Sustainability, The Point of no Return
Forging Our Own Doomsday:
Sometime in 2017, Earth crossed a point of no return; because of us! A sad truth that most ignore and very few are trying to create the needed sense of urgency around it. “The world will 'lose for ever' the chance to avoid dangerous climate change”, an article in The Guardian claims, based on an analysis done by the IEA (International Energy Agency); the root cause? Greenhouse effect.
The Blame Game:
Us, in the developing world, would love to believe that there is nothing we can do to help: co2 emissions are created by rich countries and we're victims. A Bloomberg article released in August 2014 by Charles Kenny states that “Global greenhouse gas emissions actually climbed faster from 2000 to 2010 than they did in the previous 30 years”; according to the 2014 IPCC Panel on Climate Change report, and that developed countries “have seen declining emissions” during the same period.
Fixing Problems, Causing Others On The Way:
Smart city ideas have been emerging in the past period, with one goal in mind: fixing issues created by the increased urbanization. But what if the smart city utopia had a bug? A side effect that defeats its own purpose if designers and architects are not careful? Even though Amsterdam Smart City (ASC) has the ultimate goal of reducing carbon dioxide emissions and become world leader in sustainability, the city is still suffering from one percent emissions rise annually according to an article in The Guardian titled “Smart cities: can they work?”. In fact, all smart city ideas are based on innovations that consume energy, which if not carefully designed, will contribute more to the greenhouse effect.
Can Smart Cities and Sustainability co-exist?
In his book “Big Data, Civic Hackers and The Quest for a New Utopia: Smart Cities”, Anthony Townsend argues that building a smart city is like an open heart surgery, if not done quick enough, it will fail! He thinks that the irreversible greenhouse effect will not be resolved if we do not “crack the code of sustainable design and bring the needed technologies to market” at the right time. To be able to do so on time, collaboration between all government entities, enterprises and citizens, the three pillars of a smart city, must be achieved with this goal in mind. It is instrumental to the success of Smart Cities design to have rules, regulations and governance around sustainability, which unites all government services, enterprise endeavors and technologies used by its citizens towards protecting our planet.
