The City Is Ecological, Not Artificial

Around 2000 A.D., cities became the predominant global human habitat, and this process is anticipated to dramatically increase, especially in developing nations.  By 2030, global urbanization is anticipated to become the habitat for 60% of the global human population, and increase to 70% by 2050.   Simultaneously, the global human population is anticipated to increase from the present 6.4 billion people to an estimated 8.1 billion by 2030.

Perhaps the most dramatic consequence of this transformation will involve an ongoing degradation of the Earth ecosystem.  Because of the intensity of impact, the relationship between population, urbanization and the environment will likely be the primary issue of the 21^st Century.  If all cities aspire to consume resources at the current rate of cities in developed nations, both human and nonhuman life are threatened with sustainability.  For example, to continue to sustain the levels of consumption of a city such as London is estimated to require an area of productive land and aquatic ecosystems to produce resources and absorb wastes that is equivalent to the entire productive land in the United Kingdom.  The population of the United States that comprises close to 5% of global population comprises 25% of world’s consumption of resources.  If the current global population was to consume resources at the rate of the North American population, it might require the equivalent of two additional planet Earths to accommodate the ecological load.

However, the environmental problem that is provoked by global urbanization may mask the beginning of an environmental opportunity.  Appearing to be at the vanguard of global destruction, urbanization may come to be understood as being at the vanguard of the recovery of the Earth ecosystem.  While expanding population and urbanization clearly will continue to have a harsh demand upon the Earth ecosystem, urbanization offers significant new adaptive environmental features. Approaching the city as an artificial imposition on nature emphasizes the deficits of the city and offers no escape forward with the city-form.  However, approaching the city as a natural event reveals positive or functional aspects of urbanization both to the human and non-human.  We are very good at noting problems but have a much more limited vocabulary to describe wellness or health, and this is especially true with regard to post-industrial life and nature. 

While attention to the adaptive features of urban ecology will expand the number of features, there are at least seven adaptive features that are the result of global urbanization, including

·      reducing the rate of population growth that environmental activism had failed to do  (It is even possible to imagine that by the end of the century, the global human population will be less than it is currently.);

·      freeing up landscape by increasing population density which opens an opportunity to rewild once-inhabited landscape;

·      becoming environmentally kinder to the planet in terms of the use of resources when compared to other human habitation as a model for the global human population of billions;

·      providing an “ark” for global human life and nonhuman life by increasing the opportunity for public health and life expectancy, and by enhancing nonhuman habitat within human settlements through reconciliation ecology;

·      driving a shift from a longstanding strategy of pioneering exploitation to a strategy of residency that aspires to integrate with the larger Earth ecosystem that pressures the city to “soften” as it shifts from a commercial center to become a habitat;

·      driving an ecologically centered economy to replace a longstanding industrial economy and that can produce rather than only consume resources;

·      becoming the primary support for environmentalism rather than its opponent, as environmentalism broadens from special interest advocacy in behalf of unsettled landscapes to become an apolitical public health interest; and

·      nurturing innovation.  Urbanization concentrates and encourages technical and cultural innovation.  While innovation can appear to be an exclusive cultural process, it is an expression of diversity within the human species.  Urbanization fosters specialization [diversity] and freedom from convention.   Innovation can be an environmental problem when it only serves anthropocentric interests, but it is available to serve any interest and can be crucial in shifting to an ecological care-centered economy.  Innovation can come both in the form of material diversity that can promote alternative technology as well as ecologically-friendly intentional entrepreneurial projects and “outsider” subgroup efforts to “soften” the hard urban grid.  Innovation can challenge the lag caused by traditional regulations and cultural priorities.

Perhaps the most remarkable illustration of adaptive features is the association between increasing urbanization and a decreasing rate of population growth.  Due largely to the support that urbanization offers migrants to cities, the increasing rate of global urbanization has decreased the rate of population growth from its explosive peak rate in 1963-64 of 2.2% to the current overall rate of 1.14%.  This current rate is anticipated to decrease to .91% by 2020 and to .46 by 2050.  This offers a remarkable opportunity for the global population to plateau at 8.4 after 2030 rather than to increase to a population of 10 or 11 billion persons by the next century, with a guarded probability that the global population may be lower at the end of the century than it was at 2001.  Already, one-third of the nations of the world are at a 2.1 replacement level, with some developed nations having populations that are anticipated to decline by as much as thirty percent by 2050.

The increasing reversal in global human migration is now toward the city rather than outward toward the unsettled landscape.  A now peopled Earth with no remaining vast physical frontiers is reversing a pioneering strategy of extracting resources and over-production in favor of a strategy of residency that favors integration with the larger Earth ecosystem.  An enduring naturally adaptive process of inhabitants’ “softening” of the hard urban grid that is the unpredictable heart of any city is increased as tenants shift to residents. 

Like a falling domino, one adaptation can drive other related adaptations that can be optimized as they come into awareness.  Efficient use of resources can unintentionally increase as population density increases.  Remarkably, the “peopling of the Earth” is being offset with perhaps half of the global population residing in less than three percent of the inhabited land area.  This increases the opportunity to rewild once-settled landscapes and to connect rewilded and unsettled ecosystems by developing corridors, and drive a supportive process of “reconciliation ecology” that enhances nonhuman processes even within cities.

Beyond these seven adaptive features, the post-modern city-form offers additional adaptive features yet to be discovered.  For example, there is a new overall perspective of human nature as an ongoing expression of the Earth.  This has application by encouraging integration with the larger Earth ecosystem for optimal health rather than separation from nature.  While appearing to be exclusively cultural, urban migration itself, the explosion of green technology, and even the globalization of electronic communication may express a natural adaptive process where technology serves nature more than rises above it.

Adaptive features can come directly out of urban environmental dilemmas.  Perhaps the most surprising feature is the new vision of environmental needs as economic opportunities rather than costs.  First, urban “waste” becomes “nutrient-rich,” with the city capable of becoming a producer rather than only a consumer of resources.  And even more important, the primary economic way forward is anticipated to shift from an industrial economy to an environmentally centered economy that is being built from innovations in green technology and services.

The peopling of the Earth, increasing global urbanization and environmental pressures have created a threshold where we cross over from a misperception of increasing isolation from nature to a perception of deep inclusion.  The city can be explored a “living” ecosystem that is ecologically adaptive and that can be enhanced.  Rather than the city as an intrusion into nature, it may be an ecological adaptation to sustain a population of billions. 

Environmentalism is shifting from being an adversarial advocacy in behalf of nonhuman landscapes to become an all-inclusive global public health strategy.  Attention shifts from excising what is wrong to optimizing what is not wrong.  Nature is enfolded into the city rather than distanced.  And rather than a backward step, it offers us an escape forward and centralizes the high-end strategies of usufruct—an economy of use without damaging the base—and obeisance—respect and reverence—to replace our simony, our selling of the ground of our being that is ultimately not just survival but also our optimal life.