Sustainable development in European cities:
How research can contribute
Dr. Christian Patermann
Director of the Environment and Sustainable Development research programme
European Commission, DG Research
The integration of environment into the EU policies (Agriculture, Development,
Economic and financial affairs, Energy, Industry, Internal Market, Fisheries, General
Affairs, Transport) is a prime objective of the European Commission since the Cardiff
Council of 1998. This process, known as the Cardiff process, should culminate with
the preparation of a long-term Community strategy for sustainable development for
the Gothenburg Summit of June 2001. Obviously, an important target of this effort
should relate to the promotion of sustainable development within European cities,
where almost 80% of European citizens live. The role of this paper is to emphasise
how research can help to improve the long-term sustainability of urban areas.
During the 20th century, cities tended to place their economic expansion at the top of
their agenda, with too little regard to social well being and environmental equilibrium.
This resulted in dramatic consequences from the social (exclusion, loss of cultural
identity, insecurity and criminality, etc.), economic (deteriorating infrastructure and
built environment, traffic congestion, etc.) and environmental (bad air quality, noise,
deterioration of cultural heritage, poor water management and overall waste, urban
sprawl, etc.) viewpoints.
These severe socio-economic impacts often stretch well beyond the natural limits of
cities to affect regional and even global territories. The changes in land use that are
required to support cities substantially harm both terrestrial ecosystems and
biodiversity. The dependence upon fossil fuels of urban areas contributes the main
fraction of greenhouse gas emissions at EU level. Similarly, cities emit large quantities
of gaseous pollutants and airborne particulate matter, leading to large-scale changes in
atmospheric composition. Overall, urban areas are responsible for two thirds of energy
consumption in buildings and transport. Tourism, which is likely to expand very
substantially in the future, is also affecting the organization of European cities and
their ability to preserve cultural heritage in a sustainable manner. Traffic congestion is
nowadays jeopardizing the competitiveness of many European cities. Since 1970,
passenger transport demand has grown by more than 110%, outstripping economic
growth.
The evidence that the very existence of our European cities is threatened by current
trends is indisputable. This serious situation has triggered the reaction of the European
Commission which is actively promoting the sustainable development of cities since
the 90’s.
Urban policy is normally developed and implemented by the Member States and the
cities themselves, according to the principle of subsidiarity. The responsibility of the
European Community is to act more globally as a catalyst, as is emphasised in the
communication Sustainable urban development in the European Union: A framework
for action. Major emphasis is on ensuring that EU policies are sufficiently ‘urban
sensitive’, which is illustrated, for example, by the fact that Structural Funds have
now mainstreamed the urban dimension in their programming.
The challenge for the EU is to address urban sustainability from a global perspective,
whatever the institutional level at which this effort is being carried out. In reality,
there are many barriers that limit the implementation of sustainable development at
city level:
A major barrier is the carrying out of too sectoral approaches to solve problems
or plan new activities. This occurs when efforts tend to be too narrowly focused on
limited aspects of a given problem or activity. This is often caused by the traditional
separation of urban activities by sectors at the level of city authorities. Even where
there is a good co-ordination between the different city services, it is in practice very
difficult to translate the shared knowledge into meaningful actions, because of the lack
of adequate integrated tools.
Another cause of failure is the inability of stakeholders to make long-term
planning and to ensure consistency between the many projects carried out. The
implementation of narrow short-term views and measures often leads to long term
unsustainability. Such practices may be due to a cultural incapability to envisage longterm perspectives and scenarios, or more prosaically to the conscious choice to set up
short-sighted policies mainly motivated by political interests. Another reason could be
the fact that public authorities have progressively lost their prominent role in urban
development compared to the last decades. This is not only linked to their reducing
investment capability but increasingly to their inability to co-ordinate and to give
consistency to various projects and initiatives taken up by a wider range of actors.
Another important factor is the difficulty to make reliable forecasting of how the
future of EU cities could evolve. Already today, new challenges such as the
globalisation of the economy and information (e.g. through the Internet) threaten the
fragile equilibrium of European cities. It is likely that the urban population will
continue to grow in the future, perhaps above the 80% level of today. In the meantime
the structure of family units will continue to change rapidly with, for example, the
predominance of single parent/single person households. It is unclear if cities will
continue to remain the natural arenas for social life, culture, business and politics.
Though these parameters will strongly depend on the nature of future policies, many
of them have an unpredictable character, which make forward-looking exercises
particularly unreliable. The absence of clear and well-identified milestones is a
disincentive to long-term planning.
Finally, the acceptability of the newly designed measures or policies is not always
optimal. Very often, the decision-making process does not involve all the concerned
actors. In essence, the citizens should have a say in decisions which will affect their
quality of life in the future and there is an overall need to improve the transparency of
the urban decision-making process.
The above barriers generally result in situations where the solutions implemented are
not fully appropriate. This in turn is not always visible to the decision-makers, as
negative impacts sometimes only appear in the medium-long term.
Science and technology can help to overcome these barriers which limit the actual
implementation of sustainable development policies within European towns. Science
can help to develop new modelling tools and/or assessment methodologies that are
needed to better forecast how the complex ‘urban system’ could evolve in the future.
It is also an essential decision-support tool that can facilitate the dialogue between the
public authorities/institutions and the civil society. On the other hand, technology
brings forward new products or processes that allow yields to be maximised and
resource consumption to be reduced, while stimulating competitiveness and local
employment.
This is precisely the role of the Key Action ‘City of Tomorrow and Cultural Heritage’.
As part of a research programme supported by the European Commission, it utilises
the full potential of science and technology to help develop new tools, approaches or
methodologies that will enable truly sustainable policies to be defined and
implemented. Cities have an urgent need of new practices based on forward looking
instruments and approaches that rely on new forms of public and private partnerships.
To deal with the complexity of sustainable development, this Key Action has to cover
a broad range of complementary activities from long-term basic research to short-term
demonstration. ‘City of Tomorrow and Cultural Heritage’ is probably unique as
it bridges the gap between socio-economic research and scientific/technological
research, which often tend to be separated. This is precisely the nature of the
customer-oriented deliverables of this Key Action which makes necessary the
adoption of an integrated socio-economic and technological approach. Furthermore,
this approach is consistent with the need to address all the components of
sustainability, including the technological and the cultural sustainability. Solutions
proposed must respond efficiently to the rapid pace of technological progress in an
adaptive manner and in keeping with the cultural identity of European society and its
individual members. As it increases understanding of the underlying processes at
stake, research should not only address the optimisation of future urban projects but it
should also help to set up corrective mechanisms to positively re-orient impacts of
current actions.
The Key Action ‘City of Tomorrow and Cultural Heritage’ aims to develop innovative
approaches that are inherently built on the five intrinsic pillars of sustainable
development:
 precautionary principle: the lack of scientific certainty should not be used as a
reason to delay taking action to prevent or minimise potential damage
 integration principle: environmental requirements must be integrated into all areas
of policy-making
 polluter pays principle: cost of pollution should be borne by those responsible for
causing it
 preventative principle: activities which are supposed to seriously damage natural
or physical capital should not be supported by society

participative principle: widespread and informed public participation in decisionmaking
In each project supported by the Key Action, the validation of sustainable
development approaches is carried out through ensuring that such principles might
apply adequately.
The RISK-UE project1 is a typical example of a research effort supported by the Key
Action ‘City of Tomorrow and Cultural Heritage’ enabling the application of the
precautionary principle in urban areas. It aims to produce a decision-support tool for
drawing up preventive plans of action for reducing the impacts of seismic events in
European cities. RISK-UE assesses earthquake risks in diverse urban areas of the EU
(taking into consideration their distinctive features) to better understand the
consequences of earthquakes in terms of cost and victims, paying particular attention
to historical centres, cultural heritage and economic impact. RISK-UE directly
contributes to the effective implementation of the precautionary principle at EU level,
in agreement with the resolution of the Nice Summit.
In the PROPOLIS project2, the integration principle is applied in a systematic way
to define sustainable mobility strategies for European cities. The objective is to test
different land use and transport policies and tools with regard to their potential to
improve urban mobility in the long run. The starting point is the development of a set
of indicators measuring the environmental, social and economic components of
sustainability. It is through the calculation of the values of these indicators that the
different policy options can be evaluated in an optimal way. More globally
PROPOLIS should contribute to the take up by city authorities of new integrated
management approaches that are suitable for dealing with the vast range of urban
issues.
The polluter pays principle is one of the main pillars of the PAYT project3 which
addresses the critical issue of waste management in cities. The principal objective is to
design a variable rate pricing system as a policy option for reducing household
discards. Flat rate taxes are not effective in reducing the generation of wastes at the
source, hence the idea to develop and test a “pay-as-you-throw” (PAYT) scheme in
several European cities. The project will assess if such a scheme can effectively incite
households to divert an increased portion of their domestic waste away from
traditional disposal, for example through a higher recourse to recycling or the
purchasing of goods with less bulky packages. This project could contribute to a
substantial modification of household behaviour towards increased responsibility.
Impact assessment is becoming a natural activity of many European municipalities
who want to take early measures to preserve their environment for the longer term.
The preventative principle is therefore commonly applied in RTD projects supported
by the Key Action ‘City of Tomorrow and Cultural Heritage’. The project SUIT4
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Co-ordinator: Mr. Pierre MOUROUX (p.mouroux@brgm.fr)
http://www.ltcon.fi/propolis
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Co-ordinator: Mr. Bernd BILITEWSKI (abfall@rcs.urz.tu-dresden.de)
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Co-ordinateur: Prof. Albert Dupagne (albert.dupagne@ulg.ac.be)
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deals with the integration of urban cultural heritage fragments within town to promote
the preservation of a dynamic cultural identity within European cities. SUIT will
develop a flexible and consistent application of the “Environmental Impact
Assessment” methodology towards any new urban project with respect to the cultural
heritage value and long term sustainability of urban development. This methodology
will be designed to be of great user-friendliness for municipalities and local
authorities.
The promotion of the participative principle in RTD projects is quite common, but
few projects actually put in place the right conditions to ensure the involvement of
stakeholders well beyond the RTD phase. The project SUREURO5 is one of those: it
aims to provide housing companies with practical management tools for integrating
sustainable development into refurbishment strategies. The participation of tenants
within the pilot projects initiated by SUREURO guarantees that housing
refurbishment is to be carried out within affordable costs so that tenants shall have the
possibility to stay in their dwellings afterwards. SUREURO also involves all the
actors traditionally concerned by a refurbishment project, such as municipalities
(politicians and officials), architects, consultants and contractors. The objective is to
develop a new culture conducive to the durable participation of all stakeholders,
including citizens, in refurbishment processes.
The LASALA project6 examines the current practice of Local Agenda 21. It aims in
particular to assess progress made in the areas of ´eco-efficient urban management`
and ‘new models of urban governance’ brought about through Local Agenda 21
(LA21) activities. An innovative technique of tele-guided concerted self-assessment
is at the heart of the project and will enable local authorities to translate experiences
of LA21 into policy processes and mechanisms to deliver sustainability at the local
level. The project is prepared to have a direct input in European and global processes,
e.g. Rio +10. 230 cities Europe-wide are participating in LASALA. The project
directly contributes to the effective implementation of all the principles of
sustainable development.
It is expected that the deliverables of the projects supported by the Key Action ‘City
of Tomorrow and Cultural Heritage’ will be available from 2002 onwards. It will be
the responsibility of the contractors involved and the Key Action as such to ensure a
large dissemination of these results to the broad range of city end-users:
municipalities, owners of cultural heritage, mobility agencies, transport operators,
housing companies, etc. The ultimate goal should be the effective utilisation of the
newly developed tools and approaches by these end users, for the sake of urban
sustainability.
The use of these tools and approaches for the benefit of European citizens will be the
basis for practically measuring the success of this research programme.
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6
http://www.sureuro.com
http://www.iclei.org/europe/lasala/index.html