Shell Coastal Cities Project

 

Coastal Cities: Crisis in the Making?

If the millennium has shown us a view of things to come, the world faces daunting challenges in the 21st century: global warming; sea level rise; immigration and related ethnic tension; environmental deterioration such as air and water pollution; severe storms, massive flooding and natural disasters; and population explosion and urban congestion, just to name a few. While international forums are slowly looking into these issues, perhaps those entities with the most at stake in coping with these emerging problems are coastal cities. As a result, these metropolitan goliaths such as Houston, Miami, New Orleans, Shanghai, Mumbai and London are slowly realizing they might have more in common with each other than with the countries they belong to. Urban leaders may find some day that international dialogue –global city to global city—may help with the search for solutions to the grave problems that face them better than calling on federal officials for assistance.
 
The organization of society around giant cities is as old as ancient times. City-states harken back to 2000 BC and are recorded in such famous ancient literature as the Epic of Gilgamesh and Homer’s Iliad. Today, we think of the nation-state as the main entity of international organization but increasingly, major metropolises are emerging with more in common with each other than with interior populations. As a result, a new area of interdisciplinary studies has emerged to research the impending crisis for coastal cities.

Nearly two thirds of humanity live within 150 kilometers of coastal waters. In the United States, over 50 % of Americans live in 772 coastal counties. By 2025, nearly 75% of Americans are projected to be living near a coast, with population density doubling in some areas such as Florida and California. Of China’s 1 billion plus population, over 55% reside in 13 southeastern and coastal provinces and coastal cities of Shanghai and Tianjin and the numbers are rising. Of the largest 30 cities in the world, 17 are coastal cities.

While the benefits of coastal commerce and tax free trade zones are compelling to immigrants, entrepreneurs, manufacturing and petrochemical businesses and the newly wealthy, the lure of coastal cities may have a grim and challenging flip side. As industrial and commercial centers, many coastal cities are major contributors in their own right to high levels of greenhouse gas emissions, and therefore face the prospects of greater regulation and economic dislocation. In addition, these cities are particularly vulnerable to such long-term effects of global warming as sea-level rise, flooding, air pollution, and severe storms.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has concluded that the global mean sea level has risen at an average rate of 1 to 2 mm during the 20th century through thermal expansion of seawater and widespread loss of land ice. Global mean sea level is projected to rise by another 0.05 to 0.32 m between 1990 and 2050, raising the risks to life and property of living in coastal areas. Populations that inhabit small islands or low-lying coastal areas, according to the IPCC, “are at particular risk of severe social and economic effects from sea level rise and storm surges.”

The challenges facing the largest low-lying estuary metropoles, whose economies are supported by a large petrochemical industrial base, are the most worrisome, notes sociologist Michael Emerson who is leading a major study on industrial coastal cities such as Houston, Shanghai and Tiajin, China, for Rice University’s Shell Center for Sustainability. “As populations of these cities rise dramatically through immigration, policy leaders are going to have to address worsening environmental conditions and social dislocations stemming from rapid demographic changes. This is on top of the looming challenge being posed by severe storms.”

 

These are the intrinsic problems facing coastal cities:

• Severe Storms –Global warming specialists are predicting that the occurrence of severe storms will increase in the coming decades. Coastal cities are already being impacted with headline grabbing destruction pounding urban populations along the U.S. Gulf coast, Indian Ocean, and the South China Sea. Experts warn that warming ocean temperatures and sea level rise will make coastlines in these densely populated regions particularly vulnerable in the future. Future hurricane damages, projected from experiences of past storms, could average about $5 billion in losses per year in the U.S. alone, according to the Pew Center on Global Climate Change. If climate change results in more frequent or extreme storm events, damages could be even larger.

• Flooding –An increase in extreme weather events is likely to exacerbate existing water management and control problems in many giant coastal cities. The concreting and channeling of surface water has tended to increase existing problems of run-off and flooding while increased salinity will likely become a problem in coastal aquifers and estuarine systems, threatening coastal agriculture, industrial plants and potable water systems. Existing structural solutions such as levies, bayous, and barriers and protection currently performed from shoreline wetlands will need to be supplemented or replaced by non-structural flood alleviation strategies and flood plain management policy.

• Air Pollution –Air quality remains a major challenge for many of the largest coastal cities. In the U.S., over a half a dozen of the largest coastal cities, including Los Angeles, Houston, Philadelphia, New York, and Baltimore, continue to struggle to meet federal air quality standards. Nearly 45% of 319 Chinese cities being monitored couldn’t attain national ambient air quality standards for particulate pollution. Coastal cities tend to attract industrial plants and petrochemical industries because of their excellent access to ports and seaborne transport, creating special challenges for coastal cities in regulating air quality given the contribution of such plants to ozone formation and sporadic, accidental release of industrial pollutants.

• Congestion –There is no question that urban congestion is a major challenge facing coastal cities today because of their sharply rising populations. Population density in coastal cities is expected to rise significantly in the coming decades as immigrants flock to coastal areas in search of jobs and opportunity. Absorption of new immigrants remains a challenge for transportation systems, leading to massive congestion along crowded roadways. Congestion causes more than 3.7 billion hours of travel delay and over 2 billion gallons of wasted fuel in the United States each year, according to the Texas Transportation Institute. The average annual delay per person during rush hour in 85 urban areas across the U.S. has increased from 16 hours in 1982 to 47 hours in 2003. And the U.S. is not alone. Beijing, China’s daily traffic volume has grown by 20% a year in recent years, leaving Chinese drivers in bumper to bumper traffic as well. Holistic design will be a major tool to alleviate growing congestion problems in coastal cities as well as policies needed to turn back heavy reliance on the private automobile.

• Impact of New Immigration on Community and Race Relations –As the world movements of people to large coastal cities increases, the potential for ethnic tensions increases.  So too does the complexity of local racial and ethnic relations, as new immigration often contributes to an increased number of ethnic groups in the city.  Coastal cities will need to find ways to manage their growing diversity, minimize harmful conflicts, harness the positives that come from population dynamism, and concentrate on quality education for all children.  Doing so will require extensive cooperation across people groups.

 

 

COASTAL CITIES SURVEY 2007- NOW AVAILABLE ONLINE

Coastal cities survey

(Chinese Version of the Survey)

 

 

IN THE NEWS

Magazine

Features

The Coastal Cities Phenomenon

Coastal cities around the world have something in common: they share a growing fear of the effects of global warming.

By Amy Myers Jaffe

 

For the full article please click on the link below:

http://www.esquire.com/features/ESQ1006_coastal_1

 

 

(Article appeared Fall 2007)

Rice University Coastal Cities Project: Challenges and Prospects for Sustainability

 

More than one-third of the world’s population lives within 60 miles of a coastline and thirteen of the world’s twenty largest cities are located on a coast. In the United States, over 50 % of Americans live in 772 coastal counties. By 2025, nearly 75% of Americans are projected to be living near a coast, with population density doubling in some areas such as Florida and California. Of China’s 1 billion plus population, over 55% reside in 13 southeastern and coastal provinces and coastal cities of Shanghai and Tianjin and the numbers are rising. Of the largest 30 cities in the world, 17 are coastal cities.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has concluded that the global mean sea level has risen at an average rate of 1 to 2 mm during the 20th century through thermal expansion of seawater and widespread loss of land ice. Global mean sea level is projected to rise by another 0.05 to 0.32 m between 1990 and 2050, raising the risks to life and property of living in coastal areas. Populations that inhabit small islands or low-lying coastal areas, according to the IPCC, “are at particular risk of severe social and economic effects from sea level rise and storm surges.”

Given the reality of global warming, these coastal populations will face severe challenges to their sustainability in the decades to come. Coastal cities are particularly vulnerable to such long-term effects of warming as sea-level rise, flooding, air pollution, and severe storms.  In addition, as industrial and commercial centers, many such cities are major contributors in their own right to high levels of greenhouse gas emissions, and therefore face the prospects of greater regulation and economic dislocation.

The Shell Center for Sustainability at Rice University has begun a research program on coastal cities which seeks to assess the dimensions of the challenges facing major, low-lying estuary metropoles. In its first phase, the study focuses on major U.S. and Chinese coastal cities with a large petrochemical industrial base, including Houston, Los Angeles, New York, Shanghai, Tianjin and Shenzhen. Initial research activities included the development of a comprehensive and fully comparable survey of public attitudes and beliefs, conducted jointly in both the United States and China.

The challenges facing the world’s largest coastal cities are very worrisome, notes Rice University sociologist Michael Emerson who is leading the study. “As populations of these industrialized coastal cities rise dramatically through immigration, policy leaders are going to have to address worsening environmental conditions and social dislocations stemming from rapid demographic changes,” Michael Emerson points out. “This is on top of the looming challenge being posed by severe storms.”

Science and public opinion converge to intimate that important challenges face these coastal petro-economies. Their geography makes them particularly vulnerable to the long-term affects of climate change, such as sea level rise, ocean-warming, and subsequent tidal changes, flooding, and severe storms. However, in their initial survey research, the Rice University coastal cities group found that 70 percent of Chinese respondents and over 75 percent of Americans believed that sea level rise did not pose a serious problem for their city. In contrast, a substantial majority of the respondents from the same cities believed that air pollution was a very serious challenge and were concerned about the effects of air pollution on their families’ health.
Even in the face of the recent and devastating hurricanes known as Rita and Katrina, only 33 percent of the Americans considered severe storms and flooding to be a serious challenge for their municipality.  In contrast, over 40 percent of the Chinese respondents considered severe storms to be a serious problem in their cities. More than 80 percent of the Americans believed that normal activities like driving cars and running air conditioners contribute to harming the environment, but this was the case for only 56 percent of the Chinese.
The coastal cities under study face rapidly growing populations, with the associated increases in energy demand and human footprints whose impacts include substantive air and water pollution, increased greenhouse gas emissions, and run-off wastes. Therefore, sustainability and the prospect for future growth for such coastal cities may depend on greater regulation of production systems, energy resources, and standards for health and environmental impact. The vast majority of Americans and over half of the Chinese respondents supported tighter environmental controls on urban development. In assessing the prospects for such regulation and for the development of grassroots movements, the research also measured the reported participation of citizens in pro-environmental behaviors and found that only a small number of respondents had actively participated in community environmental projects while a majority said they had purchased household appliances based on their environmental qualities such as energy efficiency. Americans were far more likely to say that they had avoided buying or using environmentally damaging products than Chinese. Level of education appeared to be a factor in increasing the likelihood of American participation in pro-environmental activity, whereas the opposite was true in China. Upwardly mobile, more educated Chinese were less likely to report participation in pro-environmental activity than their less educated counterparts.
Researchers from Rice University plan to analyze the survey data to develop specific studies to explain in the incidence with which individuals report participating in actions that assist the sustainability of the environment.  These behaviors include support for public policies designed to reduce global warming; joining environmental groups and working with others and engaging in personal behaviors that support and sustaining the environment (e.g., using mass transit, purchasing environmentally friendly consumer products).  Additional research will focus on the how best to organize government for implementing policies designed to sustain and improve the environment.
The goal of the Rice University Coastal Cities program is to foster international dialogue and cooperation to finding solutions to the major challenges of sustainable development for the world’s largest coastal cities. It is hoped that the program will be expanded over time to include other important international cities in Latin America and elsewhere.

The project is a research partnership between the Shell Center for Sustainability, the Center on Race, Religion and Urban Life (CORRUL), the Baker Institute for Public Policy at Rice University, the Shanghai Academy of Social Sciences (SASS), and Horizon Survey Research of Beijing in China. For a copy of the survey and more information about the study visit http://www.ruf.rice.edu/~soci/corrul/coastalcities.html