WASHINGTON—Earlier this week, according to the U.N. Population Fund, the world’s population surpassed 7 billion. With the global economy in recession and the impacts of a warming climate increasingly apparent, this new milestone comes at a time of enormous strain and has significant implications for the world’s natural resources, its economy, and of course, its urban areas. More than half of the world’s population lives in urban areas, and the upward trend is continuing unabated. It has been suggested that by 2050, approximately three-quarters of the world’s population will be urbanized. At this rate, one thing is very clear: cities must be part of the solution to the economic, environmental, and social challenges of our time.

But as asked in the recent U.N. State of the World Population report, “what, exactly, is a ‘city’ in 2011?” Traditional city government structures and boundaries generally do not match the web of economic and social activities among urban residents, businesses, and other institutions. Are cities then the right geography for responding to today’s tough challenges? And if not, at what scale can the pressing economic, environmental, and economic challenges of our times best be addressed?

Urban experts have long called for a more regional approach that reaches beyond city boundaries to include the residents of entire metropolitan areas. In a recent article for Atlantic Cities, for example, Bruce Katz of the Brookings Institution wrote that “metropolitan communities, here and abroad, represent the true economic geography…they are also the undisputed vehicles for environmental sustainability and social inclusion.”

But another trend is also emerging in the drive toward sustainable urban development: a greater focus on neighborhood efforts to integrate environmental, economic, and social responses to our current crises. Last week, the Portland Sustainability Institute (PoSI) hosted its third annual Ecodistricts Summit, bringing together practitioners around the globe who are pioneering neighborhood-level sustainability projects. Participants highlighted both new development and redevelopment efforts – projects that, in the words of Rob Bennett, PoSI’s Director, are “small enough to go fast and large enough to make a difference.” Among the projects presented were the Seattle 2030 project, which engages downtown property owners and businesses in an effort to minimize the environmental impact of building construction and operation; the Hammarby Sjöstad project in Stockholm, which converted an old industrial area into a modern, mixed-use, low-emissions neighborhood with state-of-the-art environmental infrastructure; and pilot projects spanning the globe from Portland, Oregon, to New Orleans, Louisiana, Sao Paolo, Brazil, and Nagoya, Japan.

So what types of innovation can best be supported at the neighborhood level? Clearly, there are technologies and strategies, such as district energy systems, that are highly relevant and effective at this scale, while other policy interventions, including those related to transportation, are more effectively implemented at a larger scale. Perhaps the strongest argument for working at the district level is that all of us live in, do business in, and identify with neighborhoods. The personal relevance of neighborhood interventions can drive community engagement and help build new coalitions. EcoVillage Cleveland, a project launched in the 1990s, for example, built new partnerships among environmental and community development advocates and the public sector around a plan that combined environmental sustainability and affordability goals, all with the aim of supporting neighborhood revitalization. Among the project’s many achievements are the construction of homes that are both permanently affordable and energy efficient, the creation of community gardens, bike trails, and other recreational spaces, the rehabilitation of the local transit station with passive solar heating and other green elements. Indeed, the district scale may be the ideal geography for effectively integrating the multiple approaches — environmental, social, and economic — that truly make a neighborhood sustainable.

Metropolitan and neighborhood approaches to sustainable urban development are not in conflict. Nor does either approach diminish the role of the city with its formal authority and urban development tools. But as we reflect on the size of our population and the enormity of the challenges we face, it is important to remember that we will only be able to resolve our current economic, social, and environmental challenges if we engage as many of the world’s 7 billion residents as possible in developing new, more sustainable forms of development and growth. This will require focusing not only on regional visions and strategies, but on making these strategies come to life through neighborhood projects and design decisions shaped by the very people who live with them every day.

Tamar Shapiro is the senior director of urban and social policy at The German Marshall Fund of the United States in Washington, DC.

Image by SkyScraperCity.com

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By Tamar Shapiro and Thomas Legge

WASHINGTON — On May 15, Richard M. Daley stepped down as mayor of Chicago. With his retirement, his city lost its chief executive of 22 years, but America also lost one of its most environment-friendly local leaders.  With the failure of the U.S. Congress to pass comprehensive climate and energy legislation, it is local and state governments in the United States, such as Daley’s city hall, that can play a pivotal role in fighting global warming. Europeans need to look to such local officials if transatlantic cooperation on climate change is to make progress in the years ahead.

Daley transformed Chicago from its industrial roots to a green city with more than 7 million square feet of rooftop gardens and green roofs, more than 1300 new acres of open space, more than half a million new trees planted since 1998, and 88 buildings that are LEED certified as meeting high standards for energy savings, water efficiency, and CO₂ emissions reduction. In recognition of these achievements, Daley was awarded the 2010 Climate Protection Award from the U.S. Conference of Mayors.

Much of the local climate agenda in the United States has been driven by committed state or city leaders, such as Daley, who have made fighting global warming a goal for their administrations. Many of these local leaders have taken steps to strengthen and leverage their own efforts through bilateral and multilateral partnerships. Mayor Michael Bloomberg of New York chairs C40, a group of 18 large cities working together to combat climate change. Former Mayor Greg Nickels of Seattle was instrumental in launching the Climate Protection Agreement, pursuant to which more than 1000 mayors have pledged to meet the standards of the Kyoto Protocol despite lack of action at the federal level. In large part due to the personal engagement of then-Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, California has led state-level action with its 2006 Global Warming Solutions Act, which commits the state to return its greenhouse gas emissions to 1990 levels by 2020 and to reduce them to 80 percent below 1990 levels by 2050, Currently, more than half of the U.S. states have adopted climate action plans, although none with California’s level of ambition so far, and they are joined by a large number of local governments.

Europe’s climate champions are also to be found at the local level. Mayors like Mayor Bertrand Delanoë of Paris and former Mayor Ken Livingstone of London made green urban development a main plank of their political platforms. Some smaller cities have gone further, adopting targets that far exceed national ambition. Växjö, Sweden, decided in 1996 to become free of fossil fuels and is on track to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions by 55 percent below 1993 levels by 2015.

Even though such efforts depend on political entrepreneurs, they are supported and sustained by a national or EU-wide infrastructure. The EU has legally binding targets for greenhouse gas emissions, renewable energy, and energy efficiency by 2020, which often translate into legislative action at the city level. The EU has also set up a highly successful “Covenant of Mayors,” under which 1,900 local authorities have committed to exceed the EU-wide target of reducing CO₂ emissions by more than 20 percent by 2020. The Covenant provides targets, baselines, methodologies, and a structure of peer support to drive implementation. Campaigns like the annual European Green Capital award (won by Hamburg in 2011 for its energy savings and smart development of its industrial docklands) can build public awareness and a race to the top among municipalities.

Many European policymakers are encouraging equivalent actions at the city and state levels in the United States in lieu of federal action. Unfortunately, city and state leaders move on eventually, and even the best climate action plan and the most well-intentioned pledge, if not implemented by investment or regulation, can easily be ignored after a political transition. In the absence of a federal framework that drives local investments and regulatory changes, the U.S. climate strategy will inevitably consist of a patchwork of state and local actions — all important, but some with a longer-lasting impact than others. Large-scale investments in transit or in open space and greening — as were made by Daley’s administration — will have an impact that long outlasts the leader who championed them. Similarly, regulatory changes that promote more compact and energy-efficient development, while not irrevocable, are more difficult to undo than a plan.

With the U.S. federal government’s current retreat from the climate policy arena, European policymakers are facing a new challenge: working with many eager but diverse partners instead of one recalcitrant one. European policymakers, especially at the local level, can exchange best practices with their American counterparts. While the United States will still be left with a patchwork of climate change actions for the foreseeable future, such cooperation can help to overcome the unpredictability of political change by encouraging the implementation of measures whose success has been proven elsewhere and which will outlast their champions.

Tamar Shapiro is director of the Urban & Regional Policy Program at the German Marshall Fund in Washington. Thomas Legge is a program officer in the Climate & Energy Program at the German Marshall Fund in Washington

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WASHINGTON — News from U.S. state capitols does not often make it across the Atlantic, but over the past month the actions of several U.S. governors have been featured in the European press, from last month’s coverage of the decision of three governors to reject federal high-speed rail funding to last week’s coverage of Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker’s now successful effort to strip his state’s unions of their collective bargaining rights.  This recent interest is a welcome development, but even more attention is merited at a time when a new political culture among governors is shaking up Washington.

Perhaps the inner workings of U.S. statehouses have not been matters of great interest in Europe because there is no real parallel in European governance structures.  Even in Germany, the country whose federal structure is most similar to the United States, the minister-presidents of the Länder are by necessity deeply involved in federal politics due to their dual position as members of the Bundesrat, Germany’s second federal chamber.  U.S. governors, on the other hand, have an unusual degree of autonomy within the American federal system and have often used this independence to stand apart from Washington’s political battles.  But recent events suggest that this may be changing.

Governors are, in the words of Bruce Katz of the Brookings Institution, “leaders grounded in place rather than rooted in ideology.”  As such, they have often been perceived as a moderating influence in our political system — often steering clear of the more bitter federal political battles and, at times, reaching across party lines as potential allies for presidents. For example, in 1989, under the first President George Bush, a bipartisan group of governors reached an accord with him on education reform goals to the dismay of some in Congress who felt they had been bypassed in the process.  Even at a time of great political polarization during President Barack Obama’s first term, four Republican governors publicly and strongly supported the stimulus bill against the views of their Congressional party allies.  Among these governors was then-Governor Charlie Crist of Florida, who explained his position by saying: “It really is a matter of perspective… As a governor, the pragmatism that you have to exercise because of the constitutional obligation to balance your budget is a very compelling pull.”

To be sure, even among governors, crossing party lines has been the exception, not the rule.  While four Republican governors openly supported the stimulus act, 25 states with Republican governors joined lawsuits against Obama’s health care bill.  But the willingness of a small but prominent group of governors to cross party lines nevertheless bolstered the image of governors as moderates willing to get things done on-the-ground without relying on ideology.

But this long-held view of governors is now being challenged.  The new class of governors can hardly be viewed as a moderating force.  Quite on the contrary, they are taking controversial stands that have a direct impact on federal funding and policy, such as New Jersey Governor Chris Christie’s decision to cancel one of the State’s most significant infrastructure projects despite strong federal support, the decisions of the governors of Florida, Ohio, and Wisconsin to reject federal funding for high-speed rail that had already been awarded to their states under their predecessors, and Alaska Governor Sean Parnell’s announcement (now recanted) that he would not implement the federal health care law.  And while Wisconsin Governor Walker’s battle with the unions might not have a direct impact on federal policy, it could have a strong impact on federal politics due to the position of unions among the Democrats’ base.

Are these governors just exhibiting a new pragmatism, driven by unprecedented financial strain, or are they exercising their ideological muscles, buoyed by the Tea Party populism that brought many of them into office? The answers will vary from case to case, of course.  And what is considered pragmatic is undoubtedly colored by ideology, particularly in hard economic times requiring tough budget decisions.  But the fact is that we are witnessing a new willingness for governors to jump into the federal political fray, not as promoters of compromise but as political standard bearers.  As Ronald Brownstein wrote recently in the National Journal, “American politics increasingly resembles a kind of total war in which each party mobilizes every conceivable asset at its disposal against the other. Most governors were once conscientious objectors in that struggle. No more.”

If there was ever a time for proactive problem-solving rather than politics, this would seem to be it.  With all levels of government struggling with ballooning deficits, both the states and the federal government would benefit from an active, pragmatic partnership and an openness to compromise.   Perhaps such a partnership can be encouraged by placing the onus for providing answers back on governors — as appears to be the goal of a recent proposal allowing early opt-out from the health care law for states that pass their own legislation.  Isn’t this what Justice Louis Brandeis was talking about when he famously stated “that a single courageous state may, if its citizen choose, serve as a laboratory and try novel social and economic experiments without risk to the rest of the country”? (New State Ice Company vs. Liebmann, 1932) Let’s hope our new governors begin using the autonomy they have in our federal system not simply to reject funding and oppose legislation, but to propose solutions.  After all, this has long been considered their strength.

Tamar Shapiro is the Director of the Urban & Regional Policy Program at the German Marshall Fund in Washington.

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