Most of South Africa’s cities experienced their growth during the course of the 20th century. In large part, our cities were structured through the lens of segregation and apartheid so that black people were excluded from urban amenities and functioned to service the mines, factories and homes of whites, and were confined to ghettos on the urban edge or beyond.
The evolution of our cities is also intimately bound up with the prevalence of abundant cheap oil which enabled individual mobility to, from and within urban areas. As the motorcar evolved and was mass produced, it afforded individuals greater mobility, so the structure of our cities expanded horizontally into the form of urban sprawl that we have today.
Urban sprawl as an urban form only works with this high level of mobility as it enables people to work, school their children, access medical care, recreational facilities and social services in different parts of the city. In South Africa, we rely for our mobility on the private car as well as busses, trains and taxis, particularly in black residential areas.
The underlying assumption which holds this structure together is that cheap fuel is infinite and is able to fuel our need for mobility. However, oil is finite, and is depleting with every journey. As oil continues to deplete, we need to consider seriously how appropriate our city models and structures are in an oil-constrained and hence mobility-constrained world.
It is important that we understand that oil is a finite non-renewable resource which depletes according to a bell-shaped curve. Independent researchers looking into oil discovery and production are raising a big warning signal, about the nature of its production curve and contend that, globally, we are very close to, if not past, the midway peak of the bell. The implication being that once past the peak of the curve, further growth in production is impossible at a time when global demand has never been greater. Beyond the peak, oil production steadily declines. The consequences are not difficult to predict.
Not only will the price of oil continue to rise substantially and become more volatile, there will be less of it to go around. What this means is that our form of urban mobility will be affected. It will dramatically impact our ability to use cities in the ways in which we are accustomed. With constrained mobility we will need to look for ways of coping with the shortages of fuel we are likely to experience. This can take many forms, from car pooling and sharing to new types of urban transportation. This situation will not be a temporary one, but rather one which becomes increasingly severe putting relentless pressure on our current lifestyles and our urban systems, including the movement of goods and food. We will need to be constantly improving the energy efficiency of the systems that enable cities to function, such as refuse collection but will be at the effect of diminishing returns.
How appropriate are our cities and the way they are structured to cope with these pressures? At the moment, it is reasonably easy for us to live, work, school our children, engage in recreational activity and access health and other social amenities. Many of us merely get into our cars and drive to wherever we need to be. Or we use some form of mass transportation such as a bus, a taxi or a train.
Just how well will we cope if our mobility becomes increasingly restricted? Our suburbs and townships are going to need to become much more integrated and will need to work at a much smaller scale. Densities will need to increase placing pressure on existing service infrastructure. We will need to be able to access our all the things we need without making long journeys.
New modes (or rather quite ancient ones) of transport will dictate the structure just as the current structure has been made possible by cheap oil. We will need to be doing much more walking, cycling to and from our amenities which means that work related opportunities are going to have to find their way into the suburbs. More walking will bring with it the need for more security, particularly in our crime-ridden country.
In fact, security concerns are likely to increase as high oil prices will affect employment and affordability of staple foods. How will we create sustainable urban communities, which require low levels of mobility and transportation? Our big metropoles will need to be divided up spatially in ways that make economic and social sense and which enable urban living but on a much smaller scale. These areas will then need to be connected by fast, efficient and reliable public transport to facilitate the movement of goods and people between them. This will require a dramatic increase in investment in new appropriate public transport infrastructure.
All of this will require high levels of coordination and planning in time frames which are becoming shorter by the day. The longer we have to plan our transition to a post oil society, the greater the likelihood of a smooth well managed process and the lower the risk of being the victim of fast moving events which could have many unexpected outcomes.
Food is a big concern. Its production and distribution are highly dependent on oil. We will need to think about ways of producing food within the city and distributing it locally to reduce the dependence on food produced using highly mechanised means with the use of fertilisers and pesticides which are fossil fuel bye products. The need for urban agriculture will require the need to utilise unused land in creative ways.
But what size of population can be sustained on urban agriculture? Will this place pressure on people to move to rural areas which will themselves be under pressure to convert their production to more labour intensive methods?
It is perhaps worth looking at how other cities in the world are thinking about and dealing with these issues. Portland in the American state of Oregon is perhaps the furtherest advanced in its thinking, having just released the “Descending the Oil Peak Report” prepared by its Peak Oil Task Team. Portland has realised that even the most optimistic predictions of when the oil peak will occur, leave very little time to adapt and has thus committed resources to planning its transition strategy.
The Task Team recommended a two faceted set of recommendations which on the one hand reduce the city’s exposure and on the other strengthen community cohesion. It proposes to cut oil and natural gas consumption in half, transforming how energy is used in transportation, food supply, buildings and manufacturing. It has also recognised that descending the oil peak curve could bring with it high levels of social dislocation in the form of unemployment and other effects of economic hardship and has recommended having social and economic support systems in place. Portland is making contingency plans for fuel shortages that may last for months or years. Our cities have far greater income disparities that does Portland and currently have higher levels of unemployment.
Portland has recognised that perhaps the most profound change that is likely to emerge from the peaking of oil production is that economies will need to become much more local. Our globalised economic relationships will be put under pressure as increased oil prices affect air and road transport dramatically seriously challenging current business models. This will mean changing both economic and spatial arrangements so that local economies flourish. Importing and exporting (and anything that requires long distance transportation) will become much more expensive and will place huge strain on the economic relations that underly these models. Like Portland, we too, will need to look at strategies to maintain business viability and employment in an energy constrained environment. The kinds of changes necessary will bring with them opportunities which could have positive social and economic impacts as we begin to spend less on imported fuel and redirect our money into local economies.
It is vital that our city leaders begin to embrace this inevitability. It is not a matter of if, it is a matter of when. Leadership by our city officials is necessary and needs to come through actions that are taken as example. This will be a demonstration that they mean what they say and are prepared to walk their talk. The bottom line is that we need to plan for a significant reduction in oil use and the consequences that flow from this even if we have to throw some of our current comforts out in the process.
Simon Ratcliffe, is an energy and sustainability consultant and is the Chairperson of the Association for the Study of Peak OIl South Africa (ASPO South Africa).
