Systems thinking as a roadmap towards sustainable cities

The ‘Sustainable City’ is not just a place. It is an idea, an ambition that all new developments aspire to achieve.

As urban planners work to meet sustainability targets within scarcity conditions, they are faced with challenges related to identifying priorities to solve in the design of superstructures and infrastructures. But most often prioritization becomes arbitrary due to the lack of systematic communication between key stakeholders, which in turn leads to missed opportunities in finding synergies. Thus, a roadmap is needed to inform decisions and manage systems influences that together shape a more sustainable city.

Systems thinking can be one such guide. It establishes that we live in a complex world of interdependencies. Systems design suggests a pragmatic and dynamic approach to development, one that analyses a system’s constituent parts and how their intra-relationships influence each other. Development thus is recognized as being a force of change that can have systematic and multi-sectoral effects, and accounting for these ‘ripple effects’ is particularly important when development opts for sustainability targets such as circularity and zero-waste design.

Systems thinking in the built environment

To design sustainable cities, systems thinking can be an effective framework to evaluate integrations in the built environment. Encompassing the entire spectrum of man-made developments, the built environment is composed of Superstructures and Infrastructures. By applying systems thinking, the first can be broken down into sub-components of Urban Form defined by key elements, such as urban footprint, street orientations, and zoning. Buildings is another system that in turn can have a multitude of subsystems as structures and materials.

Infrastructures, on the other hand, are two broad types: Hard Infrastructures like transport, power, and water, and Social Infrastructures like healthcare, education, and security. By cross-referencing different sub-systems, as shown in an exemplary matrix of systems integration model for the built environment (figure1), planners can visually map types of system interactions. They can then decide which targets are a priority, find leverage systems, and engineer solutions in a way that reduces resource consumption and increases reliance on renewable resources. Net-Zero condition will be achieved only when parity is struck between decreasing demand for resource inputs and their supply from renewables.

Figure 1: Matrix of systems integration model for the built environment, Source: AtkinsRéalis

Planning Manhattan Island

Take Manhattan for example. Compact development is one major priority for the island due to land scarcity. So how does the city manage a population density of 28,000 persons per square kilometre? By applying a systems-based approach, planners can identify a handful of levers that can have disproportionate impact on efficient land management. For one, high density construction allowances and mixed-use zoning, strategies known to control sprawl, support more activities and people on ever smaller footprints. Further, to counter overcrowding, the city employs the longest subway network in North America (more than 1,000 km) as well as human-scale urban blocks (250 by 900 feet), together serving to enable walkability and ease traffic congestions. Well-developed healthcare systems can counteract the spread of diseases potentially resulting from intensified human interactions. And to retain its liveability, cultural systems in the form of arts, design, media, and fashion help ensure Manhattan remains a prime attraction for urban living despite being one of the densest places on Earth.

Hydrating Riyadh City

Water scarcity is a notorious challenge for Riyadh. The city relies almost exclusively on desalinated water, an energy intensive and unsustainable resource. Identified as a priority sustainability problem, several high-impact systems can be leveraged to reduce water consumption levels and tap into renewables. For instance, since network leakages are one cause of water losses (up to 1 trillion gallons of water annually by US-EPA estimations), the densification of the city fabric can substantially control them. Also, since residential, commercial, and public buildings are responsible for almost 60% of all water consumption, eco-efficient building designs and high-efficiency fixtures are very effective in cutting demand. Hard infrastructure systems like irrigation networks can utilize recycled water as an alternative and digitalization through smart sensors and metering can manage usage by monitoring and predicting trends. Finally, soft systems, such as education and training, can raise awareness on the environmental costs of water supply networks, and behavioural changes can go a long way in achieving net-zero water targets.

Powering the UAE

Solar power is the most promising alternative energy source in sun-drenched UAE. Photovoltaics’ carbon footprint is estimated to be 20x less than a typical coal-powered plant. However, by employing systems thinking, potential to create further environmental savings across many other sectors can be unlocked. Sustainable transport is one example. Utility-scale plants can speed up the conversion of all fuel-based vehicles, responsible for 30% of total global carbon emissions, to electric ones that emit 40-85% less carbon in total lifecycle. Consuming about 75% of all power in the UAE, buildings can also offer synergetic opportunities. Not only can private residences host different scales of photovoltaic panels, but by orienting structures towards optimal solar and wind conditions and installing low U-value insulation envelopes, resulting lower heat gains and losses can save up to 15% in energy demand. Finally, savings in healthcare spending can be expected due to the reduction in air pollution and the improvement in urban air quality. 

Standard practicing systems thinking

One legacy that greatly damaged our societies is the linear mindset of most development that took place in the last centuries. This ‘siloed’ approach gradually disrupted natural environmental processes and delicate balances, climate change being only the latest episode. We now know how to design better. For one, we have learned that development is a complex enterprise whose multi-faceted and interdependent nature demands we sensibly and thoroughly assess the full impact of our design decisions before executing them. Second, we have been developing cutting-edge technologies to help us better predict such effects and fine-tune our approaches to create lower development footprints. We will probably never reach the ideal state of a ‘Sustainable City’, but by adopting systems thinking as a standard practice, we can start to solve one problem at a time: Lowering baseline demand and meeting supply from renewables. By doing that, gradually but systematically, compounded solutions become more solid foundations for the construction of stronger and more resilient environments for ourselves and future generations.

This article was first published in Construction Week in March 2023.