Climate Crisis Amid Pandemic Offers New Opportunities For Innovation In Urban Planning

The world will continue to urbanise over the next decade, and it’s likely that 68% of the global population will live in urban areas by 2050. The month of Urban October will end with World Cities Day on the last day of the month on Sunday when innovative ideas, best practices and solutions to build urban climate resilience will be exchanged.

The main Global Observance will be co-hosted by UN-Habitat and Egypt government in the city of Luxor. The theme for World Cities Day 2021 is ‘Adapting Cities for Climate Resilience’, reflecting the fact that climate change will have a huge impact on city residents with hundreds of millions of them experiencing floods, rising sea levels, storms and increasing periods of extreme temperatures.

It’s crucial to promote sustainable land and planning. The focus has to be on health benefits and disaster prevention which integrate spatial development approaches that cities can provide.

We are faced by a great number of questions. What kind of cities do we need to be able to address future pandemics and a wide range of other shocks?

COVID-19 highlights the critical role local governments play as frontline responders in crisis response, recovery and rebuilding. There is an urgent need to rethink and transform cities to respond to the reality of COVID-19 and potential pandemics, and to recover better, by building more resilient, inclusive and sustainable cities.

Similarly, the New Urban Agenda adopted at the United Nations Conference on Housing and Sustainable Urban Development (Habitat III) in Quito, Ecuador, in 2016 — about people, planet, prosperity, peace and partnerships in urban settings – can’t also be ignored.

Well, urbanisation is real. Integrated city planning is an old-school thought that still brings together multiple disciplines, people, ideas and expertise to create long-lasting, resilient and equitable cities. Even innovative ways of looking at cities’ needs. How can we rethink our environment to meet decarbonisation targets and improve city resilience?

Cities like Bhubaneswar or elsewhere in Odisha must think of having neighbourhood not in isolation, but as part of a system that will contribute to decarbonising. Cities must make them more resilient to the transformation required for a more sustainable way of life.

Cities like Bhubaneswar, Cuttack, Puri, Berhampur, Rourkela etc. urgently need to break the link between neighbourhood and greenhouse gas emissions by decarbonising the processes, so that neighbourhood can build new buildings, infrastructure and places — and adapt and repurpose everything which is there — without adding to global climate change.

This is not just about recognising how good greening initiatives look and feel, although the well-being aspects of cities are still vital. It’s also about how meaningful they really are, and how embedded they are in ideas about sustainability and social responsibility. An inspirational environment for physical and sensory encounters with nature is essential while also sustaining and enhancing city’s core natural resources of cleaner air, water and extensive biodiversity.

Yes there is no magic switch for our cities to achieve everything including climate resilience. So Bhubaneswar needs to innovate, intervene and act at every scale to change the trajectory and thrive in future. That will be possible if urban planners, designers, planners, engineers, policymakers, investors, decision-makers, communities and individuals put in a combined effort, build on each other’s expertise and come together to achieve collective goal of city resilience and decarbonisation. For that to happen, a radical and integrated approach to city planning and governance is needed.

Cities like Amsterdam, London, Seoul, Melbourne, Curitiba, Bhubaneswar are all hubs of innovation and human ingenuity — and potential centres for transformative action to implement the Sustainable Development Goals and build a zero-carbon, climate-resilient cities.

Interestingly, World Cities Day this year falls on the first day of UN Climate Meeting in Glasgow. Cities can trust that political leaders of their countries are going to honour the pledges to slash greenhouse gas emissions and slow down global warming. Such commitment comes at a time when cities must be more resilient than ever before. They have been epicentres of the COVID-19 pandemic and are on the frontline of the climate crisis.

This pandemic not only exposed the pathetic state of people living in cities along with climate crisis, but also pushed the vulnerable to become orphans. At the same time, the pandemic offers new opportunities for all to deal with innovation in urban planning.