UN-Sustainable Urbanism: The Challenge of “Lock-In”

The term “sustainable urbanism” has been criticized over its inconsistent and imprecise definition, leading to challenges in implementing actionable reforms and achieving urban sustainability goals. A clearer approach may be to identify its opposite: specifically, forms of urbanism that cause an unacceptable buildup of toxic or climate-altering emissions, deplete resources beyond sustainable levels, progressively destroy critical ecologies, and cause other identifiable sources of potentially catastrophic harm to human and urban welfare. Here, we present a model of such an “unsustainable urbanism”, and we further observe that it is in fact the dominant model of urban structure to this day. Its features include an over-reliance on low-occupancy vehicular transport, at the expense of other modes including walking; inefficient envelope, size, orientation and adaptability of buildings; ecologically destructive infrastructure systems for handling water, energy and other resources; and—under-appreciated but fundamentally important, as we will explore—the decline of a well-connected, walkable, functionally and aesthetically appealing public realm. This model remains dominant in spite of the many goals, agendas and declarations on sustainable urbanism at the highest policy level. We observe that the lack of progress is in large part the result of system “lock-in”—economic and professional incentives and disincentives, standards, laws, codes, and other forms of feedback that reinforce “business as usual” and create barriers to reform. Therefore, the agenda ahead must address the specific levers of change to overcome this systemic lock-in, drawing insights from economics, technology and the social sciences to do so. We present the outlines of this agenda and make conclusions for the necessary steps ahead.