Role Of Systems Thinking For Sustainable Cities

A ‘Sustainable City’ Is Not Just A Place. It Is An Idea, An Ambition That all New Developments Aspire To Achieve

But most often, prioritisation becomes arbitrary due to the lack of systematic communication between key stakeholders, which in turn leads to missed opportunities for finding synergies.

Thus, a roadmap is needed to inform decisions and manage systemic influences that together shape a more sustainable city, as highlighted in the report.

In the report further mentioned, Atkins’ Rony Hobeika outlines how systems thinking can guide a roadmap for sustainable cities.

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 is thus recognised as 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, according to the report.

The report says that systems thinking can be a useful way to evaluate integrations in the built environment when designing sustainable cities.The built environment is made up of Superstructures and Infrastructures, and it encompasses the entire spectrum of man-made developments.

By applying systems thinking, the first can be broken down into sub-components of urban form defined by key elements, such as the urban footprint, street orientations, and zoning.

Buildings are another system that in turn can have a multitude of subsystems, such as structures and materials.

Talking about hydrating Riyadh's city report said 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 renewable energy.

For example, since network leaks are one cause of water loss (up to 1 trillion gallons of water per year, according to estimates by the US-EPA), making the city more dense can help control them in a big way.

Also, since homes, businesses, and public buildings use almost 60% of all water, eco-friendly building designs and high-efficiency fixtures are very effective ways to cut demand.Hard infrastructure systems like irrigation networks can use 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 about the environmental costs of water supply networks, and behavioural changes can go a long way towards achieving net-zero water targets.

Further commenting on the "Power in UAE report mentioned, solar power is the most promising alternative energy source in the sun-drenched UAE.

Photovoltaics’ carbon footprint is estimated to be 20 times less than that of a typical coal-powered plant. However, by employing systems thinking, the 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 percent of total global carbon emissions, to electric ones that emit 40–85 percent less carbon in their total lifecycle.

Consuming about 75 percent 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, the resulting lower heat gains and losses can save up to 15 percent 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.

Speaking about the standard practise of systems thinned, Rony Hobeika concluded, "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, with climate change being only the latest episode. We now know how to design better."

"For one thing, we've learned that development is a complicated business with many different parts that all depend on each other. Because of this, we have to carefully consider the full effects of our design decisions before putting them into action."

He added, "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."