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Our city, our future: towards sustainable development in European cities

Voula Mega
SUMMARY: This paper looks at the trends in the urban
Euroscape and puts in perspective some innovative projects identified in Europe conducive to (and necessary for) sustainable cities. Most of the projects come from a European overview of urban innovations(1) undertaken by the European Foundation for the Improvement of Living and Working Conditions.(2) The overview focused on projects with a collective purpose, with significance for a city, projects resisting time and favouring local democracy and participation at the conception, decision and executive phases, projects introducing new ecological materials, techniques, methods and conditions and, last but not least, projects that produce culture and are cultural products.(3)
Voula Mega is a surveying engineer (National Technical University of Athens), DEA in Geography (French ENSG), DEA in Planning (French Institute of Urban Planning) and PhD in Urban and Regional Planning (French Institute of Planning). Post-PhD activities includes research in Regional Planning at Oxford Brooks University and training in Environmental Economics and Policy Analysis at Harvard University. She has worked as adviser to the Greek Minister for Transport and Communications in Athens and for the EC PETRA Programme. She is currently Research Manager at the European Foundation for the Improvement of Living and Working Conditions which is an autonomous body of the European Union and has its seat in Dublin. The present paper is a revised and improved version
I. THE EUROPEAN URBAN ENVIRONMENT AGENDA: HIGHLIGHTS

EUROPE IS FIRST and foremost urban. Aristotle called the city built politics.(4) He wanted it to be bright and safe,(5) while Vitruvius wanted the city to be solid, beautiful and useful.(6) These visions seem to have a great inertia in time for the European city or, more accurately, European cities in the plural.(7) Each city is individual and unique and its future is impacted by the myriad of decisions taken by people and enterprises within it. There is no single model or single reference. Each is endowed by a unique culture. According to the Commissions Green Paper on the Urban Environment (hailed by the cities of Europe as the first sign of interest by the European Union in cities) and the First Report on the Sustainable City, as we move towards the twenty-first century, cities will continue to be the main centres of economic activity, innovation and culture.(8) In the 1990s cities emerge on the European scene stronger, they compete more but they also collaborate more.(9) They all want to win the battle for sustainable development and to become more attractive to people and capital.(10) There are cities which include but also exclude, that assemble but also divide, that integrate but also disintegrate, enrich but also impoverish, cities of major progress and major problems. The optimists speak
Environment and Urbanization, Vol. 8, No. 1, April 1996
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of the paper given by the author to the conference Our Cities, Our Future organized by the OECD and WHO in Madrid, March 1995. Address: European Foundation for the Improvement of Living and Working Conditions, Loughlinstown House, Shankill, C. Dublin, Ireland.
1. The overview has been carried out in the Member States of the EU through a network of young planners established by the Foundation in 1993 (European Foundation for the Improvement of Living and Working Conditions (1993), Innovations for the Improvement of the Urban Environment, A European Overview, Dublin). In early 1996 it will also be completed in the three new Member States. Other interesting overviews of innovations include La ville et lenvironnement (21 expriences travers le monde) by the Institut National du Gnie Urbain, 1994 and especially for urban innovations in energy management OECDs good practice guide, 1994. 2. European Foundation for the Improvement of Living and Working Conditions (1993), see reference 1. 3. European Foundation for the Improvement of Living and Working Conditions (1994), reports from European Conference on Urban Innovations, Dublin; also Mega, V. (1994), Les fronts de linnovation urbaine en europe in Urbanisme, No. 276-277, Paris Studies, Vol. 1, No. 4. 4. In Politics around 340 BC (translation into English by H. Rackham, 1932). 5. See reference 4; also Politics around 336 BC (translation into English by W. Hamilton Fyfe).
about an urban revolution and the most pessimistic about urban paranoia but do not deny the important role cities play for the future. Delors characterized the deterioration of the urban environment as the second most serious European problem, second only to drug addiction(11) and not taking into account the panEuropean problem of unemployment. Dogan and Kasarda describe the development of urban pathology or ataxia where an urban place outgrows the boundaries of its niche.(12) Urban stress (overwhelmed capacity of urban systems to adapt to and orientate change) has been identified by the recent report Europes Environment: The Dobrs Assessment(13) as one of the 12 long-term pan-European problems which threaten health and quality of life. Expressions such as the Martyr City,(14) symbol of distressed urbanity, are significant. Hall suggests that the major problem in European cities is the schizophrenia between high-density, public transport city centres and low-density, private car urban peripheries.(15) But Attali reminds us that the city is the only living organism which has the capacity to renew itself(16) and Bohigas claims the virtues of metastatic planning that is able to create a positive infection through intervention within public spaces leading to an overall reconversion of the urban fabric.(17) Homeopathic planning(18) is another definition inspired by medicine and aiming at city care. As for health, the keywords are prevention, proaction, prediction. Preventing urban disease is a hard job; it has many invisible dimensions and creates no heroes.(19) Among the themes highlighted in the European urban environment agenda and around which are structured most European and international conferences in the twilight of the twentieth century, the following are found constantly: the improvement of the overall urban environment, arising from an increasing environmental awareness; the strengthening of the entrepreneurial fabric of the cities; the creation of employment through healthy and environmentally sound economic activities; the subtle role of telematics in shaping the future of the cities; the efforts for improving public transport and the progressive emphasis put on accessibility rather than mobility; the need to create lively home environments and neighbourhoods, especially in often chaotic urban peripheries; and last but not least the need to integrate all urban policies to meet these goals, and to involve the most concerned citizens in the process. All these objectives are linked to the urgency to recreate a dynamic harmony between the hardware and the software of the cities, to reconcile the body (forms, colours, odours, sounds) and the soul (culture, history, energy, magnetism) of the cities.(20) Making cities better places in which to live and work seems to be one of the ways of overcoming European crises. The European Commissions White Paper on Growth and Employment recognized Europes failure to match its wealth creation from 1970 to 1992 (73 per cent) with employment creation (7 per cent for the same period) and highlighted the need to re-examine our social costs, to transfer tax burdens from human to natural resources through eco-taxes and the inadequacy of the
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6. In De Arquitettura Book I (Texte tabli traduit et comment par F. Fleury, 1927). (Collection des universits de France (1990), Les belles lettres, Paris). 7. DATAR (1993), Les Villes, lieux dEurope, Editions de lAube, Paris. 8. European Commission, DG XI (1990), Green Paper on the Urban Environment, Brussels; also European Commission, DG XI (1994), First Report on the Sustainable City, Brussels. 9. Barrozzi, A. and G. Tagliaventi (1992), Il ritorno alla citt, seminario di studi sulla citt di Bologna, F.C. Panini (editor). 10. Burtenshaw, D. et al. (1991), The European City (A Western Perspective), David Fulton, Publishers, London; also DATAR (1994), Scenarios for the City of the Future , Paris; and IFHP (1993), Cities for Tomorrow, working papers of the 80th International Congress, Helsinki. 11. Delors, J. (1994), LUnit dun Homme , Od. Jacob (editor), Paris. 12. Dogan, M. & Kasarda (1988), The Metropolis Era, Volume 1, A World of Giant Cities, Sage, Newbury Park. 13. European Environment Agency (1995), Europes Environment: The Dobrs Assessment, Copenhagen. 14. Expression used by Professor Max Van Den Berg, general rapporteur of the XXX ISOCARP International Congress (Prague, 1994). 15. At the conference European Cities: Sustaining Urban Quality of Life (Copenhagen, April 1995). 16. Attali, J. (1994), Europe (s), Fayard, Paris. 17. La Ville (1994), Catalogue dExposition, Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris.
GNP as a measure of socio-economic progress. It suggested it was time to adopt a new measure of progress, taking into account the natural capital, to balance the two factors of production, work and natural capital, and to re-orientate research and development in order that future productivity gains be achieved in the utilization of natural resources. A new form of solidarity between North and South, East and West has to be established in Europe. Re-organizing cities, prisoners of old models of cityplanning, is being suggested as an extremely important challenge to be met,(21) at a most decisive moment in European history. Most of these considerations converge in the expectations for the sustainable city.(22) The concept has been defined in very different ways. According to the European Commissions First Report on the Sustainable City,(23) environmental sustainability cannot be perceived without social equity and economic sustainability. It is being defined more and more as a process and not as an endpoint, as a trip rather than a destination. It is a trip based on a well-defined consensus and a sense of mission. Many definitions put the emphasis on the socially sustainable outcome and one of the most interesting has been Sustainability is equity extended into the future.(24) The sustainable city might be a contradiction in terms, as many experts suggest that the only sustainable pattern for planet Earth would be the equal distribution of its population on its surface.(25) But beyond these remarks, a healthy environment, social cohesion, economic efficiency and a universal concern seem to be the pillars of urban sustainability. The road to Istanbul is full of expectations and future generations may look back to the Rio and Istanbul Summits as turning points in the history of city planning. For the first time, local policies are not solely defined from a local perspective but from the perspective of the survival of the whole planet. The ethics of sustainability highlight equitable partnerships between North and South. In the social Summit in Copenhagen, there was much discussion about preventing northification of the South. The North, with 25 per cent of the world population and 75 per cent of the resource consumption has an ecological footprint six times heavier than the South.(26) If the South were to increase its consumption by 50 per cent, the North would have to decrease its consumption by 15 per cent which would represent a drastic change of habits in the North. The achievement of better time management is seen as offering an important means towards the sustainable city and an ecology of time in cities. Time, like space and water, is a scarce resource in cities. After all the theories of the 1970s about the vanishing city or the virtual city due to the conquering of space by technology, now the intelligent use of new technologies seems a source of richness and potential for cities. Teleworking can lead to a disassociation between concentration in time and concentration in space.(27) Infostructure and infrastructure need harmonious linkages to generate a better quality of life. Teleactivities may allow interaction and the capacity to be in contact with all other places but they are just instru-
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18. Expression used by the Berlin architect Jaoquim Eble. Eble won the competition for creating a new suburban area in Mannheim, improving the climatic conditions. 19. Relevant remark by B. Kouchner in Ce que je crois (Grasset, 1994). 20. European Foundation for the Improvement of Living and Working Conditions (1994), reports from European Conference on Urban Innovations, Dublin; also European Foundation for the Improvement of Living and Working Conditions (1995), Urban Ecoauditing and Local Authorities in Europe, Dublin; European Foundation for the Improvement of Living and Working Conditions (1995), Le PMEs dans la Revitalisation des Villes Europennes, Dublin; European Foundation for the Improvement of Living and Working Conditions (1995c), Transport and Public Spaces: the Connective Tissue of the Sustainable City, Dublin; and European Foundation for the Improvement of Living and Working Conditions (1995), Esthtique, Fonctionalit et Dsirabilit de la Ville Durable, Dublin. 21. European Foundation for the Improvement of Living and Working Conditions (1993), LImpact de la Domotique sur les Fonctions Urbaines, Dublin. 22. An amazing number of conferences, books, articles and summer schools are devoted to the subject (Girardet, H. (1992), Cities: New Directions for Sustainable Urban Living , Gaia Books Limited, London; also Nijkamp, P. and A. Perrels (1994), Sustainable Cities in Europe, Earthscan Publishers, London; Prince of Waless Institute of Architecture (1993), The Sustainable City, report on the 1993 Summer School, London; and Sustainable City Fora, Brighton 1992, Manchester 1994).
ments, conducive either to integration or exclusion depending on the overall policy articulation. It is possible to anticipate many different futures in regard to their impact on urban life and on the flexi-city.(28) With the progressive globalization of the economy and the advancing international division of labour, many European metropolitan cities become control and command centres. The role of enterprises in the shift from goods handling to information handling is essential for the future of the European cities. What enterprises for what cities is a challenging question. The city is a political entity which cannot be governed by the market. Long-term policy goals versus short-term economic profit is the core element of many urban policies and each city gives its own answers. Large enterprises may lead to the edge city,(29) but small and intermediate enterprises (SME) have the potential to revitalize the city which does not accept its urban life being organized around megamalls.(30) Partnerships are linked to a shift in public policies from direct interference to indirect (or conditional) policies (incubation and innovation). The functioning of the city itself is often compared to the functioning of an enterprise which has to be more environmentally friendly, participatory and efficient. There is also an increasing recognition that it is more correct to compare the city to a semi-public enterprise trying to be useful and competitive.
II. THE URBAN EUROSCAPE: STATE, PRESSURES AND RESPONSES

EVEN IF EACH city is unique and defies generalization, they all exhibit a certain number of common problems and worries and they share a great number of common expectations. Research by the European Union(31) sheds light on the state of the urban Euroscape and on the challenges cities have to face in order to improve their environment and reverse the effects of social exclusion and segregation for certain segments of the population. The European Union urban system has been extended and enriched since 1 January 1995, as new members joined.(32) The cities of the new Member States offer new models of culture and new patterns of population density and environmental performance. The reports issued before the integration of the new Member States suggest that the European urban system is now more balanced in demographic terms. New migration waves, however, appear on the horizon. Cities seem more aware of their environmental problems and the social shock waves they can no longer absorb. The development of new physical linkages, mainly the high speed rail network, might affect the articulation of the European urban system. Increasing potential emerges for intermediate cities, the small large cities which are combining the advantages of small and large cities and which offer citizens more harmonious environments.(33) Public health and the quality of the urban environment are highly interlinked and there is no single fact or policy on the urban environment which does not have a direct or indirect
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23. European Foundation for the Improvement of Living and Working Conditions (1994), reports from European Conference on Urban Innovations, Dublin. 24. Definition suggested at the opening of the Aalborg Conference on European Sustainable Cities and Towns (May 1994). 25. Reference for Dr Susan Owens from Cambridge University in the meeting of the Ecological City Expert Group, OECD, April 1993. (OECD, Group on Urban Affairs (1993), The Ecological City, research project initiated in 1993, working papers. 26. Communications during the workshop Man, Technology and Cities organized by the Association of Danish Architects during the World Social Summit (Copenhagen, March 1995). 27. Reports of the colloquia Le tltravail: un atout pour lle de France (organized by CATRAL in Paris on 4 March 1993), Living in the City Tomorrow (Paris, La Villette, March 1994) and Eurocities-Euroenterprises Conference (Barcelona, June 1994). 28. European Commission (1993), White Paper on Growth, Employment and Competitiveness, Brussels. 29. IFHP (1993), Cities for Tomorrow, working papers of the 80th International Congress, Helsinki. 30. European Foundation for the Improvement of Living and Working Conditions (1995), Le PMEs dans la Revitalisation des Villes Europennes, Dublin. 31. European Commission, DG XII, FAST Programme (1991), Europerspectives Conference, working documents, Namur; also European Commission, DG XI (1992), The City Without Car , Tecnoser, Rome; European Commission, DG VII (1992), Green Paper on Transport (Sustainable Mobility), Brussels; European
impact on public health. Often, alarming findings on public health have the potential to generate policies for the improvement of the urban environment. The Europes Environment report highlights the fact that, in 60 European cities, there are unacceptable short-term peak levels of ozone during the summer; occurrences of photochemical smog are exceeding WHO guidelines; and 65 per cent of Europes population is supplied with ground water, the quality of which is seriously threatened. Twenty-five per cent of the worlds carbon dioxide emissions and 16 per cent of the worlds man-made methane emissions take place in Europe.(34) Competition is increasing between European cities. Paris is still the capital of fashion and London the capital of international finance, Brussels wishes to confirm itself as the political capital of Europe and Randstadt as the gate to Europe. An alter native to this should be the strengthening of complementarities.(35) The amazing number of European city cooperation networks (EUROCITIES, Commission of Cities, Strategies for Medium-sized Cities, etc...), many times supported by the European Commission, witness their need to exchange ideas and build upon one anothers experience.(36) Last but not least, among identified trends, are the increasing synergy between public and private actors and the importance of the bottom-up approaches, with the increasing participation of citizens in redefining the art of governing cities. Beyond these general trends, growth and decline coexist more and more in the European cities.(37) Within metropolitan areas, it is commonplace for social and economic change to be associated with quite different trajectories for different neighbourhoods. Clearly, localized growth accentuates the congestion, stress, noise and traffic externalities, whilst placing new demands on nature as areas expand. Decline, on the other hand, is associated with a drop in land values and the emergence of derelict space. More negative attributes such as vandalism and crime in the declining neighbourhoods arise because the poorest households live in the worst urban conditions. Over the last decade, international economic competition has meant that whilst average national incomes have grown, the real wages or benefit levels of the poorest quarter have stagnated. Disrupted job careers have been paralleled by breakdowns in family cycles, poor education and poor access to information and training. The spatial effects of social polarization are, in some cities, so marked that they have given birth to the description of divided or dual cities. Social justice becomes of major importance for cities willing to preserve their integrity, to absorb social shock waves and to assure their future attraction for people and capital.(38) The decentralization of population and employment from cores to suburbs since 1950, and the de-industrialization since the 1970s, might have reinforced patterns of suburban growth and core decline with inner-city decay. However, this view is too simplistic as reality provides much more diversified patterns and many inner-city neighbourhoods attract residents because of their symbolic and cultural value, whilst expansion of service industries helped retain vitality in central areas. Another im-
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Commission, DG XI (1993), Towards a New Development Approach , conference papers, Brussels; European Commission, DG XI (1994), First Report on the Sustainable City, Brussels; and European Commission, DG XI (1994), For a New Development Approach, workshop papers, Brussels, November. 32. Sweden, Finland and Austria. 33. Two important European conferences in 1994 focused especially on medium-sized cities. The Sabadell conference (April 1994) has been a general mobilization of medium-sized cities, while the Tarragona conference (November 1994) presented the efforts of medium-sized cities to prepare their strategic plans. See European Commission, DG XI (1994), For a New Development Approach, workshop papers, Brussels, November; also European Commission, DG XVI (1995), Europe 2000+, Brussels; and ISMERI Europa (1994), Intermediate Cities in Europe, study done for the European Commission, Rome. 34. European Environment Agency (1995), Europes Environment: The Dobrs Assessment, Copenhagen. 35. Guigou, E. (1994), Pour les Europens, Flammarion, Paris. 36. Thirty-seven European Cooperation networks have been launched and co-funded by the European Commission in 1990 and 1991 (under article 10 of the ERDF providing for the exchange of experience and cooperation between cities and regions) and under the umbrella of RECITE. 37. Burtenshaw, D. et al. (1991), The European City (A Western Perspective), David Fulton, Publishers, London; also Delft Institute of Technology (1992), European Cities: Growth and Decline, conference papers, April; Elkin, T. and D. McLaren (1991), Reviving the City, Friends of the Earth,
portant consideration is that, since the 1980s, unemployment has particularly impacted on social sector residents, and declining residential areas may now lie in the central city, at the periphery of core cities or in old 1960s settlements well into the suburban fringe. The core decline-suburban growth mode is of questionable relevance in much of Southern Europe, as core areas and suburbs continued to increase into the 1980s. In the suburban areas of towns in Greece, Portugal, Southern Italy, in analogous fashion to run-down social housing in Northern Europe, there are large areas of illegal settlements which house the poor and disadvantaged, with inadequate supportive infrastructure. Legal, illegal;(39) market, non-market; core and suburban; the mosaic of European urban neighbourhoods presents a variety of growth/decline scenarios with different environmental consequences and land use possibilities.(40) Increasing globalization and increasing localism and regionalism may be two (perhaps paradoxically) interlinked trends in the European future. Nowadays, society is based on networks (of everything) and local actors constitute the diversified poles of the global networks. Technology, information, markets are global but people are local. Information technology provides the infrastructure for the integration of the global system. The space of flows (global) is in interaction with the space of places (local) and the cities gain an increasingly dual (global-local) function. Social movements can always be a source of social change, critical actors in collective consumption and in building up awareness and consciousness, but they may disappear or be transformed into urban tribes if unable to connect with the political system. There may be an increasingly institutional diversity and parallel political institutional networks, not necessarily in a hierarchical system.(41) In this changing world, new principles have to prevail and, as such, the President of the Irish Republic suggests: connectedness, listening, sharing and participation.(42)
III. EUROPEAN CITIES COMMIT TO SUSTAINABILITY

THE CONFERENCE ON European Sustainable Cities and Towns (Aalborg, 24-27 May 1994) marked an important step towards the achievement of urban sustainability. The EU Urban Environment Expert Group presented the First Policy Report for the application of the concept of sustainability in urban areas(43) together with a Good Practice Guide. The main objective of the conference was to discuss and produce the final issue of the Charter of European Cities and Towns: Towards Sustainability. Eighty municipal signatories and 200 individual signatories were counted at the end of the conference and before the issue of the final text. The end of the conference was the starting point for the European Campaign of Sustainable Cities and Towns(44) which was to be joined, in November 1995, by 177 cities. The Charter states the responsibility of European cities and towns for many of the environmental problems mankind is facing. Patterns of division of labour and functions, land use, trans-
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London; and European Foundation for the Improvement of Living and Working Conditions (1992), proceedings of European Workshop on Land Management and Environmental Improvement in Cities, Lisbon, 6-8 May. 38. European Foundation for the Improvement of Living and Working Conditions (1992), selected papers and conclusions of European Workshop on the Improvement of the Built Environment and Social Integration in Cities, Berlin, 9-11 October. 39. Illegal housing still persists in the peripheries of Athens and Lisbon while in the centre of Athens illegal housing is to be found even on the Acropolis hill, near the Parthenon (according to the Deputy Mayor A. Tripodakis in the conference Car-Free Cities? (Amsterdam, March 1994). 40. European Foundation for the Improvement of Living and Working Conditions (1992), proceedings of European Workshop on Land Management and Environmental Improvement in Cities, Lisbon, 6-8 May; also European Foundation for the Improvement of Living and Working Conditions (1994), Visions and Actions for Medium-Sized Cities, Dublin. 41. Manuel Castells highlighted brilliantly these issues in the international conference European Cities: Growth and Decline (The Hague, April 1992). 42. The Presidents speech on the future of the UN in the Irish Ti m e s / U n i v e r s i t y / H a r v a r d colloquium at Harvard University (March 1994). 43. European Commission, DG XI (1994), First Report on the Sustainable City, Brussels. 44. The first newsletter of the campaign was published in December 1994. The campaign is supported by major European networks and associations of local governments. See presentation of the campaign by its chair-
port, industry, consumption, leisure and hence values and lifestyles are responsible for the reduction of sustainability. Sustainable human life cannot be achieved without sustainable local communities, and local governments and citizens who will rise to the great challenge of sustainability. Sustainability is described as a creative, local, balance-seeking process extending to all areas of local decision-making. Each city has to find its individual way towards sustainability. Integrating the principles of the Charter into their policies reinforces their strength and forms a common basis for progress. According to the Charter, natural capital has become a limiting factor in economic development in cities, and urban economies should give priority to investments to conserve the remaining capital and encourage its growth by reducing the levels of current exploitation, relieving pressure on natural capital stocks and increasing the end-efficiency of the consumption goals. Social equity is finally agreed upon as being a pre-condition for achieving sustainability, as the inequitable distribution of wealth both causes unsustainable behaviour and makes it harder to change. The Charter embraces an ecosystem approach to urban management and advocates the development of urban system sustainability indicators on which to base policy-making and control efforts, in particular environmental monitoring, auditing, impact assessment, accounting, balancing and reporting systems. Urban sustainability implies, at least, non-declining outputs and seems inextricably linked to non-declining urban capital (natural, physical and human). Urban metabolism can be conceived as the economic or production process which leads from input flows (of materials, products, energy, labour) to output flows (of products, services). A steady flow of output requires a steady flow of input and maintenance of the urban metabolism. The output constitutes primarily the consumption basket for citizens although some is used for the maintenance of the production process.(45) According to the Charter, declining levels of per capita consumption might be quixotic; but it is of the highest importance at least to stabilize consumption levels (up to now continually increasing in the Northern hemisphere, even if technology often increases the efficient use of resources) through changes in lifestyles and consumption patterns. City and town signatories of the treaty recognize that they cannot export problems into the larger environment or the future and seek equitable regional interdependencies. Priority is also given to ecologically sound means of transport and decreases in enforced mobility. Emphasis is placed on the stabilization and decrease of greenhouse gases emitted into the atmosphere and the prevention of ecosystem toxification. The local authority signatories of the Charter feel strong and ready to reorganize cities and towns for sustainability and ask for sufficient powers and a solid financial base. When developing Local Agenda 21 plans, cities commit themselves to working together with citizens.(46) The European Commissions First Report on Sustainable Cities(47) recognizes the need for sustainability indicators as tools
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man in the Mediterranean Local Agenda 21 Conference (Rome, 22-24 November 1995); also European Sustainable Cities and Towns Campaign (1994), Charter of European Cities and Towns: Towards Sustainability. 45. Hartwick, J. (1994), The Economics of Sustainability , conference paper in HIID, Harvard University. 46. Developing Local Agendas 21 is mandatory in countries like Sweden and left in the good will of local authorities in most countries. Dublin Conference on Local Agenda 21 (June 1995) has been designed to motivate Irish local authorities to develop local plans 21. The Mediterranean Local Agenda 21 Conference (Rome, November 1995) focused on the specific problems in the Mediterranean basin. 47. European Commission, DG XI (1994), First Report on the Sustainable City, Brussels. 48. A critical overview of the use of indicators so far has been done in Harvard University by P. Rogers and F. Murray (1994). The conference Indicators for Urban Policies (OECD, Rennes, April 1995) and the following second meeting of the secretariats
for quantifying sustainability performance. If sustainability is a coherent policy goal, it must be possible to measure whether we are moving towards it. The World Bank defines indicators as performance measures that aggregate information into a usable form, highlighting, however, the unresolved issues of fluctuation, inter-temporal variations and uncertainty. All organizations involved in indicator construction seem to agree that indicators provide a useful tool for policy-making (prospective) and for assessing policy implementation (retrospective indictors) but they stress their limitations.(48) The development of indicators is linked to the search for a new measure of progress.(49) Indicators can measure the success of one course of action and even stimulate action but they do not define what kind. Decision makers dispose of a large choice of instruments for urban intervention and good practice guides can inspire them. Moreover, they should be able to define actions which lead, with the greatest efficiency, to a targeted goal. A thematic indicator can measure the result of an action in comparison to the ultimate aim. Targets for thematic indicators may be defined at the city level according to the priorities for each city. A citys performance at the national or European level can, therefore, be judged according to both its targets and the progress achieved towards these aims. The Charter of European Cities and Towns: Towards Sustainability can serve as a common policy framework for the development of performance indicators based on the policy principles and orientations of the Charter. The European Foundation made an initial attempt to develop a set of sustainability indicators within the framework of its project on medium-sized cities.(50) Figure 1 presents a conceptual framework for urban sustainability performance indicators based on the pressurestate-response model.(51) Figure 2 presents the components that sustainability indicators should measure, without forgetting the links between them.
Figure 1: A Conceptual Framework for Urban Sustainability Performance Indicators PRESSURE STATE INFORMATION
Human Activities Industry Transport Services Construction Public Works Urban Forestry Others Physical & Socio Economic Environment burden Air Water Land Employment Income Expenditure Housing Crime resources Noise, Odour Public Spaces information Agents Households Enterprises Associations Administration Communities
RESPONSE
responses
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of international organizations dealing with indicators gave an interesting tour dhorizon of available sets of indicators; also the newsletter issued by the OECD; and World Resources Institute (1994), Developing environmental indicators, a report on the workshop on Global Environmental Indicators, Washington, D.C., 7-8 December 1992. 49. The sentence by R. Kennedy GDP measures everything except everything life is worth is well known as is the one by Delors You cant fall in love with a market, a rate of growth... 50. European Foundation for the Improvement of Living and Working Conditions (1994), Visions and Actions for Medium-Sized Cities, Dublin. 51. Mega, V. (1994), Sustainability Indicators for European Cities, Harvard Institute for International Development. 52. European Foundation for the Improvement of Living and Working Conditions (1993), Innovations for the Improvement of the Urban Environment, A European Overview, Dublin.
Figure 2: Composing Urban Policies and Performance Indicators

Social Justice
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The projects described below all fall within the wishes and expectations of the Charter on European Sustainable Cities and Towns which was agreed upon in Aalborg. The city of Aalborg prepared a development project for the integration of ecological principles and techniques in urban renewal. Citizens were motivated to choose sustainable options in urban redevelopment. Six themes have been formulated, to include ambitions and innovations, each contributing to the plan for a better town: an active town; a beautiful town; a green town; a town with a better environment; cooperation for a better city; and a town catalogue.(52)
IV. IMPROVING THE FUNCTIONING OF A CITY AS AN ECOSYSTEM: THE EUROPEAN EXPERIENCE

a. Introduction
AWARENESS OF ENVIRONMENTAL quality increasingly is being regarded as a civic value and constitutes the basis for environmental improvements in cities. Green city does not simply mean green spaces, grass roofs, timber frame constructions, improved energy systems and water cycles.(53) More and more cities recognize the need for proactive policies leading to the conception of new systems of production and consumption. A whole cultural reform and a wide urban consensus are needed to give meaning to all technical achievements. New environment friendly lifestyles cannot be imposed, they are developed through innovative partnerships rooted in the local culture. Industry is becoming more cooperative. Innovative cooperative schemes between industry, especially SMEs, local authorities
53. Elkin, T. and D. McLaren (1991), Reviving the City, Friends of the Earth, London.
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54. European Foundation for the Improvement of Living and Working Conditions (1992), proceedings of European Workshop on Cities and the Global Environment, The Hague, 5-7 December. 55. The European Foundation included an overview of such innovative European schemes in its overview The Firm and its Local Environment (1991-1993). The fifth summer school of the European University of Environment on the theme of Environmental Challenges and Local Actors (Monreale, September 1994) shed light on local innovative actions and new competencies and jobs for local sustainable development. 56. Will it lead to awareness and action? Is it measured or measurable? How often does it change? Is it important for the future of our society? Do people accept the measure as an indicator of sustainability? 57. European Foundation for the Improvement of Living and Working Conditions (1993), Innovations for the Improvement of the Urban Environment, A European Overview, Dublin.
and associations, are being created to improve the environmental performances of firms and to make them proactive to change. In a conference organized by the Foundation(54) the relevant working group was unanimous in suggesting changing the wellknown polluter pays pollution principle to potential polluter pays the prevention of the pollution. Prevention, awareness, proaction and environmental culture seem essential to the art of building a city for citizen well-being.(55) Implementing local Agenda 21 is a noble common objective and the sustainable communities project in the UK is a step in this direction. It was initiated by the United Nations Association, following the Earth Summit in Rio, and has as its objective to reduce a communitys unsustainable behaviour to the minimum. The project recognizes that, in order to make sustainable communities, radical changes will have to take place within our cities and it is vital to provide vision so that people may engage themselves. The emphasis of the project is on suggesting a process rather than prescribing a plan. At the heart of the project is the definition of a series of environmental indicators conceived to measure the environmental performance of a city against a wide range of criteria. For each potential indicator a set of questions was formulated.(56) A preliminary set of core indicators has been established concerning resource consumption, quality of natural environment, social environment, economy, transport and health. Cities compete with each other to gain environmental credentials. It is a healthy battle. Leicester was the first British city to be given the status of Environment City and it is trying to become a national and international model of excellence. Leicester Environment City is helped by the Business Sector Network to bring together ideas from the citys commercial sector and provide assistance to businesses whilst Environ, a non-profitmaking company, has been set up to provide local organizations with access to environmental audits and advice.(57)
b. Environmental Plans
Environmental plans and charters are being established in many European cities. In France, environmental charters constitute contracts between the State and each city. The Charter of Mulhouse is a clear example of a strong wish to improve the environment and public health. The general objectives of the Charter are the protection of natural resources, the improvement of life for inhabitants, the adoption of a perspective Health and Environment, the promotion of urban safety, the integration of socio-economic objectives into the preservation of the environment, and participation in the protection of fauna and flora. All city structures have been mobilized to ensure the transparent and smooth implementation of the Charters 52 actions which include coordination of the Urban Plan, the Plan for Urban Transport, the Green Plan, the Charter City Health Plan, the Intelligent Waste Plan, the Energy and Respect for the Environment Plan and the Policy for Underprivileged Districts.(58) Charters are being prepared even by cities not at the forefront
58. European Foundation for the Improvement of Living and Working Conditions (1993), Innovations for the Improvement of the Urban Environment, A European Overview, Dublin; also Ministre de lEnvironnement (1993), Chartes pour lEnvironnement (Ecologie Urbaine et Rurale, Qualit de la Vie, Territoires), Paris.
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59. The draft Charter has been prepared by students with the help of European and international experts and the final text was discussed with citizens and environmental organizations in December 1994. The Charter has been voted for by 1,200 citizens.
60. The eco-audit practices in Kirklees is one of the three selected case studies chosen by the Foundation in the framework of its research Eco-auditing and Local Authorities in Europe. All case studies come from mediumsized cities, the other two being Sundsvall (Sweden) and Igualada (Spain). See European Foundation for the Improvement of Living and Working Conditions (1995), Urban Eco-auditing and Local Authorities in Europe, Dublin.
61. Schmidt-Eichstaedt, G. (1993), Schwabach, ModellStadt-Okologie, Institut fr Stadt und Regionalplannung, TU Berlin.
of environmental performance. The University of Naples has prepared a Charter for an ecologically oriented development of Naples, through a large consultation process with citizens associations.(59) Many European cities are in search of ecological planning and eco-auditing models. The medium-sized cities of the Metropolitan district of the central UK experienced both the decline of their textile and engineering base, and industrial air and water pollution and traffic exhaust emissions. Kirklees was the first local authority in the UK to produce a State of the Environment report in 1989. The local commitment to environmental matters and the fact that Friends of the Earth were looking for a pilot authority to take on board their Environmental Charter for Local Government led to a happy partnership. The Charter sets out 193 recommendations for action. An ecological strategy was written and an update was undertaken in 1993 to identify achievements. Other components of environmental auditing in Kirklees include the Geographical Information System (GIS) and the ISIS project, the Environmental Action Programmes and Internal (Policy and Practice) Audits (Green Workplace Guide), environmental awareness training, Environmental Forums, Green Business Group and Guide and, finally, the local Agenda 21 Plan. The Friends of the Earth Charter for Local Government included, by way of example, recommendations such as making environmental requirements part of purchasing and procurement policy, encouraging and enabling public participation, implementing environmental criteria in grant-aid conditions and contract and tender specifications, and revising land use and development plans to take into account environmental policies.(60) All over Europe, cities are becoming laboratories for ecological innovation. Schwabach, a small, self-supporting German city, offers an example of the efforts to implement an urban ecology planning strategy. The city has been selected from the Federal Ministry because of its unified, dynamic local government and its ecological achievements to date, especially in waste management. Basic principles are that nothing is impossible and everybody has to participate. The pilot study aimed at introducing ecological concepts and actions to a normal city, under normal conditions and with normal funds. After the study, the city council issued guidelines for action and translated them into a concrete programme in its 1993-2003 Model Urban Development Strategy, leading to Schwabach Ecological City. Public polls were held and questionnaires completed by one out of every 17 households: nobody is against ecology but they need quick successes and think that closing the city to cars is only possible with a revolution (even for an historic centre with a 700 metre diameter and 20,000 households). The desire for quick visible ecological results ended with the creation of an ecological building for the City Hall.(61) The neighbourhood level is often highlighted as the level of action in many European cities. In The Netherlands, local authorities are experimenting with new types of neighbourhood management with specific focus on the quality of the local every-
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day environment. The Romolenporder neighbourhood management in the community of Haarlem gives a good example of ecological neighbourhood management, with people participating in the planning and realization of the neighbourhood and the construction of the houses (timber frame constructions, grass roofs, improved energy systems).(62) At the block level, Berlin, the recycled city, offers various examples. In Kreuzberg, Block 103 is an interesting example, highlighting links between social well-being and environmental upgrading. Former squatters of the block have been given the opportunity to own the space they occupied and, at the same time, they have been trained in converting the houses into ecological modern buildings. Special emphasis has been given to energy, water, green spaces and new materials and techniques. Another complex, Block 6, has been the area of innovation for alternative water systems. The system is based on a combination of cleaning techniques for the water depending on its origin, previous use and destination use. The project emphasizes the learning and communication process. Residents have been trained in feeling the process. The system allows 50 per cent savings on water whilst the society of inhabitants participates in the technological monitoring.(63)
62. European Foundation for the Improvement of Living and Working Conditions (1993), Innovations for the Improvement of the Urban Environment, A European Overview, Dublin.
63. IFS 1990-1991
c. Business Parks
Industrial, technological and business parks are mushrooming throughout Europe(64) and provide some interesting examples of public-private partnerships for turning areas of blight into healthy spaces and areas of positive environmental and economic profit. They also attract industries and enterprises from other poor environments provoking the transformation of both spaces and of the functioning of the enterprises. Stockley Park, a former derelict rubbish tip within the green belt to the west of London, is an inspiring example. A partnership has been created between the developer, the local authority and the University in order to build an international business park and public parkland including recreational facilities. In exchange for the right to construct a business park over 36 hectares, the developer guaranteed the reclamation of the whole site (140 hectares), the removal of groundwater pollution, environmental enhancement and landscaping. At all stages of the construction of Stockley, local residents were involved in the process through extensive community consultation.(65) In Germany, the IBA Emscher Park has been an important pole for urban development and ecological renewal within the northern Ruhr district. Experts from ten European cities, together with the cities and industries of the Emscher region, work for the modernization of coal-mining settlements and the creation of new housing, the development of fallow land and the valorization of attractive locations for industry and services. The preservation and re-use of industrial monuments, the landscaping of the Emscher area into a park, the ecological restructuring of the Emscher river and the protection of the water environment are leading to a healthy space. New dwellings have
64. The role of science park and the passage to science cities (passage from a top-bottom to a bottom-up approach) has been one of the focuses of the conference Cities, Enterprises and Society at the Eve of the 21st Century (Lille, March 1994).
65. European Foundation for the Improvement of Living and Working Conditions (1993), Innovations for the Improvement of the Urban Environment, A European Overview, Dublin.
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been created on fallow land and with new environment friendly material. High quality locations for industry and services have been given value. Contaminated areas are insulated and reused. Working in the park is possible through the enhancement of the quality and attractiveness of the area.(66)
66. European Foundation for the Improvement of Living and Working Conditions (1993), Innovations for the Improvement of the Urban Environment, A European Overview, Dublin; also Municipality of Amsterdam (1994), Carfree cities?, working papers. 67. European Foundation for the Improvement of Living and Working Conditions (1993), Innovations for the Improvement of the Urban Environment, A European Overview, Dublin. 68. European Foundation for the Improvement of Living and Working Conditions (1993), Innovations for the Improvement of the Urban Environment, A European Overview, Dublin. 69. European Foundation for the Improvement of Living and Working Conditions (1992), proceedings of European Workshop on Cities and the Global Environment, The Hague, 5-7 December. 70. See reference 47.
d. Waste Prevention
Reconsideration of the urban metabolism puts a lot of emphasis on waste prevention, action before the waste is generated, even if investments still concentrate on the recycling end. Once generated, waste has to be considered as a resource and many innovative actions are being taken for the prevention of industrial waste and the avoidance, re-use and recycling of domestic waste. In Parma, plastic waste is being transformed into building material and, in Rimini, organic waste from hotels into agricultural compost. Each citizen contributing to the latter, highly environmental, process is rewarded with a plant. An ecostation has been created and its management has been entrusted to former drug addicts.(67) The Municipality of Oeiras, in the metropolitan area of Lisbon, set up a backyard composting of organic waste programme. The project aims to reduce dramatically the amount of waste the municipal services collect, transport, treat and dispose of, giving inhabitants the possibility to produce by themselves a high quality fertilizer for their gardens and increasing peoples awareness of urban environmental problems.(68) In Aarhus, the Council for the Recycling and Minimally Polluting Technology has achieved 60-70 per cent domestic waste processing and recycling.(69) Separate collection of waste reaches 90 per cent in countries where it is mandatory, as in The Netherlands.
V. TOWARDS A LESS UNSUSTAINABLE URBAN MOBILITY

71. Jacob, J. (1961), Death and Life of American Cities, Random House, New York; also Jacob, J. (1992), Systems of Surivival , Random House, New York. 72. The Accessible City Conference (Toledo, October 1994) highlighted all these issues. See ALFOZ (1995), La Ciudad Accessible , No. 109, Madrid; also Ambiente Italia (1993), Per une Mobilit Urbana Sostenible, Milan; and Friends of the Earth (1992), Less Traffic Better Towns, Friends of the Earth Illustrated Guide to Traffic Reduction , Friends of the Earth Ltd.
a. Introduction
ENVIRONMENTAL PROBLEMS IN European metropolitan areas do not come mainly from production; they come from consumption and mainly from traffic. Transport systems are being accused everywhere of no longer being able to deliver the expected levels of service. Traffic congestion represents a loss of 2-3 per cent of GDP in the countries of the EU and traffic infrastructure covers 10-15 per cent of the urban space.(70) In cities such as Athens, more than 80 per cent of the air pollution is due to traffic. Many of the signs of failure are clearly visible. The great irony is that this conclusion is virtually the direct result of urban system policies from the last decades.(71) System saturation is certainly not an accident. The need for urgent limitations on the private car and transport system controls have to be the cornerstones of future urban policies. Provisions for traffic are like arteries, they should subordinate and not dominate the body of the city.(72)
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The dialectic interaction and synergy between cities, enterprises and citizens are essential for favouring public transport and the bicycle over the private car and for giving priority to the pedestrian.(73) Historic cities, most affected by the pressure of car traffic on their cultural heritage, have been pioneers in restricting the use of private cars. In a referendum organized in 1984 by the city of Bologna, the population voted in favour of the pedestrianization of the historic centre; a project was carried out which included the rehabilitation of the historic fabric, improvements to the nearest suburbs, pedestrian and bicycle networks, public transport and parking spaces. Many Italian cities followed this example.(74) Recent experiments include the closure of Rome to cars for one afternoon a week and of the historic centre of Naples for two days a week.(75) There is a delicate balance between city and car and the diseconomy of scale, starting at a certain point (limit). Mobility, no matter the price, cannot serve the objectives of urban quality of life. Refocusing on accessibility is the only possible direction. The distinction between access and mobility is not a trivial one. Unlike sheer mobility, access means not only getting people to where they need to go but also getting to them what they need, and new information technologies may play a major role in that.(76) Many are pessimistic about achieving the accessible city and many have remarked that we have come to the same conclusions over the past 20 years. The experience of Bologna is very significant in highlighting difficulties linked to the restriction of private car use. Despite huge efforts to limit private car use over the past ten years, in the city it has increased from 28.3 per cent in 1981 to 39.8 per cent in 1991 and from 48.7 to 57.85 per cent in the periphery.(77)
73. OECD-ECMT (1994), Urban Travel and Sustainable Development, Paris; also UITP (1991), Green Light for Towns, Brussels. 74. Indovina, F. (1993), La Citt Occasionale, Franco Angeli (editor), Milan. 75. European Foundation for the Improvement of Living and Working Conditions (1995), Transport and Public Spaces: the Connective Tissue of the Sustainable City, Dublin. 76. The 1993 Granada Declaration had already recognized five strategic pillars for achieving accessibility. Greater reliance in coordinated land use policy for the attention of the unnecessary physical movements, reduction of the need for motorized displacements, broadening of the range of alternative telecommunications systems for the substitution of physical movements and 28 articulations of the above for building up an effective integrated, multimodel and multi-level access system. 77. Municipality of Amsterdam (1994), Car-free cities?, working papers.
b. Innovation
In the city of Perugia, the pedestrianization of the historic centre started in 1971. Escalators were constructed in the rock to connect the old city with the modern one and the parking spaces. The city undertook innovative experiments in reorganizing the bus network especially in peripheral zones. The telebus service, introduced in 1985, runs along a principal route, with additional collateral routes which are served only on request. This is done by means of magnetic cards distributed to users, and a communications centre. The system has proved very efficient (22 per cent savings) and it is particularly interesting for areas with sparse settlement. Increased flexibility in the organization of collective transport operators allows for the better adaptation of supply to the changing pattern of user demand. Moreover, this type of system provides access to transport for people with reduced mobility.(78) Particularly interesting European examples at the leading edge include experiences from Switzerland (Zurich, Basle, Berne) and Germany (Aachen). Zurich is one of the few cities that has developed a coherent solution to a problem of traffic build-up at intersections. Preserving and upgrading the tram system and rearranging the bus lines were the key elements to improve-
78. European Foundation for the Improvement of Living and Working Conditions (1992), proceedings of European Workshop on Land Management and Environmental Improvement in Cities, Lisbon, 6-8 May.
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79. IULA (1991), International Conference on Health, Environment and Lifestyles, working papers, Oslo, July. 80. The Project Group on Urban Transport and Sustainable Development managed jointly by the OECD Group on Urban Affairs and the European Conference of Ministers of Transport analyze many of these issues and make relevant policy proposals (OECD-ECMT 1994). See OECD-ECMT (1994), Urban Travel and Sustainable Development, Paris. 81. European Foundation for the Improvement of Living and Working Conditions (1993), Innovations for the Improvement of the Urban Environment, A European Overview, Dublin. 82. Presented in the conference ECOPOLIS hosted by the city of Nantes (November 1993). 83. European Foundation for the Improvement of Living and Working Conditions (1993), Innovations for the Improvement of the Urban Environment, A European Overview, Dublin. 84. Conseil National des Transports (1991), Transports Urbains et Exclusion Sociale, Paris. 85. Rautsi, J. (1993), The European City Today, The Helsinki Round Table on Urban Improvement Strategies, Ministry of Environment, Helsinki. 86. European Foundation for the Improvement of Living and Working Conditions (1995), Transport and Public Spaces: the Connective Tissue of the Sustainable City , Dublin; also Rautsi, J. (1993), The European City Today, The Helsinki Round Table on Urban Improvement Strategies, Ministry of Environment, Helsinki. 87. European Commission, DG XI (1992c), Towards a Sustainable Development, Brussels.
ment. The particularity of the system is its ability to deal with each public transport vehicle individually, allowing it to cross intersections without stopping. Urbanism and land use planning are being reformed to favour public transport on the surface, to channel motor vehicle traffic and to restrict traffic in residential areas.(79) Efforts to restructure the settlement pattern are under way everywhere in Switzerland and several cantonal laws for physical planning require further development of housing and workplaces in the vicinity of public transport lines. There are also many private and public/private initiatives. Energy 2000 is a new federal effort to engage private enterprises and initiatives in saving energy, including training of drivers (eco-driving), promotion of the out-sourcing of logistics, and transport to improve fuel-efficient freight transport.(80) Heidelberg and Freiburg have been pioneers in introducing low-noise vehicles in noise protection districts and Basle introduced the eco-ticket for public transport. Clean, silent and fast tramways are gaining acceptance in European cities. In La Rochelle, a new multi-optional concept (Autoplus) has been introduced through a partnership between municipalities, the semi-public company for public transport, taxi owners, two private bus owners, one ship owner, hotel owners and a bank. Information and consultation campaigns have as their objective the limitation of the private car.(81) Since 1985, Nantes, Grenoble and Strasbourg have introduced three technological generations of tramway.(82) In Toulouse, the city, the semi-public enterprise for public transport and the company which created the smartpass work together to readjust transport services to peoples needs.(83) Social well-being considerations are linked to the provision of public transport,(84) pedestrian streets and bicycle paths. Copenhagen has been a pioneer city in recognizing the social value of pedestrian streets. When the main street, Strget, was pedestrianized in 1962 (as one of the very early such systems in Europe) there was heated discussion. Many believed that the scheme was contrary to Nordic mentality and culture, however, it was a great success almost immediately. Pedestrianization continued over a period of 30 years and the down-town parking policy aimed to remove 2-3 per cent of parking spaces each year. With improvements in the public transport system and the enlargement of the bicycle network, more and more space was taken away from traffic and given to people;(85) they started returning to the city centre leaving behind anonymous peripheries and making it again the centre of gravity and attraction.(86) The study undertaken by the European Commission on The City without Cars suggests the reconception of a city in pedestrian terms. A city without cars could be composed of various small units, accessible on foot from one end to the other, separated by green spaces and united by high-speed public transport. A city without cars seems to be not only ecologically efficient but also economically efficient, as it seems to be two to five times less costly. In such a city, enterprise has new local challenges to meet, as job creation is essential for the self-efficiency and sustainability of each small urban unit.(87)
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88. The referendum took place on March 1993 and 52 per cent of the population reacted in favour of the restriction of the private car. See also working papers of the conference The pedestrian city (Santander, February 1995). 89. Municipality of Amsterdam (1994), Car-free cities?, working papers. 90. Car-Free Cities Club (1994), Car-Free Cities Charter. 91. European Foundation for the Improvement of Living and Working Conditions (1995), Transport and Public Spaces: the Connective Tissue of the Sustainable City, Dublin. 92. Burwitz et al. (1991), Vier Wochen ohne auto. Bericht ber ein freiwilliges stdtisches Abentaur. University of Bremen. 93. European Foundation for the Improvement of Living and Working Conditions (1995), Transport and Public Spaces: the Connective Tissue of the Sustainable City, Dublin. 94. European Commission, DG XI (1994), First Report on the Sustainable City, Brussels. 95. European Foundation for the Improvement of Living and Working Conditions (1992), selected papers and conclusions of European Workshop on the Improvement of the Built Environment and Social Integration in Cities, Berlin, 9-11 October; also Harvey, D. (1983), Social Justice and the City, London. 96. The EC programme Quartiers en crise highlights the links between the degraded environment and the disrupted social fabric.
Following this study, the city of Amsterdam, which had also had a referendum on restricting the use of private cars,(88) organized the conference Car-Free Cities?.(89) The question mark mattered, as it expressed reactions, reluctance and inhibitions. For the occasion, the Club for Car-Free Cities was launched by cities committed to promoting policies which discouraged the use of private cars. A year after its creation the club already counted 55 members.(90) If we are still far from the car-free city, the creation of car-free residential zones is a step in this direction. In Bremen, a zone is being created where only households without cars can move in. Three hundred and fifty households are interested in living there and two-thirds of them no longer own a car. In Perugia, a public survey based on 1,200 questionnaires suggests that 65 per cent of the inhabitants would walk 500 metres a day but only 25 per cent one kilometre.(91) In Bremen, through a newspaper advertisement, a number of households was selected to participate in an innovative experiment: to stop using their cars for four weeks and to report on their experience with a diary kept for five weeks (the weeks of the experiment and one week preceding it). Seven households with small children living in various parts of the city were selected and 12 diaries were finally analyzed.(92) The main result was that nobody had felt restricted in his/her mobility except for weekend visits outside the city. The participants stressed the role of the footpath as social space (against the role of the car as private space). Sensory perception of the surrounding environment increased considerably.(93)
VI. WELL-BEING AND HARMONY IN CITIES

HARMONY IN CITIES depends greatly on the creation and distribution of urban wealth. European cities that are show-cases of financial power will never become sustainable if they hide social micro-jungles. Developing a superficial environmental image cannot have lasting effects. Unequal distribution of wealth has draining effects on the vitality of the urban activities and it is a source of both unsustainable lifestyles and obstacles to cultural change.(94) Social justice must be seen as a basic precondition for sustainable wealth. Harvey reminds us that ...there is nothing more unequal as the equal treatment of unequals and well-focused polices have to prevent and fight urban schizophrenia.(95) Achieving social justice and environmental improvement are two well-related objectives.(96) Even in the most prosperous European cities, there are urban islands where environmental degradation and social exclusion go hand in hand. They are more or less extended zones in run-down city centres or chaotic peripheral zones where the socially deprived spatially concentrate. They are places of functional impoverishment with poor housing and insufficient equipment and facilities. Is it a coincidence that the social features of these areas are: poverty, delinquency and crime, high unemployment, low mobility, little ac-
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97. European Foundation for the Improvement of Living and Working Conditions (1992), selected papers and conclusions of European Workshop on the Improvement of the Built Environment and Social Integration in Cities, Berlin, 9-11 October; also Jacquier, C. (1991), Voyage dans 10 Quartiers Europens en Crise. 98. European Foundation for the Improvement of Living and Working Conditions (1993), Innovations for the Improvement of the Urban Environment, A European Overview, Dublin.
cess to information, education and training?(97) Social problems in cities may inhibit innovation but may also create a sharper need for it. Innovative actions on job creation included in the overview of innovative projects come from the countries with the highest unemployment in the EU. The Dublin inner-city partnership represents a local area based response to long-term unemployment. The Argilan employment, guidance and training project in Vitoria-Gasteiz, Spain has three specific objectives: regeneration of the economic web of the city through new professions; qualification and requalification of the labour force, adapting it to the requirements of demand; prevention of social exclusion. The Big Issue in London gave new opportunities to the homeless and unemployed.(98) Unemployment is the most serious problem on the urban ho-
Box 1: Fighting Graffiti in Maastricht

An innovative integrated approach to fighting graffiti in public spaces has been developed in Maastricht. The project includes extra means to trace the offenders, education programmes to improve the skills of the graffiti artists and an anti-graf fiti bus with for merly unemployed people who specialize in removing graffiti. The city made a wall available to every citizen wishing to express him or herself through the means of graffiti. Within two years, the damage caused by graffiti pollution decreased considerably (by 80-90 per cent at the railway station). Results from prevention are always hard to prove but it is clear that graffiti has decreased considerably in Maastricht. Tracing and conditional or alternative punishment have a noticeable effect on preventing recidivism, and some ex-offenders, after artistic training, have become famous artists.
99. European Commission (1995), Local Development and Employment Initiatives, Brussels. 100. European Foundation for the Improvement of Living and Working Conditions (1993), Innovations for the Improvement of the Urban Environment, A European Overview, Dublin. 101. Issues very well highlighted in the second international conference on Urban Safety, Drugs and Crime Prevention (Paris, November 1992). 102. A class of schoolchildren is killed every month in car accidents in Greece (announcement at the Health and Environment Conference (Athens, January 1995).
SOURCE: European Foundation for the Improvement of Living and Working Conditions (1993a), Innovations for the Improvement of the Urban Environment, A European Overview, Dublin.
rizon of Europe. New forms of poverty challenge the urban quality of life. The ECs recent report on Local Development and Employment Initiatives identified 17 urban fields as potential sources for job creation.(99) Services to improve everyday life and the quality of the environment, as well as tourism and leisure services, might be important for potential employment and enterprise creation. Most schemes favouring job creation for improving the urban quality of life include training (enhancing the ability for reconversion), professional guidance and orientation.(100) Urban safety is another major challenge for the harmonious city.(101) Car accidents(102) and delinquency make cities a risk. Crime has, in some cases, a linear relationship with unemployment. Transport enterprises are the ones most concerned with crime prevention, as transportation spaces and mobile elements
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are main targets for juvenile delinquency. Graffiti attacks, not related to any form of artistic expression, seem to be the postmodern way of attacking public spaces and property. RATP in Paris set up a specific service for the prevention of graffiti attacks through research on the attackers, and for the investigation of more efficient ways of preventing and repairing damage(103) (see also the Programme in Maastricht in Box 1). Cities have set up innovative direct or indirect crime prevention plans. Danish cities are experimenting with a series of action plans, focusing lately on the strengthening of area consciousness through the inhabitants involvement in the creation of a better physical residential environment. Safety committees in the neighbourhoods of Barcelona are being set up by citizens engaged in improving the everyday quality of life. The psychological health of a city cannot be achieved with a poor housing environment. In many cases, the deterioration of living environments, leads to a disconnection of the urban fabric. Innovations in social housing proved to be an essential factor in social integration.(104) Mass housing often created social tensions on the urban fringe and has often been paternalistic, large, remote, uniform, collective, reactive, anonymous, devoid of management and, ultimately, has failed. In many European cities it is now becoming self-regulated, more local, personal, individualized and proactive, with corporate neighbourhood space and responsive local management: vibrant local communities are replacing void neighbourhoods. The present energy and environmental requirements create new needs for landscaping and energy efficiency. Many disadvantaged poor estates are going through a radical rethink of their space and its social significance.(105) A project in Alicante, the renewal of the Quarter of 1,000 housing units, is transforming a degraded social environment into a functional, friendly space. All inhabitants gave their views on the design of the new quarter, and the unemployed were engaged in the reconstruction of the area which now comprises 600 housing units, shops and many open spaces.(106) The renewal of the Mascagni area in Reggio Emilia is another good example. It created a multifunctional urban space out of a rigid series of anonymous buildings, a functional combination of old and new with integrated public services and access to a healthy environment.(107) There is everywhere a need for intelligent buildings and home environments. The Social Housing Association in Greece created an innovative residential village for low-income households called the Solar Village. The design and planning of the area constitute an environmental experiment, as sunlight is exploited to the maximum and provides many environmental benefits.(108) The Danish co-housing concept offers an innovative approach reconciling the need for new forms of housing with the demand for sustainable development. There are about 30 co-housing communities in Denmark, each comprising 20-50 households. They consist of individual and owner-occupied houses, each designed by the owner himself. A communal house, in the centre of the community, includes a communal dining room and
103. An interesting survey done by this service was presented at the international conference: Public Transport. Security and Environment (UITP, Paris 1992). The profile of the graffiti attacker is: male (96 per cent), aged 1518 (80 per cent) and NOT belonging to an ethnic minority.
104. Mega, V. (1992), Sustainable city in Sistema Terra, Year 1, No. 2, Rome.
105. Issues highlighted in the SCUPAD, 1991 Congress on Mass Housing: The Unexpected Crisis (Saltzbourg, April 1991). 106. Alicante is one of the cities of the European Foundation research network on medium-sized cities. All social actors of the city consider the Barrio de mil viviendas, as a model of social intervention. See European Foundation for the Improvement of Living and Working Conditions (1994), Visions and Actions for Medium-Sized Cities, Dublin. 107. European Foundation for the Improvement of Living and Working Conditions (1993), Innovations for the Improvement of the Urban Environment, A European Overview, Dublin. 108. European Foundation for the Improvement of Living and Working Conditions (1993), Innovations for the Improvement of the Urban Environment, A European Overview, Dublin.
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various workshops and facilities, from a playground to an organic garden and a couple of wind turbines producing electricity.(109) Partnership and solidarity for urban economic regeneration and housing improvement are evident in the case of Glasgow. Social housing makes up 60 per cent of the housing stock of the city and there are many rehabilitation projects undertaken by housing associations. During the late 1980s, housing cooperatives were set up in Glasgows peripheral estates, where highrise housing schemes were created in the 1960s when they were perceived to offer better living conditions. Twenty years later, those housing estates were synonymous with marginalized people, poor housing, drug abuse and crime. Housing associations undertook the physical improvement of the estates: improved housing conditions are achieved by a mix of rehabilitation, selective demolition and new building, with residents taking responsibility for the development and management of their homes.(110)
109. See also the proceedings of the Housing 2000 Conference (Dublin, July 1991).
110. See presentation at the conference Housing the Community 2000 (Dublin, July 1991).
VII. URBAN RENAISSANCE AND INTEGRATED STRATEGIES FOR DISRUPTED PARTS OF THE URBAN FABRIC
MANY URBAN SCHEMES and concepts, such as CIVITAS, advocate the renaissance, revitalization, regeneration and refounding of European cities. All challenges converge on making the city a multi-cultural place, with mix and diversity, reflecting its pluricultural past and offering choices and options for the future. The urban village, introduced by Krier, includes many of these concepts. Urban functions and services necessary for daily life, and which ensure the art of living in cities, should be found in every urban quarter, where every resident should also be able to find work. According to Krier, zoning led to an anti-urban labyrinth which broke traditional structures, centrality and urbanity. Megalopoles should grow by multiplication and not by overexpansion and should consist of a number of urban villages of optimum dimensions. Large cities should rediscover the small scale and short distance.(111) Diversity is being increasingly considered as a precondition for urban development and the articulation and composition of urban functions and uses are generating new forms of planning.(112) The urban periphery is at the very heart of these concerns. It is where there is the most urgent need for multifunctional lively urban spaces where people can live, work and dream. According to Touraine: We are living, at this moment, the passage from a vertical society we used to call class society (with people above and below) to a horizontal society, where it is important to know who is at the centre and who at the periphery. The periphery is a zone of great uncertainty and tensions, where people do not know if they are in or out....To face this prob-
111. European Foundation for the Improvement of Living and Working Conditions (1994), reports from European Conference on Urban Innovations, Dublin 112. Etudes Foncires (1991), La Mixit comme Objectif, No. 53, Paris; also European Foundation for the Improvement of Living and Working Conditions (1995), Le PMEs dans la Revitalisation des Villes Europennes, Dublin; and European Foundation for the Improvement of Living and Working Conditions (1995), Esthtique, Fonctionalit et Dsirabilit de la Ville Durable, Dublin.
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lem, the principal demand is the creation of a local democracy. This seems often impossible because good things are always supposed to come from the centre and bad things from the periphery, the centre often represents the reason, the Universe (school, the state, ...) while the periphery (people, firms, interests, professions) expresses uniquely the interest ...(113) City policy (Politique de la Ville) in France sheds light on all urban peripheries in critical condition. Partnerships with enterprises for the redevelopment of whole areas aim to improve living and public spaces and bring businesses and urban civilization to the area. Epernay is an example where housing estates are recreated with an economic approach to complete district revival and a constant concern for the prevention of isolation and exclusion. The Citizens House project in Villeurbanne focuses on the creation of a centre to encourage citizenship. The city and the prefecture entrusted an advisory office to create an expert group, all inhabitants of the district and representatives of the population. It took them only six months to define the project with the active participation of the inhabitants.(114) Run-down urban centres are the other major focus of integrated strategies for revitalization. Various urban renewal and regeneration projects have been identified with corporate approaches to the economic and physical restructuring of vulnerable areas. In Dublin, the designation of underused and derelict areas and the introduction of incentives for attracting private development into these areas has already produced some interesting results. Dublin Corporation also set up a Living Over the Shop project team to encourage and help property owners to convert their upper floors into residential areas. On a smaller scale, in Galway, residential developments above the main shopping centre and other shopping and office sites led to the creation of complete housing estates on second and third floors.(115) Urban renaissance seems to be a rediscovered issue.(116) The recreation of cities such as CIVITAS highlights the importance of citizenship, and the reconstruction of the urbis makes the city an area of universality, organized in a given territory, increasingly functional and varied.(117) Medium-sized cities are among pioneers in this process. The regulatory plan of Siena (1990) is an example of creating modern life in an old city where cultural associations (Conrade) have a power parallel to the city. The special plan for Toledo offers a good insight into the city and its problems. It is based on a clarification of the dialogue between the historic and the modern city; on an enhancement of the historic legacy, vernacular architectural spaces and the fabric of the streets); on an accessibility plan (including an access plan for cars which absolutely have to go to the centre); on the optimization of potential (arising from its physical morphology as an island anchored in the Castilla Valley); on the optimization of the structural image of Toledo with the coexistence of its historic centre with the socio-economic centre; and on the promotion of a functional mix and articulation of university/
113. Touraine, A. (1991), Citoyennet et Urbanit, Esprit, Paris.
114. European Foundation for the Improvement of Living and Working Conditions (1993), Innovations for the Improvement of the Urban Environment, A European Overview, Dublin. 115. European Foundation for the Improvement of Living and Working Conditions (1993), Innovations for the Improvement of the Urban Environment, A European Overview, Dublin. 116. A major conference and exhibition on the theme was organized in Bologna in 1992, under the title A Vision for Europe, and is being developed into a series of Triennale. 117. Petrella, R. (1993), Urban Ecology or Urban Renaissance, paper at the 1st Global and European Conference City 93/EPH 93, 25-30 October.
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118. European Foundation for the Improvement of Living and Working Conditions (1994b), Visions and Actions for Medium-Sized Cities, Dublin. 119. Council of Europe (1990), European towns strategies and programmes, Standing Conference of Local and Regional Authorities of Europe, Strasbourg, 6-8 June; also Council of Europe (1992), The European Urban Charter, Standing Conference of Local and Regional Authorities of Europe, Strasbourg. 120. La Ville (1994), Six Interviews with Architects , Le Moniteur, Paris. 121. European Foundation for the Improvement of Living and Working Conditions (1993), Innovations for the Improvement of the Urban Environment, A European Overview, Dublin. 122. Charbonneau, J.P. (1994), Arts de Ville , Ministre de lEquipement, du Transport et du Tourisme, Paris. 123. See also the working papers of the workshop on Public Participation organized by the Council of Europe (Bath, April 1995).
cultural/administrative and tourist functions.(118) Special attention is starting to be given to public spaces.(119) What Koolhas describes as fortresses of freedom(120) have great potential as islands of urban civilization within the city. For almost 40 years, huge investment in road-building led to the excessive standardization of Brussels public spaces. BrusselsCapital region prepared the Manual of Brussels Public Spaces aimed at setting up qualitative recommendations for the functional, environmental, cultural and aesthetic character of the spaces.(121) Roads and pavements, roadside plantations and public lighting are being given considerable importance in forging an identity for the public spaces. Art in the city and imagination in power are always objectives(122) and it is not simply a question of a physical picture. It has to do with the everyday quality of life and work. Many cities have, subsequently, to manage a space they created for a once in a lifetime celebration. Barcelona provides a good example. The city has lived for centuries with its back to the sea. The creation of a new sea-front was one of the challenges to be met after the celebration of the 1992 Olympic Games. Contact with the sea was the common denominator of the three major interventions: adapting the Olympic Village, remodelling the industrial port and renovating the Diagonal Mar area. The private sector has been very active in carrying out these three major interventions, bringing about a radical change in the perception and use of the urban space by the citizens. The Olympic village is being converted into an attractive residential area with office space and green zones leading to the sea-front. The renovation of the old port is under way and the Diagonal Mar development will take place over a period of seven to ten years. The 1992 Olympic Games were a starting and not a concluding point and an opportunity to develop and exercise citizenship. The experience of Barcelona and that of Seville for EXPO 92 provide models and lessons for cities such as Lisbon, which is preparing for EXPO 98. Lisbon has already decided to use the event to strengthen the citys linkage with the River Tagus.
VIII. THE EUROPEAN CITY, A CONTINUOUS CITIZEN DEBATE

MANY URBAN POLICIES have failed but failure has to be seen as a new opportunity. Throughout history, cities have always been sources of innovation, places where human creativity has flourished. Todays innovative projects are witnesses to the strategic visions that cities try to develop in order to meet the increasing social, economic and environmental challenges, and of the synergy with enterprises and citizens. The projects included in the overview may differ in many respects but, collectively, they try to tackle the range of urban problems evident throughout Europe: environmental degradation, congestion, social exclusion and marginalization. There are hardly any innovative projects that are neither the product of partnerships nor of strategic holistic approaches. The vast majority of projects call for
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124. European Foundation for the Improvement of Living and Working Conditions (1993), Innovations for the Improvement of the Urban Environment, A European Overview, Dublin. 125. European Foundation for the Improvement of Living and Working Conditions (1994), Visions and Actions for Medium-Sized Cities, Dublin. 126. DATAR (1993), Le Continent Retrouv , Editions de lAube, Paris; also Masser, I. et al. (1992), The Geography of Europes Futures, Belhaven Press, London. 127. See the publication of the Delft Institute of Technology The Randstad: An Urban Laboratory, Delft 1992. 128. DIV, OECD, URBA 2000 (1990), Cities and New Technologies, Paris; also European Commission, DG XI (1992), The City Without Car, Tecnoser, Rome. 129. European Foundation for the Improvement of Living and Working Conditions (1993), LImpact de la Domotique sur les Fonctions Urbaines, Dublin. 130. Sassen, Saskia (1994), Cities in a World Economy, Pine Forge Press, London, New Delhi. 131. European Commission, DG XI (1994), First Report on the Sustainable City, Brussels. 132. OECD, Group on Urban Affairs (1994), Cities for the 21st Century, Paris. 133. European Foundation for the Improvement of Living and Working Conditions (1995), Esthtique, Fonctionalit et Dsirabilit de la Ville Durable, Dublin. 134. Hall, P. (1988), Cities for Tomorrow, B. Blackwell, Oxford; also IFHP (1993), Cities for Tomorrow, working papers of the 80th International Congress, Helsinki.
decentralization, empowerment and devolution, and these lessons are reinforced by most projects. Innovations may be the first step towards a new urban era of well-being. Citizens participation is a common denominator in projects initiating the new era(123) and a non-participatory community is being considered increasingly unsustainable. Efforts to create citizen-friendly and environment-friendly cities are expanding. The passage from ego-citizens to eco-citizens will certainly need a lot of mobilization and education. But no more major decisions concerning the future of cities are taken without a welldefined civil consensus. In Barcelona, hundreds of citizens associations have participated in the preparation of the economic and social strategic plan, the basic instrument for urban change, elaborated in parallel with the preparation of the Olympic Games which have been characterized as a school of citizenship. In Brussels, the consultation procedures for planning introduce new concepts of participation. In Reggio Emilia, citizens participate in the compiling of the city budget with the use of new technologies. In Valencia, citizens participate in planning the new metro lines.(124) Cities such as Evora or Siena already have hundreds of citizens associations.(125) Urban diversity and participation are considered to be part of the richness of a city, and mono-functional overimposed schemes are the most unsustainable in a Europe which is changing dramatically after the fall of the Berlin Wall.(126) Europe, increasingly, is a dynamic pluri-cultural space of variable geometry. It tends to be a network of urban regions or regional cities which articulates the economic and socio-cultural system, such as the Dutch Randstad.(127) New visions and challenges emerge together with an awareness that the abolition of national frontiers does not automatically give birth to an integrated Europe. Cities are in the lead in competing territories. They join a new marathon with new values to share. They try to become more intelligent,(128) more flexible,(129) more efficient,(130) more sustainable,(131) more urban,(132) more aesthetic and functional:(133) they all want to be the cities of tomorrow.(134)
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Our city, our future: towards sustainable development in European cities

I. THE EUROPEAN URBAN ENVIRONMENT AGENDA: HIGHLIGHTS

Environment and Urbanization, Vol. 8, No. 1, April 1996

Environment and Urbanization, Vol. 8, No. 1, April 1996

Environment and Urbanization, Vol. 8, No. 1, April 1996

II. THE URBAN EUROSCAPE: STATE, PRESSURES AND RESPONSES

Environment and Urbanization, Vol. 8, No. 1, April 1996

Environment and Urbanization, Vol. 8, No. 1, April 1996

III. EUROPEAN CITIES COMMIT TO SUSTAINABILITY

Environment and Urbanization, Vol. 8, No. 1, April 1996

Environment and Urbanization, Vol. 8, No. 1, April 1996

URBAN ACTIONS - PROJECTS - POLICIES 140

Environment and Urbanization, Vol. 8, No. 1, April 1996

Figure 2: Composing Urban Policies and Performance Indicators

IV. IMPROVING THE FUNCTIONING OF A CITY AS AN ECOSYSTEM: THE EUROPEAN EXPERIENCE

Environment and Urbanization, Vol. 8, No. 1, April 1996

ci So & re n ro itu vi nd En xpe E

's Citizen tion a Particip

Urban Sustainability Strategy Urb

olism Metab Urban rces u Reso mption Consu

Environment and Urbanization, Vol. 8, No. 1, April 1996

Environment and Urbanization, Vol. 8, No. 1, April 1996

63. IFS 1990-1991

Environment and Urbanization, Vol. 8, No. 1, April 1996

V. TOWARDS A LESS UNSUSTAINABLE URBAN MOBILITY

Environment and Urbanization, Vol. 8, No. 1, April 1996

Environment and Urbanization, Vol. 8, No. 1, April 1996

Environment and Urbanization, Vol. 8, No. 1, April 1996

VI. WELL-BEING AND HARMONY IN CITIES

Environment and Urbanization, Vol. 8, No. 1, April 1996

Box 1: Fighting Graffiti in Maastricht

Environment and Urbanization, Vol. 8, No. 1, April 1996

Environment and Urbanization, Vol. 8, No. 1, April 1996

Environment and Urbanization, Vol. 8, No. 1, April 1996

113. Touraine, A. (1991), Citoyennet et Urbanit, Esprit, Paris.

Environment and Urbanization, Vol. 8, No. 1, April 1996

VIII. THE EUROPEAN CITY, A CONTINUOUS CITIZEN DEBATE

Environment and Urbanization, Vol. 8, No. 1, April 1996

Environment and Urbanization, Vol. 8, No. 1, April 1996

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