London Case Study

4.1 What are the sustainability challenges that London faces?

From the previous chapter can be seen that London fits within the category of a mature city that is able to emphasize his ‘challenge-scope’ more on environmental based challenges than emerging and transitional megacities. The hypothesis that they mostly focus on a higher level of the problems, are being confirmed by the challenges that are found in the selected literature. They already provided a basis for urbanization in the past and are therefore able to cope with challenges causing and being caused by climate change, where climate change is not only linked with environmental challenges but also with social and economic challenges.

In the next part the different challenges that

In whole London, including transportation from and to London, the bus and tram are responsible for 3,7 million trips a day in 2007 (GLA, 2011). This is more than the underground which accounts for 2,1 million trips a day (GLA, 2011). These amounts are probably too high to be replaced by improvements in other ways of transportation. Banister et al. state that completely ‘car’ free is not possible, but it is possible to design the street with an equal focus on pedestrians as on the other road users. In the picture above in Oxford Circus in London high flows of pedestrians can easily cross the street in a more efficient way (D. Banister,

The hypothesis of the chapter ‘Suitability in cities’ was that this ‘challenge-scope’ is more on environmental sustainability than ‘emerging’ and ‘transitional’ megacities. Focused on higher level environmental problems that affect not only the city, but act on a global scale, are being confirmed by the challenges that were found in the selected literature. London does this with a strong emphasis on challenges causing and being caused by climate change. They are now facing the difficult task to change from the old techniques where they relied on for ages to a more sustainable techniques. Changes already occurred but these were mainly focused on improving existing methods. This can be seen by water use, waste and energy supply. Water use is reduced by improving old systems, waste is not dumped anymore but burned using heat for other purposes, and energy supply still relies on existing technologies that are improved to be more sustainable. To become sustainable major shifts in technologies are needed. They should rely more on the resources that are already in the city to reduce their impact on the environment. Water from precipitation should be used, energy should be supplied locally and waste should be recycled as much as possible. They should, as stated in chapter two, become more circular than linear. How they