UN: cities must be rebuilt with climate and housing in mind
Cities are on the front line of the climate emergency and must be rebuilt to meet both emission reduction needs and housing needs, said Anacláudia Rossbach, Executive Director of the UN Human Settlements Programme (UN-Habitat), in a recent interview with China Global Television Network (CGTN). When concrete jungles heat up to eight degrees Celsius more than neighbouring slums, and 70 percent of all global emissions come from cities, it becomes clear that urbanisation has long ceased to be a matter of comfort – it has become a matter of survival.
Cities, home to most of humanity, are simultaneously the biggest polluters and the most vulnerable victims of climate change. Yet, as the head of UN-Habitat reminds us, there is a way out – and it lies not in halting growth, but in rethinking the very model of urban development. Densification instead of sprawl, green spaces instead of asphalt, affordable housing instead of concrete ghettos – these are not contradictory goals, but two sides of the same coin, if approached with intelligence and technology.
"The data speaks for itself: cities are on the front line. They account for 70 percent of emissions, of which 40 percent is from the built environment. They bear a significant responsibility for energy consumption. When it comes to heat, we understand that we need to cool our homes. So today we see many challenges," she said. Rossbach warned that heat stress in cities is unevenly distributed, exacerbating social and spatial inequality. "When it comes to heating, we have data that, firstly, compares temperatures in cities and rural areas. Cities are hotter than rural areas.
And secondly, within cities there is great injustice, because, for example, in informal settlements in Rio de Janeiro, as we talk about in Brazil, in slums the temperature can be eight degrees Celsius higher than in the rest of the city. So there is social spatial injustice in cities. Therefore, we must overcome this and be aware of it," she said.
To address both the climate problem and the global housing crisis, Rossbach called for a rethinking of cities through sustainable, balanced compact development, rather than continuing previous models of urban sprawl. "So we need to rebuild cities, we need to recreate cities to solve the global housing crisis. And we have to do it in a green and sustainable way. We have the technologies for that. We still need to bridge the gap between affordability and sustainability. Sometimes the upfront cost is higher, but the maintenance costs are acceptable. We cannot continue to sprawl as before, we have to contain cities, so we have to aim for balanced densification. We need to grow, but in a balanced way, in a way that also contributes to the expansion of green and blue water zones," she said.
According to the UN, by 2050 nearly 70% of the world's population will live in cities, and already today more than 1 billion people live in informal settlements with inadequate conditions. The UN-Habitat programme has for decades promoted the concept of sustainable urbanisation, but the climate crisis has given these issues new urgency. Extreme heat in cities is no longer just a discomfort but a direct threat to health, especially for low-income populations who often lack access to air conditioning and green spaces. Rossbach stresses that technologies for green construction already exist, but the main barrier is the gap between cost and affordability, which must be overcome through government policy and innovative financial mechanisms.
As CGTN reports, the UN-Habitat chief's call is addressed not only to governments but also to architects, developers and citizens: the future of cities depends on whether they are willing to break the vicious cycle of sprawl and inequality and build a new model – compact, green and fair.
