Challenges and New Options for Cities: Economic, Technical, Environmental

• Saskia Sassen• Columbia University• www.saskiasassen.com

• (partly based on new 2014 book Expulsions)

THE CITYCOMPLEX BUT INCOMPLETE

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Situating city in a planetary space via the environmental question

• Bridging the ecologies of the biosphere and of the city

• In Expulsions (new book 2014) I develop these two propositions

• Going to ground level—replication across the world constitutes a specific type of planetary space linked to the environment

• exits the state hierarchy and the interstate frame, which accounts for less and less of what happens

Major threats to the urbanity of the city— what I like to think of as cityness.

- Isolated excess density-Too much tech in buildings subject to

accelerated obsolescence-Growing inequality

-Modest households evicted from homes-Super-prime luxury housing market

-Massive buying of rural land that expels small farmers and rural economies

DE-URBANIZING A CITY

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The need to urbanize technology

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DEAD CITIES

Urbanizing technology

• Requires more than only understanding particular features of cities

• Requires also “seeing” as a city: • juggling the diversity of elements that

constitute urban space:• a multi-perspective approach.

The City as Hacker

• Of spaces• Of technologies• Of individual’s self-interest: the capacity of

making a collective good even if the individuals involved are selfish and nasty.

• Of excessively rigid technological systems

Growing inequality

Income Share of top 10% earners, USA 1917-2005

25%

30%

35%

40%

45%

50%

19

17

19

22

19

27

19

32

19

37

19

42

19

47

19

52

19

57

19

62

19

67

19

72

19

77

19

82

19

87

19

92

19

97

20

02

Sh

are

(in

%),

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din

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*Income is defined as market income but excludes capital gainsSource: Mishel, L. 2004. “Unfettered Markets, Income Inequality, and Religious Values.” Viewpoints. May 19, 2004. Economic Policy Institute. Retrieved July 26, 2008 [ www.epi.org/content.cfm/webfeatures_viewpoints_moral_markets_presentation.]

% Growth in After-Tax Income, USA 1979-2007

When modest neighborhoods become part of global finance

• 1. They key is that the source of profits for financial firms of sub-prime and other mortgages for low- and modest-income households is NOT payment on the mortgage.

• 2. The source of profits is the bundling of a large number of these mortgages to sell them on to investors, including banks and foreign investors. It worked because they were mixed up with high quality debts of all sorts.

Expulsions: Foreclosures

• 2006 : 1.2 million foreclosures, up 42% from 2005. This is: One in every 92 U.S. households

• 2007: 2.2 million forecls, up 75% from 06• 2008: 3.1 million, up 81% from 07• 2009: 3.9 million (or 1 in 45 US hholds)• (From 2007 to 2009: 120% increase in forecls)• 2010: 2.9 mill forecls. (2006-2010: over 13 mil)

• Source: RealtyTrac 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010; Blomquist 2011

Super-Prime Housing Market

• Monaco 18.9 million $Russian, CIS, UK, Italian, Scandinavian, Swiss

• London 15.9 million$Russian, French, South African, Italian, Indian, UAE, Greek, Australian, US, Canadian

• New York City 10 million$UK, French, Italian, Spanish, Mainland Chinese, Singaporean, Australian, Brazilian, Argentine, Canadian

More

• Dubai $8.0mAfrican (Kenyan, Somali, Tanzanian), Saudi Arabian, Russian, Indian, Iranian

• Paris 8.8 million$Russian, CIS, Middle Eastern, Italian, French, Benelux, German, UK, US

• Moscow $7.8m CIS

More • Singapore 8.3 m$

Indonesian, Mainland Chinese, Malaysian, Indian, Australian, UK

• Shanghai 6.4 million $Hong Kong,Taiwanese, US, Canadian, Korean, Singaporean, Australian, Japanese, Malaysian, German, French

• Hong Kong 15.4 m$Mainland Chinese

In the shadows of “urbanization”

One instance

• From 2006 to 2010: 220 million hectares of land in Afri, LatAm, Cambodia, Ukraine etc bought/leased by rich governments, firms, financial firms

• The land is now more valued than the people or activities on it

• The active making of surplus populations• Novel assemblage of Territory/Authority/Rights

The Urbanizing of “Global Governance Challenges”

• Many of our global challenges, from climate change to refugee flows, become concrete and urgent in cities.

• Cities have had to develop capabilities to handle these challenges long before national states signed treaties or passed laws on these challenges.

Using complexity

• The complex systemic and multi-scalar capacities of cities are a massive potential for a broad range of positive articulations with the biosphere’s complex ecologies.

Bridging the ecologies of cities and of the biosphere

• Cities are a type of socio-ecological system that has an expanding range of articulations with the biosphere’s ecologies.

• Today, most of these articulations produce

environmental damage. • How can we begin to use these articulations to

produce positive outcomes that allow cities to contribute to environmental sustainability.

Delegating back to the biosphere

• Rather than short-circuiting bio-cycles with problematic technology we can delegate back to the biosphere

• Delegating is NOT “returning to nature.”

• E.g. bacterium that produces a molecule of plastic out of brown waters—a biodegradable plastic

Algae and Bacteria

• Algal Wastewater processingUsing bioreactors (essentially controlled ponds)

that combine bacteria and algae

• Algal Fuel Generation/Carbon Sequestration

• Produce ethanol directly from biologically modified algae in bioreactors.

Self-Healing Concrete Bacteria residing within concrete structures seals cracks and

reduces the permeability of concrete surfaces by depositing dense layers of calcium carbonate and other minerals.

• Human structures would thus more closely model the self-sustaining homeostatic physical structures found in nature.

•Hen M Jonkers “Self Healing Concrete: A Biological Approach” in Self Healing Materials: An Alternative Approach to 20 Centuries of Materials Science Springer 2007 pp.195-204

Algal Wastewater processing

• Using bioreactors (essentially controlled ponds) that combine bacteria and algae:

• Nitrate contaminated water can be cleaned, and gaseous Nitrogen (N2) can be recycled into the atmosphere.– Garcia, Mujeriego and Hernandez-Marine. “High

rate algal pond operating strategies for urban wastewater nitrogen removal” Journal of Applied Phycology 2000 (12) pp.331-339

Algal Fuel Generation/Carbon Sequestration

• Algenol Biofuels is developing a process that produces ethanol directly from biologically modified algae in bioreactors. This process takes sunlight and carbon dioxide (obtained in a concentrated form by capturing carbon dioxide released from fossil fuel burning power plants). The company reports that their prototype strains of algae can produce ethanol at a rate of 6,000 gallons/acre/year and aim to reach efficiency of 10,000 gal./acre/year. This compares to 250-350 gal./acre/year generated by growing and fermenting corn. When coupled to an ethanol-burning power plant these bioreactors can be thought of as giant biological solar panels.

• Shapouri, Duffield, Graboski “Estimating the Net Energy Balance of Corn Ethanol” USDA Agricultural Economic Report Number 721 July 1995. http://www.klprocess.com/pdf/USDA_Shapouri.pdf

• Pimentel, Patzek “Ethanol Production Using Corn, Switchgrass, and Wood; Biodiesel Production Using Soybean and Sunflower” Natural Resources Research, Vol. 14, No. 1, March 2005 p.65

Solar Paint

• Traditional solar panel technologies are hindered by their high cost of production and their rigidity, which limits the ease with which they can be integrated into human settlements. New solar energy-capture technologies rely on abundant and inexpensive components and production techniques.

• One field of research is the development of solvent-based photovoltaic devices also known as Solar paints, nanocrystal ‘inks’, or printable photovoltaics.

Self-Cleaning Buildings / Lotus Leaf Effect

• Dampening of building materials is a cause of decomposition and damage. Cleaning of building facades represents a significant expense in polluted urban environments.

• Two strategies to deal with this. • A coating that makes building facades super-hydrophobic.

Water droplets rest on the surface without wetting it. Droplets roll down surfaces collecting dust particles on the way. This approach is modeled after the nanomechanical structure of leaves on the lotus plant. Such a self-cleaning coating has recently been released by the Sto Corporation under the name StoCoat Lotusan.

….• An alternative approach involves modifying the surface

texture on a nanoscale to create a superhydrophilic or superwetting effect in which dirt is easily removed. This can be accomplished through titanium dioxide, which also has a air-purifying effect. Such superhydrophilic surfaces may have the added benefit of reducing Heat Island Effects as water evaporating from the building surface removes heat.

– Aoki Shinichi “The light clean revolution: Aoki Shinichi explains how recent developments in photocatalytic technology will make life in the twenty-first century safer and more convenient.” Look Japan Vol 48, No. 556, July 1 2002.

Air Cleaning Tiles and Pavement• Nitrogen oxide air pollutants (e.x. released from nitrogen-based fertilizers)

and sulphur dioxide pose a human health threat and cause architectural degradation in cities.

• While not a substitute for reducing emissions, removal of pollutants from the atmosphere is crucial.

• The UST-TSU building in Tsu City, Japan is covered with photocatalytic tiles, which resist the accumulation of soot and break down harmful pollutants. The tiles on this building have the reported air-purifying effect of 200 poplar trees. An American implementation on a parking lot took place in Houston.

– Aoki Shinichi “The light clean revolution: Aoki Shinichi explains how recent developments in photocatalytic technology will make life in the twenty-first century safer and more convenient.” Look Japan Vol 48, No. 556, July 1 2002.

– Daniel H. Chen, et. al. “Photocatalytic Coating on Road Pavements/Structures for NOx Abatement” Annual Project Report Submitted to Houston Advanced Research Center and Office of Air Quality Planning and Standards U.S. Environmental Protection Agency 2007

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