This document discusses the challenges of designing truly green cities. It argues that simply adding more "green" elements to urban development plans may not actually make the plans sustainable or environmentally friendly. Three key points are made: 1) Green initiatives are often motivated more by business profits than long-term environmental stewardship. Goals need to shift towards genuine commitment to sustainability. 2) Academic knowledge of green urbanism is not always applied properly due to influences from private sector decisions and lack of integration across disciplines. 3) Public education is key to generating awareness and buy-in for sustainable development practices from communities. Without understanding and participation of local stakeholders, green plans may not be effective.

1. 1 23
Environment Systems and Decisions
Formerly The Environmentalist
ISSN 2194-5403
Environ Syst Decis
DOI 10.1007/s10669-014-9507-4
Does adding more lettuce make a
hamburger truly green? A metaphor behind
the green movement paradigm in designing
cities
Abhijit Paul, Paul F. Downton, Enoch
Okoli, Jit K. Gupta & Mark Tirpak

2. 1 23
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3. PERSPECTIVES
Does adding more lettuce make a hamburger truly green?
A metaphor behind the green movement paradigm in designing
cities
Abhijit Paul • Paul F. Downton • Enoch Okoli •
Jit K. Gupta • Mark Tirpak
Ó Springer Science+Business Media New York 2014
Abstract In designing cities, the label of the green
movement these days is being applied to almost every-
thing—starting from works of environmental non-govern-
mental organizations and international as well as local
conservation organizations to grass-roots resistance activ-
ism including radical environmentalism. This paper seeks
to understand the motivation—the paradigm—behind the
green movement initiatives and how the paradigm appears
to shift from the ground reality. Conclusions suggest that,
on one hand, environmental problems are far from being a
matter of common sense and, on the other, the matter of
intellectual and technological developments—the out-
comes of rigorous academic research reflected in endless
literature predominantly comprising the fields of environ-
mental sociology, environmental anthropology, and con-
servation psychology—are in reality often found to be dealt
with by shallow planning and policy practices without even
realizing the big-picture that the paradigm is merely being
used as an advertizing tool for making business profit. It is
expected that, unless a shift from such negative practices
towards a conscious and genuine commitment to proactive
environmental stewardship is made, the situation will
continue to be exacerbated.
Keywords Eco-urbanism Á Urban revitalization Á
Biodiversity Á Environmental politics Á Urban fractals
The challenge of this discussion lies in the metaphor itself.
Whether or not adding more lettuce to a hamburger could
make the burger truly green or eco-friendly depends on
many factors including (but not limited to) the component
ingredients used (active and non-active) and their stated
authentic food values, who assesses and confirms (after
adding more lettuce) the burger as green (and that it still
retains its integrity as a hamburger), and to what extent the
modified hamburger responds to the actual needs of the
target clientele; and so on.
In the urban development context, the diversity of cur-
rent challenges and on-going initiatives for greening built
environments, in terms of sustainable urban development,
give cause for serious thoughts and concerns (Rubin 2008;
Beatley 2000; Birch & Wachter 2008). Looking at the
overall framework of ongoing global sustainability mea-
sures, the growing trend of the wanton use and, in some
cases, destruction of the planet’s finite resources in many
parts of the world without replenishment have significant
adverse impacts, which often, and perhaps unwillingly,
open up in urban development master plans. If not, while
management of natural resources and infrastructure sys-
tems for sustainability itself is complicated by uncertainties
in the human and natural environment (Hamilton et al.
2013, p. 89), urban development policy decisions are fur-
ther complicated by contradictory views, values, and
A. Paul (&)
Department of Architecture, Jadavpur University, Calcutta, India
e-mail: abhijitpaul2002@yahoo.com
P. F. Downton
Urban Ecology Australia Inc., Adelaide, Australia
E. Okoli
Avalon Alliance Inc., Kelowna, British Columbia, Canada
J. K. Gupta
Sahara Prime City Ltd. Chandigarh, India & College of
Architecture, IET Bhaddal, Punjab, India
M. Tirpak
Transforming Cultures Research Centre, University of
Technology Sydney (UTS), Sydney, Australia
123
Environ Syst Decis
DOI 10.1007/s10669-014-9507-4
Author's personal copy

4. concerns that are seldom made explicit to general public—
that, paradoxically, are the foci as well as the justifications
of this movement.
This trend of conflicting approaches, as it is often heard,
is mainly due to the capitalists’ propensity (Rubin 1998;
Beder 1997) for choosing short-term measures for business
profit rather than striving for long-term core values for
posterity when addressing certain environmental issues.
The continuous abuse, misuse, and exploitation of nature
solely for business interests can lead the planet towards an
imminent disaster, which can merely be echoed in a dis-
cussion like this.
Essentially, the ambiguity is: Does the philosophy of
greening the built environment make sense from its
inception? Are people not instinctively concerned about the
impact for their patterns of living on scarce natural
resources that the environment provides to them (Rubin
1998) enabling their livelihoods? Do they not realize
whether their actions are contributing to a disaster in its
every sense? These are the vital questions of the hour as,
unless a shift from the negative-orientated, and perhaps
duplicitous, greening practices towards conscious and
genuine commitment to proactive environmental steward-
ship (Campbell 1996) is made, situations will continue to
worsen for all living beings of the planet.
If and when greening initiatives lead built environments
towards growth, prosperity, and universal good (including
human welfare), the movement may then be construed as
right in its choices, actions, and approaches. On the con-
trary, if the initiatives lead towards misery, chaos, poverty,
and wastage, and all together towards the disaster of the
planet, then the movement is surely in the wrong, and
reorientation of strategies (Campbell 1996; Downton 2009)
needs to be considered without further delay. Now, when
the philosophy of the greening movement itself is at stake,
because of its misuse and abuse, how can it be possible to
frame out effective strategies that can actually help in
forming a useful movement particularly from the urban
development stance? This discussion aims to find an
answer to this fundamental question.
It could be argued that the present era of urban gener-
ation has bestowed a few with the authority to control the
environment without paying much attention to what would
happen to the majority. Interesting, however, to speculate
that, if the authority is shifted to the majority instead, the
movement still does not seem to find its true meaning. It
appears to be a vicious circle, and notably, as Rubin (1998)
argues: environmental problems are far from being a matter
of common sense that can be dealt with by the ready-made
planning and policy solutions. It is rather revealing that
what is achievable through this movement and that what
the core philosophy of greening cities should be still have
been little understood.
Greening initiatives are now being connected with glo-
bal awareness of food sufficiency for the poor countries,
global warming (Roy & Chan 2012), and, so on; in short—
a spectrum that embraces global destiny! People also buy it
(Newman et al. 1995) not because they do not understand
the use of a green label often helps in making lucrative
marketing strategies with a generous ideology for selling
products, whatever they might be, but perhaps because they
prefer to leave it to others to make contributions towards
saving the planet.
What seems to be rational from a broader perspective, in
fact, is to ensure that the planet maintains the much needed
equitable balance to help it sustain its integrity for a bal-
anced sustainable development for both present and future
generations. This same principle of equitable balance
(Hardi & Zdan 1997) goes for the growing current trend in
global greening initiatives. The need is to review the
existing development initiatives while establishing a clear
and well-structured greening vision, goals, and objectives
by giving conscious and genuine considerations to the
aspirations, needs, and particularly to the concerns of
stakeholders, relevant to their local development contexts.
These stakeholders take in both the vocal minority and the
silent majority. Having established a consensus of opinion,
through dialogue and research, it is then more likely to be
possible to devise proactive, realistic, and responsive
implementation strategies through well-structured urban
development master plans.
In this context, the need for the political will to adopt
and to establish necessary statutory and financial backing
for effective implementation of green master plans and
other initiatives is indeed de rigueur (Merad et al. 2013;
Reboredo 2013). No matter how well-structured legisla-
tions and regulations might be, effective implementation
may still not be realized, or perhaps could be seriously
compromised, without strict enforcement, continuing
monitoring, evaluation, and updating of relevant imple-
mentation strategies. Enforcements need to include, among
others, ensuring compliance with local and applicable
global standards and specifications.
At the core of a sustainable green development, the need
to integrate greening initiatives with human living, work-
ing, thought, and action is often found to be undervalued.
The reality is that, even after billions of dollars spent,
planners and policymakers do not seem to find solutions to
restoring biodiversity (Huettmann 2012); rather, the bio-
diversity is still continuously being compromised by
human activities. While many exciting top-down initiatives
are popping up these days, albeit in a piecemeal manner,
the need of a much deeper understanding of ongoing pol-
icies that can actually interact with and channel individual
motivations towards a true green movement to protect the
planet and its biodiversity is evidently at stake.
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5. As it appears, there cannot be sustainability, in terms of
maintaining biodiversity, if human living remains solely
dependent on consumption (Devuyst et al. 2001; Newman
& Kenworthy 1999) that promotes nothing, but the money-
spinning notion of consumerism (Rubin 1998). Challeng-
ing the notion of consumerism might sound somewhat
incongruous in this peculiar present era of globalization,
but limiting human needs and eliminating insatiability or
greed seems to be the only way out for the betterment of
the environment that people live in. Note while nature has
enough to meet human needs, it can hardly meet a fraction
of the greed! The anomaly is that, because the expanding
patterns of consumption are mostly the outcomes of human
greed, the high consumption can make little help in car-
rying out a true green movement.
It seems sensible to realize the fact that greening ini-
tiatives must evolve from nature itself (Heffernan 2012;
Paul 2011a), essentially by limiting the needs to the extent
that people use natural resources to accommodate their
living with what is provided to them—making the most
from the least. This change in life-style does not seem to be
trouble-free or perhaps painless and can only happen when
the general public becomes more aware of the worsening
environmental situation and the concomitant requirement
for greening policy and action-taking.
However imperative the learning of cities and actualiz-
ing their greening policies appears to be, the stake seems to
be at the gained academic knowledge as well. That is, from
a different perspective, how can the academic learning on
greening theories and approaches aid in carrying out and
promoting sustainable development policy initiatives in
their true senses when these initiatives are predominantly
influenced, and perhaps, controlled by board-room deci-
sions or, as noted before, by a few who are bestowed with
the authority to be in command of the environment without
paying much attention to what is happening on-the-
ground.
Apparently, what is learnt on sustainability from an
academic institution often goes in vain at the time of
developing greening strategies and implementing them in
reality. As Rubin (1998) argues, people merely prefer to
put emphasis on making business profits literally by paying
little attention to the society and the environment that they
live in and somehow expect future generations to continue
to survive. This brings out another key question of this
discussion: Is academic learning useful for helping people
prepare themselves for participation in a true green urban
development movement?
The question above does not seem to find an answer
when many, certainly not all, are often seen to be drawn to
the planning studies preoccupied with to how best sell
planning products and services to a wider clientele instead
of utilizing their learning as a basis for public service that,
at its core, aids in promoting associated living—with its
emphasis on immediate contiguity (Dewey 2012, p. 61) or
face-to-face relations and more democratic daily
interactions.
The current trend of academic learning cannot take the
blame alone—particularly as the integrating lines between
public, private, and academic city design practices are not
very well defined and frequently they are found to be faded
and occasionally are obliterated. Frequently and across
sectors, city design can treat various means as ends.
Inadvertently, sometimes directly however, urban planning
and management attempts to dictate to the users, however
benevolently, what—as John Dewey warned ‘‘their good
shall be…’’ (quoted in Saltmarsh 1996, p. 17)—instead of
working to engage with common people, as members of the
same, to transform the conditions that matter most, break
down divides, or address various obstacles to a meaningful
development.
The outreach of urban planning and development, as a
discipline, always motivates urban planners and designers
in gaining a comprehensive understanding of the environ-
ment before developing any sustainable schemes (Paul
2011b). Urban planning algorithms are also available these
days. These can help to simulate with data-based evidence
(Paul 2012) means of showing how useful and sustainable
the development schemes are in practice and how much
more efficient they could be with necessary changes and
modifications. However, the process of urban development
is indeed complex as it involves other various disciplines.
More prominently, the disintegration (Banerjee et al. 2002)
of these disciplines in the development process often
results in unavoidable negative impacts on the city’s green
landscapes especially while dealing with urban revitaliza-
tion issues of the emerging economies (Fitzgerald 2010). In
this scenario, any greening initiatives seem to be effective
when they evolve from within a multidisciplinary envi-
ronment and associated living perspective (Calthorpe 1993;
Paul 2011a, b). A multidisciplinary environment and
associated living perspective can provide the much-needed
platform to comprehensively evaluate development initia-
tives because of the interaction and exchange of ideas
among the users, who are able to give perspectives that
might not have otherwise been considered.
Now, going back to the central question of this discus-
sion: In view of all these, how does it become possible to
practically green a city?
This depends on what kind of society and patterns of
daily living are expected and are encountered (Birch &
Wachter 2008; Devuyst et al. 2001). It is perhaps revealing
these days that cities and regions need to project an identity
worth fighting for, and make themselves a cause. Imagine
the differences of all the cities and regions of the world.
Their need to be sustainable and the quest seems to be that
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6. they all are different. So, no common recipe, even in the
name of green movement, seems to work well.
Also, at the local level, policies become useful when
they are designed and applied as a tool to encourage mass
action, including dialogue or questioning, related to the
issues on hand. It is not unusual that much of shallow
planning and policy works are frequently caught up in the
document production business without paying much
thought and value to the broader audience for their interests
or behaviors (Alexander et al. 1994), where the change in
life-style is desirable and possible.
Arguably perhaps, green sells well. But just by adding
more green colors in an urban development master plan
may not necessarily guarantee in achieving a sustainable
green outcome (Huettmann 2012; Campbell 1996). What is
needed at the core of the movement is public education
because public education is the only way that can generate
and increase awareness to ensure adaptation of effective
urban development goals and objectives, which are also to
be meaningfully realized by the general public themselves
in order to facilitate a successful implementation of a
greening vision (Kornberger & Clegg 2011). Simulta-
neously, the implementation of a greening initiative can
only be successful if it is consciously accepted as a col-
lective responsibility that warrants genuine commitment,
perseverance, and patience, by all concerned parties,
including the stakeholders. Disappointingly, however,
current policy practices on greening initiatives—divorced
from the thoughts, actions, habits, immediate experiences,
interests, and preferences of general public—do not even
make a regular burger, let alone a green one, but at best
provide a biodegradable or reusable wrapper for it.
Acknowledgments Ghosh & Downton are reported to have used the
lettuce-with-burger comment, which has appeared in Polo (1999,
p. 15). The quote goes: ‘‘Pseudo-environmental approaches are like
adding twice the lettuce to a Big Mac and calling it an eco-bur-
ger.’’Also, the views reported in this paper are part of a broader and
ongoing research effort on greening initiatives in today’s world, that
has come up in many urban conferences and professional networks
including LinkedIn. Thanks to all, who have supported this discus-
sion, in particular Santosh Ghosh, Center for Built-environment,
Calcutta and Pedro Ortiz, Sr. World Bank Consultant, Washington
DC for their motivational feedback. Also, the authors are thankful to
the anonymous reviewers of Environment, Systems and Decisions for
their comments in developing this paper.
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