Lhe catastrophic floods in Valencia created an apocalyptic urban landscape and have caused, to date, more than 200 deaths and more than 30 billion euros in damage. The Spanish government has released 10 billion euros to help a devastated population and a devastated economy. How did we get here?
This climatic catastrophe, after the floods in France, Europe and elsewhere in the world, raises the question of the sustainability of cities in the face of the new climate regime. Mediterranean cities are particularly vulnerable, each year the summer breaks heat records, and the warming of the sea is the cause of extreme climatic episodes: heatwaves, droughts, fires, tornadoes, torrential rains are multiplying with more than strength, frequency and devastating effects. According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), we are, today, on a trajectory of +3.1ºC by 2100, well above the +2ºC of the Paris Agreement , which continues with its disastrous consequences: greenhouse gas emissions, which increased by 25% between 2005-2022, continued to grow by 2%, in 2023.
In a world that is urbanizing at high speed (60% of the planet today), cities, through their form, their functioning, their growth, produce 75% of global greenhouse gas emissions, the main cause of global warming, raising the question of their sustainability. This unsustainable development gave birth in 1994 to the Aalborg charter (Denmark), with the project of promoting the development of the sustainable city.
Huge urban aggregates
Cities that commit rely on three pillars (economic, social and environmental), in order to define objectives in favor of green economic growth, equitable and inclusive social development, respect for the environment, safeguarding of biodiversity, and for the development of the post-carbon city. This charter aims to combat greenhouse gas emissions by eliminating fossil fuels. Functional and social diversity, dense and compact urban form complete these urban sustainability objectives.
In the neoliberal context of the dominant market, globalization and associated metropolization have hindered the development of the sustainable city and slow and hesitant energy transition policies ruined the completion of the project. Cities have become enormous urban aggregates – to the point where megalopolises with several million inhabitants are multiplying – and the form and functioning of these sprawling metropolitan areas, which result from mobility and flows, make them totally dependent fossil fuels. Transition policy and metropolisation policy are incompatible, and the sustainable metropolis remains an oxymoron.
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