2. Urban sustainability and
the limits of classical
environmentalism
Analysis of the problems of
applying the existing
model of environmentalism to two
kinds of cities
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3. Introduction
Sustainable cities are unimaginable because of doubt in
the applicability of environmental governance to two
kinds of cities:
- Cities in which population growth is proceeding
faster than economic growth, and where environmental
quality is poor and declining and
- Wealthy cities, whose residents and institutions
make choices about consumption and investment with
no effective feedback about the environmental impacts
that are displaced in space or time.
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4. Introduction (contd.)
There are various inventories of environmentally
responsible action e.g. Agenda 21. They seek to protect the
ability of future generations to meet their needs, while also
permitting those now living to meet theirs.
It is not clear that these steps will lead to a sustainable
economy for the following reasons:
- These inventories are only presently feasible
- The ability of future generations to meet their
needs is inherently difficult to specify
- As globalization proceeds, cities and their hinterlands
will encompass the large portion of the world
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5. THREE KINDS OF CITIES
• Poor Cities – Household Level infrastructure patterned
on industrializing city inherited from colonial period
• Industrializing city – Infrastructure administered and
overseen by public agencies of varying efficiencies
• Rich Cities – Infrastructure administered by invisible,
efficient bureaucracy regulatory policies
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6. ABOUT CITY INFRASTRUCTURE
The infrastructure and housing stock of
industrializing cities has lagged seriously
throughout the Industrial Revolution, and the
proliferation of slum conditions in developing
country cities today is historically unexceptional:
modernization has exacted human and
environmental costs. Those costs may be
avoidable or subject to better management – but
lives and ecosystems have been blighted all
along the economic growth trajectory.
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7. WELL-BEING, ECOSYSTEM SERVICES
AND
INFRASTRUCTURE
A city may be thought of as a physical and social mechanism .
The physical part of this mechanism is often called
infrastructure; the social part, government.
Human life in cities is structured by infrastructure: water and
food supply; sewage treatment; energy supply; transportation;
communications; Technologies to improve air quality; and
structures to house people and production. I
infrastructure is largely invisible, but it is not inexpensive,
particularly when it must be financed and maintained from
the public purse.
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8. THE SCENARIO – CLASSICAL
ENVIRONMENTALISM
Scientists discover threats to human health or ecosystem
stability; these threats are traced to human interventions
in the natural world, which arise from economic
activities. The threats galvanize citizen concern, leading
to politically salient expressions and to the formation of
new non-governmental organizations focused on the
threats. In response, politicians and government
organizations adopt laws, Regulations and budgets, and
create new administrative agencies to regulate the
human activities that create the threats. Engineers and
business firms advance technological solutions and
mitigations that permit the economic activities to be
continued, while avoiding or limiting the damage to
humans and ecosystems.
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9. CONDITIONS FOR CLASSICAL
ENVIRONMENTALISM
• Robust economic growth
• Governmental, financial and educational
institutions that enable regulation and
Investment to be carried out over time scales of
more than a decade
• An educated electorate in a competitive political
system
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10. LIMITATIONS OF CLASSICAL ENVIRONMENTALISM –
RICH CITIES
Classical environmentalism does not completely
eliminate environmental problems that are a
threat to public health.
The economic development of urban and peri-
urban areas continues to be contentious.
The recurrent environmental controversies
illuminate the limits of classical
environmentalism.
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11. LIMITATIONS OF CLASSICAL ENVIRONMENTALISM –
RICH CITIES (contd.)
Warnings by social scientists about aesthetic and cultural matters
lack the authority of warnings by scientists and professionals able to
claim the mantle of the natural sciences.
The environmental impacts of personal consumption are difficult to
govern within the framework of the classical approach.
When consumption demands come into conflict with the need to
site undesirable facilities, compromises are usually reached in which
poorer, less powerful communities bear the costs (but also gain the
jobs) associated with commercial and industrial development.
More broadly, classical environmentalism has had little impact on
investment behavior in distant places, except when the investments
can be convincingly demonized in the mass media. Yet for ever
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12. LIMITATIONS OF CLASSICAL ENVIRONMENTALISM –
POOR CITIES
While the limitations in rich cities are rooted in the
absence of effective feedback about consumption
and investment within the political system, the
binding constraint in poor cities is economic
feasibility.
Poor cities lack planning and capital. Even if the
case for building infrastructure is undeniable on
grounds of public health, economic productivity and
political returns, the economic constraints can be
decisive.
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13. CONCLUSION
Ecosystem management is, accordingly, a source of ideas and
questions to be explored, not a body of experience from which
one can confidently infer lessons to be learned. The following
themes arises and are worth considering:
- Community – Study of common-pool resources
- Bioregion – The tool of Ecosystem Footprint used in
various geographic region will offer a very helpful
perspective
- Learning - An emphasis on learning requires a bi-focal
perspective: to strive both for the success of projects
and to learn from failures
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14. The claim of this paper is that the search for sustainable development
must also include the social innovation required to develop robust
alternatives to classical environmentalism.
THANK YOU FOR YOUR TIME 4/7/2016
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