Help Tip the Planet grow by contributing to an article. Learn how.
City planning tips
From TipThePlanet
In the 2005 UN Green Cities Declaration it is recognised that for the first time in history, the majority of the planet's population now reside in cities, and that cities consume 75% of the world’s natural resources creating environmental challenges. To ensure a viable future, the City must take a leadership role and address the impacts placed on the environment by urbanization and a growing populace. The Urban Environmental Accords contain action items that lay the groundwork for addressing universal urban environmental issues on energy, waste reduction, urban design, urban nature, transportation, environmental health and water issues.
Contents |
[edit] Energy
- Increase the use of renewable energy to meet 10% of the city’s peak electric load within seven years
- Reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 25% by 2030 and include a system for accounting and auditing these emissions. See also Capacity-building tips.
[edit] Waste reduction
- Implement "user-friendly" recycling and composting programs with the goal of reducting by 20% per capita solid waste disposal to landfill and incineration in 7 years.
[edit] Urban design
- Mandate a green building rating system standard that applies to all new municipal buildings
- Promote Energy-efficient mortgages
- Advance higher density, mixed use, walkable, bikeable and disabled accessible neighbourhoods which coordinate land use and transportation with open space sytems for recreation and ecological restoration
- Create environmentally beneficial jobs in slums and/or low-income neighborhoods.
[edit] Urban nature
- Ensure that there is an accessible public park or recreational open space within 1/2 kilometer of all residents by 2015.
- Conduct an inventory of existing canopy coverage in the City; and, then establish a goal to plant and maintain canopy coverage in not less than 50% of all available sidewalk planting sites.
- Protect critical habitat corridors and other key habitat characteristics from unsustainable development.
[edit] Transportation
- Expand affordable public transportation coverage to within 1/2 kilometer of all city residents in ten years.
- Phase down sulfur levels in diesel and gasoline fuels, use advanced emission controls on all public fleets to reduce particulate matter and smog-forming emissions from those fleets by 50% in seven years.
- Reduce automobile subsidies and fuel subsidies
- Promote clean technologies, fuel substitution and vehicle maintenance
- Implement a policy to reduce the percentage of commute trips by single occupancy vehicles by 10% in seven years.
[edit] Environmental Health
- Every year, identify one product, chemical or compound that is used within the city that represents the greatest risk to human health and reduce or eliminate its use by the municipal government.
- Support the public health and envronmental benefits of locally grown organic foods. Ensure that 20% of all city facilities (including schools) serve locally grown and organic food within seven years.
- Establish an Air Quality Index (AQI) to measure the level of air pollution and set the goal of reducing by 10% in seven years the number of days categorized in the AQI range as “unhealthy” or “hazardous.”
[edit] Water
- Develop policies to increase adequate access to safe drinking water, aiming at access for all by 2015. For cities with potable water consumptions greater than 100 liters per capita per day, adopt and implement policies to reduce consumption by 10% by 2015.
- Protect the ecological integrity of the city’s primary drinking water sources (i.e. aquifers, rivers, lakes, wetlands and associated ecosystems)
[edit] Links
- SustainLane's 2006 U.S. City Rankings of the nation’s 50 largest cities are the U.S.'s most complete report card on urban sustainability. The indicators gauge, for instance, which cities’ public transit, renewable energy, local food, and development approaches are more likely to either limit or intensify the negative economic and environmental impacts of fossil fuel dependence. See also Fossil Fuels.
