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■ MICHAEL PACIONE UrbanSustainabilityin theUnitedKingdom The majority of the Earth’s population lives in urban areas. Consequently, the pursuit of sustainable urban development (SUD) has emerged as a major challenge for governments throughout the contemporary world. The concept of sustainable development, in general terms, aims to meet “the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.”1 In seeking to achieve the goal of sustainable urban change, society must aim to achieve a balance between economic priorities on the one hand and social and environmental priorities on the other. The ideal world envisaged at the Rio Earth Summit in 1992 was one in which the objectives of sustainable development would be fulfilled at all levels of spatial organization. Agenda 21 of the Earth Summit focused particular attention on the challenge of sustainable development at the urban scale. In 1994 the Global Forum on Cities and Sustainable Development considered reports from fifty cities on progress being made toward sustainable development,2 and in 1996 the UN City Summit (Habitat II) monitored progress on achieving sustainability in cities across the globe.3 Following the Rio+10Earth Summit of 2002 SUD was embraced as a goal by numerous international agencies and governments. The Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), the European Community, and the World Bank now all have sustainable cities programs. In contrast to the level of attention directed to the principles of sustainable development, however, implementation of policies to achieve SUD on the ground is less widespread. As the European Community’s Expert Group on the Urban Environment–Sustainable Cities Project concluded, “the gap between public declarations and concepts on the one hand, and concrete measures taken on the other hand, remains large in most cities.” In this chapter we examine the rhetoric and reality of sustainable urban development in the United Kingdom.4 612 ■ MICHAEL PACIONE Conceptualizing Urban Sustainability Interrogation of the concept of sustainability is considered elsewhere in this volume and need not be rehearsed here. In general, the concept of urban sustainability may be viewed as comprising five dimensions (see sidebar 1). Figure 1 illustrates the relationship among the five main dimensions of urban sustainability. In this concept, political sustainability plays a central role as the governance framework regulating the performance of the other four dimensions. The fundamental political character of sustainability is also evident in how different societies and governments define the concept of sustainability both as a problem and as a desired objective; identify and characterize the origins and causes of problems that undermine sustainability; and delineate solutions conducive to sustainability . In brief, “the definition of the problem, its causes and possible outcomes are all inherently and inescapably political projects.”5 In practice, creating a sustainable and livable city requires both an integrated planning and decision-making framework, and a fundamental shift in traditional values and perspectives. There needs to be a change in focus from curative measures such as pollution reduction to measures based on prevention, from consumption to conservation, and from managing the environment to managing the demands on the environment. This will require change at the individual, community , business, and urban levels. In the following discussion, we examine how UK government policy has approached this goal. Sidebar 1. The Major Dimensions of Sustainable Urban Development Economic sustainability. The ability of the local economy to sustain itself without causing irreversible damage to the natural resource base on which it depends. This implies maximizing the productivity of a local (urban or regional) economy not in absolute terms (e.g., profit maximization), but in relation to the sustainability of the other four dimensions. The difficulty of achieving economic sustainability in capitalist societies is compounded by economic globalization that is promoting competition among cities, as well as between cities and their surrounding regions. Social sustainability. A set of actions and policies aimed at the improvement of quality of life and at fair access to and distribution of rights over the use and appropriation of the natural and built environment. This implies the improvement of local living conditions by reducing poverty and increasing satisfaction of basic needs. Natural sustainability. The rational management of natural resources and of the pressures exerted by the waste produced by every society. Overexploitation of natural capital and growing inequality in access to, and rights over, the natural resources of a city or region compromises the sustainability of natural capital. Physical sustainability. The capacity of the urban built environment to...

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