The Urban Green Revolution

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Forget watered-down global treaties among nations -- cities are the next environmental frontier

In June, mayors from around the world gathered in San Francisco to draw up an ambitious blueprint for the green city of tomorrow. They also compared notes on new experiments in mass transit, energy use, and other aspects of urban life that will need to be transformed if cities are to lower their impact on climate change and environmental decline. Associate editor Leif Utne attended the event, which he calls the moment when a quietly growing green-cities movement revealed itself to be a global phenomenon. Here is his report. -- The Editors

SAN FRANCISCO -- Jaime Lerner is beaming like a proud grandfather. After speaking at the United Nations summit on urban sustainability, held here in early June, the 67-year-old architect and former mayor of the Brazilian city of Curitiba has just been mobbed by adoring fans. For the founder of the growing green cities movement, this is nothing new. He's long been the darling of progressive urban policy wonks for the way he transformed his hometown into what many now call the greenest city on earth.

When Lerner took office in 1971 as a young technocrat appointed by the country's military junta, he designed a high-tech network of roadways reserved for buses carrying up to 300 passengers each. The system became the main mode of transportation for the city's residents, who now number 2.2 million, racking up over 2 million rides a day. Meanwhile, dense development along the transit routes spared a lot of green space elsewhere. Bus rapid transit systems like Curitiba's have recently been built in Bogot‡, Jakarta, Melbourne, and Los Angeles.

Environmentalists have long nurtured a Jeffersonian grudge against cities, saying they are injurious to ecological and human health. They've been written off as indelibly dirty places marred by air and water pollution, poverty, and disease. But as the gathering in San Francisco revealed, that attitude is changing. For many reasons, cities are now often seen as playing a crucial role in environmental improvement.

One simple factor is the world's increasing urbanization. According to the United Nations, 2005 marks the first time in human history that more than half of the earth's population lives in cities, and urban areas consume some three-quarters of the planet's resources. With developed countries living far beyond their ecological means, many now realize that our cities must dramatically reduce their ecological footprints, and fast, if we are to avoid disaster. Three decades after Lerner began his visionary experiment in urban planning, others are adopting his longtime mantra: "The city is not the problem. The city is the solution."

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