Urban and Regional Environments and Planning Lecture 6: City futures: Sustainable development and th

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Urban and Regional Environments and
PlanningLecture 6City futures Sustainable
development and the city

• Dr Steve Musson

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Tonights class

• Sustainable development in context
• Growing political profile following 1987
• Roots in 1960s politics of the left?
• UK as the dirty man of Europe
• Emerging public understanding and concern
• Evaluating urban regeneration
• Evaluation group activity

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Understanding sustainable development

• First came to international attention in 1987
  when the World Commission on Environment and
  Development (the Brundtland Commission) produced
  a report for the United Nations called Our
  Common Future.
• Often seen in purely environmental terms
• development which meets the needs of the
  present without compromising the ability of
  future generations to meet their own needs"
• But increasingly, debates are moving towards a
  broader understanding of sustainability

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UN Commission for Sustainable Development
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Source Sustainable Development Commission
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• "For those of us closely involved in the
  Sustainable Development Stakes, it's nail-biting
  stuff - even though this is a race being played
  out over decades rather than minutes. The stakes
  could hardly be higher can we reach that point
  in our evoluntionary history where we start to
  live sustainably on this Planet before we inflict
  irreversible damage on the life-support systems
  that sustain us? Or will we remain hell-bent on
  testing those systems to destruction (and
  beyond)?" (Jonathon Porritt, Chair, SDC)

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Understanding sustainability

• Sustainable labour markets
• Hard-to-fill vacancies
• Skill shortages and mismatches

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Understanding sustainability

• Sustainable labour markets
• Hard-to-fill vacancies
• Skill shortages and mismatches
• Sustainable housing markets
• Regional house-price inequalities
• Key worker and affordable housing

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Understanding sustainability

• Sustainable economic growth
• Regional differences in growth
• Differences within regions

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Understanding sustainability

• Sustainable economic growth
• Regional differences in growth
• Differences within regions
• Sustainable urban development
• Jobs and housing
• Shorthand for well planned, long term

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• Sustainable development has been used very
  selectively leading to a proliferation of
  sustainabilities sustainable economic growth
  sustainable communities sustainable
  regeneration terms which for the most part
  mistakenly use sustainable as short hand for
  long term viability often with little attention
  to environmental issues.
• The result in practice is that using similar, but
  very different versions of sustainability, policy
  makers and stakeholders have found elaborate ways
  of talking past each other, of talking of
  sustainability, but changing little (Counsell and
  Haughton 2001)

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Evaluating sustainable development

• How can the value of individual projects be
  assessed?
• Against what definition of sustainability?
• Against a set of predefined criteria?
• On a case-by-case basis?
• Incorporating compromises planning gain?
• Using the concept of sustainable development

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Suggestions for further reading

• http//www.hull.ac.uk/geog/research/GFH2.htm
• http//www.sd-commission.org.uk/
• http//www.brundtlandnet.com
• http//www.un.org/esa/sustdev/index.html
• www.urcs-online.co.uk
• Environment Agency (2002) Our urban future
  (available online see reading list)
• DEFRA (2005) One future, different paths the
  UKs shared framework for sustainable
  development (London HMSO)