by Professor Dato Dr. Ahmad Ibrahim,
Most cities are reinventing to be efficient and sustainable. The costs of managing cities continue rising, while city folks demand more value. Cities account for much of global problems. In the current pandemic, the major clusters are in the urban areas. As cities grow denser, complying with social distancing is a struggle. Wastes generated by cities have emerged as a big environmental concern. Unless well managed, the implications on water and air pollution are serious. Not to mention the potential to further raise carbon emission through fossil-based city transport.
The smart city idea came about as a way out. The main idea is to use technology such as digitalisation and automation to deliver better services. Three years ago, we launched our own smart city framework, under the Ministry of Housing and Local Government. A review of the implementation, comparing with smart city initiatives around the world, has just been published jointly by MIGHT and CONFEXHUB. The book has highlighted the gaps in the implementation and proposed how to deal with them.
In the meantime, Denmark has reported success in one smart city project. They have transformed a former industrial area, close to Copenhagen, into what they call a “five-minute city”. It has been more than 10 years in the making, planning for completion by 2050. By then, it will have housing for 40,000 inhabitants and workspace for another 40,000. But in the past 18 months, it has taken the form of a city, albeit small, with enough completed buildings to house almost 5,000 residents and office workers across the former shipyard. The “five-minute city,” aims to enable residents to reach shops, institutions, workplaces, cultural facilities, and public transport within five minutes’ walk from any point in the 3.6-million-square-meter district.
A metro line connects it to Copenhagen’s city centre in 20 minutes. It has attracted popular brands, creating the beginnings of a new tourism hotspot. There are other amenities including cinemas. In the coming years, the area’s decommissioned fabrication yard will be converted into a massive cultural space spanning nearly three square miles called the Tunnel Factory. It will have among others open-air performance spaces, a sculpture park, high-design playgrounds for kids, and a spate of “climate-conscious” restaurants, all focusing on construction styles that leverage upcycled materials.
But Nordhavn isn’t just an example of innovative and highly liveable urban planning. It’s also a model for urban greening, that rival any city in the world for their sustainability ambitions. They aim for the highest certification from the German Sustainable Building Council (DGNB), the standard-setter in sustainability auditing. Since breaking ground in 2009, Nordhavn has been a showcase of cutting-edge green building. One was EnergyLab Nordhavn, a “smart city energy lab” where local companies, utility providers, and government entities have collaborated to engineer everything from energy-efficient heating pumps to electric transport infrastructure. Their 28-point report on the future of green living is now the backbone for the remaining Nordhavn projects, many of which feature architectural reuse rather than new constructions.
Some of the innovations are simple. Others are high tech, such as a citywide “energy data warehouse” that collects real-time information about wind and solar production, weather, energy costs, and how all the area’s resources are being consumed at any given moment. That allows authorities to reduce districtwide usage and efficiently manage renewables. Nordhavn may not yet be complete, but its master plan puts it in rare company as a global standard-setter for sustainability. While most rating systems certify green buildings after they’ve been completed, DGNB can help shape projects while they’re still in early design phases, offering clear guidelines for stakeholders to follow from Day One.
Already, Nordhavn’s initiatives are getting noticed. In October 2019, Nordhavn hosted the C40 summit on sustainable development, attended by mayors from 40 of the world’s largest cities. Their shared goal was to get a master class in sustainable urban planning and to identify long-term solutions to common problems such as traffic management and overdevelopment. We should learn from Nordhavn how we can turn some of our neglected city areas into such “five-minute city”. This fits in well with Kuala Lumpur’s low carbon ambitions.
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