For this entire semester I have focused on the tangible effects of the imminent consequences of global climate change, and I have explored a multitude of creative concepts each unique, yet they all strive to solve this massive and pervasive problem. With the impending challenges that the entire globe faces, such as sea-level rise and hotter temperatures, nations particularly in the Pacific will see a mass destruction of habitable places, potentially leading to a mass exodus from Pacific islands. Combined with this problem, global population growth will blow up to 9 billion people and the urban slum population is expected to double. Conscientious city design and innovative technologies will be pinnacle to reducing the effects of pervasive climate issues and population growth. Designers subscribing to New Urbanism - thoughtful and functional habitable spaces and organized communities - utilize natural skills and architectural innovation to best plan an urban environment. Solutions include green spaces, mixed use public areas, and affordable, sustainable housing. Though, implementing practical and encompassing solutions requires collective and ubiquitous efforts. Although difficult, it is not impossible, and New Urban designs have been implemented in South America, Asia, and even here in Philadelphia. Conscientious city design must address two issues: displacement of useful resources and habitable areas, as well as a booming population globally as well as in cities. In order to mitigate the ravenous effects these issues will bring, cities and designers must prepare, and it is important to build upon ideas to find the best possible answer that addresses the most problems. In this, I will briefly detail the pervasive and tangible issues, as well as the best solutions designers have been creating and implementing, with a big focus on implementations in Constitución, Chile. 

Paramount to the upcoming issues will be sea-level rise. Many millions of square miles across the globe, ranging from the Pacific Islands to the Antarctic tundra to the coastal United States will be lost to the rising tide. As I have written at some length before, islands are already disappearing leaving thousands displaced, and the US coast is going to see some of the greatest impacts, especially in low-lying delta regions such as Louisiana and New York. Focusing on the United States, and compounding to the issue, almost half of all Americans and their homes are located in at least semi-vulnerable locations along the Atlantic coast (Zaninetti, 2008). This is of an incredibly enormous scale and will be extremely expensive if unaddressed or not addressed properly. People will have to be relocated and precautions will have to be taken against flooding and more extreme natural disasters. According to the Union of Concerned Scientists, coastal cities could flood three times as often currently by 2030 (Goldenberg, 2014). In addition to more constant flooding, there will be more extreme natural disasters directly linked with climate change, such as hurricanes (as well as tornadoes, desertification, environmental degradation, famine, and heat waves with intense forest fires; but I digress). Hurricane Katrina in 2004 should have been an admonition met with swift recourse, but no decisive or progressive action was taken. And now, in 2017, we have seen multiple multi-billion dollar disasters on US soil: Hurricane Harvey in Houston, Texas, and Hurricanes Irma and Maria, which have killed 64 people in Puerto Rico (Santiago et al., 2017), and, according to StatusPR, 40% of the island is still without power (“AEE Generation”, 2017). These ‘extreme weather events’ (thanks Scott Pruitt) will only become more dangerous, and even more deadly. The most damaging feature of a hurricane that has made landfall is the storm surge, worsened because of warmer and higher coastal waters and an increase in rainfall: Hurricane Harvey wrought a record-breaking 50 inches of rain in a matter of days (Goodell, 2017; Niiler, 2017). Looking at the evidence and deferring to the experts, these storms will only get worse (Pereira, 2017). However, there is a very visual reality of what will happen when we do not design with foresight. New Urbanist design accounts for environmental, societal, and economical assets in each community and, if redesigning completely, allows for large-scale projects and investments. 

Let’s first discuss New Urbanism: it is an all-encompassing city design that focuses on the human-scale, which has much been neglected since the advent of more accessible cars and transportation. Poor city design, often led by individual developers (The Housing Monster, 2012), has wrought devastating environmental impacts inadequately adept to preventing or mitigating disastrous events. Hurricane Harvey was so devastating because Houston is highly developed and nearly completely concrete, which presented a smooth basin for the flowing surge. Additionally, the Texas metropolitan quickly developed over prairie and backswamps, which mitigate floods and runoffs naturally (Goodell, 2017). New Urbanism would never allow for this, as it promotes natural green-spaces, mixed commercial and residential areas, as well as small-scale pedestrian-friendly communities. Not only do these planned-out urban areas help mitigate disaster, it allows for a fuller participation within the community. 

For an implemented example, we turn to Constitución, Chile. In 2010, the South American city was completely destroyed by the combination of an 8.8-magnitutde earthquake and a massive tsunami. Eighty percent of the small city was demolished to the ground, and thousands of people were displaced from their homes (Greenspan, 2016; Zilliacus, 2016)). The Chilean government, prepared to ensure another event can never do as much damage, turned to local architect Alejandro Aravena, and his Santiago-based firm, Elemental. It was a chance for the young visionary architect to rebuild a city in its entirety, top-to-bottom. On the ocean city’s coastline, Aravena penned a series of parks translated from Spanish literally as “Tsunami Mitigation” park (Aravena & Ottó, 2011). Allowing for plenty of green space helps to keep floodwaters at bay, able to soak into the greenery and soil. Buildings that were present before the tsunami no longer stand for a reason. In addition to planning public green spaces, the architect utilized Ian McHarg’s layer-cake system of localizing the best development areas. Using this method, the city planners were able to discern the most vulnerable natural and residential areas, and build accordingly. The architect considered all factors before penning any design drafts to ensure a comprehensive solution (Casale, 2016). Although the low-lying city suffered a massive natural disaster, Aravena opened up a dialogue with the residents subject to his redesign, but found that the tsunami was the last thing on the list of concerns. The community, he found, held the most issue with consistent flood protection, a deficit of public space, and maintaining their river-centric identity (Yunis, 2017). From the dialogue, the architect was able to really consider everything about which the residents cared and implement solutions that would help foster the community. This conscious designing helps mitigate annual flooding, makes the city more accessible and friendly, and allows for community engagement.

In addition, thousands of people were displaced from the massive destruction. To replace their demolished homes, Aravena provided just half of a house the size of a two-bedroom apartment. He built “just enough to meet the Chilean legal requirements for low income housing” (Zilliacus, 2016), but with a catch: residents could add to “component parts of their basic sites” for more spacious and sustainable housing “on their own terms” (Greenspan, 2016). Providing half of a house with the space and opportunity to expand allowed for the residents to be “co-creators” of their homes, moving away from a static market-ideology (Greenspan, 2016). Even more effective is Aravena’s progressive implementation of residential land regularization. This is the process of co-investing with the residents to allow occupants to purchase their homes for an affordable price. These hyper-planned residential districts high in the hills (think a hillside Levittown) are owned by the residents who live in them, which were built specifically for them, and given the opportunity to expand their house within their means and timeline. In other countries like Guatemala and Mexico, land regularization has led to a $7 to $1 return for the investor-government (“What is urban upgrading?”, 1999). This helps the residents build equity and thus helps the local and national economies. 

Although this is only one solution to a gigantic global problem, there are certain ideologies that are and must be transferrable to all other city designs, especially residential ownership. Through this large, comprehensive project, Aravena was able to bring together the entire commodity economy, and everyday new technology is being created to improve efficiency and lower production costs. As an investment in the community, this opportunity will see economic growth and returns, and will “[improve] the community, and [will let] home owners invest and improve on their homes” (Greenspan, 2016). Developers often try to squeeze as much as they can from their projects, but don’t often leave much room to grow or expand the community or the economy. High-rises have the same population density as even slum developments, but have less street-level access for “low-income families to operate small businesses which these families need to supplement their incomes” (“What is urban upgrading?”, 1999). Expanded, human-scale developments allow for mixed commercial and residential use as well as community and economic development. This brings social life to the city, and makes it a better place to live for everybody. All from conscientious design. 

There are pervasive, tangible, and rapidly approaching problems cities will face within the century. Constitución was ravaged by a massive tsunami, and ensured that type of damage would never happen again. Cities in the United States have faced similar catastrophes, such as New Orleans, Louisiana and Houston, Texas from Hurricanes Katrina and Harvey, respectively. After Katrina, Philadelphia New Urban architectural firm Urban Land Institute was tasked with redesigning and reconstructing the city, following the guidelines of green space and mixed residential and commercial areas, scaled to accessible human size. However, the Louisiana state government refused to fund this progressive plan, and New Orleans was rebuilt as it stood before, as it was crushed before, as it will be crushed again (Zaninetti, 2008). Houston has an opportunity to rebuild their city with some conscientious design, but without resonating vocal support, this is unlikely to happen: the Lone Star city has not a single zoning regulation (Goodell, 2017). It is a fact that global climate change will contribute to constant flooding of our coastal cities, even if we stop releasing greenhouse gases right now. We have seen cities be demolished by evermore destructive natural disasters, and will see a huge influx of city inhabitants. There are effective solutions and ineffective non-solutions. We must support wholeheartedly the effective solutions which may cost more initially, but will pay out in the long run (as investments tend to do), benefit the most people, and will create sustainable environments. New Urbanism can be applied to cities as large as Manhattan to ports as small as Constitución. Now it is just a matter of getting support.