Urban sustainability and governance: issues for the twenty‐first century

Abstract

The notion of urban sustainability that emerged at the end of the 1980s falls within the scope of sustainable development, a concept that arose in reaction to the model of technological and economic growth that triumphed after World War II. It comes into play as an attempt to link and put into perspective economic effectiveness, social equity and ecological balance. The sustainability approach focuses on how urban societies organise their space, their way of life and transportation, their technologies of production and consumption, as well as their governance and dynamics. Applied to cities, sustainable development can be defined in terms of concrete objectives: efforts to combat wasted energy, space and natural resources, and to reduce pollution, the problems of sanitation and the degradation of the environment. To the extent that governance is established and maintained with regard to the decision‐making powers of public authorities faced with demands by divergent but equally legitimate interest groups, the responsibilities of citizens and the involvement of private stakeholders, sustainable innovations will succeed. The International Platform on Sustainable Urban Development, put in place by S‐DEV Geneva 05, makes it possible to illustrate the problem by presenting the priority issues in sustainability, along with experiments undertaken by cities that were invited to present their innovations in renewable energy, soft mobility, green planning, systematic recycling, appropriate sanitation, urban agriculture and participatory governance.

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