Look! There... That looks like a Circular City!
A little exercise envisioning a plausible future, and a huge dose of "reality checks"
Hola!
In the third article of Set Up Circular Cities, we decided to give a tiny taste of what a circular city could look like. We’ll go through a day in the life of an average citizen in such a city. And then, we’ll delve a bit into what we think about the city we just walked through!
Wakey wakey, welcome to a whole new world!
The sun rises gently over the cityscape, casting its golden hue on what was once a busy, congested urban scrawl. But, today is different. The city shows off a new identity. A new world, a circular world. It begins to spearhead sustainability into the fabric of daily life.
The new dawn reveals a neighbourhood, once plagued with pollution, garbage1 and people hustling to reach their workspaces two hours away. But the morning light reveals something new. Old, shoddy buildings with pan stains over cheap notices reading “Please do not urinate” now boast modern eco-friendly facades. And no, the building behind is just as exciting as the outside.
Many host rooftop gardens and rainwater harvesting systems, while solar panels enamour others. Transparent panels are the new windows. The streets are clean(er).
Morning chai coffee
You smell no rotting trash on the streets, instead view a row of recycle bins pre-segregated. A group of people stand around a morning tea stall using an electric stove charged through the community centre’s charging spot is the new normal.
You smell a new spirit. You smell fresh flowers from vertical gardens and barely any pollution. Electric vehicles adorn the streets now. What was once a six-lane main road now has an underground metro, two lanes for buses and private vehicles, and dedicated cycling and two-wheeler lanes.
You smell sambhar and dosa from kitchens around you, and see people relaxed as a hybrid work lifestyle reduces the need to travel and opens up more time for family and communities. Multipurpose neighbourhoods, which as a result of smart city policies2 brought a mix of commercial, residential and office spaces are usually walkable further reducing the need for commute.
Work work work work work…
You work. Whatever or wherever - at your home office or at your office, you see sustainability ingrained in everything around you. The walls are built from recycled debris, buildings sometimes generate more energy than they consume (yes, your local panipuri stall could be a beneficiary of this extra energy). Lights turn off automatically when you leave a room, thanks to smart climate control and smart microgrids all around neighbourhoods.
There are new companies sprouting up around the city, thanks to initiatives by the local government which now work exclusively to coordinate and help new businesses be as circular as possible and transform older businesses, projects, and infrastructure to be sustainable, energy-efficient and circular.
A breath of fresh air
Sprawling parks have propped up in newer parts of the city while older areas are getting greener by the day. Connected rooftops play a crucial role in connecting neighbours who picked up urban farming as a hobby. This reduces the demand for importing fresh produce and makes the city more food secure one carrot at a time.
The parks and green spaces host public forums discussing public policies required in the nearby areas bringing various stakeholders together.3 You overhear residents talking about shortcomings of short-termism due to recent floodings in monsoon and the need for businesses and officials to look into future-proofing new projects and initiatives.
The concept of proactive policy thinking seems to be spreading, taking over the reactive change mindset as youth protest the immediate change. The communities are discussing more and more about knee-jerk reactions of unfounded rhetoric, and ill informed protests regarding climate change seem to be a thing of the past. And local initiatives now seem to have better backing due to decentralization and neighbourhoods reaping rewards for their own initiatives.
Dusk to Dawn
Lights turn on, batteries begin to discharge. A drizzle brings warm pakodas to the plates of citizens while rainwater is harvested building up the almost depleted underground water reserves of the city. This in turn greens the city and reduces urban heat.
People stroll safely all around the city, the nightlife takes over, youngsters party with dancefloors generating energy with their slick dance moves, and the older folks sour about the ease of life of the later generations. Some things perhaps are better left unchanged.
On the horizon are industries working to power the city, bringing in resources and raw materials and investment opportunities. Solutions are still under work to make these pollute less while not upending the new lifestyle and bringing circular principles to them.
Am I serious? Or just plain Delulu?
Well, Let’s say I’ll take the “deli” from delirious and “rious” from serious. And, you can piece it together yourself.
Then what’s the point of me making you read 694 words of something even I don’t entirely believe in?
The way I see it, it is an exercise. It isn’t about dreaming. It’s an exercise to understand how each of us envisions a circular city. It is about understanding the differences and using the commonalities to build our future cities. For starters, commonalities are the need for a balance. An energy balance, material balance, an economic balance and most of all a net carbon-negative future until it is safe to bring net-zero ideas.
Backcasting can be a powerful approach when dealing with long-term, system-oriented challenges involving a broad range of stakeholders and actors. This allows us to define problems and design solutions for them. It also can be incredibly powerful to look back from desirable futures (basically what I shared above), or possible futures and likely futures.4
Do I want you to believe and strive towards a future like I mentioned?
Strive? Yes… Believe? Please No.
There are a few reasons I say so:
The scenario I have developed here talks only about the seen. That is what we as members of society can see, feel and sense. But there are many complex unseen factors that work behind the scenes.
This scenario is limited by my knowledge at the moment and with the word limit even more so, and our attention spans! And just out of sheer curiosity, I would like to do this exercise after a year of writing and learning due to this newsletter.
There are many biases ingrained in this vision and many assumptions, which should be challenged. For example, the vision I mentioned is almost impossible to take seriously to transition into most of the unplanned cities in the country.
A vision so grand about a circular sustainable world, cannot and I believe, should not be based on the vision of one person. It is a collaborative game where hopefully, many of us win.
In the end, if you take back anything from this, I hope it is that how such a city should look is something we should be open to and let be fluid so that we learn as we go. And, on the other hand, we must also realise the common themes and shared values5 of collaboration, closing the energy and material loops and future-proofing are what build the foundations for such an endeavour.
And yes, we will be talking about these in the coming editions where we discuss major challenges, biases and hurdles required to get to the starting line and yet a whole different set of unknown unknowns needed to reach a point we need to be.
It is quite interesting when I think about this exercise, that almost each sentence in there, is a potential theme we can explore in this newsletter and delve deep into. And honestly, this exercise also helped Vijay and me to realise the complexity of what signed up for - and, now, you folks too! (If you didn’t yet….)
See you within the next fortnight! And before you go, it would be great if you could also comment your thoughts about my idea here! Do you agree? Disagree? Do you think I missed something? Or anything that caught your attention!
It must be noted that, though it is a feature in many cities these days, it doesn’t show the entire picture of poverty. Here’s an interesting article on Poverty porn which we do not ascribe to. The state of “the old” is used just to imply the change in how a city may look.
India has a Smart City Mission which you can read more about here. It’s not perfect by any means but is a start.
Have you heard about the tragedy of the commons? Elinor Ostrom won the Nobel Memorial Prize for her work in her analysis of economic governance, especially the commons to show how commons are not a tragedy, but a resource waiting to be tapped in! Here is an article summarizing her work: Coping with Tragedies of the Commons | And here’s the original research paper for the more curious.
Here’s some more information about "backcasting” to understand the scope and uses of the methodology in policy development, especially for sustainable technologies »
Quist, J. N. (2013). Backcasting and scenarios for sustainable technology development. In Handbook of sustainable engineering (pp. 749-771). Springer.
Delving into Mrudula Ramesh’s book, “The Climate Solution” would be a great starting point for the climate challenges in India.