SHANGHAI is a world-leading city, and will be one of the top three or four cities in the world in the 21st century.

This is largely due to Shanghai’s unique position within China at a time when China will become the world’s largest economy.

Shanghai is not really in competition with New York, London, and other great cities. Each of these cities is a natural leader of its own region.

The great world cities form a global network, in which each city plays a complementary role within its own geo- graphical region.

The main challenge, therefore, is not competition between Shanghai and other world cities, but rather the challenge facing Shanghai to achieve a high and sustainable quality of life, and a high economic productivity.

All great cities, including Shanghai, need to invent new ways to achieve sustainable development. No great city has yet met all of the challenges of 21st century — low-carbon energy, public health for an aging population and an obesity epidemic, sustainable clean water, reduced air and water pollution, effective waste management, and resilience to global climate change.

Shanghai will need to think and to plan ahead to accomplish these tasks.

Here are some of the key challenges of a truly sustainable Shanghai.

• Quality of Life. Shanghai needs to emphasize parks, green areas, plentiful opportunities for walking and bicycling, multi-use zoning (combining residential, commercial, artistic, and service-sector industries), high-density residential settlements, and low automobile use in the central city.

Pudong, for example, is a relatively low-density settlement, which is too dependent on automobile use. There’s in- sufficient emphasis on walking, cycling, public transport, and mixed-use zoning (which combines commercial, residential, cultural, and other activities).

• Public Health. Shanghai has achieved remarkable successes in public health, summarized by its spectacular life expectancy of 81 years.

Yet there are major challenges ahead: high air pollution and resulting diseases (eg, asthma, other lung diseases, cancer, etc); water pollution; climate change and risks to health; obesity, which is now of epidemic proportions among children; and a rapidly aging population.

• Transport. Shanghai needs a robust system that emphasizes walking, bicycling, public transport (buses, metro, light-rail), and reduces the reliance on automobiles within the city.

This will be promoted as well by high-density residential settlements in mixed-use zoning, as in Manhattan.

Shanghai should certainly not follow the patterns of automobile-based development of Los Angeles and similar low-density cities.

Such an automobile-dependent pattern (based on low-density, single-use zoning) leads to enormous congestion of auto- mobiles; long commuting times; little walking; more obesity and ill health; and a very high carbon footprint.

Note that high-density New York City’s carbon emissions per capita are roughly one-third of the US average emissions,

and roughly half of Manhattan’s population do not have or need automobiles.

• Clean Water. Shanghai has a vital stake in the sustainable management of the Yangtze River basin, including the prevention of excessive diversion of upstream water and the reduction of pollution of the river.

• Sustainable Food. Shanghai will re- quire sustainable local sources of food, even in a context in which food imports will also be important.

The city can help to promote sustain- able agricultural policies in neighboring farm regions, and can encourage nutritious foods (eg, fresh fruits, vegetables, and fish) for the local market.

The obesity epidemic is partly the result of a reliance on low-quality, high- calorie diets, based on starches and saturated fats with too little fruit and vegetable content.

• Clean Energy. Shanghai relies on highly polluting coal-fired power plants. This will have to change in the coming two or three decades, as the world as a whole — including China — finally takes on the urgent challenge of climate- change mitigation.

Shanghai will need to find alternative low-emission technologies, including nuclear power, carbon capture and sequestration, solar and wind power, etc.

Shanghai also has many opportunities to raise energy efficiency, through green building design, co-generation of power and residential heat, renewable energy (wind, solar, etc), nuclear power, plug-in hybrid automobiles, and other advanced technologies.

• Population policies. Population policies should help to manage the continuing rapid inflow of population to Shanghai, for example by establishing several “satellite cities” in the environs, which would reduce the strains on Shanghai’s infrastructure and services.

(The author is professor of economics at Columbia University. The article is adapted from his speech at the International Business Leaders’ Advisory Council For the Mayor of Shanghai on November 2.)

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