Last September, the New York Times ran a story highlighting my hometown. Reading, PA had officially “earned the unwelcome distinction of having the largest share of its residents living in poverty” among cities with populations greater than 65,000. Roughly 43% of our residents live in poverty – a staggering 36,000 people in my community of 88,000. Less than two months later, city residents voted in a mayor whose platform addressed “green jobs” and “sustainability.” Many urban areas are beginning to jump on the sustainability bandwagon. Reading, a mid-sized industrial city about 1.5 hours northwest of Philadelphia, is just beginning to enter the fray and the new administration is jumping in with both feet.
Cities are faced with a number of ecological, economic, and social problems and sustainable systems thinking is crucial for understanding and addressing them. A systems thinking approach – that is, one that encourages us to view a system in a holistic manner by understanding the relationships that comprise the system – provides cities with an important toolkit for addressing sustainability. Systems thinking and movements toward more sustainable urban practices and policies must go hand-in-hand to ensure that sustainable approaches to urban problems are more than simply old urban policies with a green label.
In her new book, “Small, Gritty, and Green: The Promise of America’s Smaller Industrial Cities in a Low-Carbon World,” Catherine Tumber argues that small and mid-sized industrial cities like Reading offer a number of important resources that will be valuable in a transition to a low-carbon economy, including access to surrounding farmland, manufacturing infrastructure, and industrial workforce skills that can be easily transitioned for production of renewable technologies.
