Towns & Cities: the current debate

Table of contents:

1. The concept of the sustainable town/city

2. From the Charter of Athens to the Charter of Aalborg

3. From hygienism to the sustainable town/city

4. New constraints: the urban microclimate, energy infrastructures, recyling

5. Present experience/case studies

6. Difficulties in application of sustainable urban development

7. Study in depth

1. The concept of the sustainable town/city - introduction

“Why should we accept the idea of an economy in full expansion as a way of salvation when in reality what we need is a balanced economy which places the necessities of life before profit, prestige or power” Lewis Mumford

European - and world - history of the ideal city is a long one, a permanent quest by humanity for a built environment most adapted to the needs of our civilisations.

Study in depth: La cité idéale en occident à travers l'histoire (The ideal occidental city through history) >>>

Today, the concept of the sustainable town/city which a few years ago was attributed to the aspirations of an environmentalist’s utopia is starting to stimulate the urban debate.

The concept made one of its first appearances in the UNESCO programme ‘Man and Biosphere’(1988). However, it is primarily within the context of the Rio Summit (1992), that this concept starts to attract attention. The European Campaign for sustainable towns & cities initiated in the Danish town of Aalborg (1994), polarises awareness in European towns & cities by offering frameworks for meeting, reflection and exchange encouraging the implementation of local strategies for sustainable development.

Sustainable development starts to be integrated into policy-making, urban transport, and projects of urban planning. Judicial and statutory frameworks are put in place but their impact is limited. In the field, initiatives for sustainable development often suffer from a lack of support, tools or efficient leverage.

Despite these limits an urban vision is emerging that is not lacking in coherence.

A priority of the sustainable town/city is to instigate a new dialogue between urban habitat and terrestrial habitat. A local/global relationship is woven, differing to that fostered by insertion into world economic competition.

Wind, waves and vegetation: the planet is not inanimate. It is a living organism…every element of the planet’s biosphere is a constantly renewed surface / Ref. "Cities for a small planet" / Richard Rogers / 1997

Evidence from space of man’s physical impact on the planet’s surface. We are now literally shaping the face of the planet. With 20 million residents, the metropolitan area of Tokyo forms the world’s largest city / Ref. Science Photo Library.

The Endless City: Mexico City’s population has grown from 100,000 to 20 million in less than a hundred years. People continue to pour in from the countryside at the rate of 80,000 per month / Photo: Stuart Franklin

The steepest growth rate has been in cities. In the 1950’s 29% of the world’s population was urban. In 1965 it was 36%, in 1990 50%, and by 2025 it could be at least 60%. / Ref. "Cities for a small planet" / Richard Rogers / 1997

A second stake is the anchoring of the ecological question to the social question, on the one hand because today the environment is a question of society: political, urban, industrial and agricultural choices, and on the other because social inequality is often intensified by ecological inequalities. Granting that the body of society is subjected to a number of risks, urban cartography clearly shows parallels between zones exposed to high pollution levels or more localised risks and territories that are socially weakened.

A third stake is democratic: sustainable development is a good support with which to open up public debate on the validity of the present management of land – that of considering land as a commodity. Land speculation often has more impact on urban planning than projects established according to environmental imperatives and the real needs of the population. A fundamental review of the way land is managed seems indispensable in order to allocate real power to local communities and local authorities to forward a more ecological and equitable built environment.

The ambition and complexity of this programme invites a certain amount of reserve when attempting to define a sustainable environment because there are no clear-cut answers to the questions, challenges and contradictions highlighted by sustainable development. Furthermore, the diversity of local approaches is not easily definable. Whilst the stakes for a sustainable town/city hold some common ground: policies are contextual, adjusted to local cultures, local ecology and territorial specificities. The notion of the sustainable town/city is constructed within both a local and global context: between an imperative of respecting local diversity and the necessity of adhering to the vision of urban sustainability.

2. From the Charter of Athens to the Charter of Aalborg

The assertion of sustainable development in the urban landscape engages with a broad questioning of modern urban planning born in the wake of the Modern Movement in the 1930’s. In parallel a sort of hygienism comes into play beneath the surface.

Ref.: "Befreites Wohnen, 85 Bilder, erläutert von S.Giedion"

Study in depth: La ville moderne / Les visions du C.I.A.M. 1930 / Existenzminimum, hygiène et santé...
(The modern town/the visions of C.I.A.M. 1930 / Existenzminimum, hygiene and health…) >>>

The dysfunctions induced by the model of the Charter of Athens and its applications are at the heart of 'The Green Book on the Urban Environment', which marks a turning point in 1990 in the outlook towards the urban environment by the European Commission. The European campaign for sustainable towns & cities in 1994 concludes with the drafting of the Charter of Aalborg.

Sixty years or so separate the elaboration of the Charter of Aalborg with that of the Charter of Athens. This new Charter advocates urban policies that integrate the impact of short and long-term development on the environment and questions some founding principles of the Charter of Athens.

Ref.: Revue "Urbanisme", N° 330

The principle of the ‘clean sweep’ of the Charter of Athens is contested and instead the value placed upon patrimony and heritage is enhanced. The patrimonial and cultural dimension of the town/city is imposed as a central element of its planning.

Ref.: La ville de trois millions d'habitants / Le Corbusier (1922) / Virgilio Vercelloni, "La cité idéale en occident"
(Town of 3 million inhabitants / Le Corbusier (1922) / Virgilio Vercelloni, “The ideal city in the Occident”)

The removal of modern architecture from context, fed by industrial standardization and the modern international style, gives way to concern over the adaptation to milieu and improvement of local identities. This adaptation can take place through looking to the past and an over indulgence of the neo-vernacular register (dreaded by the Modernists) but can lend itself equally to a very contemporary architecture capable of chiming with the site or landscape, the patrimony, light or vegetation.

Borneo Sporenburg, Amsterdam, Netherlands

‘Zoning’, a key term in the Charter of Athens is substituted by research into ‘mixed-use nodes’ with potential to enrich an urban landscape through integral use of space, reducing journey requirements, through proximity of activities.

Compact mixed-use nodes reduce journey requirements and create lively sustainable neighbourhoods / Ref. "Cities for a small planet" / Richard Rogers / 1997

The paradigm of traffic flow and fluidity implied by separating traffic according to modes of transport opens up the debate about traffic in towns & cities.

Ref.: "L'urbanisme contemporain- Des origines à la Charte d'Athènes"
(“Contemporary urban planning” Origins of the Charter of Athens)

Ref.: "L'urbanisme contemporain- Des origines à la Charte d'Athènes"
(“Contemporary urban planning” Origins of the Charter of Athens)

Ref.: "Befreites Wohnen, 85 Bilder, erläutert von S.Giedion"

The re-appropriation of the highway by all modes of transport becomes a strategy to moderate automobile traffic and regain public space.

Cars, cars, cars: By the middle of the twentieth centry, there were 2.6 billion people on earth and 50 million cars. In the last fifty years the global population has doubled while the number of cars has increased tenfold. In the next twenty-five years the world population of cars is expected to reach a billion. Mass motorisation has arrived and is set to spread to every city in this world / Ref. "Cities for a small planet" / Richard Rogers / 1997

Friends or traffic ? A "Pedestrian traffic flow Research" in San Francisco confirms the simply reality that urban traffic undermines a street's sense of community. In a single neighbourhood tree streets with different intensities of traffic are compared. As traffic increases so casual visits to neighbours decline. Traffic is a signific cause of urban alienation. / Ref. "Cities for a small planet" / Richard Rogers / 1997

Short cut, go to chapter: La mobilité…( Mobility …)>>>

Instead of rationalist urban planning by experts, the Aalborg Charter promotes a policy based on partnership and participation of the town/city itself. New ways of working together are advocated, which should involve a number of the population interested in the theme. Sustainable development confronts the decision-makers with the complexity of the decision; revealing to them what they are unable to control. Passing through this phase of uncertainty and collaboration means that one accepts that the answers that one held no longer function in an optimum manner.

Contradicting points of view between the Charter of Athens and Aalborg/ Cyria Emelianoff ‘La notion de la ville durable dans le contexte europeen: quelques elements de cadrage” (“The notion of the sustainable town/city in a European context: some framing elements”) in ‘Enjeux et politiques de l’environment’, cahier francais no.306, janvier-fevrier 2002

3. From Hygienism to the sustainable town/city

Comparative interplay can be observed between the policies of hygiene and sustainable development. In the case of hygiene, it is the excessive policy operating in its name rather than its basic approach that may be called into question. Numerous environmental problems are not visible or are not matters directly relating to hygiene. Carbon dioxide is colourless and odourless, pesticides are scarcely detectable, chemical products which can interfere with hormonal systems were (yesterday) considered inoffensive. At the other end of the scale, global warming, over-fishing, soil erosion, biodiversity, desertification and deforestation have little to do with hygiene.

Questions to do with environmentalist hygiene have widely shifting emphases.

Ref.: "Befreites Wohnen, 85 Bilder, erläutert von S.Giedion"

Study in depth: La ville moderne / Les visions du C.I.A.M. 1930 / Existenzminimum, hygiène et santé...
(The modern town/the visions of C.I.A.M. 1930 / Existenzminimum, hygiene and health…) >>>

The race for cleanliness, and against pollution, the opening of an office for complaints, square meters of green space do not make up a policy of sustainable development.

In the urban landscape and in the Occidental context, urban sustainable practices go as far as overturning the political principles conducted in the X1X century. Necessary in their day, as was the response of modern urban planning, they no longer correspond to present imperatives.

Hygienists of the X1X century worked to increase space within towns/cities creating wide avenues. They encouraged ‘zoning’ that is the separation of functions/activities and populations.

Policies of sustainable urban development take opposing action to this approach. The extension of city limits advocated by the Moderns following the hygienist movement is replaced by the opposite concern of containing urbanization, braking growing consumption of space, infrastructures and energy. Traffic is no long a remedy to the problems of hygiene but on the contrary is one of the main factors of pollution in a town/city. Policies for urban spatial planning have been so successful that ways of urban ‘tightening’ are necessary in order to control or even simply manage mobility.

The X1X century strove to make urban ground impermeable and to cover canals - to dry out the towns/cities in order to curb putrefaction transmitted by the ground and water. Water is being found to have its attractions however, in today’s urban environment for its recreational, ecological, aesthetic and refreshing qualities

There is a revival of the waterways networks in towns/cities as rivers and canals covered over in the XX century are restored to the open air, pathways along river/canal banks are reopened, wetlands in and around urban areas are restored and abandoned fluvial ports are refurbished.

The hygenic propensity towards expansion of green space is equally replaced by more qualitative visions, concerned with vegetation and landscape composition, continuity or ecological corridors to favour biodiversity or different ways for use of nature in an urban environment.

A progressive departure from hygienism / Cyria Emelianoff ‘La notion de la ville durable dans le contexte europeen: quelques elements de cadrage” (“The notion of the sustainable town/city in a European context: some framing elements”) in ‘Enjeux et politiques de l’environment’, cahier francais no.306, janvier-fevrier 2002

4. New Constraints: The urban microclimate, energy infrastructures, recycling…

Last but not least we are confronted by new phenomena such as problems of flooding and the limits of the capacity of purification plants due to the impermeable nature of urban ground and the heat island effect of urban heat generated by the process of urbanization associating heat sources and storing capacity too great in relation to efficiency of natural mechanisms of cooling available. The transformation of land also implies control of modification of natural energy cycles.

Photo: Kalke Village shopping complex green roof, Vienna

Heat-Island effect

Short cut, go to chapter: Microclimat urbain...(urban microclimate…)>>>

Recycling in all imaginable ways is equally desirable: natural treatment and filtering of water, reuse, recycling or downcycling of construction materials and all ‘consumable’ products in general.

Water recycling management: Domestic water is filtered and reused for irrigation / Ref. "Cities for a small planet" / Richard Rogers / 1997

Linear metabolism cities consume and pollute at a high rate / Ref. "Cities for a small planet" / Richard Rogers / 1997

Circular metabolism cities minimise new inputs and maximate recycling / Ref. "Cities for a small planet" / Richard Rogers / 1997

Revalorisation of the energy value of domestic waste or the production of biogas from green waste allows for electricity production or covers heating needs of buildings through long distance heating networks.

The conventional system / remote power generation / Ref. "Cities for a small planet" / Richard Rogers / 1997

The compact model / local power generation and waste recycling / City waste should be seen as a resource to be mined. / Ref. "Cities for a small planet" / Richard Rogers / 1997

Short cut, go to chapter: Infrastructures de l'énergie... (Energy infrastructures…)>>>

Solar access, already considered important by the Modern Movement motivated by research into well-being and public health, takes on significance today which is more closely associated with questions of energy independence and atmospheric pollution. Hence a search for urban structures, which exploit the advantages of passive solar energy through carefully orientated glass facades and the use of roofing for the installation of thermal or photovoltaic solar collectors.

Photo: thermal solar collectors, ilôt 13, Geneva, Switzerland

Photo: Solstis, Etablissement Cantonal d’Assurances (ECA), Lausanne

Short cut, go to chapter: Infrastructures de l'énergie... (Energy infrastructures…)>>>

Another challenge of the XX1 century is the integration of windparks in the landscape...

Photo: Danemark

Photo: Windpark in Palm Springs (California)

Photo: Windpark in Tehachapi, USA

5. Present experience/case studies...

Today, existing trials for the sustainable town/city are rather marginal but as they are increased, they demonstrate a diversity that reveals quite different approaches from which the concept can be addressed. In spite of contrasting appearances, which may often reflect either regional or cultural particularities, these trials can serve as examples for the whole of the European territory.

Eurotechnics, ecolabels and ecobudgets
An initial approach targets ecotechnics and the ecological labelling of products by businesses or even local authorities. This approach lays out an ecosystemic conception of the town/city: multiplying instruments of evaluation, elaborating an ecobudget, putting a system of environmental management into place and aspiring to label products for ‘good’ conduct in relation to water, air and different pollutants. Ecological clauses are introduced into commercial contracts and buying ‘green’ encourages businesses to adopt improvement/ ‘reconversion’ strategies favourable to the environment. Restrictions and taxation laws that favour ecology are main levers towards the development of environmental techniques in industry and, for example, marked advances in the sphere of ‘environmentally friendly’ buildings. At the same time, ‘green’ consumerism will assert itself with the growth of labelled products and environmental competition.

Planning the ‘compact’ town
This relates to the containment of urban and suburban expansion through favouring density – compact mixed-use nodes with pedestrian zones and restricted speed traffic zones, which improve the quality of life in densely populated areas. Several planning axes can be distinguished: planning public transport in conjunction with home and workplace, organising public transport (railways) on a regional and urban scale where urban concentration is in the vicinity of public transport infrastructures and a compact organisation of the town/city (linear, unipolar or polycentric), which aims to limit travel. The installation of ‘green’ frameworks channel urbanization whilst providing ecological and recreational resources.

Compact nodes linked by mass-transit systems can be arranged in response to local constraints / Ref. "Cities for a small planet" / Richard Rogers / 1997

Unipolar, linear and polycentric towns/cities / Ref.: "La Ville dense et durable. Un modele europeen pour la ville ?" in "Vues sur la ville - Observatoire universitaire de la ville et du développement durable" / Béatrice Bochet, Jean-Bernard Gay , Giuseppe Pini / octobre 2002 and octobre 2003

On an infra-urban level the development of new sustainable neighbourhoods, which have had some success in Germany and other countries, can be observed. Built on disused docklands, military or industrial wastelands they constitute both a ‘showcase’ and evidence of sustainable urban planning. They are most often integrated into a sustainable development policy carried out on the level of agglomeration. These planning processes are based on the search for the ‘compact’ town - less energy consuming and economical in space. The concept of the sustainable town/city is often translated into ‘compact town/city’ or ‘a town/city of short distances’.

Photo: Stadtteil Freiburg-Vauban, Germany

Photo: Quartier Kronsberg, Hannover, Germany

Photo: Borneo Sporenburg, Amsterdam, Netherlands, a new prototype for low-rice high-density housing in Amsterdam's docks

Social and Ecological rehabilitation
Another approach is to grant social and ecological refurbishment programmes to old buildings, small blocks or larger neighbourhoods. The permanent reuse of places and of the urban fabric is an acceptance of the sustainable town/city and its possibilities for self-renewal.

Photo: Rehabilitation of ‘ilot’ (‘block’)13, Geneva, Switzerland

The quality of the urban landscape
This kind of project relies on the inclination of the urban landscape and its qualities. The urban environment is perceived in its architectural and aesthetic dimension and appreciated in association with the quality of its open spaces. This approach puts an emphasis on sensitive relationships, both social and cultural that are established between the inhabitants and their town/city.

6. Difficulties in application of sustainable urban development

The ease with which different strategies may achieve a sustainable built environment and respect for the environment as previously discussed is closely associated with management of land. It is no accident that the great majority of sustainable neighbourhood experiences are situated within contexts where public authorities have an important say over a given territory. A broadening of municipal power appears to be an essential condition for planning and especially setting in motion the elements that constitute the sustainable town/city without economic or speculative constraints.

Land, a commodity: the adverse effects of mismanagement of land
At present totally reckless, irresponsible management of land allows and imposes excessive speculation. The prices of the urban built environment (flats, offices, commercial surfaces and other) increase and the result of this is to reserve the latter for wealthy inhabitants and businesses, creating social segregation and urban sprawl. The town/city dweller no longer chooses his accommodation with a view to practical criteria such as proximity between workplace and home or between family and friends, but only in accordance with availability of affordable accommodation.

Setting urban planning in motion: difficult without true control of land by public authorities
It should be highlighted today, that in spite of the awareness that a policy of high-density housing/building is indispensable, land management practices, which consider land as a commodity jeopardise the establishment of measures in favour of this objective. Only strong policies tending towards at least partial state control over land that is still available (agricultural land not permitted for development) and policies enabling public authorities to acquire land and buildings still available on the market, can guarantee the setting in motion of building development that respects the environment and is equitable for the population in the medium or long term.

Ideas for a more reasonable management of land: the example of Holland
Management of land such as practiced in Holland, for example, involves the intervention of public authorities in relation to land ownership (policies of acquisition, leaseholds etc.) favouring and greatly simplifying the process of planning/management of land whilst remaining compatible with a market economy engaged with commodities other than land. These countries gain enormous advantages, and in the long term, through being able to offer their citizens a well thought-out, affordable built environment that is much more easily adaptable to demographic, social and mobility needs, and last but not least to environmental imperatives.

It is perhaps apt to remind those tempted to think that this type of ‘collective’ land management is of communist/marxist ideology, that many reputable economists (including several Nobel prize-winners) speak very highly of the considerable advantages to be had from a more collective management of land and warn of the risks which are run by a world economy based more and more on money generated by the speculative bubble (reminder: the collapse of the property market in Japan, where property values fell by 40%, plunging the country into a ten-year recession from which it is emerging painfully today).

The creation of sustainable urban development is hardly dissociable from a broadening of public powers and by fundamental questioning of the policy of management of land, which still views land as a commodity.

Peter Haefeli, architect, scientific collaborator at CUEPE (Centre universitaire d’etude des problems de l’energie) Geneva University

Study in depth: Politique de gestion du territoire … (the policy of land management…)>>>

7. Study in depth

CYRIA_EMELIANOFF_Ville_durable_dans_le_contexte_europeen.pdf

Aalborg_charter_english.pdf
Aalborg_charter_french.pdf
Aalborg_charter_german.pdf
Aalborg_charter_italian.pdf

New_Athen_charter_2003_english.pdf
New_Athen_charter_2003_french.pdf

BOCHET_GAY_PINI_La_Ville_dense_et_durable_Un_modele_europeen_pour_la_ville.pdf
VUES_Ville_durable_et_mobilite.pdf
http://www.unil.ch/igul
http://www.unil.ch/igul/page14548.html

NZZ_Holland_Triumph_der_kunstlichen_Natur.pdf
NZZ_Wir_gestalten_die_Niederlande_neu.pdf

EUROPE_Sustainable_local_energy_policy_in_european_towns.pdf