With the percentage of the world’s population that lives in cities continuing to grow, School of Public Policy professor John Rennie Short published an article in The Conversation examining what cities can do to become more sustainable. In his article, Short looked at three ways to measure the environmental impact of cities: ecological, carbon, and water footprints.
Short defined each measure and referenced various studies which compared data among cities. While they are an important starting point, he cautioned the three footprint measures should be analyzed in context.
“These metrics are still in the early stages of development. There are lots of problems, including assessing the leakage of impacts from outside the city’s boundaries; the quality of data, which is too often imprecise and collected at different times for other purposes; and the lack of comparability between studies. The work is more embryonic than definitive. For example, we have yet to agree upon standard protocols for the data used and methods employed.”
To read the full article titled “How green is your city: towards an index of urban sustainability,” click here.
In other news, Short gave a keynote address, “The New Imperative: Green Cities for an Urban World,” at the French Embassy in Washington, D.C. on March 6. The event was a forum that brought together mayors from the U.S. and France to kick-start long-term and formal cooperation among officials and practitioners concerned with sustainable urban development in France and the United States. It also aimed at paving the way to the participation of U.S. cities in the December 2015 Paris Climate Conference. For more information on the event, click here.
Tags: CAHSS, PublicPolicy
