Facing the Environmental Challenge
Urban
regions are the world's dominant population centers and the main growth engines
of the global economy. For effective governance, citizenship, urban planning,
and economic strategy in metropolitan areas, every level of government and the
private and civic sectors must collaborate across jurisdictional boundaries.
Public policy and urban management today generally do not correspond to the
reality of metropolitan regions as fundamental units of market activity, social
interaction, culture, transportation systems, land-use planning, and
environmental protection. Many people across the globe are now economic
"citizens" of metropolitan regions, but in most cases they are
politically disenfranchised within these dynamic and rapidly growing urban
agglomerations. Even stable public institutions are increasingly unable to cope
with the vast array of problems confronting the entire urban region, and
metropolitan residents are generally disconnected at the regional level from governmental
decision-making, democratic participation, and citizenship rights and
responsibilities. Global Urban Development directly addresses this 21st century
challenge by developing cooperative partnerships among the public, private, and
civic sectors in urban regions. These partnerships design and implement
metropolitan economic strategies to generate increased prosperity; metropolitan
land-use and transportation strategies to invest in infrastructure, manage
growth, and enhance the urban environment; and metropolitan community
development strategies that promote livable neighborhoods with improved
housing, education, health, safety, and quality of life. Through effective and
inclusive metropolitan strategic partnerships, urban regions can become more economically
productive, technologically innovative, socially equitable, and environmentally
sustainable.
This GUD committee recently
completed a major action-oriented research project funded by the Mistra
Foundation (the Government of Sweden’s Foundation for Strategic
Environmental Research). The project
identified the key issues, challenges, institutional capacity, innovative
policies, best practices, and other major trends related to successfully improving
the future of environmentally and economically sustainable urban development
throughout the world, including climate change and additional vital
environmental concerns. Global Urban
Development was deeply involved in this collaborative effort. Henrik Nolmark served as the overall project
coordinator, Marc Weiss and Nola-Kate Seymoar as the coordinators for the US
and Canada, Belinda Yuen as the coordinator for Asia, and Wendy Sarkissian as
the coordinator for Australia, New Zealand, and the Pacific Islands. Members of the committee on Facing the
Environmental Challenge along with other members of GUD’s global network
were involved in this project on the global future of sustainable urban
development.
In
addition, the committee completed a second project which was a spin-off from
the Mistra Foundation research. This
project involved working with the Rockefeller Brothers Fund to organize a
meeting on “The Economic Benefits of Climate Action” held at
Currently
GUD and its program committee on Facing the Environmental Challenge are
actively working to coordinate the 3-year Climate Prosperity Project as a
direct outgrowth of the highly successful Pocantico Hills meeting on The
Economic Benefits of Climate Action.
This project is financially supported by the Rockefeller Brothers Fund
and the Environmental Defense Fund. It will include publication in October by
the International Economic Development Council (IEDC) of the Climate Prosperity Guidebook, to be
co-authored by Shari Garmise, Phillip Singerman, and Marc Weiss. In addition, seven places will be launching
Climate Prosperity Strategies in 2008:
San Jose/Silicon Valley; Seattle/King County; Metropolitan Denver;
Minneapolis-St. Paul; Metropolitan St. Louis; Metropolitan Cleveland; and the
State of
Facing the Environmental Challenge
Committee
Co-Chairs: Habiba Al Marashi, Mary Jane Ortega, and Tom Roper
Michael Arwas
Barbara Askins
Rob Atkinson
Uri Avin
Vinayak Bharne
Olzod Bhum-Yalagch
David Burwell
Peter Calthorpe
Tim Campbell
Don Chen
Victor Cohen
Rick Cole
Hank Dittmar
Michael Donovan
Petr
Dostal
James
Duncan
Will Duggan
Morel Fourman
Yaakov Garb
Nicky Gavron
Laurie Geller
David Gershon
Santosh Ghosh
Ernesto Gil
Herbert Girardet
Brendan Gleeson
Peter Hall
Walter Hook
Curtis Johnson
Allen Kearns
Jeroen Klink
Robert Lang
Keith Laughlin
Christopher Leinberger
Jaime Lerner
Mark Levin
Christine Loh
Azim Manji
Jiang
Mingjun
Ricardo
Montezuma
Elizabeth
Moule
Henrik Nolmark
Thomas
Noyes
Geoffrey
Nwaka
Cornelia
Hahn Oberlander
H. Peter Oberlander
Haixiao Pan
Neal
Peirce
Morgan Pillay
Scott Polikov
Shelley Poticha
Deependra Prashad
Craig Raborn
Michael Replogle
Maria Rosario
Catherine Ross
Wendy Sarkissian
David Satterthwaite
Hans Joachim Schellnhuber
Igor Semenov
Nola-Kate Seymoar
Molly O’Meara Sheehan
Gholam Shiran
Matthew Slavin
Daniel Solomon
Jeffrey Soule
W. Cecil Steward
Ludek Sykora
Kaarin
Taipale
Jessica
Wasserman
Michael
Wegener
Lisa Van Well
Marc Weiss
Dave Wetzel
Gina Whitehill-Baziuk
Robert
Yaro
Nicholas You
Sun Younian
Belinda Yuen