Hassle-free & sustainable

In the last article, we saw the importance of making Net Zero buildings and retrofitting existing ones to ensure that they are close to Net Zero. Apart from this, it is also important that the urban spaces are planned better, so that maximum use is made of natural light, workplaces are walking or biking distance from home, flexible working hours are allowed so that employees can travel to and from office in off-peak hours and so on. Let us discuss these in more detail.

Making cities pedestrian and bike friendly

In the 18th and 19th centuries before the automobile came along, most cities were designed for walking. Most people living in rural areas, even today, walk around to do their daily business. All the major cities in Europe such as London, Paris, Florence and Geneva began with plans that involved walking to get their work done. Even today, these cities have pedestrian friendly paths, particularly, the cobbled streets in the old town area of these cities. After the automobile came and roads began to be constructed, the concept and meaning of distance changed. Since the second half of the 19th century, urban planning soon shifted to providing for mass transportation and the bus and city metros came along. For more than a hundred years, this has been the template for urban growth. While automobiles began in the US and Europe in the late 19th century, they soon spread to developing countries in the 20th century. With automobiles, road construction also expanded exponentially—both within the cities and connecting cities. As more and more road length came up, more automobiles were manufactured and owned. Soon, the number of automobiles was far larger than the roads could accommodate, leading to traffic jams in the cities across the world. These were the worst in developing country cities such as Manila, Hanoi, New Delhi, Beijing, Shanghai and Mumbai. This led to a focus on mass transportation such as buses and city metros. With the rise in cars, the emissions of greenhouse gases and the pollution levels in the cities has also shot up, with the air in many cities becoming toxic.

In the late 20th century and the 21st century, there has been a shift in urban planning to make ‘walking to work’ attractive. There is a move to have ‘neighbourhood offices’, to which one can walk to work. Many cities in Europe such as Amsterdam, Geneva, Zurich, Berlin, Munich, Oslo, Copenhagen and Stockholm are pushing for walking or cycling. There are well laid out pedestrian and cycling pathways and numerous cycling parking stations. This trend is catching up in other cities in other parts of the world.

To elaborate more on cycling and bike infrastructure, interconnected bike lanes which cover the whole city are essential. These lanes have to be safe and bikes have to be given the right of way when bike lanes intersect with roads. Bike-share and bike-rent programs such as the Velib in Paris, Bixi in Canada, Citi Bikes in New York, Boris Bikes in London and Motorbike in China, will help to incentivise bike ownership.

To create the right infrastructure for pedestrians and biking, municipalities would have to be empowered to plan for pathways and declare bike parking zones. They would also need to be supported financially with more grants to create such infrastructure.

Given that road transport accounts for 24 per cent of the greenhouse gas emissions in the world, it is important that cars give way to bikes in the cities as much as possible. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) in a special report published in August 2021 said that cycling was something that the world should move towards to ensure a safe, sustainable and net zero future. Further, research has shown that life-cycle CO₂ emissions drop by 14 per cent per additional cycling trip and by 62 per cent for each avoided car trip. Switching from a car to a bicycle saves 150g of CO₂ per kilometre, e-cargo bikes cut carbon emissions by 90 per cent compared with diesel vans and swapping the car in cities for walking and cycling even just one day a week can reduce your carbon footprint by about half a tonne of CO₂ over a year.

Conclusion

Walking and cycling are going to be an important part of the journey to net-zero. But for this, safe pedestrian walkways and biking tracks need to be developed. Large parts of the cities need to be made automobile-free and work places in the neighbourhood need to be developed so that there is no need to drive to work. For all of this, municipalities would need to be empowered as well as given generous financial grants by governments across the world.