From cities to villages

by Malene Freudendal-Pedersen and Anna Esbjørn Hess
Sustainable Cities (www.sustainablecities.dk)

In recent years, climate change and its consequences have been grabbing headlines worldwide. The melting of the icecaps and the increasing number of environmental disasters are two important visible signs of the stress that our way of life puts on the planet. Today, more than half of the human population lives in cities and, by 2050, this fraction is anticipated to reach three quarters. Accordingly, sustainable urban planning is a strategy that humanity must use to combat these pressing challenges.

Initiating the change
Cities and villages represent a level of societal organization that is very capable of addressing the issue of sustainability. On larger scales, such as that of nations, it can be incredibly challenging to obtain a detailed understanding of the specific pieces of infrastructure that people use and how they can be sustainably changed. Alternatively, scales smaller than the village can run the risk of encouraging a disorganized approach with each business, family or individual citizen acting sustainably in non-unified, less effective ways. Consequently, sustainable cities and villages encompass a comprehensive gateway to sustainability that includes social, economic, political/institutional and environmental criteria; a definition presented by the Brundtland Commission in the 1987 report Our Common Future.

The sustainable development of cities has been the main incentive behind the creation of the website Sustainable Cities™ funded by the foundation, Realdania. The site's database disseminates knowledge and strategies for sustainable urban planning that have been used by cities all over the world. It presents cases on how to improve public transport, optimize waste management, reduce energy consumption, enhance water management, and much, much more.

The Sustainable Cities™ website also provides an overview of some of the many charters, principles and concepts pertaining to sustainability and features interviews with international experts on urban sustainable initiatives. The objective is to inspire politicians, architects, city planners, businesses, NGO's and citizens worldwide to learn from each other and collaborate to transform the world's cities and villages into the sustainable built environments of the future. The following cases are a small sample of what the Sustainable Cities™ website has to offer.

Sustainable living in BedZED
In many instances, most often in relation to new developments, the most effective strategy is one that considers sustainability in every aspect of a person's lifestyle. Completed in 2002, BedZed (Beddington Zero Energy Development) applies this strategy as the UK's first and largest eco-village (100 housing units). Developers, planners and residents have infused the community with sustainability, taking a holistic approach and considering the environmental impact of everything - from design, through construction, to specific functions after completion.

BedZed illustrates that a sustainable lifestyle can be achieved in a manner that brings a community closer together without compromising the comforts of modern living. In the first year of residency, measures such as "green lifestyle officers" were introduced to organise activities and motivate community members to a healthy and sustainable way of living. Through such practises, BedZED has transcended the level of just an eco-friendly place to live and has become an active social environment with strong community values linked to sustainability.

Furthermore, BedZED has elucidated the capabilities and limits of many present-day sustainable design strategies. Simple techniques such as using natural lighting, collecting solar heat, and building with recycled materials from nearby sources have all proven to be very effective at reducing carbon emissions on the village scale. However, some of BedZed's features such as a specially-designed power plant and an eco-machine sewage treatment system seem to be much more effective on the larger urban scale.

Rain water management in Enschede
While the creation of large scale collective infrastructure is clearly important to the establishment of future sustainable cities and villages, in some cases, small localized systems can be just as effective. In the Dutch city of Enschede, small systems were used to address the issue of increasing flooding that likely resulted from redistribution of precipitation by global warming. The city decided to forego the complete remaking of its underground drainage scheme and instead established small above-ground systems based on the "natural infrastructure" of slopes and hills. The area employs a system of "wadis" or u-shaped green ditches that collect rainwater and allow it to seep into the ground. If the water in these wadis begins to overflow, it is discharged to a nearby retention pond, which is also used for recreational purposes by the residents. The fairly simple system has solved many of the area's flooding problems, while, at the same time, providing valuable community recreational space.

Sustainable transport in Freiburg
It is undeniable that the infrastructure of future sustainable cities must include revised methods of transportation. In the German city of Freiburg, a new district known as Vauban has set the goal of maintaining a car free city centre. This has been accomplished by establishing a number of good public transportation options, 500 km of bicycle paths, 5,000 bicycle parking spaces, and a car-sharing program. To supplement this, the city's schools, shopping centres, supermarkets and businesses have all been placed within walking or cycling distance of one another.

As a result, 40 % of Vauban's households do not own a private car and save 18,000 € a year by not having to purchase parking space in the district's multi-storey car park. As citizens cannot permanently park their cars next to their homes, the area has become a safe, clean, healthy and sustainable place to live. Today, Vauban has ca. 5,000 citizens and 600 local jobs with district sustainability targets that have far exceeded expectations.

How does urban planning apply to villages?
Many sustainable planning strategies can be used on different scales. Both large cities and small villages can take similar approaches to creating more environmentally-conscious transportation systems, power plants, water management systems, waste facilities, public infrastructure and means of local food production. Often, it only takes a few small adjustments to transform an effective strategy from the scale of a city to that of a village and vice versa. Additionally, important lessons from the Sustainable Cities™ cases are the big significance of empowerment and community co-creation for long-term effects of any project. Making the change as a community is easier than as individuals.

But, as anyone can tell you, nothing worth having in this world comes easy. We must fight the fears that stop us from realizing our dreams and utopias for a sustainable future. The right to re-make our cities or villages is something we all share and, though it may bring about conflict, debate and discussion, this should all be welcomed.

"We have made an urban world in which we are forced to live and, in making that world, we have re-made ourselves. The question of what kind of city we want cannot be separated from what kind of people we want to be. The attempt to re-make urban life, and thereby ourselves, in a different image depends upon a greater degree of enlightened democratization than currently exists"
David Harvey (2008)