of funding and poor coordination between levels of government (Hamer 2014).

High-density, low-rise development is the ideal for urban layouts, striking a balance between efficiency and quality of life, but small dwelling units are required to adequately increase urban density (Patel 2011). High-density development increases the efficiency with which municipal services can be provided, creates economies of scale, and preserves the surrounding natural environment. High-density urban development is also a prerequisite for effective public transportation networks, an important component for achieving urban sustainability. A 1977 study by Boris S. Pushkarev and Jeffery M. Zupan shows that public transit works best where residential density exceeds 4200 persons per square mile.

High-rise buildings and vertical cities (high-rise buildings with other self-contained municipal functions such as water treatment and power generation) offer one potential solution to increase density in cities and maximize efficiency in transportation, infrastructure, and service provision. But high-rise living is not without its drawbacks. First, not everyone is interested in this type of lifestyle- young, single men are generally the most amenable to the idea. Second, high-rise living can present some health challenges: children’s physical development may be stifled by the constraints of available play facilities; respiratory infections are more prevalent among women and children living in high-rise buildings; and high density developments can have a negative influence on mental health by reducing community interaction and increasing tensions (Wong 1998; Young 1976).

Population growth, migration, and urbanization in Arctic cities mimics global urbanization trends. With two-thirds of the world’s population predicted to live in cities by the year 2050 (UN 2014), it’s important to consider urban density and management to increase sustainability, improve quality of life, and decrease the negative effects of overcrowding.

Arctic Cities on the Move: Adapting to Environmental Changes through Relocation

July 7, 2017Uncategorized1 Comment

At the edge of town, a brand new playground sits unused, the swings perfectly still. The park is eerily quiet, with only a distant excavator piercing the silence. A lone Arctic Hare looks at me before bounding off. A few white wildflowers are blooming along the edges of the wide crushed gravel paths, but otherwise there’s not much in the way of life here. Each of the park’s quadrants are buffered by a low wall made of wire cages containing bits of brick and concrete rubble. Benches are made from the same. Beyond these rubble walls sit a row of vacant brick buildings, the windows removed, and a menagerie of plumbing fixtures on the lawn. These buildings are destined to become nothing but rubble like that which forms this park. A pair of blue banners boast “decommissioning for continued mining” in Swedish and English. Kiruna, Sweden, is slowly packing up and moving the whole city three kilometers east because of destabilization due to iron mining.

*These houses too are destined to become nothing but the rubble that fills the wire cages in the foreground. Photo by the author.*

Kiruna is one of many Arctic cities that has chosen relocation as an adaptation to environmental changes. Whether primary human activity, secondary effects of anthropogenic climate change, or other natural phenomena, environmental changes in the Arctic often present cities with limited means of adaptation other than relocation.

In Kiruna, the nearby iron mine is both the lifeblood and the angel of death for the city. The iron ore runs deep, and inconveniently right under the current city center. The choice between ceasing mining and adapting to the destabilization hardly seemed like a choice. While tourism is booming here north of the Arctic circle, this is first and foremost a mining town, and if not for the mine, Kiruna would not exist at all. And so the city is moving. The most vulnerable buildings have already been removed, and just outside of town, a handful of historic buildings sit on trailers, having been liberated from their foundations, and await relocation to the new city site. Eventually the whole city center will be relocated, and buildings that the town has identified as historically or culturally important—the clock tower, the cathedral, iconic “inkwell” houses—will be moved to the new site, while less important buildings such as the 1960s-era brick buildings built as company housing will be dismantled. LKAB, the state-owned mining company, is required by Swedish mining law to replace any housing that is destroyed due to the mine, and so new housing will be built in the new city.

*The Kiruna iron mine in the background, and debris from deconstructed city buildings in the foreground. Photo by the author.*

Signs around town proclaim that Kiruna is a “City on the Move!” Tour guides who take visitors deep into the iron mine paint a rosy picture of the development of the new city, and indeed the architectural renderings imagine a modern city that reflects that cultural history and the Arctic identity of the city. But walking among the piles of debris, with signs of destruction everywhere, it’s hard not to wonder about what will be lost. While Kiruna adapts to an environmental catastrophe of its own making, it is not the only Arctic city to turn to relocation as a means for adapting to a changing environment.

In 1649, the town of Luleå, Sweden, was moved from its original site because of decreasing sea level. Post-glacial rebound, the process by which land rises after being freed of the weight of a glacier, caused the effective decrease in ocean levels leaving the bay too shallow for ships to enter. These days the old city site, now referred to as Gammelstad (meaning old town), is an UNESCO World Heritage Site and visited mostly by tourists and for special events. The modern city of Luleå still relies heavily on shipping, and continues to face the same challenge of post-glacial rebound and decreasing sea levels as in the past. Old timers remember islands that were previously accessible only by boat, but are now separated instead by mud bars, allowing people to wade between the smaller islands. The municipality of Luleå plans to deepen the port to allow bigger ships, but even if not for this multi-billion kronor project, the city would have to continuously dredge the harbor just to continue to allow ships that are currently using the port. Modern technology that makes dredging an option means that for now, Luleå won’t have to resort to relocation as the only method to preserve the city’s viability.

*A row of wooden church cottages lead to the cathedral in Gammelstad, Luleå. Photo by the author.*

While in Kiruna, the decision has been made to continue the activity that necessitates relocation, and in Luleå alternative measures can be used to adapt to environmental changes, coastal and island towns in the Arctic such as Shishmaref, Alaska, have fewer options and much less influence over the changes that affect their towns. Sea level rise threatens to overtake the barrier island on which Shishmaref is located. Investing in sea walls and coastal barriers help mitigate the effects of rising sea levels in the short-term but in the long-term, leaving is the only viable choice. While climate refugees in Louisiana and the Carteret Islands were resettled in other communities, the village of Shishmaref plans to relocate the whole town. Relocating a whole community may help preserve some community social networks, but comes at no small price. The relocation of Shishmaref will cost an estimated US$180 million, and so far the source of that funding is uncertain. Shishmaref is one of 31 villages that the Arctic Institute estimates will need to be relocated on account of rising sea levels due to climate change.

The residents of Shishmaref voted 89 to 78 in favor of relocation, with opinions largely split among age groups. While some voted against the move because of trepidation of the new site that was chosen, many of the older residents see the island as their home, and though they might retain their families, neighbors, and social networks in the move, the places that have framed their lives- their house, the school, the land itself- would be lost. It’s hard to tell whether relocating an entire town helps to preserve social capital more effectively than resettling individual residents. Relocating an entire town or city is an extreme measure for adapting to environmental changes but as climate change progresses causing thawing permafrost and rising sea levels, many Arctic cities will face few options other than to pack up and leave.