The Impacts of Unsustainable Urbanization on the Environment

Abstract

Urban areas—cities—are not simply geographic areas for human gathering but are a locus of economic production, cultural and social interactions, and ecological development. Therefore, cities create positive development values when planned and managed on a sustainable footing by considering institutional, governance, environmental, political, economic, coherent policies, cultural, and social conditions and requirements. Sustainable urbanization has multiple benefits including creating more employment opportunities and better incomes, hubs for innovative solutions by attracting competencies, enhancing land utilization efficiency, improving infrastructural performance, providing better services (e.g., education, health, water supply, and electricity), economic growth hub, acting as knowledge centers, better social and cultural life, and providing better living standards. While the impacts of rapid unsustainable urbanization are water stress, scarcity, and high consumption, sanitation wastewater, water pollution, air pollution, climate change, noise pollution, cultivated land depleted, urban sprawl, dust, solid and hazardous wastes, destruction of biodiversity, high energy consumption, traffic congestion, soil pollution, and deforestation. Thus, the 2030 Agenda1 for Sustainable Development—and its sustainable development goals (SDGs)—and New Urban Agenda are key transformative power toward sustainable urbanization development; this development is not at the expense of the environment while leading to prosperity and improving quality of life.

1. Introduction

Urbanization is one of the largest social transformations of the modern era, accompanied by economic, social, physical, and environmental processes [1]; therefore, it has become an important and top priority issue at the global agenda. According to a United Nations report (World Urbanization Prospects: A 2018 Review), the proportion of the world population living in urban areas was 30% in 1950, increased to 55% in 2018; there is a projected increase up to 68% in 2050—i.e., an increased that is more than 126% in 100 years. The period from 1990 to 2018 witnessed an average annual growth rate reaching 1.8% for world cities that populated more than 300,000 [2]. Moreover, the cities’ number and size will continue to increase due to the rate of births being more than the death rate in urban areas, besides that the continuous migration from rural areas to urban areas and from abroad [3].

The transformation process to urbanization should be built on a sound and solid institutional basis—e.g., policies, laws, and regulations—to set up sustainable and resilient urban cities. In this context, the World Cities Report 2020 mentioned several benefits of sound institutions that include: leading to inclusive prosperity, providing a better quality of life, leading urban development, giving the highest benefits to most of the inhabitants, achieving more equitable cities, and motivating inclusive and sustain economy growth [4]. There is a remarkable policy transformation toward adopting the institutional frameworks that entitle coordination and cooperation among urban actors. Thus, there is a need to put the policy purpose into practice through investment in infrastructure development, institutional capacity building, and employment of suitable policy tools in the national context [5].

The impacts of urbanization on the integration between the economy and the environment are non-linear; thus, it does not assist in minimizing environmental pressures [6], and this creates several tangible challenges, such as escalating infrastructure development, housing, economic instabilities, education, health, pollution, transportation, and water projects [7, 8] due to unsustainable urban planning. Uttara et al. reasoned that the core causes of declining environmental quality are planning and management issues [9]. In addition, there is a causal relationship between industrialization and urbanization, where urbanization paved the way for industrialization; the latter accelerated paces of urbanization, and both resulted in challenges that cannot be easily beaten [10].

The next parts of this chapter are structured as follows: Section 2 is an overview of the New Urban Agenda and 2030 Agenda; Section 3 discusses the impacts of urbanization on the environment; Section 4 presents urbanization in the context of Sustainable Development Goals. Section 5 discusses the process toward sustainable urbanization. The last section is the conclusion.

2. New urban agenda and 2030 agenda

Two significant agreements milestones unify the globe; the first in 2015, which was the adoption of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, and the second ensued in 2016, with the adoption of the New Urban Agenda (NUA) and both agendas need to be implemented in closeness and integration to attain a better future for the people. In this context, the 2030 Agenda provides an operative framework for addressing the issue of urbanization at the global level [11].

The World Cities Report for 2016 clearly revealed that “the current urbanization model is unsustainable in many respects, puts many people at risk, creates unnecessary costs, negatively affects the environment, and is intrinsically unfair” [12]. Thus, NUA considered urbanization as the essence of sustainable development, and this agenda is characterized by a “shared vision of a better and more sustainable future,” “a paradigm shift based on urban science,” and “new recognition of the relationship between good urbanization and development” [13]. The NUA consists of 175 items but lacks metrics—indicators—for monitoring and measuring their progress [14]. In this context, Sietchiping et al. stated that, there is a need for a substantial transformation to ensure efficient urban planning and integrated policies toward sustainable cities’ planning, development, and management at all development levels [15].

Item 9 of NUA states that, “the implementation of the New Urban Agenda contributes to the implementation and localization of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development in an integrated manner, and to the achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and targets, including Goal 11 of making cities and human settlements inclusive, safe, resilient, and sustainable” [13]. Significantly, urbanization has been acknowledged growingly as a means of achieving the main aspects of the 2030 Agenda, particularly given the efficiency of urban resources and services and economic growth [16].

Notably, SDGs 9 and 11 have primarily covered the infrastructure and cities [14]. SDG11 is a so-called urban sustainable development goal and is explicit about the possibility of cities’ transformation and their capacity to realize other SDGs, whereas monitoring the progress of urban SDGs is not a simple task [17, 18], and this goal is also considered a novel tool that enables to reach the resources that have assisted urban improvement [19]. Furthermore, the United Nations initiative on the United for Smart Sustainable Cities (U4SSC) has introduced a more authentic tool intended to assess cities toward achieving smartness, sustainability, and the SDGs [20].

Figure 1 indicates that the synergy between NUA and the 2030 Agenda can generate a successful transformative pathway toward achieving sustainable cities with increased prosperity. Thus, both Agendas—NUA and the 2030 Agenda—must work jointly and concurrently to overcome the exacerbated challenges (e.g., environmental degradation) that face sustainable development toward attaining extensive sustainable urbanization and realizing the essential role of cities in tackling climate change and other issues. Therefore, NUA is a crucial driver for accelerating SDGs’ accomplishment and localization. Table 1 summarizes the relationship between the 2030 Agenda and the New Urban Agenda.

Figure 1.

NUA and the 2030 agenda: pathway toward sustainable cities.

Key issues of SDG 11 targets	Linkages to other SDGs	Linkages to NUA items
11.1 By 2030, safe, & affordable housing & upgrade slums	1, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 10	31–34, 46, 61, 70, 99, 107, 108, 110, 112
11.2 By 2030, improving road safety, notably by expanding public transport	1, 2, 8, 9, 13	48, 50, 54, 113–115
11.3 By 2030, sustainable human settlement planning & management in all countries	16	29, 39–42, 92, 149, 155–157, 160
11.4 Protect & safeguard the world’s cultural & natural heritage	4, 5, 10, 12, 13	38, 63, 66, 121, 122
11.5 By 2030, reduce the number of people deaths & affected; decrease disasters, including water-related disasters	6, 7, 13, 14, 15	65, 68–69, 71, 73–78, 119, 123
11.6 By 2030, attention to air quality, municipal & other waste management	6, 7, 13, 14, 15	65, 68–69, 71, 73–78, 119,123
11.7 By 2030, provide universal access to safe, inclusive; accessible, green, and public spaces	1, 5, 8, 9	37, 53, 55–56, 67, 100, 109
11.a Strengthening national and regional development planning	10, 16	87–91,158–159
11.b By 2020, inclusion, resource efficiency, mitigation and adaptation to climate change, resilience to disasters & disaster risk management	12, 13, 16, 17	77–78, 86, 94, 95–98
11.c Support least developed countries financially and technically	10, 12, 13, 16, 17	131–133, 139, 140, 144, 149, 151

Table 1.

Relationship between the SDG11 and the New Urban Agenda.

3. The impacts of urbanization on the environment urbanization and environmental

Cities are facing significant challenges due to current unsustainable urbanization patterns that are rapid, unplanned, sprawling, resource management way, and the pressure on the infrastructure to enhance resilience to any slow-onset crises and changes [21]. Adding to that, the global urbanization process is irregular and not uniform [22]. Consequently, urbanization aggravates environmental degradation [23]. The environmental issues drive the recognition of cities on the global agenda [24]; therefore, urbanization and environmental sustainability issues became a top priority global concern [25]. Figure 2 illustrates some challenges and solutions of urbanization in the context of SDG 11.

Figure 2.

SDG 11: Some challenges and solutions [26].

The impacts of rapid unsustainable urbanization are water stress, scarcity, and consumption [27, 28], sanitation, wastewater, water pollution [29, 30], greenhouse gases (GHGs) emissions (climate change) [31], air pollution [29], noise pollution [10], cultivated land depleted [32], urban sprawl [33], dust, solid, and hazardous wastes, and destruction of habitats (biodiversity) [9], high energy consumption [34], traffic congestion, soil pollution [35], and deforestation [36]. For instance, urban areas are generated around 70% of GHGs emissions and consumed more than 60% of global energy [37], and the continuously growing urbanization has an impact globally on waste generation and the volume of GHGs emissions [38] because the cities are major contributors to GHGs emissions [5]; in this context, the Ellen Macarthur Foundation predicts that cities will be a source of 60% of both global waste and GHGs emissions by 2050 [39]. Furthermore, the World Health Organization (WHO) has reported that during 2008–2013 global urban air pollution levels increased by 8% [40].

In addition, the UN report “The Weight of Cities: resources requirements of future urbanization,” [41] reported that in 2010 the material consumption of global cities was 40 billion tonnes, and by 2050 it will increase to nearly 90 billion tonnes where the resource consumption per capita is estimated 8 to 17 tonnes in 2050. Sustainable urbanization is one of the efficient solutions to minimize the environmental footprints of cities. Therefore, the environmental dimension should consider it during planning, designing, and developing cities to reduce their impacts without additional cost to the environment, become resilient to climate change impacts, and contribute to economic growth [21]. Furthermore, the policies should tackle urban environmental issues, such as planning urban spaces and transportation to reduce air pollution [42].

4. Urbanization in the context of sustainable development goals

The 2030 Agenda and its core 17 SDGs is comprehensive of broad multiple significant thematic issues. The core principles of the 2030 Agenda are intimately related to the process and form of urbanization [16]. One of the 2030 Agenda aims is to transform the world by ensuring human well-being [43]. Among the SDGs, SDG 11 explicitly addresses the urbanization issue, aims to provide sustainable living conditions in the city community, and tackles the linkage between urbanization and sustainable development [38, 44]. Therefore, achieving SDG11 will lead to sustainable cities and societies and contribute to accomplishing other goals [44].

There is a strong interlinkage between urbanization and the SDGs. Urbanization has a positive impact on majority of the SDGs [45], thus, urbanization cities should play essential roles in the implementation of all SDGs. The SDGs are harmoniously set and cannot be achieved separately. The large cities have positive and negative impacts on the SDGs, for example, transformation to sustainable cities via SDG11 “sustainable cities and communities,” contributing to more profitable economic productivity through SDG8 “Decent work and economic growth,” while causing environmental challenges represented in SDG12 “sustainable consumption,” SDG13 “Climate Action,” SDG14 “Life below Water,” and SDG15 “Life on Land” [46]. Therefore, cities should enhance sustainable planning and resource efficiency management through the implementation of the SDGs for achieving sustainable urbanization solutions. Table 2 summarizes the relationship between the SDGs and the New Urban Agenda items.

Table 2.

The relationship between the SDGs and the New Urban Agenda items.

To achieve sustainable urban development; sustainable development dimensions should be included in the planning standards of cities, which will lead to gaining several benefits in local and global communities; for instance, it will create more employment opportunities and better revenues, hubs for innovative solutions by attracting competencies, enhance land utilization efficiency and improve infrastructural performance, provide better services (e.g., education, health, water supply, and electricity), enhance the hub of economic growth, act as knowledge centers, better social and cultural life, and providing better living standards [33, 35, 47]. Therefore, integrating the paramount goals of both the 2030 Agenda and the Urban Agenda will create sustainable and innovative solutions and maximize the benefits of urbanization; as a result, the adverse environmental impacts associated with the urban development process on human health and the ecosystem will be avoided or reduced.

5. Toward sustainable urbanization

The population growth led to high pressure on the absorptive capacity of cities, which increased the demands on natural resources due to the increase in urban services, which has led to an urgent need to build resilient and sustainable cities. Therefore, to explore the urbanization issue based on sustainable dimensions, different concepts have been manifested in the literature and United Nations reports, such as green cities, eco-cities, eco-friendly cities, smart cities, sustainable cities, and smart sustainable cities. The most supported models of sustainable urbanism are compacted cities and eco-cities [48], while most literature overseen smart cities concepts [35, 38, 49].

The urban context should be emphasized on the dimensions of sustainable development at the early stage of urban planning. According to Bibri, some key challenges facing sustainable cities are the planning and designing the human settlement forms to enhance and improve sustainability [48]. Globally, the problems yielded by human mistakes in the urbanization development process are recurring and similar. Thus, the decision-making mechanism should consider those problems as knowledge lessons learnt to avoid them by acting appropriately to ensure sustainable urbanization results [50]. The contemporary lesson of the COVID-19 pandemic crisis is that there is an urgent need to compile efforts to find integrated solutions to make future development more sustainable and resilient; thus, the role of both policymakers and decision-makers decisions concerning urbanization development and land-use management is critical for better prosperity and quality life [51, 52]. Therefore, cities’ competitiveness and sustainability can be achieved when the policies are harmonious and aligned [53].

Considering the 2030 Agenda and the New Urban Agenda, the top requirement is an obligation to set appropriate, effective, and coherent policies and measures into practice to strengthen the sustainable planning and management of urbanization. Further, to strengthen urban governance, evolve infrastructures, enhance institutional collaboration and capacity building based on the urban priority needs, and empower the participation of concerned stakeholders.

6. Conclusion

The 2030 Agenda and the New Urban Agenda are top and foundation stones to adopt practical measures, coherent policies, and effective legal frameworks to improve resilient cities, better human settlements, aspirations life, and resilient infrastructure through sustainable planning, management, and governance to mitigate or prevent the devastating impacts of disasters and pandemics. Further, both Agendas are the transformative powers of sustainable urbanization development, and that development is not at the expense of the environment.

The New Urban Agenda creates a value of sustainable urbanization by encouraging citizens’ contribution to economic prosperity, improving environmental quality, stabilizing social justice, and enhancement of social and cultural institutions toward better lives in sustainable cities. All SDGs approvingly support the value of the transformative approach of urbanization toward sustainability, especially Goal 11. Therefore, integrating the paramount goals of both the 2030 Agenda and the Urban Agenda will create sustainable and innovative solutions and maximize the benefits of urbanization; as a result, the adverse environmental impacts associated with the urban development process on human health and the ecosystem will be avoided or reduced.

Cities can respond and contribute effectively to tackle the threats to the environment; such as by employing sustainable water consumption means (SDG 6, e.g., collection and purification of rainwater), including the social value in economic growth (SDG 8, e.g., investing more in the circular economy), adoption of sustainable waste management approach (SDG 12, e.g., increase waste recycling), minimizing climate change footprints, through the adoption of local mitigation and adaptation policies, regulations, and strategies (SDG 13, e.g., circular carbon and renewable energy), and protection of the natural and agricultural areas (SDG 15, e.g., avoid consumption sprawling land). Therefore, cities should enhance sustainable planning and resource efficiency management through the implementation of the SDGs for achieving sustainable urbanization solutions.