The Prospect of Sustainability and Energy Security in the Era of Megacities
Megacities can become too big to sustain from a social perspective, and most governments are stalling to take action. Added to a population and infrastructure problem is the increasing effect climate change will have on the areas. In order to remain sustainable, these cities need to enact public policy initiatives.
Some countries are aware of the long-term consequences and have even built entirely new cities to solve overpopulation and reduce their carbon footprint. On the whole, cities are more energy efficient than the countryside. With this in mind, megacities can incite change, transferring and borrowing policies from other urban and rural areas as long as sustainability remains the ultimate goal.
Cities are the centers of culture, commerce, and often times, political power. When cities were established in the past, there was not a Field of Dreams “if you build it, they will come” mentality. Cities were, and are more than ever in this increasingly globalized world, a necessity. They have had the ability to know what makes them prosper and what hinders them. The concept of sustainability is an ethical issue, and when a situation becomes unsustainable, it becomes harder to act ethically.
Cities are plastic in nature, capable of being molded to develop new types of urban space that improve the standard of sustainable living. There is an enormous demand to build new urban spaces to accommodate our rapidly growing global population. In terms of energy policy, it certainly matters how a city was built in its early stages. Infrastructure is what allows a city to grow and eventually mature.
While overall trends show an increasing population growth and migration to cities, resulting in an increasing aggregate demand for energy, urban dwellers tend to be more energy efficient on a per capita basis. However, this could change in the near future because if more people are moving to the cities, society as a whole will hoard more energy.
The majority of urbanization and energy demand will come from developing countries. If an estimated 75 percent of the population becomes urban, and they consume the same amount of energy as we do now, there is going to be a serious problem. We need to either radically change the combination of energy we use and/or change our energy consumption patterns.
