Cities are engines of innovation as well as fashion, art, finance, and science, and they have been for every great civilization, whether it’s the ci

The Future of Post-Industrial Cities

submited by
Style Pass
2021-05-22 15:00:04

Cities are engines of innovation as well as fashion, art, finance, and science, and they have been for every great civilization, whether it’s the cities of China, Egypt, Persia, Greece; the Mayans and the Romans; Venice in the 16th century, or Paris, London, and New York in the 18th, 19th, and 20th. Not everything is great about the great cities but more than we might think.

Eight years ago, we had a podcast interview with the author of a then-new book, The Environmental Benefits of Cities. Its author argued that cities get a bad rap when it comes to consuming natural resources, pollution, ecological disruption—because of their density, cities actually do better on these measures when looked at per-capita. Similarly, cities are thought to be inherently prone to infectious diseases, and not only historically, it seems borne out by the coronavirus pandemic, which hit cities first and hardest, especially New York, the San Francisco Bay Area, Seattle, and Los Angeles—yet cities also showed an ability to suppress the pandemic, as New York, for example, by the summer, was posting some of the lowest numbers in the nation.

As our climate warms, we need to look at the opportunities cities offer. For example, while most of the U.S. went in the direction of fossil fuel-based transportation networks, New York’s has been largely electric ever since the first subway lines were laid down in the 1890s. Opportunities abound for recycling, reuse, and shorter per-capita supply chains. Five out of every eight people in the U.S.—62 percent—live in an incorporated place, but they take up only 3.5 percent of the U.S.’s land area.

Leave a Comment