Cities and Sustainability in 2020: The Future We Are Building On
“Pestilence is so common, there have been as many plagues in the world as there have been wars, yet plagues and wars always find people…
“Pestilence is so common, there have been as many plagues in the world as there have been wars, yet plagues and wars always find people equally unprepared. When war breaks out people say: ‘It won’t last, it’s so stupid.’ And war is certainly too stupid, but that doesn’t prevent it from lasting.”
— The Plague, Albert Camus
The sultry weather. The emotional flatness. The feeling of exile. Once again we are transported into Albert Camus’ novel The Plague, living in a city assaulted by a zoonotic disease.
In broad strokes, Covid-19 wasn’t unprecedented. As many have predicted, as long as we encroach into deeper forests and continuously warm the planet with non-renewables (which we still do), a plague like this will spring out anytime soon, and it happened to break out in 2020. The repetitive pestilential history is a reassurance of humankind’s incorrigible hubris. We are the iconoclasts that bite the hand that feeds us, the only progeny that plunders Mother Nature for GDP and trade surplus, and seem to refuse the importance of sustainability and holistic well-being over doctrinaire figures and abstractions. If this continues, we would be committing a civilizational suicide.
Besides environmental concerns, although most of the readers have the privilege of using air-cons, memes and the digital economy to obviate the dull, emotionally claustrophobic present, we witness our economic and social paradigm torn apart, exposing the underlying abscesses on the urban society we live in. They are so obvious that there’s no point for elaboration: racial injustice, gender inequalities, skyrocketing extreme poverty rates and halted education opportunities. Our pre-Covid social and economic systems were so brittle, and because of that, all the progress towards SDG goals have been compromised.
Just like other TLMUN Herald colleagues, after descending your emotions into the black hole (my essay might have a more depressing tone), I would like to direct you to the major scintillating events that happened during the crisis and several inspiring pursuits that would entail from it — which organizations, which governments internationally and locally are marching towards not only in 2021, but in 2050, and how can we participate in these endeavours.
The Good
When it comes to the silver lining of the pandemic, most readers would immediately think of the cratering pollution levels in urban areas. Malaysia, and pretty much every other economically robust country, experienced a nosedive in carbon dioxide and nitrogen dioxide levels as policies to flatten the curve are imposed. Congestions evaporated, skies became cerulean, leading precipitous drop in traffic mortality and deaths due to respiratory diseases. While we are imprisoned in our homes, curious animals scouted around public spaces and empty streets. Also, one thing goes unappreciative — Malaysians and our neighbours got lucky as the seasonal haze — which could exacerbate the Covid situation — had been fortunately absent.
Outside quiet cities, the natural environment had been slowly healing since industrial hubs and tourist sites had stopped operating. From Malaysia to Brazil, from the Philippines to Italy, ecosystems were teeming with natural diversity.
When roads go empty, some urban planners saw it as a great time for people to reclaim precious urban land away from cars. Cases abound in the United States, where open streets and public spaces let citizens play, protest and vote. Streets were opened so that people could take a breath of fresh air while maintaining social distancing, and chairs and tables were allowed to flood onto the streets to prop up struggling local businesses. Minorities benefited the most as their neighbourhoods lacked public spaces before the outbreak. In countries around Europe, Latin America and Asia, local governments were retro-fitting the city to be more cycling-and-walking-friendly, replacing conventional private and public transport. These innovative transformations in mobility and city design had been a rally call for the preservation of fleeting green utopias into permanent features of our future metropolises.
Another huge leap came from the staunch cooperation from the local to the international level. Domestically, Dr Noor Hisham Abdullah — our national hero whose reverence had been expressed through comics and gifts — bespoke the composure from the top. Showing up every single day with a stoic gait and a passionate heart before the camera, announcing the daily updates on the covid situation, reflected the strong central command that percolated prophylactic guidelines and coordinated policies down to the district level. With the private sector and social groups joining the crusade, Malaysia’s response to contain the virus were lauded by many.
Globally, countries had mostly agreed on the geopolitical and ideological ceasefire to solve a shared challenge that “knows no borders’’ (indubitably, people cooperate best when they have a common enemy). The strengthened multilateralism pledged to combat misinformation, rejuvenate local economies, exchange scientific results and ensure fair distribution of pharmaceuticals and vaccines through the period.
A Better Looking Glass
After a cursory glimpse on the uplifting events happened in 2020, what promising trends could we expect in the many years to come?
As history indicates, epidemics don’t necessarily instigate revolutionary upheavals, but they tend to accelerate existing social changes. Predictably, this epidemic boosts the digitization of virtually everything heading the 4th Industrial revolution. While governments and institutions across the globe have been mostly leveraging data collection and analytics to fight against the virus, while taking initiative preparing for future biological threats, all the budding technology and Big-data based epistemologies caused overarching spill overs to adjacent fields: experimenting new economic systems, rethinking our relationship with our technological gadgets, and tracking detailed aspect of each cities to make SDG goals more local-oriented just to name a few.
The third point is a crucial one. The localized approach on sustainable development not only informs planners which problems need to be urgently prioritised on each particular area, but also allows the people living there to debate on the meaning of well-being in their urban landscape. In other words, developers, architects and mayors in the near future would plan with the public, not for them. The dawning digital infrastructure paves a development of “Smart Cities”, empowering you and I to shape the cities we envisage.
It goes without saying that health care systems and innovation would leapfrog internationally. For this essay though, I would like to point to the possible ventures on our turf. Of all the problems highlighted in Malaysia’s Urban Forum 2020, the slovenness facing the swelling elderly population is one of the most pressing one. Malaysia is aging fast and we must respond as fast as possible, and Covid shows that we are behind the curve. From incentivizing the renovation of safer interior spaces for the elderly, planning age-friendly outdoor amenities, to adopting long-term care systems, Malaysia has much room for improvement to reckon with the bloating proportion of retired residents. Even though the current government response seems sclerotic, individuals, community groups and NGOs are starting to adapt the ubiquitous progression towards longevity.
During the pandemic, as unemployment, lockdown, discrimination and the unceasing misinformation and pseudoscience directly or indirectly affect every single person, it is not hard to observe that mental health has been a huge topic bantered across the media. If Covid has done anything good to Malaysia, it reveals the lack of awareness about the gravity of this situation (The fact that there’s a lack of psychologists, dearth of evidenced-based research, negligible government funding and pervasive stereotypes and social stigma can attest to this). Because of that, online counseling, psychological first aid, promulgation of mental health awareness and many policies will mushroom to shine recognition, empathy, and maturity on this serious subject .
I’ll be criminally remiss if I do not mention Cop26. This year, politicians, activists and scientists will convene in Glasgow to address the impending climate emergency. In this summit, countries would promise tougher emission cuts, reinforce stringent legislation, and reconstruct economic structures to steer away from Covid’s nightmarish prophecy. With Biden on the helm, China announcing astonishing climate plans, and other key countries doing the same, I believe many are expectant on this watershed moment.
In the future, we would see a growing movement for veganism too. For some, Covid was the final straw that pushed them into the hands of veganism. Rich countries in particular, persuaded by strong ethical and environmental verdicts augmented by the pandemic, are embracing the fledgling vegan community. South Korea, a country famous for its bulgogi and gogigui (Korean BBQ), and not so infamous for its stigmatization of vegans, are seeing the plant-based demographic on the rise. The growing momentum will continue as more well-to-do people become environmentally conscious.
Researching on this topic, I couldn’t deny a creeping sense of hypocrisy for maintaining my meat-eating diet — I’m nudging readers to go vegan, only to leave the bandwagon due to the flimsy excuse of inconvenience and taste buds. I still bear reluctance losing in a rather lopsided ethical battle (I keep shoving Peter Singer’s Animal Liberation to the end of my reading list even though that damn book is literally in front of me!). Hopefully, this year, I will cleanse my moral impurity once and for all.
The Main Message
To end, instead of subscribing to Albert Camus’ view on the absurdity of life (this only suggests political quietism), I would like to remind that like in any crisis, every breakdown comes with a breakthrough, and these breakthroughs wouldn’t come to fruition without the passionate voices from the bottom — the grassroots, the urbanists, and crucially, the youth. As the world becomes more digitized and interconnected, we must sublimate our fiery visions into realizing place-making, defending human rights, and mobilizing audacious climate decisions for the sake of our future. This social rebuilding blueprint is presented to us, and it’s time to erect the world we dream of.
[Written by: Yew Jun Hao]
References
For instructive introduction on historical economics during major plagues, see this video.
Implementation of UBI (an economic concept reincarnated by US Democratic Party presidential candidate Andrew Yang) through digital technology is expanding in South Korea. For more info, see this video.
Absurdity of life (or “the Absurd”)is the constant struggle finding meaning in life in a world that offers no meaning. Admitting the Absurd, Albert Camus thinks that conjuring any purpose in life only leads to despair. Therefore, one should live their life enshrouded in its sheer meaninglessness. For details, see The Myth of Sisyphus by Albert Camus.