San Francisco, Amsterdam Work Toward Sustainability

Photo: San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom/Photo courtesy of Wikipedia

San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom and Cisco Chief Globalization Officer Wim Elfrink, along with Amsterdam Mayor Job Cohen, presented the latest developments in the Connected Urban Development (CUD) initiative in Bangalore, India, on Tuesday. They discussed the Urban EcoMap, the newest piece of the CUD program.

The EcoMap is designed to allow citizens to make informed decisions regarding the effect that their actions -- or inactions -- have on their environment. The online application's aim is to help foster healthy competition between cities as they lower their environmental impact. It's is also meant to serve as an example of how to incorporate technology into a city setting so that it encourages citizen participation.

"We look at sustainability as three elements: economic, environmental and social. Some cities are aging and need to reinvent themselves; some cities are exploding like Bangalore. Competition will be around cities," Elfrink said. "If the citizens are not buying into the concept, nothing will happen. We still build cities the same way we did 100 years ago. Technology in a lot of urban planning is still an afterthought. We have to start thinking out of the box."

The CUD, an offshoot of the Clinton Global Initiative, aims to demonstrate how incorporating technology into the foundation of urban development can enhance sustainability and diminish a city's carbon emissions. San Francisco, Amsterdam and Seoul, South Korea, are the founding CUD cities.

Newsom said that although San Francisco already achieved carbon emission levels lower than those of 1990 (an industry benchmark), citizen-facing technology that gives people actionable data is the key to keeping that trend going, and also will be fundamental strategy of urban planning in the decades ahead.

"The challenge for us is communicating the availability of this information. We have the most aggressive green building standards in America. But we give no thought to the issue of technology in that respect. How can we start looking at San Francisco and start looking at models of building sustainability? We're laboratories of innovation -- that's what cities are all about. Technology cannot be an afterthought; it must be front and center," Newsom said.

According to the presenters, incorporating technology and sustainability into existing cities and those yet to be built will be among the most critical challenges facing urban planners and elected leaders.

"In the next few decades, some 70 percent of people worldwide will live in cities. Cities have to act, and act now," Cohen said, citing tools like the EcoMap as first steps toward empowering citizens. "Bringing people to the idea of doing what they can is very important."

Yet the presentation struggled to address how technology and sustainability will reach or serve those who continue to live in rural areas. Newsom could only say that folding rural communities into a technology-driven sustainability environment will be a testing endeavor.

"Not everyone needs or wants to live in a city. It comes with great opportunity and some sacrifice. It's a great challenge of our time," he said.

Cohen, meanwhile, seemed to suggest that for the time, rural communities could be relegated to the backburner.

"So many people are living in cities and we have to do so much in the cities. That's the best approach to ameliorate our climate challenge. Focusing on the cities is the best we can do at the moment," he said.