The future for Africa will be urban, but will it also be green? Answering this question is of paramount importance, as rapid African urban growth has had – and will have – a dramatic impact on the environment. The outward expansion of African urban settlements has increased the pressure on natural resources, fostering loss of biodiversity and the depletion of green spaces and exacerbating the consequences of climate change.
La sindaca di Parigi Anne Hidalgo ha promesso ai suoi cittadini la “15-minute city”, una città in cui quasi tutto è raggiungibile in 15 minuti; i sindaci di Milano e Los Angeles puntano invece alla “green recovery” con l’intenzione di trasformare le due città in un esempio da seguire all’interno del C40, il club delle 40 metropoli più sostenibili al mondo.
Com’è ormai noto, oltre la metà dell’umanità - vale a dire circa 3,5 miliardi di persone – già oggi vive nelle città, ed entro dieci anni ad abitare in aree urbane sarà quasi il 70% della popolazione mondiale. Due miliardi di nuovi “cittadini” che avranno un impatto senza precedenti sulla gestione quotidiana dei servizi essenziali: dall’approvvigionamento idrico, per esempio, fino all’amministrazione ordinaria del welfare, passando per il tema fondamentale della mobilità.
Negli ultimi anni, in seguito all’emergere di un interesse sempre maggiore nei confronti delle città, quali nuclei privilegiati in cui operano i processi globali, è tornato alla ribalta il concetto di “bene comune urbano”, portando alla luce le dinamiche sociali, economiche, giuridiche e politiche che lo contraddistinguono.
For many cities, the transportation changes brought about by the COVID-19 pandemic bring both promise and concern from a sustainability standpoint.
When talking about ecological transition, we mean that the world we live in cannot be split into parts to be managed separately without having any environmental consequences. Energy, mobility, waste, logistic, industry, infrastructures (green, blue and grey), tourism, society, wild life, etc. are all parts of the same system and we do need a holistic approach to manage them together.
Strong shifts in socio-economic trends, increasingly harsh environmental phenomena, and the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic are collectively challenging urban cities.
Post-industrialization and digitalization are global processes that are changing investments, infrastructure demands, and everyday behaviours in our cities.
Urban regeneration, by its very nature, affects relations between a territory, its urban structures, and its inhabitants.
Given that cities exhaust a substantial share of the world’s resources and correspondingly contribute to an equal amount of carbon emissions, urban regeneration will likely play a central role in the “ecological transition” process.
Awareness of — and concern for — the environment has grown enormously in the last twenty years, particularly over the past decade, impacting citizens, public services, operators, and investors.
The European Green Deal is the EU’s moonshot. Becoming climate neutral by 2050, transforming the economy, and leaving no one behind resets the priorities for the European project and refocuses our attention on Europe’s cities and urban areas.
On his first visit to France two months after becoming U.S. Special Presidential Envoy for Climate, John Kerry met with President Emmanuel Macron and members of his government. After the Ministers of Finance and Foreign Affairs, Kerry met one-on-one with Paris mayor Anne Hidalgo at the Hôtel-de-Ville, outlining the key role cities and local governments play in the ecological transition.
Back at the beginning of 2020, worldwide public debate very much focused on the fight against climate change. Some countries as well as the European Union (through its so-called “Green Deal”), ranked the ecological transition as the first goal in their political agendas. On the contrary, there were also leaders who strongly opposed any green policy and denied the risks and threats caused by climate change, including the United States and Brazil.
Climate change is arguably the greatest challenge of our times, with COVID-19 further highlighting the need for a sustainable future. Despite the pandemic, urbanization is not slowing globally. Covering just 3% of the Earth’s surface, metropolitan systems are currently home to 55% of human beings and are expected to increase dramatically over the next 20 years. Cities are also responsible for about 60% of greenhouse gas emissions and 70% of solid waste, while absorbing around 70% of global energy.