Sustainable Cities or Cities that Contribute to
Sustainable Development?
David Satterthwaite
[Paper received in ®nal form, April 1997]
Urban Studies, Vol. 34, No. 10, 1667±1691, 1997
- David Satterthwaite is director of the Human Settlements Programme in the International Institute for Environment and Development, 3 Endsleigh Street, London, WC1H 0DD, UK. Fax: 0171 388 2826. E-mail: david@iied.org. This paper draws on the work that the author has undertaken with the World Health Organization in preparing two documents whose ®ndings are used in this paperÐ WHO, 1992 and WHO, 1996Ð and on the work he undertook in preparing UNCHS, 1996. He is particularly grateful to Sam Ozolins, Greg Goldstein and Wilfrid Kreisel at WHO and Donatus Okpala at UNCHS for their help. Thanks are also due to Cedric Pugh, Diana Mitlin, Nick Robins and Koy Thomson for their comments on an earlier draft.
Summary
This paper outlines a framework for assessing the environmental performance of cities in regard to the meeting of sustainable development goals. It also considers how the environ mental goals ®t with the social, econ om ic and political goals of sustainable development and the kinds of national fram ework and international context needed to encourage city-based consumers, enterprises and govern ments to progress towards their achievem ent. In a ®nal section , it considers the extent to which the recom mendations of the Habitat II Conference helped to encourage nation al govern ments and city and municipal authorities in this direction.
Introduction
The past ten years have brought examples of considerable innovation among city and municipal authorities in most parts of the world in regard to sustainable development. In Europe and North America, many cities have put in place long-term programmes to improve their environment, reduce resource use and reduce waste (Mega, 1996; UNCHS, 1996; European Commission, 1994). A growing number of cities have local authorities who have committed themselves to sustainable development goals as in the European Campaign of Sustainable Cities and Towns and have shown a greater willingness to share knowledge and experiences with other city authorities (Mega, 1996; UNCHS, 1996). Certain cities in Latin America have also put in place long-term programmes to address environmental problems for example, Curitiba in Brazil (Rabinovitch, 1992) and Ilo in Peru (DÂõaz et al., 1996) while in many cities in all regions of the world, there has been consider- able innovation by city authorities in addressing environmental problems. There is also a worldwide movement of `Healthy cities’ in which local authorities in more than 1000 cities have sought new ways to work with the many different actors and interests within their bounda ries in the promotion of health and prevention of disease (WHO, 1996).
The discussion of sustainable development in regard to cities has also gained greater of®cial recognition. For instance, the terms `sustainable cities’ and `sustainable human settlements’ were much in evidence at Habitat II, the second UN Conference on HumanSettlements (also known as the City Summit) held in Istanbul in June 1996. Despite the disagreements between the different groups represented at the ConferenceÐ for instance, between the European Union, the Group of 77 and the US all government delegations appeared to support the idea of `sustainable human settlements’ or `sustainable urban development’
But this apparent unanimity is misleading because there was no clear, agreed de®nition as to what the terms `sustainable cities’ and `sustainable human settlements’ mean. Such a diverse range of environmental, economic, social, political, demographic, institutional and cultural goals have been said to be part of `sustainable development’ that most governments or international agencies can characterise some of what they do as contributing towards sustainable development. This can include goals whose achievement in one sector or location implies a move away from the achievement of sustainable development goals in another sector or location. For instance, one reason why the environmental quality of wealthy cities can improve is because the consumers and producers they concentrate can import all the goods whose production requires high levels of resource use and usually includes high levels of waste (including serious problems with hazardous wastes), pollution and environmental risk for their workforce (Satterthwaite, 1997).
Governments in the world’ s wealthiest nations can also support the notion of `sustain- able cities’ without admitting that it is consumers and enterprises in their cities that need to make the largest reductions in resource use and waste generation. Most governments in the North also continue to view economic growth as the main means by which unemployment is to be reduced and incomes increased and it is dif®cult if not impossible to combine these with signi®cant falls in the use of non-renewable resources and the generation of greenhouse gases, unless there is an explicit linking of employ- ment generation with such goals. The simultaneous achievement of the social and environmental goals inherent in the Brundtland Commission’ s de®nition of sustainable development (meeting the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs) implies very different policies to reduce unemployment and increase incomes among those with inadequate incomesÐ that address more directly the problem than `trickledown’ from economic growth and that support reduced resource use and waste. And while many national governments may claim that they are promoting sustainable develop- ment, few have begun to put in place the ®scal and institutional framework that supports a move towards the achievement of the complete set of sustainable development goals in the urban (and rural) areas within their boundaries (see for instance O’ Riordan, 1989; Haughton and Hunter, 1994).
This lack of progress among the nations in `the North’ discourages progress among nations in `the South’ . The fact that `the South’ includes three-quarters of the world’ s population and a large and growing share of its economic activity and high-level consumers also means a large and growing share in global resource use, waste generation and greenhouse gas emissions. But despite the diversity of nations within `the South’ , they can collectively point not only to higher levels of resource use, waste and greenhouse gas emissions per person in the North, but also to much higher historical contributions to these problems. Without a strong commit- ment by governments in the North to reduce resource use, waste and greenhouse gas emissions, and to support the achievement of sustainable development goals in the South, the governments in the South are reluctant to act. This delays the actions that could make the (often) rapidly urbanising nations’ settle- ment patterns and transport systems less dependent on high levels of private automobile use and their building s less dependent on high levels of energy for lighting and heating or cooling. As will be discussed in more detail later, it is dif®cult to adjust buildings, settlement patterns and transport systems that developed during a long period of cheap oil and (generally) growing prosperity to much lower levels of fossil fuel use. However, in nations which are urbanising rapidly, putting in place the institutional and regulatory framework that encourages energy conser- vation in all sectors, minimises the need for heating or cooling in buildings and encour- ages settlement patterns that limit the need for high levels of private automobile use can ensure the development of cities that are more compatible with some of the main sustainable development goals. A framework encouraging ef®cient use of water within all sectors and promoting the re-use of waste water where appropriate can also consider- ably reduce the prospect of water scarcity.
The ambiguity as to what `sustainable cities’ or `sustainable human settlements’ means also allows many of the large international agencies to claim that they are the leaders in promoting sustainable cities when, in reality, they have contributed much to the growth of cities where sustainable develop- ment goals are not met. For instance, most international agencies give a low priority to meeting directly human needsÐ for example, in supporting provision of safe and suf®cient supplies of water and provision for sanitation, primary education and health care. Most also give a low priority (or allocate nothing ) to improving garbage collection and disposal, energy conservation and public transport in cities, despite their importance for the achievement of sustainable development goals. 1
This paper contends that to progress towards the achievement of sustainable development goals, the environmental performance of cities has to improve not only in terms of improved environmental quality within their boundaries, but also in terms of reducing the transfer of environmental costs to other people, other ecosystems or into the future. This presents considerable institutional dif® culties for city and municipal authorities whose of® cial responsibilities are to the citizens within their boundaries. Within a competitive world market, it is dif®cult for city authorities to reconcile the need to attract or retain new investment with a com- mitment to the full range of sustainable development goals, especially those sustain- able development goals that raise costs within the city to reduce environmental costs for people outside these cities. This is a subject to which this paper will return, after describing a framework for assessing the environmental performance of cities.
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