Transition – a change, shift or turn. Innovation – a creation, design or invention.

These two words will define the future of our cities.

Our hometowns exist for the health, safety and enjoyment of the people who live there. They are centres of economic vitality, places where the action is, cornerstones of learning, citadels of culture, and playgrounds for our children.

In our neighbourhoods, we shop, borrow books, walk in the park, eat out and hang out. People know our names and our dreams become realities here.

But our communities are in trouble. They overuse water, energy and materials; they disperse garbage, sewage and pollution into the air and water.

Our cities need to be redesigned to be in balance with nature; they must be integrated into the local ecosystem, not imposed upon it. Our buildings must be designed to be heated and cooled by nature as much as possible.

This is where transition and innovation come in. Our cities need to transition from fossil fuels to alternative energy, from wasting to efficiency, from sprawl to compactness.

In a nutshell, we must move from sustaining our communities to improving them. Our cities must become healthier, more connected and self-reliant.  

On February 22nd, the city council of Seattle announced the city will aim to become carbon neutral, and explore whether it can realistically commit to hitting that target by 2030. Achieving this goal would make Seattle the first carbon neutral city in the United States.

“Addressing climate changes is the most pressing moral issue we face as a society,” said Councilmember Mike O’Brien.

“Seattle has an opportunity to shape what a carbon neutral society can look like in a way that is both economically sustainable and socially just.”
 
Reinventing the Automobile, written by two engineers from GM’s advanced auto division and the head of MIT’s Smart Cities program, describes the sustainable city of the future in considerable detail. Here is a condensed sketch of that city:

Everything is linked up in a smart, integrated communications, power, and transportation network. The city “knows” which roads are congested and which parking spots are free. It can communicate to individuals what combination of walking, transit, and individual vehicles will get them where they’re going fastest. Vehicles are small, electric, modular, and – via sensors, GPS, and broadband wireless – intelligent, so they can pilot and park themselves. They can be charged by parking-integrated stations or even electromagnetic coils embedded in curbs, and since they’re interchangeable and easily customizable, they can be public goods (like today’s car-sharing services), easily swapped out and thus continuously in use.

The city uses the vehicles’ batteries as distributed energy storage, along with other storage options including pumped hydro integrated into the sewer system. Rooftops, parking lots, and other marginal lands are covered with solar panels; small-scale wind turbines are perched on bridges and towers; cogeneration systems are attached to every industrial facility. Through smart design and sensing, every building and neighbourhood maximizes efficiency. The city senses power demand, knows where power is being produced and stored, and continuously balances supply and demand.

Pictures tell a thousand words and the preceding images give us a taste of the transformation and redesign our cities – the places where most of the world’s population lives – will undergo in the years to come.

Seattle is just one of dozens of cities – big and small – that is pioneering sustainable change.  Here are some of the ways that Worldchanging’s Sarah Kuck imagines cities will be different in a bright green future:

In a carbon neutral city, cars are no longer king. Land use policy and zoning laws are designed with people in mind, to bring us nearer to the people we want to see, and the goods and services we need to live, learn and work. Through these new plans, development will be more compact, people will walk where they need to go and green spaces will proliferate.

Innovations in transportation help to shift the focus from moving the most cars the farthest distances in the least time, to getting the most people to the places they want to be most effectively.

In a bright green city, water is something everyone will think about because they will have more information and access to the resource. Here, every raindrop that falls on a building is used – each drop is recycled and used again onsite. Water use is monitored in our homes and clearly marked on the things we buy. Innovators tell us that we will be able to capture all our water on site and reuse it before we send it away.

In the carbon neutral city, we’ll live so close to food sellers you can walk there. Farming innovators say that, with the exception of a few international products (coffee, chocolate, etc), most of the food available will come from nearby farms, if not from farms within the city itself. More people will grow their own food. Educated on the physical and climate effects of meat, most of us choose to eat only locally raised chicken on special occasions.

In a bright green city, cradle-to-cradle designers create goods with their next use in mind and landfills are a thing of the past. Products are less toxic because they have to be used longer and over again, are not designed to break but to be fixed and are meant to be shared.  In carbon neutral cities, we are all aware that there is no “away.” Each item is designed to be reborn as something new or is capable of decomposing. Composting masters work together at centres to create new organic material, reuse specialists collect and redistribute larger items and technology workers are trained to retool and upgrade technology and small items are effortlessly repaired at recovery parks.

In the carbon neutral city, it’s essential to include and support everyone. Bright green city philosophy states that equality is an essential part of creating sustainability. Research shows that people who are taken care of and shown respect are able to think beyond their basic needs, and have the energy and motivation to take care of themselves and others.

In a bright green city, business people care about the triple bottom line – people, planet and profit. Success is not just measured by how much money a company can make, but also by how much good they can do for the people and places they operate in and for. Companies support carbon neutrality as a business goal.

In a carbon neutral city, citizens are engaged in the political process because they know that the more they are, the more is possible. In such a city, politics are transparent, people are involved, and everyone knows that by working together, positive change happens.

In a bright green city, our laws, regulations, infrastructure, built spaces, economics, behaviours, and values are embedded in sustainability. We will use them to turn our cities into new creations.
Communities are about what we can and should do for each other. Innovating the transition to our future is our challenge.