12.1. The challenge of sustainability in cities

1992 Brundtland Report54is unambiguous, but, what does it mean and how should cities approach it? The realm of participants showed a variety of understandings. For many researchers and practitioners, it is for society to become more resilient, which in turn would make our ecosystems more resilient. From a people-based approach, to a planning-based one, focusing on regeneration or the inclusion of environment in local policies can only bring in consensus and a chance for all stakeholders to adjust their visions and priorities55.

At the end of the 20th Century and beginning of 21st Century two emergent phenomena, urbanization and technologies shaped the societies through technological advancement and economic growth while increasing the quality of living especially in urban centers. This fostered the progressive development of urban areas at the expenses of the rural areas with manifold increase of the urban population. Such enormous congregation and concentration of people inevitably led to both positive and negative effects at local and global level. On one side it created new job opportunities, improvement of economic conditions and creative multicultural environment, but on the other side it also created the enormous pollution of the environment, traffic congestion, carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases emission, enormous energy consumption, waste and deterioration of quality of living conditions. Another set of problems are more social and associated with lack of comprehensive vision for cities, competing interest and objectives, multiple stakeholders, lack of civic participation in decision making, social and political confrontation and complexity. Ensuring the positive effects of the urbanization and new technologies with high quality of living conditions in cities requires a deeper understanding of the synergies and interdependence between processes that are shaping contemporary societies. These challenges are triggering many cities around the world to find smarter ways to manage them.

The latest considerations brought afore by Saskia Sassen reflecting on the urban sustainability concept brings a fresh look on the idea of sustainability. Sassen suggest that historically, the city is formed through its complexity and its incompleteness, its unfinished nature, always developing and expanding, with no clear limits. According to her, setting up enclosed technical systems in a city to govern all its main functions can only weaken this vital mix56 .

54 "Sustainable development is development which meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generation to meet their own needs." World Commission on Environment and Development, ‘Our Common Future’. 55 URBACT-Bringing more sustainability to cities: 5 goledn rules