Sustainable Cities in Europe

Peter Nijkamp, Adriaan Perrels

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2018
• eBook ISBN: 9781134052738
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Urban Planning & Landscaping
• Index: Business

Although urbanization steadily increases, many modern cities are finding the accommodation of their populations an increasingly difficult task. Planners and policy-makers battling to alleviate the problem with a host of urban renewal initiatives have made environmental issues and policies central to their quest for urban sustainability.;Drawing on the CITIES programme of the EC, this study describes the urban energy and environmental policies now available. Through detailed case studies of various European cities, it explains how to devise and implement strategies for urban growth and development.

PART I

SUSTAINABLE CITIES: CHALLENGE AND POTENTIAL OF ENERGY AND ENVIRONMENTAL POLICIES

1

Urban Sustainability as a New Paradigm

SUSTAINABLE CITIES

For many people urban areas are concentration points of environmental decay, where pollution, noise annoyance and congestion can mean a serious threat to human welfare and well-being. At the same time, however, it has to be recognized that – with some ups and downs – urbanization has become widespread around the world, so that at a macro level, apparently, the economies of scale in urban areas are by and large superseding the diseconomies and external costs of modern city life. Nevertheless, the environmental situation in many cities is a matter for concern, as demonstrated by health standards not only in the Third World but also in Europe.

In recent years interest in urban environmental questions has risen to an unprecedented degree. The Commission of the European Communities (EC) launched its Greenbook on the Urban Environment (1990), the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) published its report on Environmental Policies for Cities in the 1990s (1990), while many other institutions (international, national, regional and local) followed this new wave of interest in urban quality of life by organizing meetings of experts, undertaking urban environmental research projects, preparing urban quality of life programmes and the like. Various new concepts were advocated, such as the ‘green city’, the ‘eco-city’, the ‘liveable city’, ‘the resourceful city’ or the ‘environmental city’. Nowadays, apparently, there is a broad concern about the future of our cities (see Elkin et al 1990).

Especially in the European context, the reinforced focus on the city seems warranted, as the European countries (especially those in the EC) are facing a stage of dramatic restructuring and transition as a consequence of the move towards the completion of the internal market. (This follows the Cecchini Report on the economic benefits of the internal market; see Cecchini 1989.) However, the aim to make Europe more competitive in economic terms may be at odds with its environmental sustainability. In the long history of Europe numerous cities with an extremely valuable and vulnerable socio–cultural heritage have emerged which deserve strict protection in the interest of current and future generations. Therefore, what we are facing here is a problem of ecologically sustainable urban development.

The notion of ‘sustainable development’ has gained much popularity in recent years. The political formulation of this notion is most clearly described in the publication Our Common Future (the so-called Brundtland Report; see WCED 1987) as follows: ‘a process of change in which the exploitation of resources, the direction of investments, the orientation of technological development and institutional changes are made consistent with future as well as present needs’ (p 46). Thus it is clear that the idea of sustainable development is much broader than that of environmental protection. Besides, sustainable development is not a predetermined end state, but a balanced and adaptive evolutionary process. Sustainability refers in this context to a balanced use and management of the natural environmental basis of economic development (see also Archibugi and Nijkamp 1990; Van den Bergh 1991).

Sustainable development has of course a global dimension, but it is also increasingly recognized that there is close mutual interaction between local and global processes: regions are open systems impacting on all other areas and on the earth as a whole. Therefore, a regional or urban scale for analysing sustainability is certainly warranted. It has to be added that in an open spatial system cross-boundary flows and external development stimuli may play an important role: unsustainability may even be imported or exported. In any case, a focus on local circumstances may enhance our insight into the feasibility of sustainability objectives formulated at a given institutional policy level (Breheny 1992; Giaoutzi and Nijkamp 1993 and Stren 1992).

Sustainability is a concept from (eco-)systems dynamics and refers to the morphogenesis of a dynamic system which is subject to evolutionary change (that is, structural changes in which systems parameters may vary also, in either a linear or a non-linear way). Sustainability in an urban setting, then, describes the potential of a city to reach qualitatively a new level of socio–economic, demographic and technological output which in the long run reinforces the foundations of the urban system, although its evolutionary path may exhibit various stable or unstable temporary fluctuations (Nijkamp 1990). Thus urban sustainability ensures a long-term continuity of the urban system. It is worth noting that we interpret sustainability here at the level of the urban system, and not at the level of the individual players (businesses, households, political parties, and so on). In summary, sustainable cities are cities where socio–economic interests are brought together in harmony (co-evolution) with environmental and energy concerns in order to ensure continuity in change.

Thus sustainability is not exactly equal to survival, but means essentially continuity in changing situations. These changing situations are clearly reflected in the role of the city, for instance, as an industrial centre, as a service centre, as a high-tech centre, and so on. In the past in most cities it was possible to identify shifts in the role that the city plays within the (changing) national system of cities and within the changing national economy.

Clearly, in some cases war, a catastrophe, the decline of a dominant employer or a major new policy initiative may induce a very clear role change (for example, from an industrial city to a recreational one; from a seaside resort to an electronics centre; from a railway town to a university city, etc). However, in various cases the shifts are not so clear, perhaps, because they have only been partly successful or because countervailing forces emerged to forestall the shift. Interesting examples can be found among large industrial centres which are not regional market and commercial centres (Liverpool, Coventry or Teesside in the UK, for example). In such cities exposure of the export base (both manufacturing and services) of their economies is higher than in the regional ‘central place’ centres, and hence sustainability would demand a stronger response to the emergence of structural economic upset, disruption and change. The response may be a reassertion of an old role in a new guise (ie with new products and technology), or it may involve role change, through which the whole character of the local economy moves on a fairly rapid transition. Thus sustainability of an urban system will only come into being if the system at hand is exhibiting a high degree of resilience with respect to external and internal challenges.

A situation of non-sustainability of a city would imply a structural decline of the economic base of a city (reflected, inter alia, in population decline, environmental degradation, inefficient energy systems, loss of employment, emigration of industries and services, and unbalanced social-demographic composition). In general, if the self-organization of an urban system fails (for example, because of lack of consensus among different individual institutions), a phase of non-sustainability is likely to start. Environmental decay is one of the first signs of non-sustainability.

Cities certainly qualify as focal points for sustainability research and planning, as they play a decisive role as nodal points of people and their activities. In many cases they also face the most severe environmental problems, such as air and water pollution, noise, waste, declining quality of urban life and destruction of urban landscapes and architecture – hence the current heightened public awareness and concern about the quality of the urban environment (including public health). Urban policies aiming to achieve sustainable development should be more strategic in nature, more integrative, more visionary regarding the role of the private sector, more focused on the provision of market incentives, and more oriented towards the needs of citizens.

Sustainable urban development has become an important issue in social science research (Banister and Button 1993, Owens 1992 and Rickaby 1991), but the theoretical underpinnings and the critical success parameters of actual urban sustainability policies are still feeble. Moreover, such policies should also cover multiple fields, such as urban rehabilitation and gentrification, land use, transport, energy management, architecture and conservation policy (Newman and Kenworthy 1992). Measurable indicators, including minimum performance levels and critical threshold levels, will then have to be estimated, defined and used in forecasting tools so as to improve awareness of sustainable development issues in modern cities. Local authorities will have to share their tasks with all other players in the urban space (including the private sector). Nevertheless, it goes without saying that urban sustainable development is a process riddled with conflicts and incompatibilities. Key commitment to a strict environmentally sustainable urban development in a city is necessary for a successful implementation of sustainability policies. Economic (market-based) incentives are necessary also in order to cope with the negative externalities of modern city life. Failure to develop an effective balanced urban development policy will reinforce urban sprawl and will spread inner city problems to a much larger area.

The city is – and has always been – the ‘home of man’ (Ward 1976). Nobody likes to destroy this home, but our current carelessness regarding the daily quality of life threatens to destroy the conditions for the survival and continuity of cities. To counter this, both strong scientific and policy interest in the well-being of cities is both warranted and necessary (see also UNEP 1993). Fortunately, there is increasing awareness in Europe and elsewhere that cities need to be sustainable, that is, they should find a development pace which is economically viable without eroding the environmental amenities (both natural and man-made) that make up the foundation stones of social economic progress now and in the future. The question, however, is whether those policies can be identified.

INTEREST IN URBAN QUALITY OF LIFE

Our world is exhibiting a massive transition towards urbanization. The majority of the world population now live in urban areas, and this proportion is still increasing (Juul and Nijkamp 1989). And currently, there are no signs of a change in this pattern of a world-wide urbanization. At face value it seems as though cities are exerting a strong centripetal force, so strong that all negative externalities of the city are to be accepted. However, some words of caution are in order here. Modern cities are suffering severely from environmental overheads (for example Madrid, Rome, Athens, London), and it is precisely these externalities which decide the shape the city will assume in the future. There have been some attempts to design optimal city configurations, eg ideal energy-efficient urban forms (see Owens 1992). Owens proposes spatial models of concentrated deconcentrations as ideal configurations, but the dynamic and structural change in such idealistic models are hard to incorporate.

In order to explain urban dynamics from the viewpoint of urban externalities, it is necessary to recognize that throughout world history, cities have played a critical role as nodal points in the spatial–economic network of a country. This has always attracted urban immigrants in both the developed and the underdeveloped world. However, this movement has at the same time caused urban sprawl, resulting in city regions or functional urban regions. Often both land prices and environmental externalities in central areas of the cities became an impediment for new private and business locations, so that an outward shift began to take place. Industries moved to the urban fringe or to purpose-built industry parks in the city neighbourhoods. People moved to suburban – and even more distant – locations, but essentially this massive movement meant only an expansion of the functional urban territory. Thus, despite a broadening of the spatial range, the urban system has still kept its original function and has even reinforced its position over the past decades. As a consequence, urban environmental damage tends to show a wider spatial coverage (see Orishimo 1982).

Now the question is: how can urban policies be used in order to cope with these urgent issues of urban decay? How can effective instruments be applied so as to improve urban quality of life and to avoid a furth...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Original Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• List of illustrations
• Preface
• PART I SUSTAINABLE CITIES: CHALLENGE AND POTENTIAL OF ENERGY AND ENVIRONMENTAL POLICIES
• PART II ENERGY AND URBAN ENVIRONMENT IN EUROPE: A COMPARATIVE OVERVIEW OF TWELVE CITIES
• PART III INTERPRETATION AND POLICY ANALYSIS OF THE CITIES PROJECT
• References