International Institute for Environment and Development (IIED), 3 Endsleigh Street, London WC1H 0DD, UK.
Philos Trans A Math Phys Eng Sci. 2011 May 13;369(1942):1762-83. doi: 10.1098/rsta.2010.0350.
With more than half the world's population now living in urban areas and with much of the world still urbanizing, there are concerns that urbanization is a key driver of unsustainable resource demands. Urbanization also appears to contribute to ever-growing levels of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. Meanwhile, in much of Africa and Asia and many nations in Latin America and the Caribbean, urbanization has long outstripped local governments' capacities or willingness to act as can be seen in the high proportion of the urban population living in poor quality, overcrowded, illegal housing lacking provision for water, sanitation, drainage, healthcare and schools. But there is good evidence that urban areas can combine high living standards with relatively low GHG emissions and lower resource demands. This paper draws on some examples of this and considers what these imply for urban policies in a resource-constrained world. These suggest that cities can allow high living standards to be combined with levels of GHG emissions that are much lower than those that are common in affluent cities today. This can be achieved not with an over-extended optimism on what new technologies can bring but mostly by a wider application of what already has been shown to work.
随着全球一半以上的人口现在居住在城市地区，而且世界上还有很多地区正在城市化，人们担心城市化是不可持续的资源需求的主要驱动因素。城市化似乎也导致温室气体（GHG）排放不断增加。与此同时，在非洲和亚洲的大部分地区以及拉丁美洲和加勒比地区的许多国家，城市化的速度早已超过了地方政府的能力或意愿，这可以从居住在质量差、过度拥挤、非法住房中缺乏供水、卫生、排水、医疗和学校设施的城市人口比例很高这一事实中看出。但有充分的证据表明，城市地区可以将高标准的生活水平与相对较低的温室气体排放和较低的资源需求结合起来。本文借鉴了一些这样的例子，并考虑了这些例子对资源有限的世界中城市政策的意义。这些例子表明，城市可以在不依赖于对新技术能带来什么的过度乐观的情况下，实现高标准的生活水平与今天富裕城市中常见的温室气体排放量低得多的结合。这可以通过更广泛地应用已经证明有效的方法来实现，而不是过分依赖新技术。
