Urban October: origins

The early 1970s are when true modernity began. The post-war economic boom had created new conditions, civilian Earth surveillance and communication satellites were up and running, climate change and mass extinction were coming into view, and humanity was migrating to cities. Many key environment and development indicators and institutions tell their stories from then. In 1975 the new UN Environment Programme was tasked with midwifing an urban-specialised body which later became UN-Habitat. A decade afterwards, UN-Habitat was given World Habitat Day (WHD) at the start of October to mark its concerns. And a decade after that it was given World Cities Day (WCD) at the end of October to mark its progress. The month of urban focus in between became known as Urban October.

Urban October: purpose

The aim of Urban October is to encourage everyone to think about the viability and liveability of our towns and cities, and how they do or do not, or can, or should meet the needs of all their inhabitants, sustainably, inclusively, and without imposing harm on people elsewhere. Urban October also reminds us that we are all stakeholders in adapting our cities and towns to meet the needs of everyone, both now and in the future. And this calls for informed participation in decisions about cities’ needs, ecological footprints, vulnerabilities, and systems of governance.

We are becoming an urban species

More than half of all people now live in cities and towns – our new habitats – and this proportion may reach two-thirds by 2050 as small cities grow in developing countries. We gather in cities to benefit from their density of people, jobs and opportunities to interact with others. A result is that cities are potent and influential aggregations of infrastructure and industry, as well as human and financial capital. But with concentrated populations that depend on imported ecosystem products like food and clean water, and on past assumptions of environmental security, they are also increasingly vulnerable in a changing world.

Cities are on the front line of global heating

Many cities are already facing the effects of climate change, including heat-waves, water stress, flooding, storm damage, and new diseases, all on top of the health effects of urban lifestyles, poverty and poor nutrition. And the vast majority of urban areas are coastal, putting them at particular risk from rising sea levels and storms powered by the ever-greater heat content of the oceans. Ironically, cities also produce 70% or more of the world’s GHG emissions, especially from the transport, buildings, energy, and waste management sectors. But the future of the living world depends on quickly reducing the concentration of GHGs in the air. This calls for rapid net emission cuts by major emitters (like cities), accountability to vulnerable electorates (like city dwellers), and leadership supported by access to key sources of knowledge (like urban academia), capital (like urban businesses), and the levers of power (like urban elites).

Urban October: historical themes

Each World Habitat Day, and since 2015 Urban October as a whole, has a distinct focus on a certain aspect of urbanisation and its consequences and implications. The theme of the first WHD, in 1986 and hosted by Nairobi where UN-Habitat is based, was the right to shelter. UN-Habitat returned to this again in 1987 and 1990. Other themes have included planning our urban future (1997, 2001 and 2009), urban safety and liveability (1998 and 2010), women in urban governance (2000), water and sanitation (2003), and climate change (2011). Since 1989, alongside WHD, WCD and Urban October, UN-Habitat has maintained a Scroll of Honour for people, places and initiatives that have made outstanding contributions in areas such as housing, homelessness, post-conflict reconstruction, and improving the quality of urban life.

Urban October: recent themes

The 2022 theme was growing inequality and vulnerability driven by Covid, climate and conflict. The pandemic and multiple conflicts (in Ukraine, Ethiopia, Yemen, Haiti, Myanmar, and elsewhere) had reversed years of progress against poverty, with tens of millions blocked from advancement or thrown back into unemployment and destitution. And the 2023 theme is investment for resilient urban economies. Here the aim is to promote full recovery from the economic shocks of Covid and conflict by boosting economic activity and sharing experience on tackling inflation. Attention will likely soon return to climate change, following the many weather-related disasters recorded globally in 2022 and so far in 2023.

Cities comparing notes

The immeasurable adaptability of our species is increasingly shown through solutions to the special challenges of urban life and the special needs of cities themselves. Because all cities are built by only one species (us), they differ only superficially (in the great scheme of things) and have many major features in common. This allows city administrations to learn from each other, and their ability to do so is greatly enhanced by networks such as United Cities and Local Governments, C40 Cities, and the Global Covenant of Mayors.

Sustainable landscapes with cities in them

Every city needs healthy farm, catchment and wetland ecosystems nearby, for food and water supply, waste management, environmental security, education and recreation. So city administrations should care for upstream and downstream ecosystems, and the people who live in them, as key allies in meeting the needs of their cities. This often requires the careful and ecologically-informed negotiation of landscape-scale agreements between cities and their surrounding ecoregions. And cities are important habitats for many wild species. Rivers often run through them, offering beauty and biodiversity to city-dwellers, while parks and gardens can be constellations of connected ecosystems that sustain an immense diversity of wildlife. Urban ecology is a key part of our heritage and future, where peace with nature can be restored and maintained for the benefit of everyone and everything.

Self-sufficient cities?

As I explain in my book Surviving Climate Chaos, there is no such thing as an entirely self-sufficient city. But a city can be viable as an open system that draws on resources without harming the systems from which they come. This usually means paying a price for imported goods and services that is satisfactory to producers, and also sufficient to pay for the systems concerned to be managed sustainably. Balancing this equation requires skill and knowledge, but can also be made easier if a city minimises its demands for imports, for example:

• by securing local food supplies from intensive organic horticulture on roof-tops and in private gardens, public parks and community allotments, and from neighbourhood and household hydroponic, aquaculture, microlivestock and invertebrate protein farms;
• by promoting local water conservation through household and neighbourhood rain harvesting, water purification and water recycling;
• by using local sources of biogas and fertiliser from household and neighbourhood waste and sewage fermentation, and obtaining and distributing energy through household and neighbourhood biomass, solar, wind and geothermal energy systems;
• by harnessing personal energies and social behaviour, such as through local currencies for trading time spent in social care, labour commitments and local produce, or through self-organised local networks like residents’ associations; and
• by re-designing city systems to be much more liveable, efficient and self-sustaining, though public transport, architecture, pedestrianisation, etc., and with the support of locally-accountable self-government with sufficient powers to make a difference.

Future cities?

In a 2085 scenario, my book on water describes a world in which “City administrations had learned to strike long-term deals with catchment dwellers to pay a fair price for catchment services, in return for their help in protecting upstream ecosystems. Cities had learned to collaborate with one another to liberate rivers from industrial canals and dams, so that they and their shadows, and migrating fish, could run free again. They had also learned to collaborate with land owners to encourage organic farming and low-impact use of ecosystems in the catchments. Their citizens, affected by the ideas of ‘water democracy’, quickly became adept at conserving municipal waters, and began insisting that public water companies (the private ones having been repossessed) fix all leaks in their supply systems. [And] they also began to demand that their urban environments become much more porous, with parks and gardens everywhere, all roads made of water-permeable materials, and a water trap on every roof.” Urban October is an opportunity to join those who are seeking outcomes like this.

© Julian Caldecott 2023