Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Day 1
1.1 Davoudi, S. Dilley, L and Crawford, J. 2014, "Energy consumption behavior: rational or
habitual? " DiSP, forthcoming.
1.2 Alberti, M. 1999, "Modeling the urban ecosystem: a conceptual framework", Environment
and Planning B, vol. 26, pp. 605-630.
1.3 Kennedy, C., Cuddihy, J. & EngelYan, J. 2007, "The changing metabolism of
cities", Journal of Industrial Ecology, vol. 11, no. 2, pp. 43-59.
1.4 Kennedy, C., Pincetl, S. & Bunje, P. 2011, "The study of urban metabolism and its
applications to urban planning and design", Environmental pollution, vol. 159, no. 8, pp.
1965-1973.
1.5 Ozaki, R. & Shaw, I. 2014, "Entangled Practices: Governance, Sustainable Technologies,
and Energy Consumption", Sociology, vol. 48, no. 3, pp. 590-605.
1.6 Wachsmuth, D. 2012, "Three Ecologies: Urban Metabolism and the SocietyNature
Opposition", The Sociological Quarterly, vol. 53, no. 4, pp. 506-523.
1.7 (downloadable) FP7 Project: Sustainable Urban Metabolism in Europe (SUME)
http://www.sume.at/project_downloads [Working paper 1.1.] Downloadable online (after
brief registration)
Day 2
2.1 De Boer, J., Zuidema, C. 2013, "Towards an integrated energy landscape", AESOP-ACSP
joint congress, Dublin.
2.2 Loorbach, D. 2010, "Transition management for sustainable development: a prescriptive,
complexitybased governance framework", Governance, vol. 23, no. 1, pp. 161-183.
2.3 Newman, P.W. 1999, "Sustainability and cities: extending the metabolism
model", Landscape and Urban Planning, vol. 44, no. 4, pp. 219-226.
2.4 Pincetl, S., Bunje, P. & Holmes, T. 2012, "An expanded urban metabolism method:
Toward a systems approach for assessing urban energy processes and causes", Landscape
and Urban Planning, vol. 107, no. 3, pp. 193-202.
2.5 Barles, S. 2010, "Society, energy and materials: the contribution of urban metabolism
studies to sustainable urban development issues", Journal of Environmental Planning and
Management, vol. 53, no. 4, pp. 439-455.
Day 3
3.1 Beck, M.B. & Cummings, R.G. 1996, "Wastewater infrastructure: challenges for the
sustainable city in the new millennium", Habitat International, vol. 20, no. 3, pp. 405420.
3.2 Gandy, M. 2004, "Rethinking urban metabolism: water, space and the modern
city", City, vol. 8, no. 3, pp. 363-379.
3.3 Marks, J.S. & Zadoroznyj, M. 2005, "Managing sustainable urban water reuse: structural
context and cultures of trust", Society and Natural Resources, vol. 18, no. 6, pp. 557-572.
3.4 Zaman, A.U. & Lehmann, S. 2013, "The zero waste index: a performance measurement
tool for waste management systems in a zero waste city", Journal of Cleaner
Production, vol. 50, pp. 123-132.
3.5 Barles, S. 2009, "Urban metabolism of Paris and its region", Journal of Industrial
Ecology, vol. 13, no. 6, pp. 898-913.
Day 4
4.1 Bettencourt, L.M., Lobo, J., Helbing, D., Kuhnert, C. & West, G.B. 2007, "Growth,
innovation, scaling, and the pace of life in cities", Proceedings of the National Academy of
Sciences of the United States of America, vol. 104, no. 17, pp. 7301-7306.
4.2 Grubler, Arnulf, Xuemai Bai, Thomas Buettner, Shobhakar Dhakal, David J. Fisk,
Thoshiaki Ichinose, James Keirstead, Gerd Sammer, David Satterthwaite, Niels B. Schulz,
Nilay Shah, Julia Steinberger and Helga Weisz: Chapter 18: Urban Energy Systems. In
Global Energy Assessment: Toward a Sustainable Future. L. Gomez-Echeverri, T.B.
1 Introduction
In the United Kingdom (UK) households are responsible for around half of the national
carbon emissions through energy consumption in the home and personal transport (DECC,
2013). While residential energy consumption has been falling per household this is more
than offset by growing population and household formation (Committee on Climate Change,
2013). It is argued that reductions in household energy use could be much greater if
improved domestic technologies and products were to be more rapidly adopted and used
more effectively. Individual energy behaviour is perceived as a significant barrier to
achieving a major step change in energy efficiency. This barrier exists in spite of growing
environmental awareness and the financial and environmental benefits of energy efficiency
measures (Christie, et al., 2011; Crosbie & Baker, 2010; Gram-Hanssen et. al., 2007). In
addition, when such measures are adopted their benefits may be negated by poor use (Gill, et.
al., 2010) or changes in other household characteristics such as increase in the number of
appliances in the home (Vale & Vale, 2010), preferred temperature (Lomas, 2010) or the
floor area of the house (Summerfield, et. al., 2010). This offsetting of increased efficiency by
increased consumption is known as the rebound, or take back effect. The terms suggest
that household energy efficiency measures can encourage more profligate use of energy
because energy users feel they do not have to be as miserly with energy usage (Jenkins,
2010; Greening et al., 2000). For example, it has been shown that instalment of efficient
washing machines correlates with an increase in the amount of washing done (Sorrel et al.,
2009). This has led to a growing argument that reducing energy demand is not simply about
developing energy efficiency measures and technologies, but also changing behaviour and
everyday practices. Indeed, there is a commonly held assumption that changes in individual
behaviour can achieve a step change in global energy use, as indicated in the following
statement from the Stern Review:
In the case of climate change, individual preferences play a particularly important role.
Dangerous climate change cannot be avoided through high level international agreements; it
will take behavioural change by individuals and communities, particularly in relation to their
housing, transport and food consumption decisions (Stern, 2007:395)
Similar assumptions are made by the UK government (DECC / Defra, 2009) which consider
behavioural change to be central in pulling society towards the development of alternatives
to carbon intensive forms of living (Parag & Darby, 2009: 3985).
Although the over-emphasis on individual behaviour as the main driver of transition to lowcarbon societies may be contested on the grounds that it distracts attention from the wider
structural, economic and political factors, it is widely acknowledged that pro-environmental
behaviours play an important part in such a transition (Defra, 2008). The question, however,
remains: what constitutes such behaviour? Why do people behave in the way they do? What
motivates them to change their behaviour? What are the key factors in behaviour formation
and change?
One response to these questions has been to bundle everything in what may be called
Attitudes-Behaviours-Context (ABC) models (Stern 2010) in which a multitude of factors
are considered as contextual factors including:
interpersonal influences (); community expectations; advertising; government
regulations; other legal and institutional factors (); monetary incentives and costs; the
physical difficulty of specific actions; capabilities and constraints provided by technology
and the built environment (); the availability of public policies to support behaviour ();
and various features of the broad social, economic and political context () (Stern 2000:
417)
However, as Shove (2010: 1275) argues, the more factors are added to ABC models the
more muddled the picture becomes. At the same time, the more complex the models
become the less their empirical applicability (Jackson, 2005).
This paper aims to shed some light on this complex picture by presenting a clearer grouping
of the factors that drive behaviour. We draw on the broader literature on decision making
which cuts across several disciplines to frame specific discussion about environmental
behaviour with a focus on energy consumption. A large part of the decision making literature
is normative and prescribes how decisions ought to be made. The focus of this paper,
however, is on how decisions are actually made by individuals. It aims to provide a
conceptual understanding of behaviour. We believe that such an insight is crucial for policies
aimed at encouraging pro-environmental behaviour. The following sections focus on three
broad perspectives on behaviour and review the discussions on values and norms which play
a critical role in the environmental behaviour literature. The concluding section highlights a
major shift in understanding energy consumption behaviour in terms of the interplay of
individual and social drivers.
based on giving feedback to households on their use of energy and providing them with
new, actionable information on consumption that could be clearly understood Darby (2008:
450). The idea is that having the information about energy use of different appliances and
different patterns of use, people will be motivated to reduce their consumption (Hargreaves
et al., 2010; Thaler & Sunstein, 2009; Gronhoj & Thogerson, 2011; Gyberg & Palm 2009).
Another role of policy intervention, according to this model, is to ensure that the market
allows people to make optimal choices by correcting price signals through internalisation of
social and environmental externalities. This is the basis of a growing number of
environmental taxes and levies (such as carbon tax) that are aimed at incorporating
environmental costs into economic cost-benefit calculations.
Critics point to key complicating factors such as: the influence of variable future discount
rates and the non-linear way in which the value of costs and benefits changes over time; the
significance of framing and how preference is depended on a reference point (Lindenberg &
Steg, 2007), and the importance of various forms of heuristic, habit and emotion (Wilson &
Dowlatabadi, 2007; Jackson, 2005). These latter will be discussed in more details below.
Empirical studies have also demonstrated that people do not always behave as utility
maximisers. For example, Christie, et al. (2011) highlight that adoption of energy-efficiency
technologies are assessed by potential users not only in terms of utility maximisation but
also, and more significantly, in terms of risks to, among other things, perceptions of social
belonging and other aspects of personal identity and safety.
At the same time, the rational model suggests that besides cost-benefit calculation, the
probability of achieving the preferred outcome also plays a part in decision-making.
Perceived behavioural control (PBC), as advocated by Ajzen (1991), describes the
individuals perception of the ease or difficulty with which they can adopt behaviour
(Turaga et al., 2010: 216). Self-efficacy is defined as the perception of how well one can
execute a course of action required to deal with prospective situations (Jackson, 2005: 49).
The implicit assumption within notions of PBC and self-efficacy is that if a behaviour is
perceived as being impossible within a particular context it will not be adopted despite the
motivation being present (Darnton, 2008: 19). It is, however, suggested that encouragement
and emotional arousal can increase feelings of self-efficacy (Darnton, 2008: 20). Again,
information plays a key part because it is argued that feelings of self-efficacy can be
strengthened through positive feedback (Grohoj & Thogersen, 2011) on, for example, the
level of reduction in energy use. However, if the feedback is negative (no reduction), it may
act as a deterrent for those with low perceptions of self-efficacy. Wilson & Dowlatabadi
(2007) argue that it is crucial for interventions to enhance individuals perceptions of selfefficacy through feedback mechanisms as well as education and training.
The rational economic model was dominant in the spatial planning field in the 1960s and
1970s in Europe and America. Since then, it has been subject to criticism by planning
theorists who argue that it fails to match the seemingly disjointed and incremental processes
of decision making by individuals and institutions (including planning systems) alike.
However, despite a great deal of research indicating the limitations of the rational model, its
assumptions have crept into the debate about attitude and its assumed determining role in
environmental behaviour. Peoples behaviour is understood to be preceded by their attitude
towards that behaviour. This attitude is in turn informed by a rational evaluation of the
characteristics of that behaviour (Jackson, 2005). For example, the attitude towards
purchasing and installing a low energy light bulb might be based upon an evaluation of its
environmental impact, money saving potential, its aesthetic qualities, the quality of the light
and so on (Crosbie & Baker, 2010). Such assumptions imply that if we modify attitudes, we
can modify behaviour and this can be done primarily through education, information
provision and awareness raising (Stern, 2000; Hargreaves, 2008).
The second type of social pressure is mimetic and involves imitating what others do
(Routledge, 1993). In order to reduce complexity and save time, we may either choose or be
compelled to copy others without necessarily considering the potential contextual
differences. We tend to do what our neighbours do especially if we trust their judgment.
Research has shown that households are motivated to take energy-saving action only after
others have been seen to do so (GfK NOP Social Research 2012).
The third type of social pressure is normative, based on the values we hold and the
acceptability of behaviours. It involves what we think we should do to not only avoid social
censure but also maximise social reward. A great deal of the literature on environmental
behaviour considers values and norms as central to the understanding of behaviour and the
design of effective policies and programmes aimed at behavioural change (see for example:
Stern, 2000; Barr, 2003; Gilg et al. , 2005; Turaga et al., 2010). It is, therefore, justified to
dedicate a section to these and elaborate them further.
activate a social norm and hence a change of behaviour (Fischer, 2008; De Young, 2000).
However, empirical findings on this claim are mixed: some argue that normative feedback
stimulates energy saving (Darby, 2010), others suggest that the effect is often under-detected
(Nolan, et. al., 2008) and a third group find that none of the studies utilising normative
feedback could demonstrate an effect on consumption (Fischer, 2008: 99). While, more
research is needed in the exact effects of normative feedback, it is widely acknowledged that
social norms refer to what is conceived of as appropriate forms of behaviour in a given
circumstance or a given social group (Jackson, 2005:60). Adjusting ones behaviour to the
norm can therefore have a positive or negative impact on their energy consumption. So, as
Fischer (2008) suggests, low energy households could actually increase their energy
consumption if comparative feedback suggests that their consumption is below the norm.
So, social norms can act both ways depending on the nature of the norm (pro, anti or neutral
towards the environment) and the extent to which it is embedded in the social consciousness.
Lorenzoni et al. (2007) argue that a significant barrier to adopting pro-environmental
behaviour in the UK is the perception that low-consumption green living is both abnormal
and undesirable.
Overall, it is important to note that a focus on values and norms in policy-making recognises
that energy behaviour is an inherently political as well as a technical issue and requires the
development of energy-sensitive politics as well as policy integration.
4 Conclusion
Reducing households energy consumption is a significant part of strategies for transition to
low carbon societies. Such reduction can take place through technological advances such as
energy efficient building materials and appliances and physical interventions such as
retrofitting of the built environment. However, problems of rebound effect, low levels of
take up and acceptability have directed attention to behavioural issues. Changing behaviour
has increasingly become the buzzword of public policy. However, as mentioned in the
introduction to this paper, progression towards more sustainable forms of energy demand
and supply requires more than a shift in the attitudes and intentions of individuals (Walker
& Cass, 2007: 467). Attempts to steer society towards sustainable energy systems should go
beyond a focus on influencing individual behaviour. It requires a radical re-working and realignment of technologies, routines, forms of knowhow, markets and expectations (Shove,
2012:1278) as well as institutional practices and systems of provision.
Peoples consumption of energy is based on a set of social practices which are influenced by
both their lifestyle choices and by the institutions and structures of society, including those
which determine the dynamics of energy systems. For policy to be effective, it needs to be
developed with a sound understanding of the complexity of these relationships.
The need for systemic change does not mean an abandonment of attempts to promote proenvironmental behaviour. What we have demonstrated in this paper is the existence of at
least three different conceptualisations of behaviour with each being rooted in different
disciplinary traditions and presenting different views of individuals and the drivers of
behavioural change. In practice, what constitute our behaviour is far from the neat dividing
lines presented above. As Jackson (2005) puts it, peoples behaviour is a function of their
attitude and intentions, their habitual responses and the situational constraints and conditions
under which they operate. Their intentions are then influenced by social, normative, and
affective factors as well as rational deliberations.
Effective policies have to take into account the importance of the social context of behaviour,
while also renegotiating habits and encouraging new habit formation. An important element
of changing habit is to unlock existing behaviour or, in other words, raise the behaviour
from the level of practical (everyday routine) to discursive (intentional, goal-oriented)
consciousness (Jackson, 2005). This can be done more effectively with a focus on
communities rather than individuals (Brulle, 2010; Bunt and Harries, 2010, Heiskanen et al
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11
Environment and Planning II Planning and Design IW), volume 26, pages 603 630
M Aibcrtt
Department of Urban Design and Planning, University of Washington, Box 355740, Seattle,
WA 98195, USA; e-mail: maibcrttou.wasliington.edu
Received 14 October 1998; in revised form 22 March 1999
Abstract. In this paper I build on current research in urban and ecological simulation modeling to
develop n conceptual framework for modeling the urban ecosystem. Although important progress has
been made in various areas of urban modeling, operational urban models are still primitive in terms of
their ability to represent ecological processes. On the other hand, environmental models designed to
assess the ecological impact of an urban region are limited in their ability to represent human
systems, I present here a strategy to integrate these two lines of research into an urban ecological
model (UEM). This model addresses the human dimension of the Pugct Sound regional integrated
simulation model (PRISM)a multidisciplinary initiative at the University of Washington aimed at
developing a dynamic and integrated understanding of the environmental and human systems in the
Pugct Sound. UEM simulates the environmental pressures associated with human activities under
alternative demographic, economic, policy, and environmental scenarios. The specific objectives of
UEM are to: quantify the major sources of human-induced environmental stresses (such as land-cover
changes and nutrient discharges); determine the spatial and temporal variability of human stressors in
relation to changes in the biophysical structure; relate the biophysical impacts of these stressors to the
variability and spatial heterogeneity in land uses, human activities, and management practices; and
predict the changes in stressors in relation to changes in human factors.
1 Introduction
Planning agencies worldwide are increasingly challenged by the need to assess the
environmental implications of alternative urban growth patternsand policies to
control themin a comprehensive manner. Urban growth leads to rapid conversion
of land and puts increasing pressure on local and global ecosystems. It causes changes
in water and energy fluxes. Natural habitats are reduced and fragmented, exotic
organisms arc introduced, and nutrient cycles are severely modified. Although impacts
of urban development often seem local, they cause environmental changes at larger
scales. Assessments of urban growth that are timely and accurate, and developed in a
transparent manner, are crucial to achieve sound decisions. However, operational
urban models designed to analyze or predict the development of urban areas are still
primitive in their ability to represent ecological processes and urban ecosystem
dynamics. Though important progress has been made in various areas of urban
modeling (Wegener, 1994; 1995), only a few scholars have attempted to integrate the
environmental dimension. The majority of these models are designed to answer a set of
fundamental but limited planning questions relevant to housing (Anas, 1995; Anas and
Arnott, 1991; Kain and Apgar, 1985), land use (Landis, 1992; 1995; Prastacos, 1986;
Waddell, 1998), transportation (Boyce, 1986; Kim, 1989) and in some cases the interactions among them (de la Barra, 1989; Echenique et al, 1990; Mackett, 1990; Putman,
1983; 1991; Wegener, 1983).
On the other hand, the environmental models designed to assess the ecological
impact of an urban region are limited in their ability to represent human systems. These
models represent people as static scenarios of land uses and economic activities and
predict human-induced disturbances from aggregated measures of economic development and urban growth. Only with the increasing attention paid to the role of human
606
M Alberti
activities in global environmental change has the need emerged to represent more
explicitly human systems in environmental models. Whereas integrated assessment
modeling can be traced back to the late 1960s (Forrester, 1969; Meadows et al, 1972),
the first generation of operational integrated models has emerged only in the mid-1980s.
During the last decade, integrated assessment modeling has been proposed as a new
approach to link biophysical and socioeconomic systems in assessing climate change
(Dowlatabadi, 1995). At present more than thirty integrated assessment models (IAMs)
have been developed (Alcamo, 1994; Dowlatabadi, 1995; Rotmans et al, 1995). The focus
of current IAMs is global; however, a new generation of spatially explicit regional
integrated models is now emerging (Maxwell and Costanza, 1995). These models
have started to treat human decisions explicitly but are still too limited in the representation of human behavior and the heterogeneity of urban land uses (Alberti, 1998).
Recent progress in the study of complex systems (Schneider and Kay, 1994) and the
evolution of computer modeling capabilities (Brail, 1990) have made possible a more
explicit treatment of the link between human and ecological systems. The development
of GIS has provided the capability to integrate spatial processes. However, the greatest
challenge for integrating urban and environmental modeling will be in interfacing the
various disciplines involved. Urban subsystems have been studied for several decades
but progress in urban-ecological modeling has been limited because of the difficulty
in integrating the natural and social sciences. A recent National Science Foundation
workshop on urban processes pointed out that ecologists, social scientists, and urban
planners will need to work together to make their data, models, and findings compatible
with one another and to identify systematically where fruitful clusters of multidisciplinary research problems can be developed (Brown, 1997). Such an approach can offer
a new perspective on modeling urban systems.
In this paper I build on research in urban and ecological simulation modeling to
develop an integrated urban-ecological modeling framework. This framework is part of
a current effort to develop an urban-ecological model (UEM) at the University of
Washington as part of the Puget Sound regional integrated simulation model (PRISM).
UEM simulates the environmental impacts associated with human activities under alternative demographic, economic, policy, and environmental scenarios. Its objectives are to:
(1) Quantify the major sources of human-induced environmental stresses (such as landcover changes and nutrient discharges);
(2) Determine the spatial and temporal variability of human stressors in relation to
changes in the biophysical structure;
(3) Relate the biophysical impacts of these stressors to the variability and spatial heterogeneity in land uses, human activities, and management practices; and
(4) Predict the changes in stressors in relation to changes in human factors.
The development of an integrated urban-ecological framework has both scientific
and policy relevance. It provides a basis for developing integrated knowledge of the
processes and mechanisms that govern urban ecosystem dynamics. It also creates the
basis for modeling urban systems and provides planners with a powerful tool to
simulate the ecological impacts of urban development patterns.
2 The urban ecosystem
Early efforts to understand the interactions between urban development and environmental change led to the conceptual model of cities as urban ecosystems (Boyden et al,
1981; Douglas, 1983; Duvigneaud, 1974; Odum, 1963; 1997; Stearns and Montag, 1974).
Ecologists have described the city as a heterotrophic ecosystem highly dependent on
large inputs of energy and materials and a vast capacity to absorb emissions and waste
(Boyden et al, 1981; Duvigneaud, 1974; Odum, 1963). Wolman (1965) applied an 'urban
607
metabolism1 approach to quantify the Hows of energy and materials into and out of a
hypothetical American city. Systems ccologists provided formal equations to describe
the energy balance and the cycling of materials (Douglas, 1983; Oclum, 1983). Although
these efforts have never been translated into operational simulation models, they have
laid out the basis for urban-ecological research. Urban scholars were rightly skeptical
about the attempts to integrate biological and socioeconomic concepts into system
dynamics models. None of these models represented explicitly the processes by which
humans affect or are affected by the urban environment. At best, human behavior was
reduced to a few differential equations. These models simplified the interactions of
natural and social systems so much that they could provide little useful insight for
planners and decisionmakers. Since then, however, urban and ecological research has
made important progress with respect to understanding how urban ecosystems operate
and how they differ from natural ecosystems.
Urban-ecological interactions are complex. Urban ecosystems consist of several
interlinked subsystems -social, economic, institutional, and environmental each
representing a complex system of its own and affecting all the others at various
structural and functional levels. Urban development is a major determinant of ecosystem structure and influences significantly the functioning of natural ecosystems
through (a) the conversion of land and transformation of the landscape; (b) the use
of natural resources; and (c) the release of emissions and waste. The earth's ecosystems
also provide (d) important services to the human population in urban areas. Thus
(e) environmental changes occurring at the local, regional, and global scale such as
the contamination of watersheds, loss of biodiversity, and changes in climate -affect
human health and well-being. Humans respond to environmental change through
(f) management strategies (figure I).
Global ecosystem
608
M Alberti
(Turner, 1989). In urban areas these forces combine to affect the spatial distribution of
activities and ultimately the spatial heterogeneity of natural processes and disturbances. It is increasingly clear to both social (Openshaw, 1995) and natural (Pickett
et al, 1994) scientists that it is absurd to model the urban ecosystem without explicitly
representing humans in them. Would ecologists exclude other species from models of
natural ecosystems? However, as Pickett et al (1997) point out, simply adding humans
to ecosystems without representing the way they function is not an adequate alternative. Today, social and natural scientists have the tools to explore the richness of
interactions between the social and ecological functions of the human species.
Representing human actors and their institutions in models of urban ecosystems
will be an important step towards representing more realistically the human dimension
of environmental change. Many of the human impacts on the physical environment are
mediated through social, economic, and political institutions that control and order
human activities (Kates et al, 1990). Also, humans consciously act to mitigate these
impacts and build the institutional settings to promote such actions. They adapt by
learning both individually and collectively. How can these dimensions be represented?
Lynch (1981, page 115) suggested that "a learning ecology might be more appropriate
for human settlement since some of its actors, at least, are conscious, and capable of
modifying themselves and thus changing the rules of the game", for example by
restructuring materials and switching the path of energy flows. Humans, like other
species, respond to environmental change but in a more complex way.
2.2 Natural systems
Environmental forcessuch as climate, topography, hydrology, land cover, and humaninduced changes in environmental qualityare important drivers of urban systems.
Moreover, natural hazardssuch as hurricanes, floods, and landslidescan cause
significant perturbations in social systems. Most models of human systems, however,
simply ignore these forces. In urban models, biophysical processes are at best included as
exogenous variables and treated as constants. This is a severe limitation because human
decisions are directly related to environmental conditions and changes. Surprisingly,
urban modelers cannot remove the behavior of the job market or degradation of housing
stocks from their models but can represent the dynamics of urban systems without
considering the degradation of the environment and depletion of natural resources.
As we cannot simply add humans to ecological models, representing biophysical
processes in urban models will require going beyond simply adding environmental
variables to existing urban models. A number of models currently extend their modules
to include changes in environmental variables such as air quality and noise (Wegener,
1995). However, these models may misrepresent complex ecological responses. Before we
can model these responses, we need to recognize explicitly the properties of ecosystem
organization and behavior that govern them. According to Holling (1978, pages 25-26)
four properties of ecological systems determine how they respond to change. First, parts
in ecological systems are connected to each other in a selective way that has implications
for what should be measured. Second, events are not uniform over space, which has
implications for how intense impacts will be and where they will occur. Third, sharp
shifts in behavior are natural for many ecosystems. Fourth, variability, not constancy,
is a feature of ecological systems that contributes to their self-correcting capacity.
2.3 Integrated modeling
In modeling the interactions between human and natural systems, we need to consider
that many factors work simultaneously at various levels. Simply linking these models in
an 'additive' fashion may not adequately represent system behavior because interactions
occur at levels that are not represented (Pickett et al, 1994). On the basis of hierarchy
609
theory* Pickett et nl (1994) argue that the consideration of interactions only at the
upper level may provide statistical relationship but cannot help explain or predict
important feedback for future conditions. This is particularly true in urban ecosystems
because urban development controls the ecosystem structure in complex ways. Landuse decisions affect species composition directly through the introduction of species
and indirectly through the modification of natural disturbance agents. Production and
consumption choices determine the level of resource extraction and generation of
emissions and waste. Decisions about investing in infrastructures or adopting control
policies may mitigate or exacerbate these effects. Because ecological productivity
controls the regional economy, interactions between local decisions and ecological
processes at the local scale can result in large-scale environmental change.
We also need to challenge the implicit assumption of most models that decisions
arc made by one single decisionmaker at one point in time. Urban development is the
outcome of dynamic interactions among the choices of many actors, including households, businesses, developers, and governments (WaddcII, 1998). These actors make
decisions that determine and alter the patterns of human activities and ultimately
affect environmental change. Their decisions arc interdependent; for example, housing
location is affected by employment activity and affects retail activity and infrastructure,
which in turn affect housing development.
Human and natural systems, including their equilibrium conditions, change over
time. One major problem in describing their relationships is that they operate at very
different temporal and spatial scales. The lag times between human decisions and their
environmental effects further complicate any attempt to understand these interactions.
Moreover, the environmental effects of human actions may also be distanced over
space (Moiling, 1986). Simulating the behavior of urban-ecological systems requires
not only an explicit consideration of the temporal and spatial dynamics of these
systems, but also achieving consistency across the different temporal and spatial scales
at which various processes operate.
Another source of difficulty in spelling out these interactions is their cumulative
and synergistic impacts. In general, environmental impacts become important when
their sources are grouped closely enough in space or time to exceed the ability of the
natural system to remove or dissipate the disturbances (Clark, 1986). Human stresses in
cities may cross thresholds beyond which they may irrevocably damage important
ecological functions. In most ecological systems, processes operate in a stepwise rather
than a smoothly progressive fashion over time (Holling, 1986). Sharp shifts in behavior
are natural This property of ecosystems requires the consideration of resilience: the
amount of disturbance a system can absorb without changing its structure or behavior.
In modeling urban-ecological systems we also need to consider feedback mechanisms between the natural and human systems. These are control elements that can
amplify or regulate a given output. At the global level, an example of negative feedback
in the biosphere described by ecologists is the homeostatic integration of biotic and
physical processes that keeps the amount of CO2 in the air relatively constant. Feedback loopsboth positive and negativebetween human and environmental systems
are not completely understood. We know that human decisions leading to the burning
of fossil fuels and land-use change affect the carbon cycle, and that in turn the
associated climate changes will affect human choices, but the nature of these interactions remains controversial. In particular, the feedback of environmental change on
human decisions is difficult to represent because environmental change affects all
people independently of who has caused the environmental impact in the first place,
whereas the impact of each individual decisionmaker on the environment depends on
the choices of others (Ostrom, 1991).
610
M Alberti
The dominant approach in urban modeling can be traced to Lowry's (1964) model,
a simple iterative procedure in which nine equations are used to simulate the spatial
distribution of population, employment, service, and land use. The model is based
on the simple hypothesis that residences gravitate toward employment locations.
Two schools of research have provided a statistical basis for the gravity model, guided
by Wilson (1967, the entropy-maximizing principle) and McFadden (1973, utility
maximization). The results obtained by the two methods were later shown to be
equivalent (Anas, 1983). The models most often used by planning agencies in the
USAthe disaggregated residential allocation model (DRAM) and the employment
allocation model (EMPAL)are derivatives of Lowry's model using maximum entropy
formulation. Developed by Putman (1979), and incrementally improved since the early
1970s, DRAM and EMPAL are currently in use in fourteen US metropolitan areas
(Putman, 1996). The integrated transportation land-use package (ITLUP), also developed by Putman (1983), provides a feedback mechanism to integrate DRAM, EMPAL,
and various components of the urban transportation planning system (UTPS) models
implemented in most metropolitan areas. Although these models substantially improve
61!
upon the initial Lovvry model, they are based on the same simple assumption. No
environmental variables are used in determining the spatial distribution of residence.
The allocation of residential and employment activities must of course meet physical
constraints and planning restrictions within the available zones. However, other than
these constraints no other environmental considerations are included in the equation.
3.2 Economic market-based models
A second urban modeling approach is based on the work of Wingo (1961) and Alonso
(1964), who introduce the notion of land-rent and land-market clearing. Wingo was the
first to describe the urban spatial structure in the framework of equilibrium theory.
Given the location of employment centers, a particular transportation technology, and
a set of households, his model determines the spatial distribution, value, and extent of
residential land requirements under the assumption that landowners and households
both maximize their return. Wingo uses demand, whereas Alonso uses bid-rent functions to distribute the land to its users. The aim of both models is to describe the
effects of the residential land market on location. Under this approach, households are
assumed to maximize their utility and select an optimum residential location by
trading off housing prices and transportation costs. The trade-offs are represented in
a demand or bid-rent functional form which describes how much each household is
willing to pay to live at each location. Anas (1983) introduced discrete-choice behavior
into models with economically specified behavior and market clearing. Two models
that use this approach arc UrbanSim developed by Waddcll (1998), and CUF2 developed by Landis and Zhang (1998a; 1998b). Both models arc based on random utility
theory and make use of logit models to implement key components. However, they
differ in a substantial way. UrbanSim models the key decisionmakershouseholds,
businesses, and developersand simulates their choices that impact urban development. It also simulates the land market as the interaction of demand and supply with
prices of land and buildings adjusting to clear the market. UrbanSim simulates urban
development as a dynamic process as opposed to a cross-sectional or equilibrium
approach. CUF2 models land-use transition probabilities based on a set of site and
community characteristics such as population and employment growth, accessibility,
and original use in the site and surrounding sites.
As indicated in table 1, most current operational models are based on an economic
market-based approach and rely on random utility or discrete-choice theory. In these
models, environmental variables are not part of the equation, except for environmental
constraints. The value of the ecological servicessuch as clean air, clean water, and
flood controlthat ecosystems provide to households are not reflected in market prices.
This is a severe limitation, because changes in environmental quality and other ecological services provided by ecosystems will affect the market behavior of the households
(Maler et al, 1994).
3.3 Mathematical programming-based models
A third approach to describing urban activity allocation is based on optimization
theory. By using mathematical programming, these models design spatial interaction
problems in order to optimize an objective function that includes transportation
and activity establishment costs. Herbert and Stevens (1960) used linear programming
to simulate the market mechanisms that affect location. Wheaton (1974) developed
an optimization model by using nonlinear programming. More recently Boyce et al
(1993) and Boyce and Southworth (1979) have explored the options for integrating
spatial interactions of residential, employment, and travel choices within a single
optimized modeling framework. The projective optimization land-use system (POLIS)
developed by Prastacos (1986) is one of the few optimization land-use models used in
M Alberti
612
Subsystems
Theory or approach
Population or sectors
Clarke
Complex systems
Cellular automata
Monte Carlo simulation
Aggregated
CUF2
Population
Employment
Housing
Land use
Random utility
Multinomial logit
Aggregated
IRPUD
Population
Employment
Housing
Land use
Random utility
Network equilibrium
Land-use equilibrium
Monte Carlo microsimulation
Partially disaggregated
ITLUP
Population
Employment
Land use
Travel
Population
Employment
Transport
Travel
Population
Employment
Housing
Land use
Travel
Random utility
Maximization
Network equilibrium
Partially disaggregated
Random utility
General equilibrium
Input-output
Aggregated
Random utility
Maximization
Monte Carlo microsimulation
Disaggregated
Population
Employment
Housing
Land use
Transport
Travel
Population
Employment
Housing
Land use
Travel
Population
Employment
Housing
Land use
Transport
Travel
Population
Employment
Housing
Land use
Random utility
Maximization
Market clearing
Input-output
Aggregated
Random utility
Optimization
Aggregated
Random utility
Network equilibrium
Land-use equilibrium
Input-output
Aggregated
Random utility
Partial equilibrium
Multinomial logit
Partially disaggregated
Kim
MASTER
MEPLAN
POLIS
TRANUS
UrbanSim
613
Model
Time
Space
Environmental
(actors
Source
Clarke
Dynamic
Dynamic
Cirid cell
CUF2.
Static
Static
I00x 100 m
grid cell
Land cover
Topography
Hydrography
Percent slope
IRPUD
Quasidynamic
Static
Zone
Wegener, 1995
ITLUP
Static
Static
Zone
Kim
Static
Static
Zone
Kim, 1989
MASTER
Quasidynamic
Static
Zone
Mackctt, 1990
MEPLAN
Static
Static
Zone
Echcnique et al,
1990
POLIS
Static
Static
Zone
Prastacos, 1986
TRANUS
Static
Static
Zone
de la Barra, 1989
UrbanSim
Quasidynamic
Static
Parcels
Topography
Stream buffers
Wetlands
100 years floodplain area
Waddell, 1998
614
M Alberti
planning practice. This model, which has been implemented in the San Francisco Bay
area, seeks to maximize both the location surplus and the spatial agglomeration
benefits of basic employment sectors. As in previous models, only land availability is
included as a determinant of employment allocation to zones.
3.4 Input-output models
Another important contribution from economic theory to urban modeling is the
spatially disaggregated intersectoral input-output ( I - O ) approach, developed initially
by Leontief (1967). The approach provides a framework for disaggregating economic
activities by sector and integrating them into urban spatial interaction models. This
transforms the basic structure of an I - O table, allowing the modeler to estimate the
direct and indirect impacts of exogenous change in the economy on a spatially disaggregated scale. Operational urban models that use such an approach include
MEPLAN, TRANUS, and the models developed by Kim (1989). MEPLAN includes
three modules: LUS, the land-use model; FRED, which converts production and
consumption into flows of goods and services; and TAS, a transportation model which
allocates the transport of goods and passengers to travel modes and routes. The landuse component of MEPLAN is based on a spatial disaggregation of production and
consumption factors that include goods, services, and labor. Total consumption is
estimated by using a modified I - O framework subsequently converted into trips.
MEPLAN, TRANUS, and Kim's models use I - O tables to generate interregional flows
of goods. MEPLAN uses the results of the I - O framework to evaluate environmental
impacts. I - O models have been extended to include environmental variables and incorporate pollution multipliers, but no urban model has attempted to implement this
approach for describing economic-ecological interactions. The regional applications of
such an approach have encountered various difficulties related to the specification of the
ecological interprocess matrix and the assumption of fixed coefficients. A major limitation is that inputs and outputs are measured in values as opposed to physical flows.
3.5 Micro simulation
One major limitation in the way most urban models represent the behavior of households and businesses stems from the fact that they are aggregated and static. Individuals
behave in ways that are influenced by their characteristics and the opportunities from
which they choose. Without the explicit representation of these individuals it is impossible to predict the trade-offs they make between jobs, residential locations, or travel
modes. A distinct approach to model the behavior of individuals is microanalytic
simulation that explicitly represents individuals and their progress through a series of
processes (Mackett, 1990). Microsimulation is a modeling technique that is particularly
suitable for systems where decisions are made at the individual unit level and where the
interactions within the system are complex. In such systems, the outcomes produced
by altering the system can vary widely for different groups and are often difficult to
predict. In microsimulation the relationships between the various outcomes of decision
processes and the characteristics of the decisionmaker can be defined by a set of rules
or by a Monte Carlo process. Furthermore, the actions of a population can be simulated through time and incorporate the dynamics of demographic change. An example
is the microanalytical simulation of transport, employment, and residence (MASTER)
model developed by Mackett (1990). The model simulates the choices of a given
population through a set of processes. The outcome of each process is a function
of the characteristics of the household or business, the set of available choices, and
a set of constraints. This approach is applied less extensively in Wegener's (1982)
Dortmund model. Although these models do not explicitly use microsimulation for
modeling environmental impacts, it is clear that the greater disaggregation of the
cm
actors and behaviors has enormous advantages for modeling consumer behavior and
environmental impacts,
3.6 Cellular automata
The use of cellular automata (CA) has been proposed to model spatially explicit
dynamic processes not currently represented in urban models (Hatty and Xie, 1994;
Couclclis, 1985; White et al, 1997; Wu, 1998). Existing operational models arc spatially
aggregated and, even when they use or produce spatially disaggregated data, they rely
on simple spatial geometric processing. A number of modelers have stressed the need
to represent more realistically the spatial behavior of urban actors (White and Engelen,
1997). CA consist of cells arranged in a regular grid that change state according to
specific transition rules. These rules define the new state of the ceils as a function of
their original state and local neighborhood, Clarke et al (1997) have developed a CA
urban growth model as part of the Human-Induced Land Transformations Project
initiated by the US Geological Survey. The model aims to examine the urban transition
in the San Francisco Bay area from a historical perspective and to predict regional
patterns of urbanization in the next 100 years (Clarke ct al, 1997). These predictions are
then used as a basis to assess the ecological and climatic impacts of urban change.
There are four types of growth: spontaneous, diffusive, organic, and road-influenced.
Five factors regulate the rate and nature of growth: a diffusion factor which determines
the dispcrsiveness; a breed coefficient which specifics the likelihood of a settlement to
begin its growth cycle; a spread coefficient which regulates growth of existing settlements; a slope resistance factor which influences the likelihood of growth on steeper
slopes; and a road gravity factor which attracts new settlements close to roads.
4 The human dimension in environmental models
Environmental models have been developed for several decades to simulate atmospheric, land, and ecosystem dynamic processes, and to help assess the effects of various
natural and human-induced disturbances. However, the use of these models in environmental management has become widespread only in the last three decades (J0rgensen
et al, 1995). Since the early 1970s major environmental problems such as eutrophication
and the fate of toxic substances have attracted the attention of environmental modelers,
and very complex models were developed. More recently, the prospect of major changes
in the global environment has presented the scientific community with the challenge of
modeling the interactions between human and ecological systems in an integrated way.
Over these decades a rich literature on'environmental models has developed, but this
is well outside the scope of this paper. In this review I focus on the treatment of the
human dimension in these models (table 2, over).
4.1 Climate and atmospheric models
Atmospheric models can be classified according to the scale of the atmospheric processes they represent. At the global scale, sophisticated coupled atmospheric-ocean
general circulation models (AOGCM) predict climate conditions by considering simultaneously the atmosphere and the ocean (Washington and Meehl, 1996). Using a set of
climate parameters (that is, solar constant) and boundary conditions (that is, land cover,
topography, and atmospheric composition), these models determine the rate of change
in climatic variables such as the temperature, precipitation, surface pressure, and soil
moisture associated with alternative scenarios of CO2 concentrations. These models are
currently being used by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPPC) to
assess the impact of alternative greenhouse-gases emission scenarios up to the year 2100.
Regional models have been developed primarily to tackle the issue of acid rain.
Aggregated emissions of sulfur and nitrogen compounds, estimated on the basis of
616
M Alberti
Class
Media or subsystems
Scale
NCAR
Ocean-climate
general circulation
model
Climate - ocean
Global
CMAQ
Atmospheric model
Meteorological emission,
Chemistry transport
Local or regional
UAM
Atmospheric model
Photochemical processes
Local or regional
OBM
Biogeochemical model
Terrestrial biosphere
Global
HRBM
Biogeochemical model
Terrestrial biosphere
Regional
DHSVM
Distributed hydrology
soil vegetation model
Hydrology
Regional
JABOWA/
FORET
Population-community
dynamic model
Trees
Local
CENTURY
Biogeochemical model
Nutrient cycles
Local
GEM
Process-oriented
ecological model
Ecosystems
Local
PLM
Process-oriented
landscape model
Terrestrial landscape
Regional
IMAGE2
Process-oriented
integrated simulation
model
Energy - industry
Terrestrial
Environment
Atmosphere - ocean
Global, 13 regions
ICAM-2
Optimization - simulation
model
Climate
Economy
Policy
Global, 7 regions
RAINS
Optimization - simulation
model
Emissions
Atmospheric transport
Soil acidification
Continental, Europe
TARGETS
Integrated simulation
model
Population or health
Energy or economics
Biophysics, land, soils,
or water
Global, 6 regions
617
Human factors
Source
Model
Time
Space
NCAR
Dynamic
Minutes
100 years
CO? concentration
Dynamic
scenarios
4.5" x 7.5
(latitude x longitude )
9 layers
CMAQ
Dynamic
8-hour to
72-hour period
Dynamic
Variable 3-D grid
Emissions of
atmospheric
pollutants
UAM
Dynamic
8-hour to
72-hour period
Dynamic
Variable 3-D grid
Emissions of
photochemical
pollutants
OBM
Dynamic
1 year
Dynamic
2.5 x 2.5
Land use
CO2 concentration
scenarios
Esser, 1991
HRBM
Dynamic
6 days
Dynamic
0.5 x 0.5
Land use
CO2 concentration
scenarios
DHSVM
Dynamic
Hours
Dynamic
30- 100 m
Land cover
Wigmosta et al,
1994
JABOWA/
FORET
Dynamic
Dynamic
Up to 500 years 10 x 10 m grid
1 year
Land cover
Botkin, 1984
CENTURY
Dynamic
1 month
Thousands
of years
Dynamic
1 x 1 m grid cell
Land cover
CO2 concentration
GEM
Dynamic
12 hours
Dynamic
1 km cell
Land cover
PLM
Dynamic
1 week
Dynamic
200 m grid
1 km grid
Land cover
Costanza et al,
1995
IMAGE2
Dynamic
Dynamic
1 day to 5 years Variable from
0.5 x 0.5 grid
to region
CO2 emissions
Land use
Alcamo, 1994
ICAM-2
Dynamic
5 years
Static
Latitude bands
Explicit treatment
of uncertainties
Dowlatabadi and
Ball, 1994
RAINS
Dynamic
1 year
Static
150 km x 150 km
in deposition
submodel and
0.5 x 1.0 impact
submodel
Energy use
Sulfur emissions
TARGETS
Dynamic
1 year
Static
Regions
Energy use
Water use
Emissions
Land cover
Rotmans et al,
1994
Washington and
Mcchl. 1996
618
M Alberti
emissions factors of point, area, and mobile sources, serve as inputs for long-range
transport models which predict the emissions and regional distribution of acid compounds. Two regional air-quality models developed by the Environmental Protection
Agency (EPA) are the regional oxidant model (ROM) (Young et al, 1989) and the
regional acid-deposition model (RADM) (Chang et al, 1990).
Emission factors for criteria pollutants are also used as inputs for urban atmospheric models. The EPA's urban airshed model (UAM) is a three-dimensional photochemical grid model designed to simulate the relevant physical and chemical processes
affecting the production and transport of tropospheric ozone (Morris and Meyers,
1990). The basis for the UAM is a mass balance equation in which all of the relevant
emissions, transport, diffusion, chemical reactions, and removal processes are expressed
in mathematical terms (Morris and Meyers, 1990). A more recent model developed by
EPA is the community multiscale air-quality (CMAQ) model. CMAQ is a third generation air-quality model that treats multiple pollutants simultaneously up to continental
scales and incorporates feedbacks between chemical and meteorological components.
The CMAQ modeling system contains three modeling components: a meteorological
model, emission models for human-made and natural emissions, and a chemistrytransport model. The target-grid resolutions and domain sizes for CMAQ range
spatially and temporally over several orders of magnitude. In these models human
decisions are represented by emission factors developed by the EPA (Novak et al, 1995).
4.2 Biogeochemical models
A number of global models aim to simulate the impacts of human activities on
biogeochemical cyclesthe continuous cycling of carbon, nitrogen, and sulfur through
the biosphere which sustains life. Two examples are the Osnabriick biosphere model
(OBM) and the high-resolution biosphere model (HRBM) developed in Germany
(Esser, 1991; Esser et al, 1994). These spatially explicit models simulate the dynamics
of the carbon cycle through the terrestrial biosphere in response to climate and CO2
forcing. OBM uses a grid cell of 2.5 x 2.5 (latitude x longitude) and an annual time
step. HRBM has a greater spatial resolution (0.5 x 0.5) and a finer (6 days) time step.
They compute the storage and transfer of carbon from each cell by using a series of
rate constants and coefficients. In these models human impacts are generated through
scenarios of land-use change and CO2 concentrations. However, these models do not
represent more complex interactions between human behavior and biogeochemical
cycles. For example, land-use decisions affect the carbon cycle not only directly but
also through its impact on transportation patterns and related CO2 emissions in the
atmosphere.
4.3 Hydrological models
Human-induced changes in water and sediment fluxes have been modeled through runoff models. Human activities can cause four major impacts on the hydrological cycle:
floods, droughts, changes in surface and groundwater regimes, and water pollution
(Rogers, 1994). Primarily, changes in land uses and channelization cause these impacts.
The water balance model developed by Vorosmarty and Moore (1991) is an example of
a regional model used to predict changes in the water cycle. It uses spatially explicit
biophysical data including precipitation, temperature, vegetation, soils, and elevation to
predict run-off, evapotranspiration, river discharge, and floodplain inundation at a grid
resolution of 0.5 x0.5. Another example is the distributed hydrology soil vegetation
model (DHSVM), a spatially distributed hydrologic model developed by Wigmosta et al
(1994) for use in complex terrain. The DHVSM represents dynamically the spatial
distribution of land-surface processes (that is, soil moisture, snow cover, evapotranspiration, and run-off) at high resolution (typically 30-100 m). While their aim is to
619
assess the hydrologic effects of land-use decisions, the human dimension in these models
is represented by static scenarios of climate and land-use changes.
4.4 Ecosystem models
Ecosystem dynamics can be simulated through three classes of models: plant physiology, population community, and ecosystem (Melillo, 1994). Plant physiology models
are used to predict plant growth and water balance and are particularly useful in the
analysis of plant responses to climate change and CO?,. Population community models
simulate the dynamics of tree growth on small forest patches as influenced by limiting
factors, space, and stand structure. Ecosystem models are process-based models that
take into account carbon and nutrient fluxes. These models, such as CENTURY
and GEM, simulate changes in ecosystem structure and function over a period from
decades to centuries. CENTURY computes the How of carbon, nitrogen, phosphorus,
and sulfur through four compartments: soil organic matter, water, grassland, and forest
(Parton, 1996). GEM simulates ecosystem dynamics for a variety of habitats by incorporating ecological processes that determine water levels, plant production, and nutrient
cycling associated with natural and human-induced disturbances. Inputs in these models
are static scenarios of nutrient loads and climate change.
4.5 Karth systems models
Important progress in linking biophysical models has been made through the development of earth systems models (Meyer and Turner II, 1994). In 1990 the US Global
Change Research Program (USGCRP) set itself the goal of linking general circulation
models, land-surface paramctrization models, and ecosystem dynamics models to predict
energy and water fluxes between land and the atmosphere (US Global Change Research
Program Act, 1990). However, coupling atmospheric, terrestrial, and ecosystem dynamics
is not a straightforward task owing to the different spatial and temporal resolutions
between land-surface and ecosystem processes. Models can be integrated through a
nested approach that allows users to calculate parameter values across models of
various resolutions. With the help of advances in computer processing these models
are rapidly increasing in sophistication. However, earth systems models are still too
limited in representing the complex interactions between the earth's subsystems and
human systems. Human actions in these models arc represented by static scenarios of
highly aggregated land uses and pollution loads into the atmosphere, water, and land.
4.6 Integrated assessment models
In response to the need to incorporate a more realistic representation of human
and ecological processes in existing models, natural and social scientists have built
integrated assessment models (IAMs). IAMs incorporate two tasks. They allow users
(1) to integrate various knowledge domains to predict environmental changes associated
with the behavior of complex socioeconomic and environmental systems, and (2) to
assess the likelihood, importance, and implications of predicted environmental changes
to inform policymaking. IAMs have gained interest primarily as a new approach to
link biophysical and socioeconomic systems in assessing global environmental change
(Dowlatabadi, 1995; Parson and Fisher-Vanden, 1995; Rotmans et al, 1995; Weyant et al,
1996). Since 1994 the USGCRP has made IA modeling its central priority.
The integrated model to assess the greenhouse effect (IMAGE 2) developed by the
Dutch National Institute of Public Health and Environmental Protection (RIVM) is
designed to simulate the dynamics of the global society-biosphere-climate system
(Alcamo, 1994). IMAGE 2 is the first I AM to represent environmental phenomena
at a fine spatial scale. It performs many calculations on a global grid (0.5 x 0.5). The
time horizon extends to the year 2100 and the time steps of different submodels vary
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between one day and five years. The model consists of three fully linked subsets of
models: the energy-industry system; the terrestrial environment system; and the
atmosphere - ocean system.
The energy - industry models compute the emissions of greenhouse gases in thirteen
world regions as a function of energy consumption and industrial production. End-use
energy consumption is computed from various economic driving forces. It includes four
submodels: energy economy, energy emissions, industrial production, and industrial
emissions. The terrestrial environment models simulate the changes in global land
cover on a grid scale based on climatic and economic factors. The roles of land cover
and other human factors are then taken into account to compute the flux of CO2 and
other greenhouse gases from the biosphere to the atmosphere. This subsystem includes
five submodels: agricultural demand, terrestrial vegetation, land cover, terrestrial carbon, and land-use emissions. The atmosphere - ocean models compute the buildup of
greenhouse gases in the atmosphere and the resulting zonal-average temperature and
precipitation patterns. Four submodels are included: atmospheric composition, zonal
atmospheric climate, oceanic climate, and oceanic biosphere and chemistry.
IMAGE 2 makes a major scientific contribution by representing many important
feedback mechanisms and linkages between models in the subsystems, and between
subsystems. IMAGE 2 links explicitly and geographically the changes in land cover
with the flux of CO2 and other greenhouse gases between the biosphere and atmosphere, and, conversely, takes into account the effects of climate in the changing
productivity of the terrestrial and oceanic biosphere. It also dynamically couples
natural and human-induced emissions with chemical and physical processes in the
atmosphere and ocean and then feeds climate change back to the biosphere.
Another example of IAM is ICAM-2, an optimization model developed at Carnegie
Mellon University to assess the effectiveness of climate change policies (Dowlatabadi
and Ball, 1994). Although most IAMs focus on climate changes, more recent efforts in
integrated modeling have attempted to address a broader set of policy questions.
TARGETS (tool to assess regional and global environmental and health targets for
sustainability) is an example of a model designed to inform the policy debate on a
broader set of global change issues related to economic development and sustainability.
TARGETS is currently being developed by RIVM as part of its research program on
global dynamics and sustainable development (Rotmans et al, 1994). This model aims
to assess simultaneously several human stresses on various global and regional issues
such as climate change, tropospheric ozone, deforestation, and the dispersion of chemicals. None of the current integrated modeling efforts, however, has addressed urban
ecosystems.
5 A conceptual framework for modeling the urban ecosystem
In this section I present a framework to integrate urban and ecological modeling. This
framework is part of a strategy that Alan Borning, Paul Waddell, and I have developed
at the University of Washington to build an urban ecological model as part of PRISM,
which is a multidisciplinary initiative aimed at developing a dynamic and integrated
understanding of the environmental and human systems in the Puget Sound. Our aim is
to integrate the various components of the Puget Sound into a metamodel. The urbanecological model addresses the societal dynamics of environmental change.
5.1 Model objectives
One major aim of the PRISM human dimension is to describe how human actions
generate environmental stresses and to predict the impacts of changes in human actions
on the biophysical system. Human decisions in PRISM will be treated explicitly through
621
the development of UEM which will represent the principal actors and behaviors
affecting environmental change. This model will predict the environmental stresses
associated with urban development and related changes in land-use and human activities under alternative demographic, economic, environmental, and policy scenarios.
We start with the assumption that urban development is the outcome of the interactions between the choices of households, businesses, developers, and governments.
These actors make decisions that alter the patterns of land-use and human activities.
UEM will be designed to model these processes in a dynamic and spatially explicit
framework that links these decisions to changes in the biophysical structure of the
Pugct Sound. This is a first step, we believe, toward coupling human and biophysical
processes in the urban ecosystem.
5.2 Conceptual framework
The urban ecosystem will be represented by a number of human and biophysical
variables. Figures 2(a) and 2(b) are schematic diagrams of the major subsystems
Urluiri processes ami
environmental stressors
Drivers
Natural systems
I-Iumnn systems
Demographics
Economics " H
Policy
Actors
Markets
Resources
Institutions
Production
and
[consumption |
-H
Technology
Environment
Land development
and use
feedback
Upper level
Climate
ocean and
atmosphere
Biogcochemical
cycles
Hydrology
Terrestrial
biosphere
Lower level
Environmental change
(a)
Human systems
Actors
Drivers
Demographics
Economics *
Policy
Households
Businesses
Developers
Governments
r
Markets
Job market
Land market
\ Housing
market
\
Governmental
and nonprofit
organizations
NGOs
Institutions
Environmental change
(b)
Figure 2. U r b a n ecological frameworks.
o'
>T3
622
M Alberti
considered in the model and their interactions. Human systems are represented by four
components: actors, resources, markets, and institutions. Major resource-stock variables
are population, economic activities (jobs), land, buildings (residential and nonresidential), infrastructure (transportation, energy, water supply, wastewater), and natural
resources (water, forests, and ecosystems). The actorshouseholds, businesses, developers, and governmentsmake decisions about production and consumption activities and
their location, leading to changes in land use. These decisions affect, directly and
indirectly, the biophysical system through land conversion, the use of resources, and the
generation of emissions and waste. Businesses make choices about production, location,
and management practices. Households make choices about employment, location,
housing type, travel mode, and other lifestyle factors leading to consumption. Developers make decisions about investing in development and redevelopment. Governments
make decisions about investing in infrastructures and services and adopting policies
and regulations. Decisions are made at the individual and community levels through
the economic and social institutions. The actors interact in three submarkets: the
job market, the land market, and the housing market. These actors also interact in
nonmarket institutions including governmental and other nonprofit and nongovernmental organizations. Decisions are influenced by demographic, socioeconomic, political, and technological factors represented in the model by exogenous scenarios, and
are affected by environmental conditions and changes predicted by the biophysical
modules. The types of activity and the context in which the activity takes place both
determine the level of pressure and the patterns of disturbances.
The output of the urban ecosystem model will serve as the input to several biophysical models such as the climate and atmospheric model, the hydrology model, and
the aquatic and terrestrial ecosystem models. The urban-ecological framework is
designed to take into account the interactions between the ecological impacts and
urban processes at various levels of the hierarchy of processes. These include feedback
from the ecological changes on the choices of households and business locations,
market prices, availability of land and resources, and regulation. Feedback is also
included at the levels of the processes of production and consumption, and land
development.
5.3 Model structure
Using the framework described above we plan to develop an object-oriented model
that links urban and ecological processes. We build on UrbanSim, an existing urban
simulation model developed by Waddell (1998), to predict three types of humaninduced environmental stressors: land conversion, use of resources, and emissions.
Figure 3 represents the urban-ecological dynamics that the integrated model will
address (Waddell and Alberti, 1998). Our initial focus will be on modeling changes
in land use and land cover. Instead of linking the urban and ecological components
sequentially, we propose to integrate them at a functional level. Our current strategy is
to extend the object properties and methods now implemented in the UrbanSim model.
UrbanSim predicts the location behaviors of households, businesses, and developers,
and consequent changes in land uses and physical development. These are among the
required inputs to predict the changes in land cover and ecological impacts. We propose
to add the production and consumption behaviors of households and businesses, and
link them through a spatially explicit representation of land and infrastructure to
ecological processes.
The UrbanSim data structure is currently being revised from the current aggregate
approach to one based on microsimulation and from a zone description of space to
a high-resolution grid structure (Waddell and Alberti, 1998). We use a combination of
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(Households J
Location
Travel
Production
(\msumptUm
(Developers j
New construction
Redevelopment
(liusittcHHCN j
(< iowrmncitta)
Location
Travel
Production
('onsumption
Infrastructure
Hegulntions
Urban processes
Feedback
Land tt.se
Land value
Development
Environmental
stressors
Impervious surface
Grassland
Forest
Wetlands
Water
Energy
Materials
Point sources
Not point sourct
}
( Biophysical processes and impacts j
Figure 3. UEM structure. Note that processes in italics are new components not presently modeled
in UrbanSim (source: Waddell and Alberti, 1998).
the aggregated economic I - O methodology and a microsimukition approach to model
the production and consumption behavior of individual businesses and their location.
A microsimulation approach is also being implemented to model households' choices
of jobs, location, and lifestyles. A highly disaggregated representation of households
(that is, individuals) and businesses (that is, the standard industruil classification) will
allow us to represent explicitly detailed production, consumption, and location behaviors of various actors and to link these behaviors to ecological impacts.
The urban ecosystem model simulates three types of human-induced environmental
stressors: land conversion, use of resources, and emissions. Changes in land use-cover
will be modeled based on a set of land use - cover determinants, including original use,
accessibility, environmental conditions, cost of conversion, and policy constraints.
Land conversion will be predicted based on the changes in housing and commercial
buildings, household and business characteristics occupying these buildings, and the
biophysical characteristics of the land parcels. The resource models will be represented
by various modules, each predicting the use of water, energy, and materials, which will
be linked to the UEM on the basis of consumption and infrastructure capacity. The
emission modules are mass-balance models that will simulate pollution loads into the
atmosphere, water, and soil, and relative contributions from the various media.
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M Alberti
625
and human systems models would suggest that even more important is the way we
formulate such questions. The integration of urban and ecological models, I have
said, cannot be achieved simply by inserting humans into ecosystems or biophysical
elements into human systems because the interactions occur at various levels. This
implies that the traditional questions, such as how humans affect natural systems and
how natural systems affect humans, need to be reformulated to reflect an integrated
approach. For example, we will ask how natural and human-generated landscape
patterns and energy Hows affect natural disturbance regimes and how land-use choices
and practices are controlled by human-induced environmental change.
Multiple actors. Urban decisionmakers are a broad and very diversified group of
people who make a series of relevant decisions over time. In order to model urbanecological interactions we must represent explicitly the location, production, and consumption behavior of these multiple actors. This requires a highly disaggregated
representation of households and businesses. Disaggregation of economic sectors could
be achieved by using a revised version of the I -O model methodology. Microsimulation
could help address the difficult trade-offs that households and businesses make between location, production, and consumption preferences (Wegener and Spiekermann,
1996). Morgan and Dowlatabadi (1996) suggest that new methods must be developed
to incorporate separate multiattributc utility functions by different social actors in
integrated models.
Time. Time needs to be treated explicitly if relevant temporal dynamics of urban
and environmental change are to be represented. Time can be represented as a discrete
or continuous variable. Though treating time continuously is certainly a daunting task,
introducing time steps or using multiple time steps for different processes modeled
can provide an important improvement over current models. Today, most operational
urban models are based on a cross-sectional, aggregate, equilibrium approach.
Improvement over these models could be achieved by representing time explicitly as
a discrete variable. A more ambitious continuous approach to the treatment of time
will need to be explored.
Space. We need to represent more realistically the spatial behavior of urban processes, both human and ecological. Existing operational urban models are spatially
aggregated and, even when they use or produce spatially disaggregated data, they rely
on simple spatial geometric processing. Several scholars have developed various functionalities in modeling spatial processes that can be implemented in UEMs. Additional
research is required to explore the potential for using CA to model spatially explicit
urban dynamic processes efficiently. A more flexible conception of space could help
reconcile the spatial resolution needed to model different urban processes. This will
require implementing a data structure that will accommodate process resolution
ranging from cells to various land units as well as various levels of aggregation across
several hierarchical scales.
Scale. The appropriate scales for modeling depend not only on the problem being
tackled, but also on considerations of consistency across spatial and temporal aggregations (Lonergan and Prudham, 1994). Modeling urban ecosystem dynamics requires
crossing spatial and hierarchical scales. According to hierarchy theory, landscape processes and constraints change across scales (O'Neill et al, 1986). Because landscapes are
spatially heterogeneous areas, the outcome of changes in driving forces can be relevant
only at certain scales. Yet our current understanding of spatial scale links is still
limited. Two scale issues must be addressed in modeling land-use and land-cover
change (Turner II et al, 1995). First, each scale has its specific units and variables.
Second, the relationships between variables and units change with scale. To tackle these
issues, a hierarchical approach needs to be developed.
626
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627
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author
Keywords
global cities
industrial ecology
materials flow analysis (MFA)
sustainable cities
urban environment
urban metabolism
Summary
Data from urban metabolism studies from eight metropolitan regions across five continents, conducted in various years
since 1965, are assembled in consistent units and compared.
Together with studies of water, materials, energy, and nutrient
flows from additional cities, the comparison provides insights
into the changing metabolism of cities. Most cities studied exhibit increasing per capita metabolism with respect to water,
wastewater, energy, and materials, although one city showed
increasing efficiency for energy and water over the 1990s.
Changes in solid waste streams and air pollutant emissions are
mixed.
The review also identifies metabolic processes that
threaten the sustainability of cities. These include altered
ground water levels, exhaustion of local materials, accumulation of toxic materials, summer heat islands, and irregular accumulation of nutrients. Beyond concerns over the sheer magnitudes of resource flows into cities, an understanding of these
accumulation or storage processes in the urban metabolism is
critical. Growth, which is inherently part of metabolism, causes
changes in water stored in urban aquifers, materials in the
building stock, heat stored in the urban canopy layer, and potentially useful nutrients in urban waste dumps.
Practical reasons exist for understanding urban metabolism.
The vitality of cities depends on spatial relationships with
surrounding hinterlands and global resource webs. Increasing metabolism implies greater loss of farmland, forests, and
species diversity; plus more traffic and more pollution. Urban
policy makers should consider to what extent their nearest resources are close to exhaustion and, if necessary, appropriate
strategies to slow exploitation. It is apparent from this review
that metabolism data have been established for only a few
cities worldwide, and interpretation issues exist due to lack of
common conventions. Further urban metabolism studies are
required.
www.mitpressjournals.org/jie
43
R E S E A R C H A N D A N A LY S I S
Introduction
Cities grow in complex ways due to their
sheer size, social structures, economic systems,
and geopolitical settings, and the evolution of
technology (Hall 1998). Responding to waves of
new technology, cities have grown outward from
small dense cores, first as linear transit cities and
then as sprawling automobile cities. Changes in
industry have also been important; obsolete factories have often closed down, leaving behind
contaminated soil and groundwater. Risks associated with rebuilding on such brownfield sites
have encouraged developers to pursue greenfield
sites on the edges of cities. Ever-growing urban
populations also fuel the expansion of cities. Yet
even cities showing no change or decreasing populations, such as some older industrial cities, are
still growing outward.
Forty years ago, in the wake of rapid urban
expansion, Abel Wolman published a pioneering article on the metabolism of cities. Wolman
(1965) developed the urban metabolism concept
in response to deteriorating air and water quality
in American citiesissues still recognized today
as threatening sustainable urban development.
Wolman analyzed the metabolism of a hypothetical American city, quantifying the overall fluxes
of energy, water, materials, and wastes into and
out of an urban region of 1 million people.
The metabolism of an ecosystem has been defined by ecologists as the production (via photosynthesis) and consumption (by respiration) of
organic matter; it is typically expressed in terms
of energy (Odum 1971). Although a few studies
have focused on quantifying the embodied energy
in cities (Zucchetto 1975; Huang 1998), other
urban metabolism studies have more broadly included fluxes of nutrients and materials and the
urban hydrologic cycle (Baccini and Brunner
1991). In this broader context, urban metabolism
might be defined as the sum total of the technical and
socioeconomic processes that occur in cities, resulting
in growth, production of energy, and elimination of
waste.
Since Wolmans work, a handful of urban
metabolism studies have been conducted in urban
regions around the globe. By reviewing these
studies, this article describes how the urban
metabolism of cities is changing. It also demon44
strates how understanding of accumulation processes in the urban metabolism is essential to the
sustainable development of cities.
Sustainable development can be understood
as development without increases in the throughput of materials and energy beyond the biospheres capacity for regeneration and waste assimilation (Goodland and Daly 1996). Given this
definition, a sustainable city implies an urban region for which the inflows of materials and energy and the disposal of wastes do not exceed the
capacity of its hinterlands. As discussed in this
article, this definition presents difficulties in the
context of cities dependent on global markets;
nevertheless, it provides a relative bar against
which progress may be measured. In quantifying material and energy fluxes, urban metabolism
studies are valuable for assessing the direction of
a citys development.
The objectives of this article are twofold.
The first objective is to review previously published metabolism studies to elucidate what we
know about how urban metabolism is changing.
A previous review article on energy and material flows to cities has been presented by Decker
and colleagues (2000), but it made only minor
reference to the metabolism concept; it did not
include reference to many of the studies considered here; and it did not specifically ask how
urban metabolism is changing. The number of
metabolism studies is not sufficient to apply any
form of statistical analysis, and therefore, some
might argue, to identify any generalizable trends.
Nevertheless, the balance of evidence generally
points to increasing urban metabolism.
The second objective is to identify critical processes in the urban metabolism that threaten the
sustainable development of cities. It has been argued that high levels of urban resource consumption and waste production are not issues about
sustaining cities per se, but reflect concerns over
the role of cities in global sustainable development (Satterthwaite 1997). Although partially
agreeing, we aim to show that there are also processes within the urban metabolism that threaten
urban sustainability itself. In particular we highlight storage processeswater in urban aquifers,
heat stored in urban canopy layers, toxic materials in the building stock, and nutrients within
urban waste dumpsall of which require careful
R E S E A R C H A N D A N A LY S I S
Water
In terms of sheer mass, water is by far
the largest component of urban metabolism.
Wolmans calculations for the 1960s for a onemillion-person U.S. city estimated the input of
water at 625,000 tonnes1 per day compared to
just 9,500 tonnes of fuel and 2,000 tonnes of food.
Most of this inflow is discharged as wastewater,
with the remainder being lost by activities such
as the watering of lawns. Data from the cities
in table 1 show that wastewater represents between 75% and 100% of the mass of water inflow
(figure 2a). The six studies since 1990 typically
have higher per capita water inputs than the four
45
46
Duvigneaud and
Denaeyer-De Smet 1977
Hanya and Ambe 1976
Chartered Institute of
Wastes Management 2002
White 2003
Gasson 2002
Brussels
Hong Kong
Toronto
Vienna
London
7.4
3.0
2000
2000
3.940
7.0
2.79
3.657
4.038
5.071
1.5
11.513
1.075
1.0
2000
1971
1997
1970
1990
1987
1999
1990s
1970
1970s
1965
Year
3,900
6,730
2,920
3,710
2,000
58,000
6,632
6,640
Urbanized
density (cap/km2 )
0 W
34 S
18 E
28.0
88
20.8
16.7
14
18.5
19.9
170
105
22.3
24.3
17
16.4
76
50 N
4 E
35 N
139 E
22 N
114 E
33 S
151 E
43 N
79 W
48 N
16 E
51 N
Summer
Altitude (m)
13.5
4.9
1.8
1.8
13
17.0
6.9
4.2
Winter
Av. temperature ( C)
Location
(geographic coordinates)
Note: cap = capita. One square kilometer (km2 , SI) = 100 hectares (ha) 0.386 square miles 247 acres. One meter (m, SI) 3.28 feet (ft). (Celsius temperature [ C] 9/5) + 32 =
Fahrenheit temperature [ F].
Cape Town
Sydney
Tokyo
Wolman 1965
Reference
U.S. typical
City
Population
(million)
Table 1 Characteristics of cities (metropolitan areas) where urban metabolism studies have been conducted
R E S E A R C H A N D A N A LY S I S
R E S E A R C H A N D A N A LY S I S
Figure 1 The urban metabolism of Brussels, Belgium in the early 1970s. Source: Duvigneaud and
Denaeyer-De Smet 1977.
47
R E S E A R C H A N D A N A LY S I S
250
t/cap/yr
200
150
Water Supply
100
Wastewater
50
London (2000)
Toronto (1999)
Vienna (1990s)
Sydney (1990)
Toronto (1987)
Tokyo (1970)
Sydney (1970)
Brussels (1970s)
5
4.5
4
3.5
3
2.5
2
1.5
1
0.5
0
Residential
London (2000)
Toronto (1999)
Vienna (1990s)
Sydney (1990)
Toronto (1987)
Tokyo (1970)
Sydney (1970)
Brussels (1970s)
Total
t/cap/yr
(a)
(b)
Figure 2 Metabolism parameters from selected cities. (a) Fresh water inputs and wastewater releases.
(b) Solid waste disposal. (c) Energy inputs. (d) Contaminant emissions. Missing bars indicate data unavailable.
Date refers to the date of measurement; t refers to tonnes. For sources see table 1. The data behind this
figure are available in an electronic supplement (e-supplement) on the JIE Web site. One tonne (t) =
103 kilograms (kg, SI) 1.102 short tons. One gigajoule (GJ) = 109 joules (J, SI) 2.39 105 kilocalories
(kcal) 9.48 105 British Thermal Units (BTU). SO2 = sulfur dioxide; NOx = nitrogen oxides; VOC =
volatile organic compounds.
160
140
120
100
80
60
40
20
0
Primary
London (2000)
Toronto (1999)
Sydney (1990)
Toronto (1987)
Tokyo (1970)
Sydney (1970)
Brussels (1970s)
Direct
GJ/cap/yr
R E S E A R C H A N D A N A LY S I S
0.07
0.06
0.05
0.04
0.03
0.02
0.01
0
SO2
NOx
VOC
Toronto (1995)
London (1995)
Sydney (1990)
Sydney (1970)
Brussels (1970s)
Particulates
t/cap/yr
(c)
(d)
Figure 2
Continued
49
R E S E A R C H A N D A N A LY S I S
Water Table
Water Table
Figure 3 Evolution of water supply and wastewater disposal for a typical city underlain by a shallow
aquifer. The arrows indicate water flows; the line with dots indicates the water table. Source: Adapted from
Figure 1.2 of Foster et al. 1998.
Materials
Material inputs to cities are generally less
well quantified than water inputs, despite their
significance to urban infrastructure. Detailed
analyses, however, have been conducted for
Hong Kong and Vienna. Material flow analyses
have also been conducted for Hamburg and a few
50
R E S E A R C H A N D A N A LY S I S
Energy
The quantification of urban energy fluxes as
a component of urban metabolism has varied
in depth and breadth between studies. One of
the most comprehensive was that of Brussels, for
which both natural and anthropogenic energy
sources were quantified. Most other studies have
focused directly on anthropogenic sources, neglecting net all-wave radiation and heat transfer
due to evapotranspiration, local advection, soil
conduction, and mass water transfer. The importance of urban heat islands, discussed below, however, indicates the significance of incorporating
anthropogenic sources into the natural surface
energy balance of cities.
Comparisons of the anthropogenic energy inputs for the cities of table 1 need to distinguish between the direct energy consumed and
the primary energy consumption, which includes
energy losses in the production of electricity
(figure 2c). With its cold winters, and fairly warm
summers, Toronto has the highest per capita
51
R E S E A R C H A N D A N A LY S I S
Figure 4 The distribution of mineral aggregate sources for Metropolitan Toronto in 1972. Metropolitan
Toronto, in the center of the figure, is the destination of all flow shown. Source: Ontario Ministry of Natural
Resources.
R E S E A R C H A N D A N A LY S I S
Figure 5 Variation in annual transportation energy consumption and population density among several
global cities during the 1980s. 000 MJ = one thousand megajoules = one gigajoule (GJ) = 109 joules
(J, SI) 2.39 105 kilocalories (kcal) 9.48 105 British Thermal Units (BTU). One hectare (ha) =
0.01 square kilometers (km2 , SI) 0.00386 square miles 2.47 acres. Source: Newman and Kenworthy
1991. Reprinted with permission.
puts in elevating temperatures. All of the energy that is pumped into cities will eventually
turn into heat. Estimated anthropogenic contributions range from 16 W/m2 for St. Louis to
159 W/m2 for Manhattan (Taha 1997).3 Santamouris (2001) summarizes a collection of studies,
some of which present contradictory findings, or
at least highlight the importance of city-specific
features.
Increases in temperature directly impact summer cooling loads, thus introducing a potentially
cyclic effect on energy demand. For U.S. cities
with populations greater than 100,000, peak electricity loads increase by about 1% for every
degree Celsius increase in temperature (Santamouris 2001). For high ambient temperatures,
utility loads in Los Angeles have demonstrated a
net rate of increase of 167 megawatts (MW)4 per
53
R E S E A R C H A N D A N A LY S I S
Nutrients
Understanding the flow of nutrients through
the urban system is vital to successful nutrient management strategies and urban sustainability. Consequences of improper management include eutrophication of water bodies, release of
heavy metals onto agricultural lands, acid rain,
and groundwater pollution (Nilson 1995; Baker
et al. 2001). The Hong Kong metabolism study
(Warren-Rhodes and Koenig 2001) included an
analysis of key nutrients: nitrogen and phosphorus. A nitrogen balance for the Central Arizona
Phoenix (CAP) ecosystem (Baker et al. 2001), a
phosphorus budget for the Swedish municipality
of Gavle (Nilson 1995), and a study of Bangkok
(Faerge et al. 2001) also provide insight into the
flow of nutrients through urban systems.
The studies reveal the extent to which natural
nutrient flows are altered in human-dominated
ecosystems. In the CAP and Gavle regions, approximately 90% of nitrogen and phosphorus inputs are human-mediated. Whereas the majority of phosphorus fluxes are related to human
food production, import, and consumption (agricultural production and food import), nitrogen
fluxes in urban systems are becoming increasingly linked to combustion processes (Bjorklund
et al. 1999, Baker et al. 2001). In the CAP region
(which includes agricultural land and desert in
addition to urban Phoenix), fixation from NOx
emissions from combustion is the single largest
nitrogen input, greater than nitrogen inputs from
commercial fertilizers applied to both crops and
landscapes! In Hong Kong, 42% of the nitrogen
output is NOx from combustion, which is equivalent to nitrogen outputs from wastewater. Thus,
reductions in nitrogen inputs and outputs might
be most readily achieved by reducing NOx emissions (Baker et al. 2001).
In addition to managing nutrient inputs and
outputs of the urban system, nutrient storage
must also be considered. Nutrients may remain
in the urban system through accumulation in soil
or groundwater by inadvertent losses or direct
disposal or through nutrient recycling, such as
the use of food waste for agricultural fertilizer.
R E S E A R C H A N D A N A LY S I S
Accumulation often results in negative environmental consequences, such as groundwater pollution. All study areas exhibit high levels of nutrient storage. Approximately 60% of all nitrogen and phosphorus inputs to Hong Kong, 60%
of phosphorus inputs to the Gavle municipality,
20% of nitrogen inputs to the CAP region, and
51% of phosphorus (but only 3% of nitrogen) in
Bangkok do not leave the system. Although a
small amount of these nutrients are recycled, the
majority are accumulated in municipal and industrial waste sites, agricultural soils, and groundwater pools (Nilson 1995; Baker et al. 2001; WarrenRhodes and Koenig 2001).
The relatively low levels of nutrient recycling
practiced in these study areas highlight the lack
of synergy that exists between urban centers and
their hinterlands. Girardet (1992) suggests that
for cities to be sustainable from a nutrient perspective, they must practice fertility exchange, in
which the nutrients in urban sewage are returned
to local farmland. This relationship between the
city and its hinterlands requires adequate sewage
treatment and an appropriate means of sewage
transportation, as well as a good supply of local
agriculture. The process of urbanrural nutrient
recycling was prevalent in the United States during the nineteenth century, until the development of the modern fertilizer industry (Wines
1985). Similar processes existed more recently in
China, where 14 of the countrys 15 largest cities
were largely self-sufficient in food, supplying a
majority of their food requirements from agricultural suburbs, which were kept fertile using
treated human waste (Girardet 1992); such practices have since changed. In contrast, Hong Kong
produces only 5% of its food needs locally, and
human food wastes, which used to be recycled as
bone meal fertilizers, are now disposed of in landfills (Warren-Rhodes and Koenig 2001). Given
that the Hong Kong model is more representative of most modern cities than the former Chinese case, what can be done to improve urban
sustainability from a nutrient perspective?
It is not clear that the fertility exchange between a city and its hinterlands described by
Girardet (1992) is an appropriate goal for the
modern city. Traditionally, there was a symbiotic relationship between cities and their surrounding rural areas, but this relationship has
55
R E S E A R C H A N D A N A LY S I S
management strategies are those that are specifically tailored to individual ecosystems (Baker
et al. 2001). The creation of such strategies requires an understanding of nutrient input, accumulation, and output, which can be acquired
from detailed nutrient balances within an urban
metabolism study.
Conclusions
With data from metabolism studies in eight
cities, spread over five continents and several
decades, observation of strong trends would not
be expected from this review. Moreover, there
are concerns over the commensurability of data
from different cities, especially for waste streams.
Nevertheless, with three different cities having been analyzed at different times, and other
supporting evidence, some sense of how the
metabolism of cities is changing can be gleaned.
Many of the data suggest that the metabolism of
cities is increasing: water and wastewater flows
were typically greater for studies in the 1990s
than those in the early 1970s; Hamburg, Hong
Kong, and Vienna have become more materialsintensive; and energy inputs to Hong Kong and
Sydney have increased. However, some signs
point to increasing efficiency, for example, per
capita energy and water inputs leveling off in
Toronto over the 1990s. Other changes are
mixed; for example, cities that have implemented
large-scale recycling have seen reductions in residential waste disposal in absolute terms, but
other waste streamssuch as commercial and
industrialmay well be on the increase. Similarly, emissions of SO2 and particulates may have
decreased in several cities, whereas other air pollutants such as NOx have increased. Changes
in urban metabolism are quite varied between
cities.
Future studies might attempt to identify different classes of urban metabolism. These are
perhaps apparent from the transportation energy
data, where old European, dense Asian, and New
World cities are distinctive. Climate likely has
an impact on the type of metabolism; cities with
interior continental climates would be expected
to expend more energy on winter heating and
summer cooling. The cost of energy may also influence consumption. The age of a city, or its
56
R E S E A R C H A N D A N A LY S I S
participate in continental and global trading networks. Thus, full evaluation of urban sustainability requires a broad scope of analysis.
Urban policy makers should be encouraged to
understand the urban metabolism of their cities.
It is practical for them to know if they are using
water, energy, materials, and nutrients efficiently,
and how this efficiency compares to that of other
cities. They must consider to what extent their
nearest resources are close to exhaustion and,
if necessary, appropriate strategies to slow exploitation. It is apparent from this review that
metabolism data have been established for only
a few cities worldwide and there are interpretation issues due to lack of common conventions;
there is much more work to be done. Resource
accounting and management are typically undertaken at national levels, but such practices may
arguably be too broad and miss understanding of
the urban driving processes.
Acknowledgment
This research was supported by the Natural
Sciences and Engineering Research Council of
Canada.
Notes
1. One tonne (t) = 103 kilograms (kg, SI) 1.102
short tons.
2. One cubic meter (m3 , SI) 1.31 cubic yards (yd3 ).
3. One watt (W, SI) 3.412 British Thermal Units
(BTU)/hour 1.341 103 horsepower (HP).
One square meter (m2 , SI) 1.20 square yards
(yd2 ).
4. One megawatt (MW) = 106 watts (W, SI) = 1
megajoule/second (MJ/s) 56.91 103 British
Thermal Units (BTU)/minute.
5. Available at the JIE Web site.
References
Abu-Rizaiza, Q. S. 1999. Threats from ground water
table rise in urban areas in developing countries.
Water International 24(1): 4652.
Baccini, P. 1997. A citys metabolism: Towards the
sustainable development of urban systems. Journal
of Urban Technology 4(2): 2739.
57
R E S E A R C H A N D A N A LY S I S
58
R E S E A R C H A N D A N A LY S I S
and nature. Case study, the urban region of Miami. Ecological Modelling 1: 241268.
59
Environmental Pollution
journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/envpol
Review
The study of urban metabolism and its applications to urban planning and design
C. Kennedy a, *, S. Pincetl b, P. Bunje b
a
b
a r t i c l e i n f o
a b s t r a c t
Article history:
Received 12 October 2010
Accepted 15 October 2010
Following formative work in the 1970s, disappearance in the 1980s, and reemergence in the 1990s,
a chronological review shows that the past decade has witnessed increasing interest in the study of
urban metabolism. The review nds that there are two related, non-conicting, schools of urban
metabolism: one following Odum describes metabolism in terms of energy equivalents; while the second
more broadly expresses a citys ows of water, materials and nutrients in terms of mass uxes. Four
example applications of urban metabolism studies are discussed: urban sustainability indicators; inputs
to urban greenhouse gas emissions calculation; mathematical models of urban metabolism for policy
analysis; and as a basis for sustainable urban design. Future directions include fuller integration of social,
health and economic indicators into the urban metabolism framework, while tackling the great
sustainability challenge of reconstructing cities.
2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
Keywords:
Cities
Energy
Materials
Waste
Urban planning
Urban design
Greenhouse gas emissions
Sustainability indicators
1. Introduction
The concept of the urban metabolism, conceived by Wolman
(1965), is fundamental to developing sustainable cities and
communities. Urban metabolism may be dened as the sum total of
the technical and socio-economic processes that occur in cities,
resulting in growth, production of energy, and elimination of waste
(Kennedy et al., 2007). In practice, the study of an urban metabolism involves big picture quantication of the inputs, outputs and
storage of energy, water, nutrients, materials and wastes for an
urban region. While research on urban metabolism has waxed and
waned over the past 45 years, in the last decade it has accelerated.
Moreover, as this review will show, practical applications of urban
metabolism are emerging.
The notion of urban metabolism is loosely based on an analogy
with the metabolism of organisms, although in other respects
parallels can also be made between cities and ecosystems. Cities are
similar to organisms in that they consume resources from their
surroundings and excrete wastes. Cities transform raw materials,
fuel, and water into the built environment, human biomass and waste
(Decker et al., 2000). Of course, cities are more complex than single
organisms e and are themselves home to multitude of organisms e
humans, animals and vegetation. Thus, the notion that cities are
* Corresponding author.
E-mail address: christopher.kennedy@utoronto.ca (C. Kennedy).
0269-7491/$ e see front matter 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
doi:10.1016/j.envpol.2010.10.022
1966
a political science context (e.g., Heynen et al., 2005), or in a qualitative historical context (e.g., Tarr, 2002).
In his seminal study, Wolman (1965) used national data on
water, food and fuel use, along with production rates of sewage,
waste and air pollutants to determine per capita inow and outow
rates for a hypothetical American city of one million people (White,
2002). His approach to determining material ows, even with the
omission of important inputs such as electricity, infrastructure
materials, and other durable goods, helped focus attention on
system-wide impacts of the consumption of goods and the generation of wastes within the urban environment (Decker et al., 2000).
The rst metabolism studies of real cities were conducted in the
1970s. Interestingly the rst three studies of Tokyo (Hanya and
Ambe, 1976), Brussels (Duvigneaud and Denayeyer-De Smet,
Table 1
Chronological review of urban metabolism studies.
Author (year)
Notes/contribution
Wolman (1965)
Hypothetical US city of
1 million people
Miami
1850s Paris
Toyko
Brussels
Seminal study
Hong Kong
Zucchetto (1975)
Stanhill (1977); Odum (1983)
Hanya and Ambe (1976).
Duvigneaud and
Denayeyer-De Smet (1977)
Newcombe et al. (1978);
Boyden et al. (1981)
Girardet (1992)
Bohle (1994)
European Environment
Agency (1995)
Nilson (1995)
Baccini (1997).
Huang (1998).
Newman (1999);
Newman et al. (1996)
Stimson et al. (1999)
Hermanowicz and Asano (1999)
Hendriks et al. (2000).
Warren-Rhodes and Koenig (2001).
Baker et al. (2001)
Srme et al. (2001)
Svidn and Jonsson (2001)
Obernosterer and Brunner (2001)
Frge et al. (2001)
Chartered Institute of
Wastes Management (2002)
Gasson (2002)
Barrett et al. (2002)
Obernosterer (2002)
Sahely et al. (2003).
Emmenegger et al. (2003)
Burstrom et al. (2003)
Gandy (2004)
Lennox and Turner (2004)
Hammer and Giljum (2006)
Kennedy et al. (2007)
Schulz (2007)
Barles (2007a)
Forkes (2007)
Zhang and Yang (2007)
Ngo and Pataki (2008)
Chrysoulakis (2008)
Schremmer and Stead (2009)
Barles (2009, 2007b)
Zhang et al. (2009)
Niza et al. (2009)
Deilmann (2009)
Baker et al. (2001)
Thriault and Laroche (2009)
Browne et al. (2009)
Prague (comprehensive
metabolism study)
Gvle, Sweden
Swiss Lowlands
Taipei
Sydney
Brisbane & Southeast Queensland
Vienna & Swiss Lowlands
Hong Kong
Phoenix & Central Arizona
Stockholm
Stockholm
Vienna
Bangkok
London
Cape Town
York, UK
Toronto
Geneva
Stockholm
Paris
Beijing
Lisbon
Greater Moncton,
New Brunswick
Limerick, Ireland
Emergy approach
Emergy approach
Nitrogen balance
Heavy metals
Mercury
Lead
Nitrogen & Phosphorus
Materials
Metals
1967
Fig. 1. The urban metabolism of Brussels, Belgium in the early 1970s (Duvigneaud and Denayeyer-De Smet, 1977).
1968
1969
Table 2
Components of urban metabolism that are required for the inventorying of GHG emissions for cities and local communities.
Components of urban metabolism
Preferred units
GWh
TJ for each fuel type
Table 3
GHG emissions for cities and metropolitan regions (adapted from Kennedy et al., 2009b; note see Table 2 in source for differences in methodology).
Denition
Year
Population
Athens
Barcelona
Bologna
Brussels
Frankfurt
Geneva
Glasgow
Hamburg
Helsinki
London
Ljubljana
Madrid
Naples
Oslo
Paris
Porto
Prague
Rotterdam
Stockholm
Stuttgart
Torino
Veneto
Metropolitan region
City
Province
Capital region
Frankfurt/Rhein Main
Canton
Glasgow and the Clyde Valley
Metropolitan region
Capital region
Greater London
Osrednjeslovenska region
Comunidad de Madrid
Province
Metropolitan region
Ile de France
Metropolitan region
Greater Prague
City
Metropolitan region
Metropolitan region
Metropolitan region
Province
2005
2006
2005
2005
2005
2005
2004
2005
2005
2003
2005
2005
2005
2005
2005
2005
2005
2005
2005
2005
2005
2005
3,989,000
1,605,602
899,996
1,006,749
3,778,124
432,058
1,747,040
4,259,670
988,526
7,364,100
500,021
5,964,143
3,086,622
1,039,536
11,532,398
1,666,821
1,181,610
592,552
1,889,945
2,667,766
2,243,000
4,738,313
41.57
6.74
9.97
7.55
51.61
3.35
15.30
41.52
6.94
70.84
4.77
40.98
12.49
3.63
59.64
12.14
11.03
17.64
6.88
42.57
21.86
47.29
10.4
4.2
11.1
7.5
13.7
7.8
8.8
9.7
7.0
9.6
9.5
6.9
4.0
3.5
5.2
7.3
9.3
29.8
3.6
16.0
9.7
10.0
Austin
Calgary
Denver
Los Angeles
Minneapolis
New York
Portland
Seattle
Toronto
Washington
City
City
City and county
County
City
City
City
City
Greater Toronto Area
District of Columbia
2005
2003
2005
2000
2005
2005
2005
2005
2005
2000
672,011
922,315
579,744
9,519,338
387,711
8,170,000
682,835
575,732
5,555,912
571,723
10.48a
16.37a
11.08
124.04
7.03a
85.87
8.47a
7.82a
64.22
11.04a
15.6a
17.7a
19.4
13.0
18.3a
10.5
12.4a
13.7a
11.6
19.3a
Mexico City
Rio de Janeiro
Sao Paulo
City
City
City
2000
1998
2000
8,669,594
5,633,407
10,434,252
35.27a
12.11
14.22
4.1a
2.1
1.4
Bangkok
Beijing
Delhi
Kolkata
Shanghai
Seoul
Tianjin
Tokyo
City
Beijing Government administered area
Metropolitan area
National capital territory
Shanghai Government administered area
Seoul City
Tianjin Government administered area
Tokyo metropolitan government admin. area
2005
2006
2000
2000
2006
1998
2006
2006
5,658,953
15,810,000
15,700,000
13,200,000
18,150,000
10,321,496
10,750,000
12,677,921
60.44
159.00
20.65a
17.80a
211.98
42.03a
119.25
62.02
10.7
10.1
1.6a
1.1a
11.7
4.1a
11.1
4.9
Cape Town
City
2006
3,497,097
40.43
11.6
Total emissions
million t CO2 e
Per capita
emissions t CO2 e
1970
4. Future directions
There is a growing body of knowledge on urban metabolism.
Over 50 papers have been referenced here, some of which are
relatively comprehensive studies of metabolism, others that
analyze particular components, such as energy, water, nutrients,
metals etc. These studies provide valuable insights into the functioning of specic cities at particular points in time, but there is still
more to learn. There are only few cross-sectional studies of multiple
cities and a lack of time series studies of urban metabolism.
As Barles (2010) observes much of the research on urban
metabolism is now being conducted within the industrial ecology
community, which has broadened from its initial focus on industrial metabolism to include social and urban metabolism. A workshop held by industrial ecologists at MIT in January 2010, identied
several research needs, including:
work on the relationship between urban metabolism and the
urban poor
efforts to collect and combine energy use data from world cities
1971
Fig. 3. The urban metabolism of the Toronto Port Lands shows reduction in inputs of energy, water, materials, and nutrients due to the partial closing of these loops (designed by
a second group of graduate students at the University of Toronto).
1972
Acknowledgment
The authors are grateful for the support of the California Energy
Commission, PIER Program.
References
Baccini, P., 1997. A citys metabolism: towards the sustainable development of urban
systems. Journal of Urban Technology 4 (2), 27e39.
Baccini, P., Brunner, P.H., 1991. Metabolism of the Anthroposphere. Springer Verlag,
Berlin.
Baccini, P., Bader, H.-P., 1996. Regionaler Stoffhaushalt, Spektrum Akad. Verlag.
Baker, L.A., Hope, D., Xu, Y., Edmonds, J., Lauver, L., 2001. Nitrogen balance for the
Central Arizona-Phoenix (CAP) ecosystem. Ecosystems 4, 582e602.
Baker, L.A. (Ed.), 2009. The Water Environment of Cities. Springer, US.
Barles, S., 2007a. Feeding the city: food consumption and ow of nitrogen, Paris,
1801e1914. Science of the Total Environment 375 (1e3), 48e58.
Barles, S., 2007b. A material ow analysis of Paris and its region. Renewables in
a changing climate-innovation in the built environment. In: Proceedings of the
International Conference CISBAT 2007. cole Polytechnique Fdrale de Lausanne, Lausanne, pp. 579e584. 4e5. September 2007.
Barles, S., 2009. Urban metabolism of Paris and its region. Journal of Industrial
Ecology 13 (6), 898e913.
Barles, S., 2010. Society, energy and materials: the contribution of urban metabolism studies to sustainable urban development issues. Journal of Environmental
Planning and Management 53 (4), 439e455.
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Sociology
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2013
Article
Entangled Practices:
Governance, Sustainable
Technologies, and Energy
Consumption
Sociology
2014, Vol. 48(3) 590605
The Author(s) 2013
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DOI: 10.1177/0038038513500101
soc.sagepub.com
Ritsuko Ozaki
Isabel Shaw
Abstract
In this article we provide a timely account of how sustainable technologies become entangled
with cultural practices and thus co-evolve, influencing energy consumption. In doing so,
we critique the approach current UK policy takes towards energy renewal and carbon
reduction. We investigate the effectiveness of the social housing sectors efforts to implement
environmental policy initiatives that use a technology-driven approach. By looking at how social
housing residents consume energy as part of domestic practices, we identify tensions between
strategies to influence energy consumption by a housing association, and the ways residents
incorporate sustainable technologies into everyday practices. Our findings reveal how sustainable
technologies become enrolled in established practices: residents creatively develop novel routine
strategies to accommodate new technologies to their daily routines. We contend that policy
efforts to engender behaviour change through a technology-driven approach have limitations.
This approach ignores how practices become entangled, affecting energy consumption.
Keywords
energy consumption, environmental sustainability, governance, practices, technologies
Introduction
In the UK nearly 30 per cent of energy consumption and carbon emissions are attributed to the residential sector.1 Current UK policy recommends the installment of
Corresponding author:
Ritsuko Ozaki, Imperial College Business School, Imperial College London, South Kensington Campus,
London W7 2AZ, UK.
Email: r.ozaki@imperial.ac.uk
591
sustainable technologies (e.g. solar thermal panels), which are designed to help energy
and carbon reduction, into homes. Yet, the story does not end here. In order for the
sustainable technologies to deliver on their promise of energy renewal and carbon
reduction, the technologies require particular forms of use by residents, but the process
of user-technology interactions is not straightforward. Current policy asks that individuals simply change their behaviours in accordance with the characteristics and
requirements of the technologies. In doing so, policy makers place responsibility for
environmental outcomes on households by making environmental sustainability a matter of individual choice (Webb, 2012). We argue that such an approach is partial and
simplistic: it ignores (a) practices of routine domestic consumption, as well as (b) the
actions of actors involved in energy infrastructure provision and policy implementation (Barr et al., 2011; Shove, 2010; Spaargaren, 2011; Webb, 2012). Heading
Spaargarens (2011) call for research into the relations between consumption practices
and sustainable technologies, we take these two points as our focus of analysis to
investigate how energy is consumed as part of everyday domestic practices that engage
with sustainable technologies, and consider the effectiveness of efforts to implement
environmental policy initiatives that use a technology-driven approach. In doing so,
we examine tensions between performing and governing practice, focusing on how
practices are constituted, conducted and transformed.
In 2006, a UK government policy called the Code for Sustainable Homes was
launched as a building standard to tackle environmental sustainability issues such as
energy security, resource scarcity and the environmental impacts of activities that contribute to increased levels of carbon dioxide from domestic arenas (DCLG, 2006a).2 The
Codes target is to make all new-built homes zero carbon by 2016, with a 25 per cent
improvement in energy use before 2010 and a 44 per cent improvement by 2013, against
the 2006 Building Regulations (Part L). Pressure to comply with the Code is significant
in the social housing sector because housing schemes require Code certification as part
of the conditions set by the funding agency in order to qualify for grant subsidy.
Furthermore, local authorities often set a minimum Code level in planning conditions for
future builds. The installation of sustainable technologies is one recommendation made
by the Code. A zero-carbon home is defined as a home with zero net emissions of carbon
dioxide from all energy use (DCLG, 2006a). This definition encompasses all cooking
and electrical appliances, as well as all those energy uses that are currently part of building regulations, such as space heating and hot water (DCLG, 2006b). The home is thus a
prime site for policy interventions.
Actors seeking to operationalise policy initiatives to alter individual behaviour
deal with energy reduction as a matter of pro-environmental consumer choice
(Wilhite, 2008: 122). In doing so, they promote a technology-driven discourse by
focusing on the implementation of technologies (e.g. photovoltaic cells) within
domestic spaces, which aim to intervene in and encourage energy-saving behaviour.
In these approaches, firstly, the consumer is cast as an isolated rational individual
(Winch, 2006: 32; see also McMeekin and Southerton, 2012) whose practices are supposedly objective and neutral and thus open to intervention and governance (Webb,
2012: 113). Much criticism has been levied at this model. For example, technology is
frequently held by policy makers as the magic bullet to environmental problems,
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which fails to engage with the big questions of what our needs are and how they are
constructed and reproduced (Shove, 2004: 1053; see also Slater, 1997). Secondly,
these approaches sideline questions of collective responsibility for energy reduction,
which allows governments to treat the operations of markets and corporations per se
as above or outside the societal frame of reference (Webb, 2012: 111). By reducing society to the sum of rationally self-interested individual choices (2012: 113) a
range of actors affiliated to government efforts to affect energy consumption, as
diverse as energy providers and housing associations, are excluded from consideration. As Spaargaren (2011) argues, this is inherently problematic because the consumption of energy is invariably achieved through the social and material
infrastructures through which energy is provided.
In line with these arguments, we examine how a key actor responsible for implementing UK environmental policy a social housing association promotes normative
assumptions about use through the implementation of policy-recommended sustainable
technologies. We focus on how these assumptions are operationalised by housing association professionals to encourage pro-environmental practices by residents. To better
understand how these technologies affect residents domestic energy consumption, we
then investigate how residents adapt to the sustainable technologies and creatively manage their routines.
From our empirical analysis we identify tensions between strategies mobilised by the
housing association to influence technology use and energy consumption, and the incorporation of sustainable technologies as part of everyday practices by residents. Our findings reveal how sustainable technologies participate in the performance and transformation
of established practices, as residents creatively develop new routine strategies to incorporate those technologies and to juggle activities. The socio-cultural conditions of residents home lives with the use of sustainable and mundane technologies affect how
practices are performed and then become entangled. Energy is consumed in those complex entanglements of practice. We conclude that by ignoring these tensions and practices, current environmental initiatives that promote a technology-driven view to
influence energy consumption exclude fundamental considerations about routine practice and the pervasive effect of social and technological relationships on energy
consumption.
593
This notion of practices being interrelated, and thus inseparable from one another, is
echoed in Shove and Walkers (2010: 476) observation that patterns and practices of
daily life interrelate, erode and reinforce each other. Despite such theorisations, empirical accounts of the interrelations between practices are significantly lacking. Addressing
this, we focus on the performance of practices with regards to the sphere of culture
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Sociology 48(3)
(Pickering, 1995: 4) in which they are both situated and constituted by. Pickering
describes the sphere of culture as comprising skills, social relations, technologies and
concepts/knowledge; where practice is conceptualised as the work of cultural extension
(1995: 3). We attend to the conditions and means surrounding how practices become
interrelated, considering how sustainable and mundane technologies participate in this
process of shaping activities, and vice versa. In doing so, we do not consider technologies in isolation, but as active in practical activities (Barry, 2001: 11). With people, technologies and practices are mutually constitutive (see Barry, 2001; Pickering, 1995;
Reckwitz, 2002; Schatzki, 2001) in shaping activities and energy consumption. This
raises pertinent questions about how residents adapt to sustainable technologies, which
can disrupt and alter established routines. How do residents interactions with sustainable
technologies match up to normative notions of correct use promoted by policy and
housing association professionals? What consequences does this have for how practices
become interrelated and energy is consumed?
Methodology
We have collaborated with a large social housing provider in South East England; the
case study site is located in South East London and consists of 80 terraced houses. It is
part of a large urban regeneration site; those living on the housing scheme have moved
from an estate that was made up of tower blocks built in the late 1960s and early 1970s.
Residents were not billed individually for the consumption of water, gas and electricity,
but paid a fixed amount each month that was included as part of their rent. In contrast,
their new homes are terraced houses with solar water heating and heat recovery ventilation systems. Residents are billed individually according to the amount of water, gas and
electricity they use. The mechanical ventilation for heat recovery system exchanges stale
air for fresh air and recovers heat in the process; and the solar water heating system uses
heat from the sun to warm domestic hot water. The aim of these technologies is to reduce
energy consumption from heating water and space, which accounts for half of all thermal
energy consumption in the UK (Hawkes et al., 2011: 2), and to ultimately reduce carbon
emissions.
This study has two parts: interviews with (a) social housing professionals and (b) residents. A detailed information sheet was provided to each participant before the interview
explaining the aims of the project: that the interview was voluntary and anonymous, and
that they could withdraw from the project at any time. All interviews took between 30
and 60 minutes, and were recorded and fully transcribed. The interviews were coded
openly and analysed thematically to capture emerging themes (Thomas, 2006).
The first strand of research comprises 20 semi-structured interviews between June
2010 and August 2011with professionals working for the housing association. Each professional was a front-line actor involved in the design, management or maintenance of
housing schemes developed under the directive of the UK governments policy the
Code for Sustainable Homes. These actors included architects, a building contractor,
development managers, a community regeneration officer, maintenance managers and
council employees. Interviews were carried out in two phases. Interviews were gained
with the assistance of actors working for the housing association.
595
Household composition
Nationality
AW
MO
GT
Chinese
Nigerian
Eritrean
OO
IA
TN
GM
FO
Nigerian
Nigerian
Vietnamese
British
Nigerian
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Sociology 48(3)
Diverse actors are involved in the enactment of environmental governance which seeks
to affect individual behaviour. The social housing association is a key organisation that
implements government environmental strategies by installing and encouraging correct
use of sustainable technologies. To meet funding and planning criteria, the development
of social housing needs to demonstrate the potential for its buildings to achieve targets of
carbon reduction and energy renewal set out by the Code. In the analysis that follows, we
identify three strategies mobilised by the housing association that aim to disseminate and
implement assumptions about the consumption of energy and the conduct of everyday
life what is good, normal, healthy, efficient and profitable (Miller and Rose, 2008: 55)
which are closely tied to technology use. Specific forms of knowledge about technology use and energy consumption are promoted. In attempts to achieve this, the housing
association adopts a rational-choice model firmly grounded within a technology-driven
discourse: choice and education are two approaches used to try and engender environmental behaviour change through the use of technologies.
This approach promotes the view that sustainable technologies alone will produce the
desired environmental effects if left switched on. As the quote suggests, however, there
exists a concern that residents will worry about the cost of keeping the sustainable technologies switched on and that by turning the technologies off, this will make them redundant. To try to counteract this potential for technological failure, as well as limit energy
consumption, a cost-based incentive is presented to residents.
597
water and ventilation, and billing method. Because of the different nature of energy provision and payment method, financial considerations are viewed as pivotal to changing
residents behaviour:
There was going to be quite a big increase in rent charges and service charges [In the
previous homes] the residents paid a certain amount, which included unlimited heating hot
water and cold water So if they had the heating on 24 hours a day they would be charged
the same amount if they had the heating on for 30 minutes It seemed that rather than turning
the heating down they would just open a window because they werent paying for it. So
its educating residents about the changes that are going to happen when they move into their
new homes. (Housing Regeneration Officer)
Residents do have concerns over the higher cost of living in the new houses. Yet despite
this apprehension, strategies that focus on cost alone do not significantly affect the routine practices of residents, as we discuss later. An additional strategy is used to try to
create the environmentally beneficial outcomes imagined with the installation of the
sustainable technologies. The housing association and affiliated professionals disseminate standardised advice about correct usage of sustainable and mundane technologies
within the home.
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Sociology 48(3)
Housing association professionals promote ways of living within the home that are tied
to normative notions of technology use. This is clear in the advice given to residents on
how to reduce their energy consumption:
You can cut down on your water by taking a shower than a bath always load the washing
machine when it is completely full. Were directing a lot of residents to the Thames Water
website it gives information about how much a family of four would expect to spend if they
have a water meter property. (Housing Regeneration Officer)
This advice neglects socio-cultural practices and related meanings, such as notions of
cleanliness. Indeed, a resident described how she had been given a timer device to reduce
her shower time to four minutes. This was not sufficient enough time for her to feel
clean: Im not using it [the timer] any more Its too short for me. Im like, oh my God,
Ive not cleaned properly! (FO).
It is evident that potential tensions exist between the housing associations efforts to
introduce energy efficient practices within the home and residents daily socio-technological practices, which we investigate in detail in the next section. We have discussed
three strategies adopted by the housing association that try to govern the behaviour of residents. The first strategy assumes that sustainable technologies alone will achieve the
desired environmental effect. The second approach employs cost-based incentives to
reduce energy usage, making it a matter of choice to decide to use less heating and hot
water, for example. The third strategy offers standardised advice for resource intensive
practices such as showering, which assumes that consumption practices are universal and
remain constant with time. The desire for efficient sustainable technology use embodied
in these strategies thus neglects the cultural and social concepts and practices that underpin energy consumption (see Shove, 2010; Southerton et al., 2004; Spaargaren, 2011).
We next examine residents routine practices and their use of both sustainable and
mundane technologies as part of accomplishing their daily lives, which, we argue, have
a significant impact on the ways in which practices interrelate and the diverse ways in
which energy is consumed.
599
Cooking
The heat recovery ventilation system installed in the residents homes is purportedly
energy efficient by offering a means to control the indoor climate through providing
fresh air. The regulation of the indoor climate is supposed to require a lessened need to
open windows and thus allow the heat of the property to increase in the winter and
decrease in the summer. We found that some households adapted their cooking practice
to try to control steam and cooking smell, developing their own strategies to manage
ventilation as the ventilation system did not remove smells from cooking:
I have not used it [heat recovery ventilation]. I dont bother any more Sometimes I go in
there [the kitchen], I see theyve [other household members] left it on for two or three days and
I just switch it off. But if Im cooking I dont even bother because it doesnt work I have to
leave the front door open, leave the back door open. All the windows upstairs are open If I
am in the house the front door, kitchen window [is open] so that the smell will go. And I
dont cook in the evening, I cook in the morning so that will give it time [for the smell to go]
if I have to fry fish, I cant fry fish in this house because for the next three months the smell
with stay in the house. I will have to take it [a cooking hob] out [to the patio] and fry it there.
(OO)
In addition to these strategies of scheduling cooking to the morning so that the smells
have time to dissipate, and changing the location of cooking from the kitchen to the garden patio, households also manage ventilation by cooking particular dishes, such as an
African stew. Residents cook the stew in bulk so that only one day a week is dedicated
to intensive cooking (producing smells and steam). Bulk cooking is scheduled when the
rest of the household is out of the house. This is important in colder months when opening windows and doors results in heat loss, but other family members are not affected:
[I shop] maybe two weeks ahead I buy my meat and fish, I have two [freezer] drawers that I
have left for that. Thats for the stew If youre doing all this cooking, it takes the whole day
to boil it, fry it, bag them in the freezer When you cook and you leave this door open, even
though you switch on the vent you can still smell it upstairs in the house but once you leave
the kitchen window open, at least the smell escapes immediately Its colder but then
Im the only one cooking in the kitchen and I do the cooking when no one is home. (MO)
Bulk shopping and cooking, as well as strategically using doors and windows, aids
households to manage ventilation. This process reciprocally shapes how families organise their time and leisure practices. Assembling the stew offers flexibility to conduct
these practices and achieve ventilation. This flexibility is also facilitated by technologies
such as the refrigerator-freezer to store large quantities of food and the microwave to
provide instant meals (see Shove and Southerton, 2000), which frees up residents
time for other activities:
[Now that we have bought a fridge freezer] she [his wife] will cook stew and then put them
in small containers and just freeze them. So you just go to the freezer as and when you need
them put them in the microwave just like those ready-made foods that you buy She
does a major cooking and she spends something like three hours in the kitchen And that will
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last sometimes nearly two months Its sort of freed up time to attend to other things, like
maybe go to the library, go to the pub, and you know, do the shopping. (IA)
I cook for the week the stew can be eaten with rice or whatever If I cook it on Saturdays
it lasts by [till] Wednesday or Thursday and Friday we just eat out. Once its cooked it can
be left in the fridge. [The stew] would be a mixture of fish, beans, and chicken, everything
goes together spiced up The boys can just come back from school they will just go in the
freezer, get it and, you know, put it in the microwave Some weekends we have weddings
So I tend to do [bulk shopping and cooking], like I did last weekend, so for the next three weeks
now Im OK, I dont have to get to the market If you have an African wedding you have to
go from about 12 pm, all day practically My son [also] has football on Saturday then you
have people who want to visit you we dont have any free weekends any more we dont
have any free day, let me just put it like that. (MO)
The incorporation of a new technology with existing ways of living in the home culminates in the emergence of novel socio-technological practices and arrangements. We see
next how these new arrangements have a knock-on effect on the conduct of other
resource intensive practices, such as showering. How these practices are adapted and
become entangled influences how energy is consumed. For instance, to manage ventilation one household made changes to the hardware and techniques of practice, such as
the tools and methods of cooking, giving up their traditional Vietnamese food, and cooking by not frying, but steaming:
The housing [association] dont give us permission to fit the extractor hood, so that means
were not allowed to make the food like before We have to change the way we cook
before [we moved in] we can [could] cook our dishes like traditional [Vietnamese food], but
since we move here we prefer to steam [rather than fry] Mostly we have for dinner is
vegetables, and we mix our fish which [we] make very quickly We dont cook as complicated
as before, so the ingredients we find [are] very simple We prefer the taste before more than
[to] now, but we have to get used to it. (TN)
This change has consequences for ways in which the resident organises her daily life and
other practices. The cooking is now simpler but with less flavour; because of this, alternative efforts were sought to introduce flavour by marinating food. This process demands
a significant period of time to complete and so the respondent schedules her food preparation for each morning:
You have to leave it [food] for a couple of hours at least and then it turns out very tasty. If you
do it too quickly it turns out like not tasty. Thats why I always prefer to do it in the morning
the gap between preparing and the meal is about four or five hours if I prepare in advance
the time I cook is less And when we have dinner I dont feel so tired Thats why I prefer
a shower in the morning because I prepare the food, after that I have a shower and in the
evening I cook it just 1520 minutes and we have dinner You have a nice dinner with your
family and were talking, my children are talking about what is happening at school. (TN)
Adopting a new cooking method and arranging her time in this way affects the scheduling of her shower and the demarcation of family time. It is evident that one strategy to
601
cope with a new technology embodied in a new practice has a domino effect on the
arrangement of other activities during the day.
Residents alter their practices: the tools (ingredients), methods (steaming, frying) and
techniques (recipes) of cooking, to enact unique strategies for ventilation. These strategies are entwined in efforts to juggle family activities and time. The notion that adequate
ventilation will occur if you just keep the vent switched on promotes the idea that there
exists a universal home and user, separating sustainable technologies from these wider
social and cultural practices. Yet in reality we see that the varied practices of food preparation and cooking mutually shape residents engagement with technologies and their
energy consumption. Clearly, a standard ventilation system alone cannot control the
indoor climate and improve energy efficiency, as it overlooks the creative and culturally
diverse practices of residents. Sustainable technologies can change established routines
(Spaargaren, 2011) in ways unanticipated by the housing association: residents actively
adapt to these technologies with varied implications for use. Through these processes
new cultural practices emerge with potentially diverse and conflicting consequences for
anticipated environmental outcomes.
The arrangement of time, family members and work, for example, demands careful planning and coordination and the shower aids this by allowing for speed and convenience
(Hand et al., 2005: 78). In the following quote, a family morning timetable is scheduled around showering:
Everyone takes a shower and leaves We wake up around 6.30. I think we finish, all of us, by
7.30. Within one hour everyone has finished, six people And by eight oclock weve all left.
First me or their mum, because of the nature of our work. It might be delayed. Otherwise my
bigger daughter, she has to leave by 7.30. She always gets to her job early. Theres a boy, the
same thing, he might leave at quarter or ten to eight. Theres one she leaves at ten past eight,
and the other one, the youngest daughter leaves at 8.30. (GT)
Current work on practices sheds light on the relations between showering and strategies
of time management (Southerton, 2006; Warde, 1999). Building on this, we argue that
residents wider socio-cultural organising praxis is shaped by sustainable and mundane
technologies, and vice versa, affecting how practices become interrelated, in turn, influencing other resource intensive practices. As part of the praxis of daily life, routine practices are closely interconnected; we cannot view them in isolation.
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Showering and bathing practices are also part of, and intertwined with, residents
social life:
[My daughter] doesnt have a bath in the morning, she has a bath in the night But if its
weekend when Im at home, she has to have a bath in the morning because we have to go to
church, so I cant leave and go out of the house without having a proper wash. (OO)
We all take a shower in the morning You use a bath for your children, maybe in the evening
We do baths in the evening if the kids have been to sports, and you know, summertime, because
they roll on the grass, they do a lot in summer, we do both morning and evening (MO)
In the latter household, the demarcation of morning showering (adults) and evening bathing (children) is closely tied to the practices in which adults (work) and children (sports)
are involved. The consumption of energy services, such as showering, and energy itself,
are together accomplished as part of peoples daily lives (Wilhite, 2008).
Practices (re)configure and sustain one another; they are intertwined with and constitutive of existing ways of doing things, which are adapted and transformed through
negotiating new social, cultural, and technological arrangements. Efforts to govern residents practices and energy consumption through strategies that essentially bracket off
sustainable technologies from the lives and activities of residents disregard how sustainable technologies contribute to how residents arrange their daily lives. During these
juggling acts new forms of practice are created, which do not conform to the technologies characteristics and technological potential anticipated by housing professionals.
Advice, such as taking a shower instead of a bath, therefore, does not lead to so-called
behaviour change as imagined by policy makers.
603
and standardised advice overlooks how energy consumption is achieved. The policy
approach of asking individuals to change their behaviours in accordance with the characteristics and requirements of the sustainable technologies simply does not work.
Residents narratives not only reinforce well-established sociological criticisms of the
policys rational-choice model, but also further our understanding of the relations between
sustainable technologies, practices and energy consumption. The narratives offer deeper
insights into how practices mutually shape and sustain each other. Analysing these, we
have empirically demonstrated and furthered our understanding of the interconnectedness of practices (Rechwitz, 2002; Shove and Walker, 2010), by broadening this theoretical contention in relation to the contingent socio-cultural and technological frames of
residents lives and their implicated ways of engaging with technologies. In doing so, we
have demonstrated how the entanglement of practices shapes energy consumption.
We contend that the relations between mundane practices (e.g. cooking and showering
or bathing) are entwined and constitutive of activities as residents creatively adapt to the
sustainable technologies, generating new forms of cultural practice. Despite recent work
that examines how mundane technologies become enrolled as part of objectual elements of
practice and energy consumption, there needs to be a greater appreciation of how both
sustainable and mundane technologies affect the interrelations between residents practices
in the sphere of culture (Pickering, 1995: 4) that influence how energy is consumed.
Governance attempts to promote normative concepts of correct use, which depend
on consumer choice, do not materialise in practice and thus have limitations.
Environmental sustainability cannot be achieved without understanding how sustainable
technologies reciprocally shape and are incorporated into residents activities and lives.
The rational-choice model excludes fundamental questions about routine practice and
the pervasive effect of social and technological relationships on energy consumption.
There is no linear relationship between sustainable technologies and sustainable energy
consumption. Rather, future research needs to investigate the different trajectories of
use that materialise out of the interrelations between practices. The varied practices that
emerge have important implications for how energy is consumed.
Acknowledgements
We thank the collaborating housing association and residents for their participation in this research.
This article was jointly written.
Funding
This research was funded by the UK Engineering and Physical Science Research Council (EP/
F036930/1).
Notes
1. UK domestic energy consumption comprises 28.4 per cent of total energy consumption
(BERR, 2008) and residential carbon emissions account for 29.4 per cent (DECC, 2011).
2. The Code for Sustainable Homes provides recommendations for house builders to make new
buildings environmentally sustainable. Developers and builders are able to choose technologies for each development. Points, which are calculated into Code levels, are given depending
on how much improvement they make (DCLG, 2006a).
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Sociology 48(3)
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Date submitted February 2013
Date accepted May 2013
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This article is an intellectual history of two enduring binariessociety-nature and citycountrysideand their co-identification, told through evolving uses of the concept of urban
metabolism. After recounting the emergence of the modern society-nature opposition in the
separation of town and country under early industrial capitalism, I interpret three ecologies
successive periods of urban metabolism research spanning three disciplines within the social sciences. The first is the human ecology of the Chicago School, which treated the city as an
ecosystem in analogy to external, natural ecosystems. The second is industrial ecology: materialsflow analyses of cities that conceptualize external nature as the source of urban metabolisms raw
materials and the destination for its social wastes. The third is urban political ecology, a reconceptualization of the city as a product of diverse socio-natural flows. By analyzing these three
traditions in succession, I demonstrate both the efficacy and the limits to Catton and Dunlaps
distinction between a human exemptionalist paradigm and a new ecological paradigm in
sociology.
INTRODUCTION
Louis Wirth opened his celebrated article Urbanism as a Way of Life with the observation that nowhere has mankind been farther removed from organic nature than
under the conditions of life characteristic of great cities (Wirth 1938:12). Historically, this has been a common sentiment, but one we now know is wrong. Nature is as
much present in city concrete as in a farmers field. Indeed, Wirths statement eloquently expresses the society-nature oppositionthe idea that the social and the
natural are distinct and perhaps opposed realms of reality. This article is an urban
intellectual history of that opposition, told via one specific concept that is particularly
expressive of the evolution of the theme over time: urban metabolism.
The term metabolism was coined in the early 19th century to describe chemical
changes within living cells. Within 50 years, its use was widespread in biology and what
would become biochemistry to characterize processes of organic breakdown and
recomposition, within individual organisms (at a cellular scale) and between organisms and their environment. Ever since, metabolism has lived a dual existence in the
natural sciences, referring both to processes by which bodies change and reproduce
themselves and to more holistic conceptions of ecosystem relations (Fischer-Kowalski
1998; Foster 1999).
*Direct all correspondence to David Wachsmuth, Department of Sociology, New York University, 295
Lafayette St, 4th Floor, New York, NY 10012; e-mail: david.wachsmuth@nyu.edu
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It was in the latter register that the metabolism concept entered the social sciences,
via Karl Marx, who appropriated it to describe first the human transformation of
nature through labor and second the capitalist system of commodity exchange. Marx
was also the first to use the concept of social metabolism to question the apparent
separation between human beings and their environment:
What requires explanation is not the unity of living and active human beings with
the natural, inorganic conditions of their metabolism with nature. . . . What we
must explain is the separation of these inorganic conditions of human existence
from this active existence. (Marx 1964:8687; emphasis in original)
This is the society-nature divide, which Marx elsewhere referred to as a metabolic
rift (Foster 2000). In this article, I reexamine it as a distinctively urban phenomenon.
I begin by recasting familiar arguments about the production of nonhuman nature
to emphasize that the society-nature opposition took its modern form in the separation of town and country under the emergence of industrial capitalism. The
co-identification of these two oppositionssociety-nature and city-countrysideis
the rubric I use to interpret changing uses of the metaphor of urban metabolism. I
analyze three ecologies: three successive periods of urban metabolism research
spanning three disciplines within the social sciences.
The first is the human ecology of the Chicago School. In what was to become the
dominant sociological understanding of the city for much of the 20th century, Robert
Park and Ernest Burgess treated the city as an ecosystem in analogy to external, natural
ecosystems, and conceptualized urban metabolism as a process of social (i.e., nonnatural) change internal to the city. The second era of the urban metabolism concept is that
of industrial ecology: materials-flow analyses of cities, following Wolmans (1965)
foundational text The Metabolism of Cities. Like the Chicago School, it locates
society spatially within cities, but adds external nature as the source of raw inputs and
the destination for social wastes. The final era is the rise of urban political ecology
(UPE), a hybrid approach to studying urban natures premised on an analytical dissolution of the society-nature division. These scholars explicitly reconceptualize the city as
a product of diverse socio-natural flows.
The succession of the three ecologies demonstrates a progressively greater awareness of the role of nature within urbanization and thus within human society, but also
a changing real relationship between these terms. Nature begins as entirely absent from
the city, proceeds to inhabit its outside, and ends up profoundly implicated in its production and reproduction. The history I present here thus offers a qualification to
Catton and Dunlaps (1980) influential elaboration of a break in sociology between a
human exemptionalist paradigm, which holds human society to be exempt from
natural forces and constraints, and a new ecological paradigm, which incorporates
natural forces into its analysis. On the one hand, I demonstrate that a similar break
occurred outside the domain of mainstream sociology, lending support to their argument that changing material conditions have driven changing awareness of the role of
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environmental factors in the social world. But on the other hand, the limits of the new
ecological paradigm are illustrated by further developments in urban metabolism
research in recent decades that have been slow to occur in either environmental or
urban sociology. I return to these considerations in the conclusion.
THE URBAN ORIGINS OF THE SOCIETY-NATURE OPPOSITION
The city is now frequently presumed to be the future proving ground for the relationship between human beings and their natural environment. Here, for example, is a
recent edition of UN-HABITATs influential State of the Worlds Cities report:
From a sustainable development perspective, the welfare of future generations
depends on how well present generations tackle the environmental burdens associated with urban living. Environmental harmonybetween rural and urban areas,
and within citiesis a growing concern among urban planners, policymakers and
environmentalists. (UN-HABITAT 2008:122)
Many such statements are contextualized with reference to a dawning urban age: 50
percent of the worlds population now live in cities. This is a round number, but ultimately not a very compelling quantitative justification for an apparently qualitative
shift in the relationship between cities, society, and the environment. If urbanization
has indeed provoked a metabolic rift in the social relation to nature (Foster 2000), it is
hard to see how any particular demographic threshold could be decisive. In fact, this
relationship is not as novel as contemporary discourse often assumes: the modern form
of the society-nature opposition is to a large extent a consequence of the separation of
town and country under 19th-century capitalism.
The basic proposition is that modern Western understandings of nature were set in
the emergence of industrial capitalism. In particular, what I take to be the most important feature of the society-nature oppositionthe idea that nature is a realm external
to human society and in some sense even antithetical to itowes its modern, recognizable existence to the social transformations wrought by the industrial revolution. This
argument is a common one, in some form or another (e.g., Polanyi 1944; Williams
1973, 1980; Berger 1980; Cronon 1995; Foster 2000; Smith 2008). The scholars who
have made it have persuasively demonstrated the role that the society-nature opposition has played in (1) legitimizing both the human domination of nature in the name
of progress, and (2) naturalizing socially produced injustices such as inequality, racism,
sexism, war, and imperialism.
But much of this research has tended to downplay the specific aspect of industrial
capitalism most responsible for the setting the terms of the modern society-nature
opposition: the separation of town and country.1 We see this clearly in William
Cronons brilliant article on the creation of wildernessanother term for external,
nonhuman nature. Echoing the seminal work of Nash (1967), Cronon (1995:69) argues
that wilderness is quite profoundly a human creationindeed, the creation of very
particular human cultures at very particular moments in human history, and locates
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this creation in 19th-century North America and Western Europe. He identifies two
important causes of the production of external nature: the sublime and the frontier.
The former is a Romantic sense of spiritual wonder imbued in certain remote landscapes, common, according to Cronon, to European and American imaginaries of
nature. The latter is a more distinctively American concept of promise and renewal
outside the bounds of civilization.
Cronon demonstrates the positive origin of wilderness as both sublime and frontier,
but only hints occasionally at its negative origin. That is, what was wilderness being
defined in contrast to, beyond industrial civilization in general? The closest we get in his
account is the following line: The dream of an unworked natural landscape is very
much the fantasy of people who have never themselves had to work the land to make a
livingurban folk for whom food comes from a supermarket or a restaurant instead
of a field, and for whom the wooden houses in which they live and work apparently
have no meaningful connection to the forests in which trees grow and die (Cronon
1995:80). But of course there were urban folk who did not grow their own food long
before either the sublime or the frontier separated the idea of nature from the idea of
society. So what changed?
The answer is the separation of town and country into distinctive and apparently
autonomous social realities, a process ushered in by the new spatial division of labor of
European industrial capitalism. As Sennett (1969:3) observes of Western Europe, up to
the time of the Industrial Revolution, the city was taken by most social thinkers to be
the image of society itself, and not some special, unique form of social life. We find a
paradigmatic example in the first book of Rousseaus Social Contract, where the term
city simply describes the body politic. Such a usage does not imply a contrast of city
with any other social sphere, and certainly not with an agricultural or pastoral countryside. Indeed, it would have been strange had Rousseau drawn such a contrast. For historically, as Weber (1958:70) notes concisely, The relation of the city to agriculture has
not been clear cut.
In England by the 19th century, however, manufacturing (previously dispersed
throughout the countryside in so-called cottage industries) was concentrating along
with a growing working class in the cities (Polanyi 1944; Thompson 1963). And
embattled rural communities, increasingly finding their ways of life threatened by the
new political and economic weight of the cities, engaged in radical acts of resistance
that paralleled the better known urban oppositional movements such as Luddism
(Calhoun 1982). The result was a widespread (i.e., both intellectual and popular)
imaginary of town and country as opposing but inextricably linked forces in English
society. The new industrial cities were not contrasted with smaller towns (as, for
instance, Rousseau earlier contrasted the metropolis with the town [Ellison 1985]) but
with the countryside. And the fate of the countryside was held to be a question of
reining in the destructive influence of the city (Spirn 1985).
In other words, within the citycountry relationship, the city came to occupy the
socially decisive position by the late 19th century. (This despite the fact that the majority of the English population continued to reside in villages and small towns.) The city
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became the active, social subjectthe place where society really is locatedwhile the
countryside was progressively reduced to a dominated, nonsocial other (Haila
2000:157).
This is the context that Cronon was no doubt aware of but did not emphasize in his
account of the creation of wilderness. When he quotes Wordsworths Prelude, with its
solemn depiction of sacred nature, he might plausibly have paired it with William
Blakes And Did Those Feet in Ancient Time, a poem composed in 1804, within a few
years of Wordsworths:
And did those feet in ancient time.
Walk upon Englands mountains green:
And was the holy Lamb of God,
On Englands pleasant pastures seen!
And did the Countenance Divine,
Shine forth upon our clouded hills?
And was Jerusalem builded here,
Among these dark Satanic Mills? (Blake 1994:114)
Here, wildernessexternal, nonhuman natureis put in its proper historical context,
next to the dark Satanic Mills of the newly industrializing city. We might likewise juxtapose Walt Whitmans Leaves of Grassits reflections on external nature readily locatable within the American transcendentalist traditionwith his later, modernist work
about New York City. It is the same coin: on one side, society in the city; on the other,
nature in the countryside.
Finally, here is Ebenezer Howard, writing in 1898, describing the magnets of town
and country that pull on individuals:
But neither the Town magnet nor the Country magnet represents the full plan and
purpose of nature. Human society and the beauty of nature are meant to be
enjoyed together. The two magnets must be made one. As man and woman by their
varied gifts and faculties supplement each other, so should town and country.
(Howard 1965:9)
Notice with how little hesitation Howard moves between town and country and
society and nature as expressions of the same opposition. Such an attitude was perfectly sensible in England by the end of the 19th century, but would have been nearly
incomprehensible 150 years earlier. This is the fundamental development I wish to
identify: the social separation of town from country in the rise of industrial capitalism,
and as a consequence, the perceived separation of human society from nonhuman
nature. In this sense, both the society-nature opposition and its manifestation in mainstream sociology as the human exemptionalist paradigm are constitutively urban
phenomena (Dunlap and Catton 1994:6; Clement 2010:292).
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is telling: there was always a tension within the Chicago Schoolas in early
20th-century sociology more generallyabout which were appropriate, and about how
far to take them. In the first pages of his seminal article, Park (1915:57778) proposes
to study the city as a mechanism, but immediately hedges by suggesting it might also
be characterized as a growth. In Burgesss The Growth of the City, there is a basic
incompatibility between the metabolism metaphor, which implies that the city should
be treated as an organism (a sort of scaling down of Herbert Spencers conception of
society as an organism), and the succession metaphor, which implies that the city
should be treated as an ecosystem.
Human ecology was above all an investigation of how humans adapt to their
environment, with the city serving as the privileged environment for the Chicago
Schools research program. But, as Burgesss urban metabolism demonstrates, the relevant environment was conceived of as entirely a social one (for the same tendency
in subsequent mainstream sociology, see Catton and Dunlap 1980:22). All the biological metaphors remain just thatmetaphors. Burgess uses the concept of metabolism in analogy to natural metabolism, but nature itself makes no appearance in
Burgesss account whatsoever, nor does it figure significantly into human ecology
more generally.
The lack of a real role for naturewhether as resources, local flora and fauna, landscape, weather and climate, and so onin Burgesss explanatory agenda leads to some
remarkable tensions. For Burgess, the city is a self-contained system, within which
people and their social ties circulate, integrate, and disintegrate with no reference to the
outside world except ongoing human immigration. But at the same time, he is studying
the growth of the city: he understands urban metabolism to be a process of transformation, not simply reproduction, and growth itself is a premise rather than something
to be explained. In other words, Burgess approaches the city as (1) a self-contained
system (either in analogy to an organism or an ecosystem) (2) that is ceaselessly
growing. These two attributes are, of course, mutually exclusive. Any plant ecologist
who found a bounded system that grew indefinitely would be surprised indeed.
This is the society-nature opposition mapped onto town and country in its barest
form. The study of society is the study of the city, while nature lurks as an unmentioned backdrop, at best to inform the study of primitive folk societies in the countryside. There could be no clearer example of Catton and Dunlaps (1980) human
exemptionalist paradigm in action. But to observe the absence of a substantive role for
nature from human ecology is not to retrospectively accuse Burgess and the rest of the
Chicago School of incompetence or blindness. These scholars sought to understand a
novel social systemthe industrial citythat appeared to be operating under its own
autonomous, self-perpetuating logic. In this sense, urban metabolismand human
ecology more generallyfollows directly from the separation of town and country discussed above. A purely social urban metabolism, endlessly growing but nevertheless
self-contained, only became a plausible idea once cities were sufficiently large as a
result of rural-urban migration, sufficiently autonomous as social realms, and sufficiently significant in the general course of social life.
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early industrial capitalism opened a rift in the circulation of soil nutrients. Nutrients
still left the soil as food, and yet, since this food was consumed far from its point of
origin, the waste products were no longer returned to the soil as fertilizer but were
simply expelled out the sewers. What had previously been a circulatory metabolism
was becoming a one-way flow. Foster generalizes this idea into a critique of capitalisms
tendency to undermine the conditions for its own survival (although one still rooted in
the imbalance between the city and the countryside), and other researchers have fruitfully applied the concept of metabolic rift to a variety of environmental questions (e.g.,
Moore 2000; Clark and York 2005). In all cases, the basic formulation resembles Girardets distinction between linear metabolism and circular metabolism, although the etiology differs and the political thrust is more radical.
Girardet presents the underlying conception behind these approaches to urban
metabolism in an unusually clear form:
Cities transform raw materials into finished products. They convert food, fuels,
forest products, minerals, water, and human energy into buildings, manufactured
goods, and financial and political power: all the components of civilization. (Girardet 1996:20)
In other words, urban metabolism is the conversion of nature into society. Likewise, in Newmans model of urban metabolismthe most holistic of the empirical
studies within industrial ecologynatural resources remain the sole inputs, to be
metabolized through dynamics of settlements into both livability and waste
outputs (Newman 1999:22021). Correspondingly, from Wolmans initial intervention to the present, industrial ecology has approached urban sustainability specifically
as the need for cities to consume fewer natural resourcesthat is, consume less
nature. (Not surprisingly, the focus of urban metabolism studies has increasingly
shifted from resources to carbon emissions [e.g., Chen and Chen 2012], reflecting
the larger transition in environmental concern from limits to growth to climate
change.)
The consequence is that industrial ecology implicitly maps the society-nature
opposition onto town and country in the same fashion as human ecology, although
natures role is elaborated. The country is the geographical area where natureraw
materialsis located, while the city is the geographical area where the society that
metabolizes this nature is located. The difference is that for human ecology, the object
of investigation was the growth of the city in social terms, so Chicago School sociologists could import analogies with nature into a purely social account of city growth,
while for industrial ecology the object of investigation is the sustainability of urban
resource use, so for Wolman, Girardet and the rest the city is only understandable in
relation to the external natural environment that supplies the raw materials for its
growth.
If industrial ecology gives a greater role in its urban metabolism to nature than
does human ecology, it gives a lesser role to humans. This is hardly surprisingthat
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materials science would pay more attention to materials, and sociology would pay
more attention to the socialbut it is worth emphasizing, because it strongly
informs the way that both environmental problems and their potential solutions are
approached. The industrial ecology approach is ultimately technocratic: it presents
environmental problems as technical problems rather than social ones. Girardet
(2008:124), for example, after discussing the imperative for cities to adopt circular
metabolisms, asks What does a circular metabolism mean in practice? The answer,
it turns out, is a discussion of cooperation on waste diversion between corporations
and the municipal government in a Danish town. We are told that such cooperation
is desirable and that other cities should emulate it. But what led the corporations and
municipality to cooperate? What were the politics at work? The power structures and
forms of contestation? In other words, where are the social and the historical?
For Girardet, the problem of linear urban metabolisms and thus unsustainable
urban society is one of insufficient local will. Nature stands at the ready, in a static
fashion, to be used in more or less harmonious ways. Cities (consistently and uncritically imbued with agentic properties in his account) each need to adopt more sustainable environmental practices with respect to that static nature to convert their
linear metabolisms into circular onesto close their individual metabolic rifts and
thereby reduce the resource pressure they put on the earth. But this raises the question: why should we look for municipal solutions to the pathologies of urban
metabolism when the environmental pressures are universally understood to be
regional or indeed planetary? Are problems in the city necessarily problems of the
city?
Throughout the industrial ecology literature on urban metabolism, we frequently
find self-consciously global environmental questions mapped onto the city. Wolman
(1965:179; emphasis added) is paradigmatic in this regard, introducing his foundational text with the observation that the planet cannot assimilate without limit the
untreated wastes of civilization, and then pivoting to a discussion of the city. Where
there is a justification for such logical leaps in more contemporary scholarship, it is
usually an invocation of the urban age thesis discussed briefly above. Our global
society is now an urban society, so solutions to our global problems must be urban
solutions. It is worth noting that Foster, whose diagnosis of the pathologies of contemporary urban metabolism has a lot in common with Girardet, makes no such
assumption. For Foster, the metabolic rift is a feature of global capitalism, and repairing the rift means confronting capitalism at a global scale. Marshaling the local will
of cities may well be part of such a confrontation, but cannot be the confrontation
itself. Still, Girardets assumption, widely shared as it is, demonstrates the potency of
the conflation of the society-nature and town-country oppositions. Society is in the
city, nature is in the country, so if there is a crisis in the relationship of society to
nature, the thinking goes, we must look for solutions in the city. The same tendency
is present in environmental sociology, where many analyses of urbanization have
treated it as a source of environmental degradation (Clement 2010:294)cities consuming nature.
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urban socio-natural landscape to take the form it does, and the differential environmental impacts that landscape has on different classes and groups within the city
(Gandy 2003; Domene and Saur 2007).
To assess the potential contributions for environment and urban sociology of
UPEs approach to urban metabolism, we can compare it briefly to what is probably
the most influential work on urban and environmental change in recent decades:
Cronons (1991) Natures Metropolis. Like UPE, Cronons history of Chicago and its
agricultural hinterland foregrounds the role of nature in constituting the city, in his
case by tracing the flow of commodities from raw materials to social institutions such
as railroads and the Chicago stock exchange. But there are two features of Cronons
work that place him more comfortably in the tradition of new ecological paradigm
environmental sociology and industrial ecology. First, he treats nature and the environment overwhelmingly as the fuel for the development of the urban social system
(although in his case the system spans city and hinterland). This is by design, of
coursethe book sets out explicitly to chart commodity flowsbut the consequence
of this design is that while Cronon is able to document the role of nature in the production of the social, he fails to grapple with the social production of nature (Smith
2008), which has been a major emphasis of UPE and is slowly filtering into urban
sociology (Capek 2010). Second, Natures Metropolis is largely silent on the class politics and power relations corresponding to the transformations of nature that it documents. Again, Cronon acknowledges that he deliberately left these questions aside,
but this will not likely be a satisfactory response to urban and environmental sociologists, for whom power relations are key concerns, and who would do better in this
regard to follow UPEs lead in investigating not just urban nature but the politics of
urban nature.
There are still some gaps in the UPE project though. Most notably, there is a contradiction between the most influential UPE theorizations of urbanizationwhich
stress its planetary dimensions and its juxtaposition of the global and the
local (Swyngedouw 1996; Keil 2003; Heynen et al. 2006)and the nearly exclusive
empirical focus on cities, traditionally understood (but see Pellow [2006] for an
insightful exception). This is methodological cityism: the city is taken to be the
privileged analytical lens for studying contemporary processes of urban social transformation that are not necessarily limited to the city (Angelo and Wachsmuth 2012).
So, while scholars working within the UPE tradition have produced insightful analyses of cities as products of global socio-natural processes, they have largely failed to
investigate noncity products of those same processes. In this respect, Cronons
mutual investigation of the city and the countryside has not yet been equaled within
UPE, where the city is richly theorized and investigated in socio-natural terms, but
the countryside remains inert by default, inasmuch as it is not explored in these same
terms.
Still, UPE has advanced a notion of urban metabolism that manages in important
respects to overcome the limitations of the human ecology and industrial ecology
models that came before. It does so while being in some ways a hybrid of the two, com518
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bining in the concept of socio-nature the social and political concerns more traditionally associated with urban sociology and the attention to the natural world associated
with ecology.
CONCLUSION: NATURES STEADY MARCH ON THE CITY
The intellectual history I have told about urban metabolism is a story of natures
steady march on the city. For human ecology, urban metabolism is analogous
to nature, but only analogousthe natural environment itself is simply a backdrop
to a purely social process of urbanization. For industrial ecology, nature is the source
of the urban metabolisms fuel and the destination for its wastes. In both cases,
the two terms of the society-nature opposition are mapped exclusively onto the
city and the countryside. For UPE, by contrast, urbanization is a constitutively
socio-natural process, where the city is not merely the site of urban metabolism but
rather its product. These successive understandings are summarized graphically in
Figure 1.
But there have been, in fact, two armies marching. On the one hand, conceptions of
urban metabolism have changed as social scientists have become better at thinking
about nature and the city. This somewhat modernist notion is, I think, undeniable, and
while the story as I have presented it here inevitably has imposed some measure of
Human ecology
Industrial ecology
Town
Country
Town
Society
Nature
Society
Country
Nature
Input (resources)
::
Output (waste)
Country
Socio-nature
FIGURE 1. Varieties of the Intertwined Society-Nature and Town-Country Oppositions in Different Models of Urban Metabolism.
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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
The author would like to thank Hillary Angelo, Neil Brenner, Colin Jerolmack, Anne
Rademacher, Esm Webb, and the participants in the NYLON workshop for their
thoughtful comments on earlier drafts of the article.
NOTES
1
Two exceptions are Bergers (1980) brief account of capitalist urbanizations relegation of
animals to the domestic sphere as pets, and Fosters (2000) elaboration of Marxs theory of
metabolic rift. But the former has overwhelmingly been read as an animal studies intervention,
while the latter is focused specifically on the soil-nutrient cycle between farms and cities.
Neither is commonly read as a general account of the relationship between the separation of
town and country and the society-nature divide. Williamss (1973) The Country and the City, by
contrast, is highly influential but places less emphasis on the discontinuities of the Industrial
Revolution and more on the long and ambiguous historical lineage of rural enclosure and social
transformation in England, and thus stands as a partial dissent from my argument here.
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ABSTRACT
In this paper, we show that an area-based approach to fostering the energy transition has
the potential to improve understanding of the factors that contribute to the viability of
innovative energy initiatives. On the basis of a desk study and gathering empirical data, we
witnessed that energy initiatives have the capacity to activate linkages with their local
physical and socio-economic landscape. Furthermore, when initiatives build upon the
qualities of their environment, they tend to be less sensitive to changed conditions and
shocks and hence, are more viable. Moreover, our study shows that drawing upon these
distinct local qualities and opportunities, fosters variety in locally specific energy initiatives.
The variety between initiatives in the landscape allows for the emergence of decentralised
energy systems that are an integrated part of the multifunctional physical and socioeconomic landscape, which again reduces the vulnerability of the entire energy system. The
image of what we coin an integrated energy landscape is therefore promoted as a potential
guidance for planners and policy makers to understand how they can contribute to the shift
towards a sustainable energy system.
1 INTRODUCTION
1.1 The Challenge of a Sustainable Energy System
Over the last decades, sustainability has become a central issue on the global governance
agenda. In the quest for a sustainable future, one of the crucial elements is the sustainable
provision of energy. The fossil fuels we still rely on for almost all of our energy provisions are
unsustainable for several reasons. Firstly, fossil fuel reserves are limited to a finite amount in
the earths crust; conventional oil production will probably begin to decline within the next
decade (Smil 2010, Sorrell et al. 2012). Secondly, fossil fuel combustion contributes to more
than 50% of the anthropogenic greenhouse gasses, causing further climate change (Hk et
al. 2010). Thirdly, at least for western nations, geopolitical uncertainties regarding a secure
provision of energy from major supply countries like Saudi-Arabia and Iran (cf. Correlj, van
der Linde 2006) also give incentives to search for domestic energy sources, including
renewable energy. Each of these reasons urge for a fundamental change in our energy
system, frequently referred to as the energy transition (Rotmans et al. 2001). Dominant
among these desired changes is a shift towards the use of renewable and often more locally
based sources. Such shifts, however, are not always easy to accommodate.
On the one hand, the current fossil fuel based energy system is far from easy to change. This
energy system is not just based on an infrastructure of wells, pipes, energy plants, networks
and consumers. It also involves a multitude of stakeholders, each with their own interests
and access to resources and power. In the meantime, contracts and existing regulatory
systems help stakeholders interact and constrain their freedom to act. In other words, the
energy system is a complex web of interrelated actors and networks, both in a physical,
1|
economic, social and institutional sense. Apart from limitations to fully oversee and grasp
such a complex web, ownership and power are fragmented, limiting the capacity of any actor
to alter the energy system. Traditional planning and policy approaches tend to focus on the
capacity of a single or group of stakeholders to come to decisions regarding desired endstates and the approaches to achieve them (Allmendinger 2009). Faced with the complex
web that characterizes the energy system, such approaches are seriously constrained (cf.
Roo 2012, De Roo, Silva 2010, and Kemp 2010). Planners and policy makers, including
spatial planners are thus asked to come up with new approaches.
On the other hand, a move towards a sustainable energy system also confronts spatial
planners with three challenges specific to their profession. For one, harvesting of well-known
sustainable energies such as solar energy, wind energy, hydropower, geothermal energy and
biomass is not equally possible in all locations (Smil 2008). Depending on local and regional
circumstances, such as the characteristics of the landscape, weather and the economic
activities taking place, certain renewables will be more favourable than others. (cf.
Dobbelsteen 2007). To illustrate, installing hydropower on the flat lands of the Netherlands or
Denmark is less advantageous than using wind turbines in these regions. Secondly, many
renewables have a high visibility in the landscape and are prone to cause NIMBY (Not In MY
Back Yard) effects (Cass 2010, Walker 2010). Not only do renewables typically demand more
space than generating energy from fossil sources, they also tend to be highly visible,
specifically in the case of wind farms or hydropower. Consequently, careful planning that
focuses on both the physical landscape and societal responses is required. Thirdly, many
independent and small-scale energy initiatives operate locally and are not yet part of the
energy network. This urges for a reconsideration of how the qualities of sustainable energy
production and consumption can become interwoven with existing energy systems in order to
make future energy systems viable. Spatial planners, again, have an important role to play in
the shift to a sustainable energy system (Noorman, De Roo 2011, Stremke, Koh 2010).
1.2 Outline
In this paper, we take an area-based approach to understand the role that sustainable
energy initiatives play in their local context and to investigate the area-based conditions for
up-scaling these energy initiatives in the energy transition. We begin section two by
presenting our research method for assessing the hypothesis that the integration of energy
initiatives in the landscape makes them less vulnerable and hence, more viable. In section
three, we discuss literature on the energy transition that highlights the importance of bottomup innovations that overcome the lock-ins that characterize existing fossil-fuel based energy
systems (Kemp 2010, Grin et al. 2009, and Loorbach 2010). For such bottom-up innovations
to become meaningful, however, we argue that they should be well connected to the local
physical and socio-economic landscape, as we show in section four. In taking an area-based
approach, we will highlight in section five, how energy initiatives have the capacity to activate
linkages with the local physical and socio-economic landscape. Based on such linkages, we
will argue and illustrate that energy initiatives become less sensitive to changed conditions
and shocks, and hence, are more viable. Furthermore, we will argue that embedding
sustainable energy initiatives within their local context can spawn the kind of innovation that
allows for an up-scaling of individual initiatives to a wider sustainable energy system. In
doing so, we will reflect on existing theories on transitions, which highlight the role of
individual niches of innovation and development (cf. Kemp 2010, Kemp, Loorbach 2006,
and Loorbach 2010). In taking an area-based approach to foster energy transitions we will
frame in section six, local contexts as the niches of innovation and development and show
that innovative energy initiatives position themselves in the energy landscape and thrive on
specific qualities of the physical and socio-economic landscape. With an area-based
approach, we conclude in section 7 that we can gain a clearer understanding of the important
conditions necessary for a successful energy transition.
2 RESEARCH METHOD
Against the backdrop of the emerging, innovative energy initiatives in the energy transition,
this study investigated whether there is empirical support for the hypothesis that the
integration of innovative energy initiatives within the local landscape makes them less
vulnerable and hence, more viable. Building upon literature on transition thinking and areabased planning approaches (presented in section 3 and 5), we hypothesised that innovative
energy initiatives activate area-based linkages with the physical and socio-economic
landscape, which make them less sensitive to changed conditions and shocks. To assess our
hypothesis we gathered empirical data during two interdisciplinary research projects we are
involved in since 2012 (presented in section 4 and 6).
The first research project we are involved in is MACREDES, a four-year European Delta Gas
Research (EDGaR) funded project (EDGaR 2012). MACREDES aims to map the technical,
economic, socio-psychological and spatial conditions relevant for the integration of
decentralised energy networks within the conventional energy system. The second project is
DELaND, a three-year European funded Interreg IVa project with a consortium of Dutch and
German partners (Groen Gas-Grnes Gas 2012). It is focused on the potential role of
residual biomass streams in decentralised energy systems and on the potential for Public
Private Partnerships (PPPs) around biomass. Both research projects aim to gain a better
understanding of the spatial planning issues relating to the decentralisation of energy
systems, resulting in area-based guidelines for stimulating the energy transition.
Following our hypothesis, we assessed empirically how innovative energy initiatives and
actual projects benefit from area-based linkages. For the scope of this study, the initiatives
and projects are all in peri-urban areas in the Northern Netherlands. An innovative energy
initiative can be for instance, a community initiative that sets up an energy cooperation, or a
public-private partnership establishing an energy service company. During the first empirical
research-phase, we conducted a desk study in which we analysed research reports with
inventories of innovative energy initiatives and projects based on factors contributing to their
integration in the physical and socio-economic landscape. Besides this, we conducted
interviews and workshops with experts involved in the energy transition. Experts included
advisors working for transition-stimulating organisations, government officials who facilitate
innovative energy projects and spatial planning scientists.
Building upon gathered insights, we selected four cases for the second empirical researchphase to be analysed in more detail from the perspective of spatial planning. In this study, a
case can be framed as one or more innovative energy initiatives in the context of the local
physical and socio-economic landscape. We selected two explicit examples of energy
initiatives in the Northern Netherlands that had a traditional, top-down planning approach.
Both initiatives are high on the political agenda and subject to public debate. As we will
explain, both initiatives appeared to have weak connections with the physical and socioeconomic landscape. The other two cases we studied, were more connected with their local
context, we investigated how these cases seek to benefit from area-based linkages with the
physical and socio-economic landscape. For each case we conducted a desk study and had
interviews with partners of the initiative. For the first case study presented, our department of
Spatial Planning in Groningen also held an indicative survey on public opinion in one of the
villages where a wind farm is planned (Van Dijk 2012). 1500 surveys were available of which
227 people responded. The survey proved valid at a 1% significance level. The contrast
between the two types of cases enabled us to further develop our theoretical argument, as
we will explain in the conclusion of this article. In the following section, we begin to build up
our theoretical argument by discussing how to improve our understanding of the crucial role
of innovative energy initiatives, in the energy transition.
3 TRANSITION THINKING
The energy transition is a complex and long-term process. Therefore the specific conditions
required for a constructive contribution by innovative energy initiatives, are difficult to grasp.
Understanding how innovations to the energy system emerge and how these can transform
the existing energy system is for researchers an analytical puzzle (Geels 2011). Transition
thinking provides a framework, for understanding the complex web of interrelated actors and
networks, in a society based on multilevel perspectives that describe how these transitions
take place. On the macro level, the socio-technical landscape, consists of the material
infrastructure, political culture, social values, worldviews, the macro economy, demography
and natural environment (Kemp 2010). The dynamics at the macro level are rather
autonomous and tend to change slowly. The meso level is the regime and refers to
dominant actor networks and institutions (Kemp, Loorbach 2006). The rules, roles and belief
systems of the regime guide decision-making processes. This provides stability and
orientation to societal domains and sectors but simultaneously may result in inertia. The
institutional structure tends to stimulate the reproduction of practises that fit within the regime
and block innovations that conflict with the status quo. In contrast to the continuity and
stability of the meso level, the third micro level is characterised by high dynamics. At the
micro level, individual actors, technologies and local practices develop new ideas and new
initiatives in niches. The novel and pioneering niche activities do not develop routines nor
are they regulated yet. In the niche, initiatives have more freedom to experiment and
improvise, enabling deviation from the status quo of the regime level (Kemp, Loorbach
2006). Therefore, alternative technologies, product systems and social practises are
developed often outside or on the fringe of the existing regime (Kemp 2010). Our research
aims to further explain the processes at the niche level and how they interact with the
regime level.
Transition thinking describes the dynamics within and between these three levels; the basic
hypothesis is that transitions come about through the co-evolution of processes at different
levels in different phases of the transition (Kemp, 2010). A transition is the result of the
interaction between changes and innovations at these different levels; slowly changing
trends lead to new ways of thinking (paradigms) that lead to innovation and vice versa
(Kemp, Loorbach 2006; p.108). The interplay between the various levels explains why a
transition can be accelerated by certain catastrophes or crisis, but not caused by a one-time
event (Kemp, Loorbach 2006). Rather, transitions are about the complex interaction patterns
between individuals, organizations, networks, and regimes within a societal context, and how
over time, these can lead to nonlinear change in seemingly stable regimes (Loorbach 2010;
p.167). Within this pattern of complex interactions, unpredictable developments take place
while feedback loops can create rapid and unforeseen changes. Such complexity and
unpredictability can make it difficult to steer a transition or even know the outcomes in
advance. As we noticed in the introduction, such complex and unpredictable situations urge
planners to move beyond traditional planning approaches, as these largely focus on the
capacity of a single or group of stakeholders, to come to decisions regarding a desired endstate and the approaches required to achieve it (Allmendinger 2009). Instead, transition
thinking sees complexity and unpredictability as motives for shifting towards more adaptive
and flexible planning approaches that draw on a constant process of learning-by-doing
(Geels 2011, Kemp 2006, Rotmans et al.2001).
While focussing on learning-by-doing, transition thinking highlights the role for localised
niches in which innovations take place. Change can subsequently follow on, from learning
about successful experiments and by grasping how these experiments influence and interact
with higher-level actor networks, institutions and socio-economic practices. Transition
thinking frames these niches as individual actors, technologies and local practices where
experimentation takes place. The result is that sustainable energy projects tend to be framed
4 | Boer and Zuidema / Towards the Integrated Energy Landscape
largely as initiatives to test new technologies or practical applications largely in isolation from
their physical and socio-economic context. We argue that such an isolated vision of energy
projects is too simplistic. After illustrating our argument in the next section, we will continue in
section five by explaining how niches might better be framed as area-based projects where
energy initiatives are embedded, in their physical and socio-economic context.
4 A CHALLENGE ACCEPTED
The Dutch central government recognised early on, the potential of transition thinking and
embraced the term energy transition in 2001 (Ministry of VROM 2001). Nevertheless, only
about 4% of its total energy supply is renewable-based (CBS 2012). Success therefore, is
still fairly limited and a real transition is still pending. In contrast to transition thinking, the
Dutch government also foresees few roles for local initiatives in the energy transition.
Practice shows that the Dutch government has mainly focused on large, mono-functional
energy projects. In this section, we discuss two explicit examples of large energy projects in
the Northern Netherlands. These projects were chosen as the most visible large-scale
examples of sustainable energy initiatives in the media and political debate, within the
Northern Netherlands in recent years. The first case is a project that proposes to contribute
to the ambition of the State government to have 9%1 of the total energy usage in renewable
energy by 2020, through installing 6000 MW of wind power, in designated areas of the
Netherlands (CBS 2012, Ministry of I&M 2013). This quantified ambition resulted in largescale plans for wind farms of over 200 MW, similar to the wind farms in the Veenkolonin,
which we will reflect on later. The second case we discuss comprises the Municipality of
Groningen, which aims to become carbon-neutral in 2035. We assess from a spatial
planners perspective how these two innovative energy initiatives connect or conflict with the
unique local physical and socio-economic landscape.
4.1 Wind farms in the Veenkolonin
In the Northern part of The Netherlands is an area called the Veenkolonin (Peat Colonies)
where several wind farms are planned. The Veenkolonin is a peripheral area characterised
by low population density and a relatively high economic dependence on state subsidies and
unemployment benefits (Commissie Structuurversterking Veenkolonin 2001). The wind
farms planned in this area will have a total capacity of around 700 MW and contribute to the
ambition of the State government to have installed 6000 MW of wind power on land by 2020
(Ministery of EZ 2011). The farms are managed by the top-down state coordination energy
program (Agentschap NL 2013). As a result, the project was carried out as an isolated,
mono-functional energy project. The State made direct agreements with local landowners,
mostly farmers, on the allocation of the wind turbines. This connects the energy project to the
land of the famers but does not connect it to other values of the physical, natural landscape
for the local society.
When assessing the linkages of the project to the socio-economic landscape, we see that the
State and energy companies (Sijmons, van Dorst 2012) receive the most benefits, followed
by selected local farmers, who gain revenue from the allocation of wind turbines on their
land. Linkages with local initiatives, stakeholder interests and economic functions were not
explicitly considered. We inform the local society on several spatial designs for wind farms to
choose from (quoted from an interview with a wind farm developer on April 15th 2013 in
Groningen). As a result, the local population and much of the existing economic fabric were
overlooked in the planning. With no direct revenues or benefits, the local population merely
faces the social costs related to visibility, noise and the intermittent shade of the wind
turbines (Sijmons, van Dorst 2012). It resulted in the classic example of the NIMBY (Not In
1
By estimation, based on the total energy usage of The Netherlands in 2011 (2112 PJ = 66950MW) (CBS 2012)
My Backyard) effect, with heightened local resistance to the plans during public hearings and
subsequent consultation procedures (Rietveld 2013). As our survey reveals however, the
local people were not against the wind energy per se, rather they found it unfair that such an
unequal share of the planned, total wind power capacity was designated for installation in
their region. The allocation of the wind parks reinforces their feelings about the region being
disadvantaged. Whereas actually, the innovative wind parks might have provided an
economic and social boost to the Veenkolonin. A survey from our department of Spatial
Planning in Groningen indicates that 30-40% of the local society is not against the allocation
of the wind turbines in their back yard when they are compensated, either via a financial
share in the revenues of the wind turbines, or via a local foundation that allows for placebased investments in the area (Van Dijk 2012). The project did not create area-based
linkages with the local physical and socio-economic landscape, other than between the wind
farm project and the landowners. This makes it comprehensible from a spatial planning
perspective that the project coordinators have difficulty to implement the project successfully.
4.2 Carbon-neutrality in the Municipality of Groningen
A more encompassing approach to innovate the energy system, planned by the Municipality
of Groningen in the Northern Netherlands, aims for the entire city to be energy neutral by
2035 (Projectteam Groningen geeft energie 2011). A special project team has been set up for
developing and implementing projects on the basis of energy saving and sustainable energy
production (Projectteam Groningen geeft energie 2011). However, we assessed that the
connection with the local physical and socio-economic landscape is still weak.
As our interviews revealed, the political desire to be energy neutral preceded awareness of
the consequences of pursuing such an ambition: There is an ambition, but neither a vision,
nor a strategy to achieve it (quoted from an interview with a project manager of the project
team on December 13th 2012 in Groningen). In being responsible for distinct portfolios, most
project managers feel a limited sense of ownership of the ambition to become energy
neutral. The tendency to see energy projects as stand-alone or even technical projects
signals the following quote: There is an energy meeting with the energy program leader
regularly, but only two out of the five project managers are in that meeting (quoted from an
interview with a project manager of the project team on December 13th 2012 in Groningen).
This is unfortunate, as our interviews also confirm, since achieving energy neutrality of a city
will require cooperation of the whole local government and society.
While ownership of the ambition to become energy neutral is a problem in Groningen, the
projects that are initiated also seem rather isolated and technical in focus. Consequently,
projects initiated by the municipality do not build upon what is already happening in the
neighbourhoods of Groningen, such as collective procurement of solar panels. Nor do the
project managers activate the potential for socio-economic synergies with existing
companies, spatial projects or social initiatives. Among the prime initiatives pursued by the
municipality, includes the development of a vision to employ residual heat. The project,
however, is carried out top-down, an inventory is made of the residual heat sources, and their
possible utilisation for district heating is assessed (Warmtevisie 2012). As was confirmed
during an interview with a municipal advisor (April 17th 2013 in Groningen), the municipality
did not directly involve key partners, either those related to the sources of heat such as
industries, or the potential users such as housing cooperatives and residential organisations.
As these key partners are not project owners and many do not find the resources to follow-up
on the plans made by the municipality, impairing the success of the project.
Next to these weak linkages between the energy program and the socio-economic context,
we also find that linkages are missing with the physical landscape. The ambition to be energy
neutral was little understood when politically decided. In fact for the current level of energy
demand, the municipality would need to fill the surface of at least twenty times the area of the
6 | Boer and Zuidema / Towards the Integrated Energy Landscape
Municipality of Groningen with wind turbines and solar PV for its energy supply, while
additional energy storage would still be required for back-up. Clearly, such an ambition would
at least require the cooperation of adjacent municipalities. Over the past years, such
cooperation has not occurred; only rumour suggests that neighbouring towns could be
energy suppliers for the municipality. Furthermore, such high ambition would also require the
Municipality of Groningen to be willing to install energy projects on currently unused land or
even on temporary unused plots in the municipality. Faced with an unfavourable economic
climate, there are many areas that are likely to be unused for 15 years or more and could
stimulate the emergence of area-based innovative projects. As was confirmed during an
interview with one of the project managers of the project team (May 23rd 2013 in Groningen),
few initiatives have emerged and at the same time, the municipality has been responsible for
postponing new spatial projects on vacant land, and seemed reluctant to consider energy
initiatives.
From this we conclude that the municipality, when developing their energy program, did not
consider the city as a physical and socio-economic system embedded in a larger spatial
context. Energy was framed largely as an isolated theme, to be dealt with possibly on a
project basis. As our reflection shows, becoming energy neutral does urge the municipality to
consider how innovative projects can be embedded the physical and socio-economic
context, or can be based on existing local initiatives. This calls for steps towards a spatial
vision, in which the separate themes of the energy program are integrated. For example,
innovations for smarter connections between energy production and consumption require an
infrastructural plan to link up with. Without an integrative energy vision, the ambition is
impossible to achieve within the physical and socio-economic conditions of the municipality.
Again, it shows the necessity to consider innovations in the energy system in connection with
the socio-economic and physical landscape.
4.3 Energy Initiatives in Isolation
Both cases show the limitations of treating sustainable energy initiatives as projects isolated
from their local contexts. The case of the Veenkolonin illustrates that an energy project
cannot be based on top-down plans and implementation alone. It explicitly needs to link into
the local dynamics. The second case of the Municipality of Groningen, subsequently
illustrates that taking the dynamics of the local society into account, is not so much about
formulating new policy ambitions and plans to describe or highlight a future energy projects
or desired end-states. Instead, it is about recognizing, accommodating and facilitating
niche developments and to connect them to each other and to the existing physical and
socio-economic context. Therefore, we also argue that seeing sustainable energy initiatives
as stand-alone projects is too simplistic. As we explained in the introduction, the energy
system is a complex web of interrelated actors and networks, both in the physical, economic,
social and institutional sense. As the cases above illustrate, not embedding projects in the
local context may cause social and economic blockages (e.g. resistance or unwillingness to
pay) and spatial blockages (e.g. no available land or no infrastructure to link up with).
Moreover, isolating energy projects denies use of societal potentials and creativity. Activation
of the local potential however, can foster commitment and financial incentives to stimulate
energy initiatives.
5 INTEGRATED LANDSCAPES
5.1 Activating area-based linkages
The previous section shows that planning for energy initiatives as isolated or stand-alone
projects risks difficult implementation of the project due to weak linkages with the local
context. In contrast, here we follow a spatial planning perspective and highlight the important
role of the physical and socio-economic context, to trigger the success of innovative
initiatives. If well embedded, we argue individual energy initiatives might become less
vulnerable to failure and more prone to active linkages with other interests and energy
systems so as to be up-scaled. Literature on area-based policy making and planning2 shows
that locally embedded issues defy a generic approach due to their unique circumstances
(Cameron et al. 2004, De Roo 2004, Turok 2004, Zuidema 2011). Instead, area-based
approaches can make use of such local circumstances, as Cameron et al. note, the local
scale of projects allows for a development process based on an understanding of local
needs, conditions, dynamics and potentials, and that includes local residents and
stakeholders in a collaborative planning process (2004).
The interest that area-based planning approaches have for local needs, conditions, dynamics
and potentials may explain their emphasis on synergy-effects and integrative solutions. For
instance, in environmental planning the synergy between the environment and other themes
results in integrative, sustainable solutions to environmental issues (Zuidema 2011, Roo
2003). Also, integrated infrastructure planning and urban planning assessments show the
multiple benefits of area-oriented approaches (Heeres et al.2012). For our research, synergy
can be defined as the additional value created by the innovative energy initiatives
(Mackintosh 1992). The additional value consists not only of sustainable energy production
and of financial benefits, but also of benefits for the physical and socio-economic landscape
in which the initiative is located. The integration of sustainable energy production in the
landscape, can be understood as the connection of energy production to other functions of
the physical and socio-economic landscape, such as drinking water provision, agricultural
farming or community trust and support. In our research, we assessed innovative energy
initiatives on the presence or absence of area-based linkages as indicators of synergy and
integration. This allowed us to understand firstly, the area-based conditions under which
synergy-effects, between the energy initiative and the landscape emerge, and secondly, how
sustainable energy production can be integrated in the wider physical and socio-economic
landscape both locally and on higher levels. In the following section, we illustrate with an
array of energy initiatives how initiatives tend to respond to their unique context by activating
area-based linkages. This will give insight into how initiatives become viable.
5.2 Area-based Energy Initiatives in a Unique Context
Local area-based energy initiatives are very diverse, not only regarding the type of energy
they produce and the scale on which they operate, but also in the ways in which they make
use of their context. Every region has its specific qualities in general, but also for energy
production. There are quite some examples of area-based energy initiatives that start from
the social and physical capital of an area. Individually, a farmer may use manure for the
cogeneration of its own electricity and heat, in a combined-heat-and-power installation (CHP)
(Pehnt et al. 2005). A household can co-produce electricity and heat with a hybrid solar PV
and solar heating system (Zhai et al. 2009, Lazou, Papatsoris 2000). Or in cooperation with
others, farming initiatives with biomass available from agriculture and nature maintenance,
are able to use such biomass streams for the production of energy (cf. Muller 2009). Also,
more and more communities are starting local energy initiatives. Thriving on the social trust
in the community (Walker et al. 2010) they may collectively procure solar panels to produce
their own energy or have their own wind turbines (Nada, van der Horst 2010). In The
Netherlands, more than 300 local energy initiatives are on the map (HIER klimaatcampagne
2012). The amount and diversity of local area-based energy initiatives highlights the potential
and the creativity in society, but also shows that innovative energy production is hard to
understand without its unique context. Every region has its specific qualities, which allows for
another specialisation regarding energy production. On a bigger scale, this offers perspective
2
sometimes also referred to as area-oriented planning or a place-based approach, cf. De Roo 2004, Heeres et al.
2012, Castells 2005, Barca et al. 2012
8 | Boer and Zuidema / Towards the Integrated Energy Landscape
for the balancing of qualities between different regions. Sweden has a lot of wood, Denmark
has installed a lot of wind power offshore and Germany and The Netherlands have a lot of
biomass from agriculture (John Bartholomew and Son.1990). On a smaller scale, cities tend
to have waste-heat, while rural areas have biomass or the potential for wind farms. These
examples illustrate the relevance of differentiating between regions, to recognise their
different potentials. The point we want to make here is that the perspective of area-based
spatial planning can help to benefit from the potential of the local context and connect it with
the bigger scale. Therefore, the role of the spatial planner is crucial for understanding the
relevance of area-based energy production, as a spatially and socio-economically embedded
innovation, of the energy system.
5.3 Integration of Energy Initiatives on Multiple Scales
From a planners perspective, a niche can be defined by the unique context or what we call
an area-based 'niche'. It is not the novelty of the innovation that defines the 'niche', as
transition thinking tends to express but the fact that energy initiatives make use of their
unique contexts. This defines the 'niches' as being area-based. The local innovative
initiatives we discussed in the previous paragraph are embedded in their region and activate
area-based linkages. The embedding of an initiative in the existing structures of a region
makes it more prone to acceptance by the local society and less vulnerable for failure. From
a spatial planners' perspective, this connection is a pre-condition for successful up-scaling.
This fits with transition thinking, which argues for the power of certain niche developments to
become strong enough to breakthrough and compete with the established energy system
(Kemp 2010). If such an up-scaling of niche developments becomes institutionalised in
various regions, the regime will have no choice but to adapt: allowing the transition to take-off
towards a new balance in the energy system. Our point is that area-based niches are a key
condition for successful up-scaling in the energy transition. For understanding how areabased niches allow for a successful up-scaling of energy initiatives, it is useful to know how
area-based linkages are created, not only between the initiative and the landscape but also
between initiatives, and between clusters of initiatives. That is, area-based conditions for
successful up-scaling of 'niche' developments can be understood on various scales in the
landscape.
On the level of the energy initiative itself, the fact that the initiative is linked to a wider set of
interests in the area contributes to the viability of the energy system. An area-based initiative
is often based on overlapping interests, which gives the initiative a multifunctional purpose.
For example, farmers use bio-digesters to reduce their need to export manure, to generate
heat, produce gas and produce humus (Muller 2009). Even if the profit from biogas or heat
reduces, the other benefits are sufficient enough to continue with the project. In an economic
sense, this means that there is more capacity to adapt to market change. Furthermore, its
linkages to other interests provide more funding options. For example, solar panels on the
roof of a large distribution centre could be funded by the company itself, an energy company
or even individual users. Moreover, the embedding of the initiative in the local economy gives
trust and support. Local commitment may open up possibilities for extra investments in
innovations, or for bridging difficult periods with regional support. Hence, a spreading of risk
is achieved. From a societal perspective, local involvement will also stimulate learning about
the costs and benefits of local energy production, allowing for more public support for
innovation of the energy system. Moreover, the fact that energy initiatives emerge from local
society allows for closer consideration of the physical impact of energy production on the
landscape, enabling them to stay within perceptual boundaries of visual attractiveness. In
fact, this may prevent the risk of NIMBYism (Wstenhagen et al. 2007).
On a regional scale, we find that initiatives can form robust networks together, which in turn
contributes to robustness of the energy system. Robustness can be understood as
9 | Boer and Zuidema / Towards the Integrated Energy Landscape
resistance to change, brought about by circumstance and shock. For instance, a heat
network can become robust when multiple sites with residual heat are connected to multiple
housing areas with heat demand (Broersma et al. 2011). In that case, the exit of a single
industry with heat supply will not lead to the collapse of the whole heat network. Another type
of robust network can be achieved when several biomass streams are connected to one
bioenergy plant, which makes it less dependent on one biomass supplier (Kooistra et al.
2011, Jenssen et al. 2012).
On an interregional level, we argue that an area-based approach can stimulate local and
regional diversification in energy systems. Local and regional diversification emerges from
the fact that area-based energy initiatives draw on regional qualities for energy production.
Initiatives make use of regional advantages, leading to a regional specialisation in energy
production. Some regions or localities will be specialised in solar energy, others in wind
power or geothermal heat, and others in energy from biomass, etc. This will lead to spatial
diversification, which can be employed to stimulate the creation of a viable energy system on
a higher level. Instead of a country relying strongly on only one source of renewables, spatial
diversification spreads the risks between regions. This avoids path-dependency (Martin,
Simmie 2008) and allows for the possibility to shift to a different technology (if local supply
fails or is ineffective) because other areas and regions have used other technologies. This
will make the overall system less vulnerable. It also makes it more robust by preventing the
emergence of a monoculture. For example, when the system is completely dependent on
wind, a windless period puts high demands on installed energy storage capacity (Mitchell et
al. 2005). If it is based on multiple sources of energy, these can compensate each other
reducing the need for buffers.
Hence, area-based energy initiatives contribute to the viable and robust innovation of the
energy system on various levels. Firstly, on the level of the initiative, the embedding of the
initiative in its local context ensures that the physical and socio-economic landscape has a
greater carrying capacity for the initiative. Its connections to other socio-economic functions
give the initiative adaptive capacity and strength. Secondly, on the regional level the
initiatives form a robust network together. Thirdly, on the interregional level diversification of
innovations to the energy system enhances the capacity to balance different energy qualities
and provide buffers for variations in energy quantities (Broersma et al. 2011). This is the
image of a multifunctional physical and socio-economic landscape, in which energy systems
are an integrated part. This image of what we coin an integrated energy landscape is a
potential vehicle to help planners and policy makers understand how a shift to a sustainable
energy system may become within reach.
6 WHY IT COULD WORK
In order to improve our understanding of the synergies that capacitate the energy transition
and stimulate the emergence of an integrated energy landscape, we assess here two cases.
The cases were chosen as they were both instigated without the influence of any national
policies or subsidies and draw on their own unique local circumstances. Each case highlights
constraints and opportunities of an area-based approach to innovate the energy system. We
analysed for each case the area-based linkages with the local physical and socio-economic
landscape, and assessed how the initiative is integrated in the region. These area-based
conditions provide spatial planners with an insight to support the emergence of an integrated
energy landscape. For each case we gathered empirical data through a desk study,
interviews conducted with partners of the initiative and workshops with actors related to the
spatial planning issues around it.
participation of the Municipality ensures sufficient amounts of biomass and the efficient use
of waste heat of the energy plant. The energy company ensures that electricity production
can be sold directly to local costumers and the biomass trader is stimulated to regionally
collect waste streams of biomass for producing energy. These three conditions make the
construction less vulnerable. What is still missing however is a stronger embedding of the
initiative within the local social landscape. The initiative does not directly involve users of the
Sports Park and local residents, which diminishes the opportunity to earn public support,
whereas worries about health consequences of the plants emissions have spread to a local
newspaper (DVHN 2012). Socially embedding the initiative may prevent the occurrence of
NIMBY-effects and therefore something to take into consideration.
In conclusion, we can say that again, the energy initiative has connected energy production
with the local physical and socio-economic landscape. Also, at exactly those points where it
fails to do so (i.e. social support and debate) the problems have emerged. The network of
participating actors, activated through the project might well have potentials for up-scaling.
The Municipality of Hoogeveen is currently trying to use the project as a snowball effect for
setting up its own energy development company (Gemeente Hoogeveen 2012a). This could
subsequently help plan and support other local energy initiatives, making Hoogeveen an
interesting case to follow for future research.
7 CONCLUSION
This paper underlines the emerging need for spatial planners to become involved in the
energy transition. It is not only a reality to embrace area-based spatial planning could
make a key contribution to this transition. Building upon literature on transition thinking and
area-based planning we hypothesised that the integration of innovative energy initiatives
within the physical and socio-economic landscape makes initiatives less vulnerable and
hence, more viable. The empirical data presented provide support for this hypothesis.
The array of innovative initiatives that have passed this review demonstrates that it makes
sense to frame a niche by its unique context, what we term area-based 'niche'. We
contribute to the debate by noting that it is not the novelty of the innovation that defines the
'niche' as transition thinking tends to express, but the fact that energy initiatives make use of
their unique contexts define the 'niches' as being area-based. Indeed, in the first two cases
we saw that planning for energy initiatives, as isolated or stand-alone projects, risks difficult
implementation of the project due to weak linkages with the local context. It even resulted in
a standstill for the wind farm project in the Veenkolonin. In the case of the energy program
of the municipality of Groningen, we saw in addition that the spatially demanding
characteristics of sustainable energy, require a spatially conscious approach for innovation of
the energy system.
In the second two cases, we saw how area-based energy initiatives connect with the physical
and socio-economic landscape. Local actors actively involved with sustainable energy, show
an awareness of the multifunctional potential of sustainable energy. The partners in the case
of the Haarlose Veld and Hoogeveen addressed themes such as waste recycling and ground
water quality, in connection with the production of sustainable energy. Thus, area-based
initiatives consciously use the physical and socio-economic landscape in which they are
embedded. The synergies at hand give the initiative a robust basis upon which it can build.
Furthermore, they are both activating linkages between actors and land use that might
inspire new projects, both locally and in other areas. It is in doing so that they are examples
of innovations that do have the potential to be up-scaled.
The power of area-based niches can be used for shifting to a sustainable energy system.
Firstly, integration of the initiative with the physical and socio-economic landscape makes the
initiative viable. Secondly, integration of initiatives within the landscape allows them to form a
12 | Boer and Zuidema / Towards the Integrated Energy Landscape
robust network together. Thirdly, landscape-specific innovation of the energy system will
result in diversification, thus enhancing the capacity to balance energy qualities and buffer
variations in energy supply (Broersma et al. 2011). This is the image of a multifunctional
physical and socio-economic landscape in which energy systems are an integrated part. This
image of what we coin an integrated energy landscape, is a potential vehicle to help planners
and policy makers understand how a shift to a sustainable energy system may become
within reach.
Of course, there are still challenges to face. Most energy initiatives are young, and it is yet to
be seen how fast they develop and up-scale. This sets the agenda for follow-up research in
which we want to draw lessons from the spatial-institutional arrangements that area-based
energy initiatives create in order to formulate guidelines, for designing landscape-specific
institutional settings. After all, only by taking constructive steps to up-scale viable, areabased energy initiatives, can a more fundamental energy transition be fostered.
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This article introduces transition management as a new governance
approach for sustainable development. Sustainable development is used
here as a common notion referring to those persistent problems in (Western
industrialized) societies that can only be dealt with on the very long term
(decades or more) through specic types of network and decision-making
processes. Based on interdisciplinary research into complex processes of
long term, structural change in society, basic tenets for complexity-based
governance are formulated. These tenets are translated into a framework
that distinguishes between four different types of governance activities and
their respective roles in societal transitions. This framework can be used for
implementation of governance strategies and instruments. The approach
and framework have been developed deductively and inductively in the
Netherlands since 2000. This article presents the theoretical basis of transition management and will be illustrated by examples from transition
management practice, especially the Dutch national energy transition
program.
Introduction
Over the last decades, we have witnessed a shift from the centralized
government-based nation-state toward liberalized, marketbased, and
decentralized decision-making structures in modernized European
democracies. The power of central government to develop and implement
policies in a top-down manner has decreased, leading to increasingly
diffuse policymaking structures and processes stratied across subnational, national, and supranational levels of government (Hooghe and
Marks 2001). Generally referred to with the term governance (Kooiman
1993), the current practice of governments in Western European nationstates is increasingly to develop policies in interaction with a diversity of
societal actors. In other words, interaction between all sorts of actors in
networks often produces (temporary) societal consensus and support
upon which policy decisions are based. This development is far from
*Erasmus University Rotterdam
Governance: An International Journal of Policy, Administration, and Institutions, Vol. 23, No. 1,
January 2010 (pp. 161183).
2010 Wiley Periodicals, Inc., 350 Main St., Malden, MA 02148, USA, and 9600 Garsington
Road, Oxford, OX4 2DQ, UK. ISSN 0952-1895
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DERK LOORBACH
trivial in light of the many complex, persistent problems that face Western
societies, and for which sustainable development can neither be planned
nor emerge spontaneously.
There seems to be an increasing degree of consensus in governance
research that both top-down steering by government (the extent to which
social change can be effected by government policies) and the liberal free
market approach (the extent to which social change can be brought about
by market forces) are outmoded as effective management mechanisms to
generate sustainable solutions at the societal level by themselves, but it is
at the same time impossible to govern societal change without them
(Jessop 1997; Meadowcroft 2005; Pierre 2000; Scharpf 1999). Therefore,
new modes of governance are sought that reduce the lack of direction and
coordination associated with governance networks in general, and
increase the effect of existing forms of government and planning in the
context of long-term change in society. In effect, this implies a new balance
between state, market, and society and new ways to facilitate and make as
effective as possible the informal network processes through which alternative ideas and agendas are generated that are often seen as important in
fueling regular policymaking processes with new problem denitions,
ambitions, solutions, and agendas (Hritier 1999).
Although it is not easy to generalize, theories of governance developed
over the last 15 years are highly descriptive and analytical and rarely offer
a prescriptive basis for governance. Modern industrialized societies are
however confronted with many complex and unstructured problems (e.g.,
in our welfare systems, environment, agriculture, energy, mobility, health
care) for which long-term solution strategies need to be developed at the
level of the society. We can refer to this as the challenge for (a form of)
sustainable development or, to use a sociological concept, as reexive
modernization (Beck 1992): Long-term development that takes in to
account the adverse side effects of modernization and fundamentally
redenes its own dynamics and workings. Not only does this imply a new
paradigm on economic and technology development, it also includes a
redenition of how to govern society. While in this article we focus on
Western democracies, this need for reexive modernization and associated new ways of reexive governance (Voss 2005) are a general need for
industrialized and industrializing countries.
Since 2001, a governance experiment is ongoing in the Netherlands
under the ag of transition management (Rotmans, Kemp, and van
Asselt 2001; VROM 2001), of which the so-called Energy Transition
Program is best known (www.senternovem.nl/energytransition). It is
perhaps not coincidental that this experiment originated in the Netherlands, well known for its collaborative policymaking, long-term planning,
and innovative environmental policies. It is, however, also surprising,
since many facets of transition management constitute a break with dominant approaches: a focus on frontrunners, the objective of radical innovation, and the selective participatory approach (Van Buuren and Loorbach
163
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165
166
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167
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169
setting, and long-term anticipation. In essence, all activities and developments that deal primarily with the culture of a societal (sub-) system as
a whole: debates on norms and values, identity, ethics, sustainability, and
functional and relative importance for society. In the context of regular
policies, especially in periods of predevelopment and takeoff, discussions
of this nature draw more attention. Think, for example, about the debate
about energy supply, in which energy security, climate impact, energy
prices, and diversity of resources are central issues for which the buildup
of sociopolitical sense of urgency, as well as consensus regarding future
development, is ongoing.
In such a sociopolitical context, uncertainty around future developments is high, and opinion leaders and innovative alternatives are able to
voice alternatives and inuence societal and political debate. However,
the way in which future visions, structural reection on ongoing and
future trends and developments, and debate on how innovation should
contribute to desired changes is often more implicit than systematically
structured. Long-term concerns and governance have no institutionalized
place in regular policymaking, which is generally focused on the short and
mid term because of political cycles, individual interests, and public
pressure. The ambition of transition management is to integrate (in a
sense institutionalize, although this is contrary to the nature of transition management) long-term governance activities into the realm of
policymakingnot as a regular and formalized activity but as a fundamentally necessary element of policymaking for sustainable development.
Tactical
As tactical activities, we identify steering activities that are interest driven
and relate to the dominant structures (regime) of a societal (sub-) system.
This includes all established patterns and structures, such as rules and
regulations, institutions, organizations and networks, infrastructure, and
routines. This sphere thus includes all actors that are dealing on a daily
basis with developing programs, nancial and institutional regulation and
frameworks, organizing networks and coalitions, and, in general, representing certain interests. The context in which such actors operate is at the
level of departments, subsectors, or within specic subthemes. For
example, subsystems or themes observed within the energy system could
be the different sources of energy (coal, gas, oil, sustainable) or could be
different domains, such as technology, policy, market, and consumption. Activities are focused on achieving goals within a specic context but
are almost never concerned with the overall development of the societal
system. They generally have a time horizon of 515 years, and are generally considered strategic at the level of individual actors.
A company or organization will probably have a strategic vision upon
the position of the organization in its direct (industrial, institutional, or
societal) context, from which it enters the interaction and negotiation with
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other actors. But from the perspective of transitions, this leads to fragmentation in governance and suboptimal solutions at the systems level. For the
government, the institutional fragmentation in terms of different ministries, departments, executive ofces, and directorates is a major barrier for
integrative long-term policies. The same might be true for other actors,
such as business, science, and NGOs that are operating in networks
negotiating change or projects and running their day-to-day operations.
Sometimes, these actors are not able or willing to contribute to system
innovation, but often they are unaware of the possibility. Not because they
are not functioning at their own level, but because an integrative strategic
governance level is missing, there are only very limited instances of successfully integrated long-term governance.
Operational
As operational activities, experiments and actions are identied that have
a short-term horizon and are often carried out in the context of innovation
projects and programs, in business and industry, in politics or in civil
society, and are generally referred to as innovation. In the context of
transition management, it is important to emphasize the inclusive denition of innovation as including all societal, technological, institutional, and
behavioral practices that introduce or operationalize new structures,
culture, routines, or actors. Action at this level is often driven by individual ambitions, entrepreneurial skills, or promising innovations. In the
innovation and sociotechnical literature, the process of innovation is often
presented as an emergent, often random, and uncertain process. In practice, these innovations often seem to emerge in niches (Kemp, Schot, and
Hoogma 1998) without any link to broader policies or agendas and can,
under specic conditions, develop into mainstream options. From this
perspective, innovations almost never lead to system innovations and
transitions except by chance.
Reexive
Reexive activities relate to monitoring, assessments and evaluation of
ongoing policies, and ongoing societal change. In part, they are located
within existing institutions established to monitor and evaluate, but in part
they are also socially embedded: The media and Internet, for example,
have an important role in inuencing public opinions and judging the
effectiveness of policies and political agendas. A central role is also played
here by science: Researchers analyze longer-term societal processes and
dynamics and put these on the societal and political agenda. These and
other reexive activities are necessary to prevent lock-in and to enable
exploration of new ideas and trajectories. From a transition management
perspective, however, the reexivity needs to be an integrated part
of governance processes and not, as is often the case nowadays, either
171
TABLE 1
Transition Management Types and Their Focus (Loorbach 2007)
Transition
Management
Types
Focus
Problem Scope
Time Scale
Long term
(30 years)
Mid term
(515 years)
Short term
(05 years)
Strategic
Culture
Tactical
Structures
Abstract/societal
system
Institutions/regime
Operational
Practices
Concrete/project
Level of
Activities
System
Subsystem
Concrete
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DERK LOORBACH
process dimension that distinguishes between different clusters of activities that are recognizable throughout any governance processes around
long-term societal change. These are the typical phases identied by many
policy-process models but fundamentally different in their focus on societal processes, persistent problems, and normative direction. This process
model has been developed by Loorbach and Rotmans (Loorbach 2007;
Loorbach and Rotmans 2006) based on iteration between theoretical
reection and practical experiments with new systemic instruments. Such
experiments include, for example, regional transition arenas,1 the Dutch
national energy transition program,2 and two transition arenas on
resource transition and sustainable housing in Flanders, Belgium.3
The systemic instruments are captured in a cyclical process model as a
basis for implementing the transition management approach. It thus offers
the basis for a normative approach based on the analytical framework and
theoretically offers the perspective of actively inuencing the natural
self-steering and governance activities present in society. This so-called
transition management cycle consists of the following components (Loorbach 2004): (1) structure the problem in question, develop a long-term
sustainability vision and establish and organize the transition arena; (2)
develop future images, a transition agenda and derive the necessary transition paths; (3) establish and carry out transition experiments and mobilize the resulting transition networks; (4) monitor, evaluate, and learn
lessons from the transition experiments and, based on these, make adjustments in the vision, agenda, and coalitions. In reality, there is no xed
sequence of the steps in transition management. The cycle only visualizes
the need to connect activities and presents some possible logical connections but does not suggest a sequential order of activities (Figure 1).
Implementing Transition Management
The transition management framework does provide the basis for managing transitions in an operational sense. Although every transition management process will be unique in terms of context, actors, problems, and
solutions, the cycle is exible enough for adaptation but prescriptive
enough to be functional in practice. An integrated analysis of a societal
system in transition terms yields a very general idea of the dynamics in
society on different levels that are a starting point for governance.
Depending on this analysis, a strategy can be designed that, for example,
focuses primarily at structuration of societal problems, at envisioning, at
scaling up experiments, at political lobby, or a combination of these. Either
way, transition management focuses at the frontrunners in society, and
related to desired sustainability transitions, these are frontrunners that
promote sustainable development. In a sense, it tries to structure and
coordinate those informal networks of actors that, collectively and over
time, are able to inuence regular policy. The important role of outsiders
and informal networks on providing innovative ideas and impulses to
173
FIGURE 1
The Transition Management Cycle
Problem structuring,
envisioning, and
establishment of the
transition arena (strategic)
Developing
coalitions,
images, and
transitionagendas
(tactical)
Evaluating,
monitoring,
and learning
(reflexive)
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DERK LOORBACH
beyond the limits of their own discipline and background, (3) enjoy a
certain level of authority within various networks, (4) ability to establish
and explain visions of sustainable development within their own networks, (5) willingness to think together, and (6) open for innovation
instead of already having specic solutions in mind. These frontrunners
do not necessarily need to be experts; they can also be networkers or
opinion leaders. They should also be prepared to invest time and energy
in the process of innovation and commit themselves to it. And nally, it is
important that there are an equal number of frontrunners from the societal
pentagon: government, companies, NGOs, knowledge institutes, and
intermediaries (consulting organizations, project organizations and
mediators).
The fundamental issue here is not that the existing establishment and
interests (incumbent regime) come together within the transition arena
but that innovative individuals who can operate more or less autonomously are involved. Indeed, a certain representation from the existing
regime is necessary, also with an eye to the legitimacy and nancing of the
process of innovation. But a transition arena is not an administrative
platform, or a consultative body, but a societal network of innovation
(Van Buuren and Loorbach 2009). This demands a critical selection of
frontrunnersnot by a gatekeeper who selects who may or may not
participate but by an initiating core group in which experts on the process
and on the transition subject are involvedthat consider matters carefully.
The arena process is an open, evolving process of innovation that implies
variation and selection: After a certain period of time, some people drop
out and others join in. Management therefore means creating sufcient
space and favorable conditions for the frontrunners, such that the envisaged process of innovation begins to take shape. It does not mean gathering together a wide range of bodies around the arena, such as a steering
group, a consultation group, or advisory board, because that is exactly the
recipe for limiting the space for innovation and management that has just
been created.
When such a group of frontrunners has been brought together to focus
on a certain transition issue, an attempt is made to reach a joint perception
of the problem by means of a strongly interactive process. By deploying a
participative integrated systems approach, the complex problem(s) can be
structured and made easier to understand (Hisschemller and Hoppe
1996). The convergence of the various problem perceptions is facilitated
from the articulation of diverging perspectives of the actors involved,
which in turn will lead to new insights into the nature of the problem(s)
and the underlying causal mechanisms. These insights form the prelude to
a change in perspective, which is a necessary but insufcient precondition
to realizing a transition. Based on this new perspective and through discussion and interaction, sustainability visions are generated, which
primarily include the shared basic principles for long-term (sustainable)
development, leaving room for dissent upon short and mid-term
175
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DERK LOORBACH
into the open; there will be negotiations about investments, and individual plans and strategies will be ne-tuned. The actors who should be
involved at this stage are those who represent one of the organizations
involved and who are willing and able to operate for more than just a
short period of time. Within this tactical layer, actors should be recruited
who, in particular, have sufcient authority and room for maneuver
within their own organization and who also have insight into the opportunities for their organization to contribute to the envisaged transition
process. An important condition for this is that the actors involved have
the capacity to translate the transition vision and the consequences of
this to the transition agenda of their own organization. When the organizations and networks involved start to adjust their own policy and actions
in this way, tensions will arise between the transition arena and the everyday policy agendas. Then the direction will have to be reviewed at a
strategic level, and if necessary, a new arena will have to be established
with some of the existing actors, but also with new ones.
Operational: Experiments
At the operational level of transition management, transition experiments
and actions are carried out that try to broaden, deepen, and scale up
existing and planned initiatives and actions (Raven, Van den Bosch, and
Weterings 2007; Rotmans and Loorbach 2008). The transition experiments
need to t within the context of the vision and transition paths developed.
They may compete, complement each other, or investigate various
options. Diversity is an important aspect, as long as these experiments at
the systems level are in a position to contribute to the envisaged transition.
Transition experiments are iconic projects with a high level of risk that can
make a potentially large innovative contribution to a transition process.
New transition experiments are derived directly from the developed sustainability vision and transition objectives, and they t within the identied transition paths. On the other hand, experiments can be linked to
innovation experiments that are already taking place as long as they t
into the context of the transition. When an experiment has been successful
(in terms of evaluating its learning experiences and contributions to the
transition challenge), it can be repeated in different contexts (broadening)
and scaled up from the micro- to the mesolevel (scaling up). This requires
a considerable amount of timeapproximately 510 years. Transition
experiments are often costly and time consuming, so it is important that
wherever possible, existing infrastructure (physical, nancial, institutional) is used for experiments, and that the experiments feasibility is
continuously monitored. Transition management at this level focuses on
creating a portfolio of related transition experiments that complement and
strengthen each other, have a contribution to the sustainability objective,
can be scaled up, and are signicant and measurable.
177
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179
Acknowledgments
The author would like to thank the anonymous reviewers sincerely for
their in-depth comments and constructive suggestions, which helped to
improve the quality of the article considerably. In pointing out new and so
far underdeveloped research questions, they also helped in shaping the
authors future research agenda. This research is funded by the Dutch
Knowledge Network on System Innovations and Transitions (KSI),
(www.ksinetwork.nl).
Notes
1.
2.
3.
http://www.ontwikkelingsmaatschappij-parkstad.nl/
page.php?pagID=169&men1ParentID=179 (in Dutch).
http://www.senternovem.nl/EnergyTransition/Index.asp.
http://www.ovam.be/jahia/Jahia/pid/1607 (in Dutch), http://www.lne.
be/themas/duurzaam-bouwen-en-wonen/algemeen/
transitiemanagement-duwobo (in Dutch).
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Abstract
The use of the metabolism concept, expanded to include aspects of livability, is applied to cities to demonstrate the practical
meaning of sustainability. Its application in industrial ecology, urban ecology, urban demonstration projects, business plans
and city comparisons are used to illustrate its potential. # 1999 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.
Keywords: Sustainability; Cities; Metabolism; Livability; Ecosystem; Indicators
1. Introduction
Sustainability has been dened through the United
Nations as a global process of development that
minimises environments resources and reduces the
impact on environmental sinks using processes that
simultaneously improve the economy and the quality
of life (UN World Commission on Environment and
Development, 1987). This paper tries to show how a
simple model developed for the Australian State of the
Environment reporting process (Newman et al., 1996)
can be used to give some substance to the application
of sustainability to cities. Data from the Australian
applications and some other case studies are provided
to illustrate how the model works.
2. Application of sustainability to cities
The principles of sustainability can be applied to
cities though the guidance on how this can be done
1
Tel.: +61-8-9360-6913; fax: +61-8-9360-6421
E-mail address: newman@central.murdoch.edu.au
220
221
in order to turn them into anything useful and ultimately all materials will eventually end up as waste.
For example, all carbon products will eventually end
up as CO2 and this is not possible to recycle any
further without enormous energy inputs that in themselves have associated wastes. This is the entropy
factor in metabolism.
What this means, is that the best way to ensure that
there are reductions in impact, is to reduce the
resource inputs. This approach to resource management is implicitly understood by scientists but is not
inherent to an economist's approach which sees only
`open cycles' whenever human ingenuity and technology are applied to natural resources. However, a city is
a physical and biological system. Fig. 2 and Table 1
apply the metabolism concept to Sydney.
The metabolic ows for Sydney in 1970 and 1990
are summarised in Table 1; they show that apart from
a few air quality parameters there has been an increase
Fig. 2. Resource inputs consumed and waste outputs discharged from Sydney, 1990. Source: Newman et al., 1996.
222
Table 1
Trends in certain per capita material flows in Sydney, 1970 and
1990; source: Newman et al. (1996)
Population
Sydney 1970
2 790 000
Sydney 1990
3 656 500
Resources inputs
Energy/capita
Domestic
Commercial
Industrial
Transport
88 589 MJ/capita
10%
11%
44%
35%
Food/capita (intake)
0.23 tonnes/capita
0.22 tonnes/capita
Water/capita
Domestic
Commercial
Industrial
Agricultural/gardens
Miscellaneous
144 tonnes/capita
36%
5%
20%
24%
15%
180 tonnes/capita
445
9%
13%
16%
18%
Waste outputs
Solid waste/capita
Sewage/capita
Hazardous waste
0.59 tonnes/capita
108 tonnes/capita
0.77 tonnes/capita
128 tonnes/capita
0.04 tonnes/capita
Air waste/capita
CO2
CO
SOx
NOx
HCx
Particulates
7.6 tonnes/capita
7 1 tonnes/capita
204.9 kg/capita
20.5 kg/capita
19.8 kg/capita
63.1 kg/capita
30.6 kg/capita
9.3 tonnes/capita
9.1 tonnes/capita
177.8 kg/capita
4.5 kg/capita
18.1 kg/capita
42.3 kg/capita
4.7 kg/capita
This approach now becomes more of a human ecosystem approach, as suggested by Tjallingii and others
above.
Some typical sustainability indicators for cities
covering metabolic ows and livability are outlined
in Table 2. Livability is about the human requirement
for social amenity, health and well being and includes
both individual and community well-being. Livability
is about the human environment though it can never be
separated from the natural environment. Sustainability
for a city is thus not only the reduction in metabolic
ows (resource inputs and waste outputs), it must also
be about increasing human livability (social amenity
and health).
Livability indicators were produced for Sydney and
other Australian settlements for the State of the Environment Report (Newman et al., 1996), but only for 1
year. Further studies can thus determine if these
aspects of sustainability are improving or not.
5. Application of the extended metabolism model
The extended metabolism model can be applied at a
range of levels and to a range of different human
activities, for example:
Industrial areas can examine their inputs of
resources and outputs of waste while measuring
their usual economic parameters and other matters
such as worker health and safety. These data could
then be used to see how mutually useful solutions
could be found such as the recycling of one industry's waste as an important resource substitute for
an adjacent industry. The Kalundborg area of Denmark has made an assessment of this kind (Tibbs,
1992). Ayres and Simonis (1994) have adopted a
similar approach for industrial areas based on
`industrial metabolism'.
Households or neighbourhoods can make an
assessment of their metabolic flows and livability
and together make attempts to do better with both.
Examples of this approach in single developments
are being labeled `urban ecology' (Newman and
Kenworthy, 1999).
Urban demonstration projects can be assessed for
their sustainability using the extended metabolism
model. For example, we were asked to evaluate the
223
Table 2
Annual goals and indicators for sustainable city
1. Energy and air quality
Reduce total energy use per capita
Decrease energy used per dollar of output from industry
Increase proportion of bridging fuels (natural gas) and renewal fuels (wind, solar, biofuels)
Reduce total quantity of air pollutants per capita
Reduce total green house gases (eg Kyoto goals of `demonstrable progress' by 2005 and 5% reductions by 200812 from 1990 levels and
then further reductions annually)
Achieve zero days not meeting air quality health standard levels
Reduce fleet average and new vehicle average fuel consumption
Reduce number of vehicles failing emission standards
Reduce number of households complaining of noise reducing
2. Water, materials and waste
Reduce total water use per capita
Achieve zero days not meeting drinking water quality standards
Increase proportion of sewage and industrial waste treated to reusable quality
Decrease amount of sewage and industrial waste discharged to streams or ocean
Reduce consumption of building materials per capita (including declining proportion of old growth timber to plantation timber)
Reduce consumption of paper and packaging per capita
Decrease amount of solid waste (including increasing recycle rates for all components)
Increase amount of organic waste returning to soil and food production
3. Land, green spaces and biodiversity
Preserve agricultural land and bushland at the urban fringe
Increase amount of green space in local or regional parks per capita, particularly in `green belt' around city
Increase amount of urban redevelopment to new development
Increase number of specially zoned transit-oriented locations
Increase density of population and employment in transit-oriented locations
4. Transportation
Reduce car use (vehicle kilometer traveled or vehicle miles traveled) per capita
Increase transit, walk/bike and car pool and decrease sole car use
Reduce average commute to and from work
Increase relative average speed of transit to cars
Increase service kms of transit relative to road provision
Increase cost recovery on transit from fares
Decrease parking spaces per 1000 workers in central business district
Increase length of separated cycleway
5. Livability, human amenity and health
Decrease infant mortality per 1000 births
Increase educational attainment (average years per adult)
Increase local leisure opportunities
Decrease transport fatalities per 100 population
Decrease reported crimes per 1000 population
Decrease deaths from urban violence
Decrease proportion of substandard housing
Increase length of pedestrian-friendly streets (based on specific indicators) in city and sub-centres
Increase proportion of city/suburbs with urban design guidelines to assist communities in redevelopment
Increase proportion of city allowing mixed use, higher density urban villages
224
Table 3
Sustainability and construction
The Sydney 2000 Olympics are described as the `Green Olympics' due to the Greenpeace winning design for the Olympic Village. In this
Olympic Village there will be 100% renewable electricity (from roof top photo voltaics and wind power), energy efficient buildings, solar hot
water, no poly vinyl chlorides or rain forest timber, a rail service connection, bicycle/pedestrian oriented layout and water and waste recycling
systems (Bell et al., 1995). Karla Bell and Associates who were closely involved in the design have also designed a Swedish new town,
Hammarby Sjostad, which was part of the failed 2004 Stockholm Olympics bid but which will still be built as a `sprearhead for ecological and
environmentally friendly construction' (City of Stockholm, 1997)
The goals of the new town are a model of reduced metabolic flows:
Energy
100% renewable-based electricity and heating
Energy use to not exceed 60 kwh/m2 in 205 and reducing to 50 kwh/m2 by 2015
Transport
80% commuting by non automobile means
20% less traffic by 2005 and 40% less by 2015
15% vehicles using biofuels by 2005 and 25% by 2015
100% freight vehicles electric or low emission vehicles
Material flows
100% solid waste recycled
20% reduction in waste by 2005, 40% by 2015
Water consumption reduced by 50% in 2005 and 60% by 2105
Sewage used for energy extraction and nutrients for farm soil
Stormwater used locally
Building materials
No PVC or non-recyclable materials to be used
No rain forest timbers to be used
New building materials only 50% of construction by 2005 and only 10% by 2015
No `sick-building' chemicals in carpets and furniture glues
wastes (`what we waste'). It did not specify livability outcomes, though their report stressed that
economic productivity improved as much from
staff morale as from new technology. Four hundred
separate sustainability initiatives were specified in
the firm based on the work of 18 different teams.
City comparisons. By comparing indicators for
resource use, wastes and livability in different
cities, it is possible to locate those cities (or parts
or cities) that have something to contribute to
policy debates on sustainability. Few cities have
done full assessments of their resources, wastes and
livability (Newman and Kenworthy, 1999). New
Zealand cities were assessed using the extended
metabolism model (Parliamentary Commission of
the Environment, 1998) and found that the area
requiring most attention was the growth in automobile dependence. Australian cities were studied
225
Table 4
Australian settlements and substainability based on `State of The Environment, Australia 1996'
1. The larger the cities the more sustainable they are in terms of per capita use of resources (land, energy, water) and production of wastes
(solid, liquid and gaseous) and in terms of livability indicators (income, education, housing, accessibility). The reason for this is the economies
of scale and density which mean that they have more public transport and recycling and are generally more innovative with new technology
(Newman and Kenworthy, 1999)
2. Larger cities are however more likely to reach capacity limits in terms of air sheds and water sheds. For large cities to continue to grow they
will need to be even more innovative if they are to be sustainable
3. In geographic cross section across Australian cities there is an increase in metabolic flows and declines in livability indicators from core to
inner to middle to outer to fringe suburbs. This pattern is related to the different urban development periods and most recently has been related
to re-urbanisation by more wealthy residents and firms. This rapid re-urbanisation of more central areas appears to be related to processes of
economic change in the new Information Age which may be helping cities to become less automobile dependent (Newman and Kenworthy,
1999)
4. Ex-urban and coastal settlements beyond the big cities are the least sustainable of all Australian development; they have large environmental
impacts, high metabolic flows and low invability on all indicators. These areas are heavily automobile dependent and highlight how
sustainability and transportation priorities are totally enmeshed
5. Remote aboriginal settlements have low metabolic flows and low livability (especially in regard to employment and health) but are the
settlements where new small-scale eco-technologies are being trialed.
6. Conclusion
This paper has provided examples of how the
extended metabolism model can be used to assess
the sustainability of cities. The simultaneous achievement of reduced resources and wastes whilst improving livability provides a framework for guiding our
cities into the future.
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226
Perspective Essay
h i g h l i g h t s
We propose an new approach to conducting urban metabolism analysis.
These will strengthen its utility for policy makers.
Data remain difcult to obtain and synthesize, but new approaches are emerging.
a r t i c l e
i n f o
Article history:
Received 28 November 2011
Received in revised form 23 May 2012
Accepted 5 June 2012
Available online 2 July 2012
Keywords:
Urban metabolism
Urban systems
Life cycle assessment
Environmental and social impacts
a b s t r a c t
The integrated study of energy and urban systems has recently become a critical component of sustainability research and policy. Increasing urbanization of human societies combined with intense energy
demands of modern economies have driven a recognition that sustainable practices require a systems
approach to both the study and application of sustainability principles. Urban metabolism has emerged
as a leading methodology for quantifying energy consumption and use patterns in urban environments.
Though typically applied as a method of accounting for total energy and materials inputs and outputs into
cities, its interdisciplinary history and methods allow urban metabolism to be expanded in ways that will
allow more comprehensive and integrated assessment of the patterns and processes of urban energy systems. In this article, we review the concept of urban metabolismincluding its two typical approaches:
mass balance and emergy methodsand offer a means to expand urban metabolism into a platform that
incorporates socioeconomic analysis, policy analysis, and additional quantitative methodologies (such as
life cycle assessment). This expanded urban metabolism framework is more comprehensive analytically
and builds upon the documented capacity of traditional urban metabolism to account for total energy
and materials ows of cities to provide an integrated platform for analysis of both energy patterns and
the causal processes that govern energy in contemporary cities.
2012 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
1. Introduction
With the industrial revolution and the rise of capitalism, the
modern world entered an era of resource exploitation and intensity that it had never before experienced. This industrial revolution,
coupled with advances in science as well as the growth of cities
and the global economy, laid the basis for the prodigal twentieth century (as McNeill, 2000 writes), that invented processes
bringing enormously accelerated social and ecological change,
predicated largely on the use of fossil fuels. No other centuryno
millenniumin human history can compare with the twentieth for
194
demands into line with the nite resources of the Earth, much
more needs to be done to quantify resource use and to understand its political, economic, and ecological context. One promising
framework that has been advanced as an approach for quantifying
energy and resource use and supply in modern societal systems
is that of urban metabolism. Urban metabolism offers a platform for greatly expanded urban systems analysis. Researchers
such as Newman et al. (1996), commissioned by the Australian
government to study the trends of per capita resource input and
waste metabolism in Sydney, were early pioneers in linking urban
metabolic measures to livability and sustainability analysis. Yet the
analyses remained at a descriptive level and did not delve into the
social and political drivers of urban form and levels of ows. Much
of the discussion was exhortative, stating that industrial areas could
look at their ows to reduce waste through industrial ecology principles, or that projects could be assessed for their sustainability
using extended metabolism analysis. There was little recognition
of the structural (political, economic, social) processes and complexity of change. In this paper, we assess the state and value of
urban metabolism for inuencing urban sustainability and conclude by suggesting that urban metabolism analysis, to be effective,
also requires a politicalecologicaltheoretical framework and an
understanding of power and money.
In the discussion that follows, we attempt to make the case for
the expansion of urban metabolism to a more encompassing systems approach. While urban metabolism has been explored by a
number of different disciplines such as industrial ecology, ecology, chemistry, and urban planning, studies on cities have tended
to be done from each disciplinary perspective. The expansion of
urban metabolism to a wider systems-oriented approach requires
the collaboration of different disciplines in the analysis of a citys
metabolism, in matching energy and waste ows to land uses and
social-demographic variables, in evaluation of the socioeconomic
and policy drivers that govern the ows and patterns, as well as life
cycle assessment of the various processes and materials that make
up a citys metabolism. This is a difcult undertaking, necessitating harmonization of units of measure, scale, boundary denitions,
and the integration of the human element. Urban systems are sustained by resource ows and they generate waste, and these are
driven by policy frameworks (explicit and implicit) and human
social organization. Linking the resource base of cities to the human
decision-making frameworks they exist inoften politicalwill
provide insights about the contexts that support how urban areas
work.
We begin with an overview of urban metabolism rst as discussed by Marx, and much later as applied by industrial ecologists
and others. We provide an overview of its applications in the
current literature and its limitations. We then suggest a new
approach to urban metabolism, modied and augmented by sociodemographic and spatially explicit data, greater integration of
ecological impacts, considerations of systems-based policies (e.g.,
climate change and energy), and the situating of urban metabolisms
in current political ecology theory (Castree, 2008; Francis, Lorimer,
& Racko, 2011; Heynen, Kaika, & Swyngedouw, 2006; Pickett,
Buckley, Kaushal, & Wiliams, 2011; Robbins, 2004; Zimmerer,
2006). This expanded urban metabolism approach is inherently
interdisciplinary, requiring the techniques of life cycle assessment, ecological assessment, economic analysis, sociology and
policy studies, and the uncovering of systemic interdependencies
and interactions that undergird urban energy patterns and processes. It recognizes the multi-level governance challenges faced by
cities, including the opportunities for experimentation and learning (Corfee-Morlot, Cochran, Hallegatte, & Teasdale, 2011; Evans,
2011) as well as the limitations due to the politicized nature of systems policies (i.e., climate change) and declining public sector scal
capacity. Indeed, expanded urban metabolism is a science and data
195
Fig. 1. An urban metabolism is situated in a nested and tiered system that is interconnected, interactive, and interdependent.
196
4. Measurement methods
Forty-ve years after this pioneering work by Wolman and his
contemporaries, UM has evolved into two distinct approaches:
mass balance accounting and Odums emergy method. The rst is
the more widely used energy-materials ux approach (discussed
in greater detail below). It is closely associated with the Industrial
Ecology and Engineering elds. It incorporates tools of material
ow analysis (MFA) to assess the movement of urban materials
(and energy) through the urban system (Barles, 2007a, 2009). It
also accounts for the energy necessary to transform raw materials and resources into material goods to meet demand needs and
the associated waste ows (Huang, Lee, & Chen, 2006). The latter
approach, discussed immediately below, is based on H.T. Odums
conceptualization of energy in which all measures are normalized
to standard units based on solar energy.
Odum (1983) accounted for metabolic ows by measuring the
available solar energy used directly or indirectly to make a product or deliver a service. He called this method Emergy. Emergy is
measured in solar emergy joules (seJ). As a systems ecologist, he
wanted to emphasize the dependence on the source of almost all
energy on the planetthe sun. Emergy researchers were trying to
show that there are qualitative differences of mass or energy ows
that were ignored by previous UM researchers. As pointed out by
one of the reviewers of this paper, one ton of cement and one ton
of sand are different for construction activity, just like one ton of
meat (beef) and one ton of vegetables provide different nutrients
and calories for peoples diets. Emergy accounting draws attention
to the fundamental dependence of cities on ecological processes
that themselves are possible only due to solar energy (Huang et al.,
2006; Huang & Chen, 2009). Emergy is a measure of energy ow (i.e.,
analogous to thermodynamic work) by nature and humans to generate products and ecological services. For Odum it was the basic
and ubiquitous common metric of environmental and economic
values (Odum, 1996; Odum & Odum, 2006).
The emergy method emphasizes standard units for all materials,
energy, nutrient, and waste ows in biophysical systems. While
theoretically possible, it is practically difcult to express all urban
processes in common units. Emergy accounting faces challenges of
inadequate or disparate data as well as difculties of integrating
and/or comparing materials and energy represented in different
units. The complexity of this approach and its resulting limited
application is due to converting ows to the seJ metric (Huang,
1998; Huang & Chen, 2009; Huang & Hsu, 2003; Odum, 1996). Thus,
the energy-material ux method, which emphasizes quantifying
as much of an urban systems materials and energy ows as possible, regardless of units, is the more common urban metabolism
approach.
Among urban metabolism studies that employ an energymaterial ux approach, widely used quantication methods
include material ow analysis (MFA), mass balance, and, increasingly, the joining of life cycle assessment (LCA) to UM. MFA is
based on the principle of mass conservation where mass in = mass
out + stock changes. MFA measures the materials owing into a system, the stocks and ows within it, and the resulting outputs from
the system to other systems in the form of pollution, waste, or
exports (Sahely, Dudding, & Kennedy, 2003). Materials enter, or
ow into urban systems, they are consumed to create biophysical structureshuman bodies, artifacts, buildings, roads, machines,
tools, agricultural crops and livestock, export productsand create waste (Haberl, Batterbury, & Moran, 2001). Within the concept
of industrial or societal metabolism, sustainability problems are
197
Table 1
Comparative urban metabolism measurement methods.
Method
Merits
Drawbacks
Emergy
Material ow analysis
Mass balance
use UM to examine the role that location, urban form, technology, and economics can play in GHG inventories. UM has been
used by several urban designers to provide material ow analysis and a framework to envision more sustainable communities
and cities (Kennedy, 2010; Oswald, Bacchini, & Michaeli, 2003;
Quinn, 2007). Codoban and Kennedy (2008) have explored the
relationship between design and metabolism at the neighborhood
scale. Their study of the urban metabolism of four representative Toronto neighborhoods showed that different neighborhood
forms, including the construction of energy-efcient buildings and
development of public transit, had different implications for neighborhood metabolisms. Further research must be conducted to
evaluate whether unintended consequences impact nearby areas.
Climate change, which will differentially affect regions of the globe,
adds yet another dimension of resource use that UM studies can
usefully inform. For example, Mediterranean climate cities are
likely to experience greater heat incidents and water scarcities.
Understanding patterns of water use and energy requirements
(e.g., for cooling) through UM, coupled with water and energy policy, could greatly inform metropolitan adaptation and mitigation
strategies.
In addition to environmental, land use, and urban quality
parameters, urban metabolism analyses have the capacity to reveal
which inputs present an unsustainable balance between demand
and supply as well as pollution ows that result at an aggregate
scale. Additionally, these energy and material ows can be related
to provisioning and sustaining functions, such as resource sources
and sinks, that ecosystem services provide to communities. The
ecosystem services component of UM remains less well developed,
however. To date, UM has generally conducted a raw accounting
of pollution generated by the city, with little further study of the
environmental impacts (e.g., water pollution, atmospheric nitrogen deposition) on the surrounding hinterlands (or beyond). The
expanded urban metabolism framework described in this paper
seeks to facilitate the explicit incorporation of these assessments
into urban metabolism studies.
5. Urban metabolism, the second generation: upgrading
the analytical framework by adding spatiality, ecology, and
people
In this section we discuss the additional elements UM needs
to provide more complete analysis, as well as the theoretical
198
199
Table 2
Theories of political ecology and political economy as framework for understanding drivers of UM (after Gibbs, 2002).
Political ecology
Political economy
An approach that focuses on institutions, rules, money and power that shape
economic forces and ows of wealth. For example the organization of the
world market for rare minerals: China produces the vast majority of them, and
regulates their sale, despite GATT agreements for fair trade.
200
Fig. 2. Describing the additional elements of an expanded urban metabolism framework. Based on the spiral model of software development, urban metabolism
can serve as a platform for incorporating relevant and appropriate methodologies for quantifying elements of an urban system that characterize that systems
metabolism. The additional elements in the expanded platform allow for a more
thorough evaluation of the causal, scalar/hierarchical, and process-based characteristics of urban systems.
10. Conclusion
Urban centers grow in complex ways due to dynamic and interlinked geographical and institutional forces converging upon them
(Grimm et al., 2008). Cities are now nearly entirely dependent on
access to resources and ecosystem functions outside of their administrative boundaries. They are also, as a result, the primary driver of
global environmental change. This includes greenhouse gas emissions that are causing climate change, the decline of biodiversity,
and impacts of resource extraction in far ung places such as mining in Africa for minerals, oil and gas extraction and much more.
Urban metabolism analysis can serve to bring to light these resource
impacts, and trace the consumption at the city level, back to the
place where the resource was originally obtained. Process impacts,
that may occur in yet another place, can also be quantied if UM is
linked with LCA.
At present, UM studies focus on fairly aggregated physical ows
of inputs and wastes at the city level without addressing the LCA,
but also not including an analysis of the social and institutional
drivers that organize, manage and regulate these ows and outcomes. Data gaps, omitted/hidden upstream ows, uncertainty
regarding the appropriate scale of analysis, and segregated information sources continue to constrain ne accounting of the urban
metabolism of cities. No studies have yet been able to describe ows
into a city and the waste sinks in a way that correlates those ows
with the specic residents and their activities, let alone a cradle to
grave accounting of the inputs. For example, few cities have data
about trash generation by ne-grained geographic scale or by land
use type.
Thus to determine what sectors are contributing different types
of waste, and the potential of waste reduction is quite difcult.
Moreover, without this type of specic information, it is also impossible to know what places and sectors are reducing their ows
and could be used as a model for other parts of the city/region.
This kind of data gap exists for water use, electricity and gas use,
materials intensivity of buildings and other infrastructure as well.
The same could be said about ecosystem services. While there is
a sense that a region such as Greater Los Angeles (for example)
could be far more water self-sufcient due to vast groundwater
resources, accurate mapping of optimal groundwater inltration
areas matched to land use is only emerging, and the sustaining capacity of groundwater resources themselves has not been
well assessed. Furthermore, change toward greater local water
resources use will also necessitate changes in land use regulations,
property rights, and groundwater management. Landscape designers and urban planners have an important role to play in these
changes. An expanded framework that also incorporates LCA methods will enhance the ability of urban metabolism to characterize
urban systems and inform their governance.
Finally, without a corresponding analysis of the social systemic
drivers of the ows, little headway will be made toward greater
urban sustainability, much less global climate change mitigation.
Patterns of resource use today, and the structures that support
them need to be unpacked for change to occur. These involve
power and money, politics and institutional conventions, as well
as increased afuence and population size. Merely describing the
ows better cannot make a difference without linking those ows
to the complex set of institutions, organizations, and societal relations that shape and guide economic activities, politics, and cultural
norms. This expanded urban metabolism framework is an attempt
to integrate these diverse research needs and advance the eld to
incorporate recognized needs and demands for societal relevance.
201
202
Niza, S., Rosado, L., & Ferrao, P. (2009). Urban metabolism methodological advances
in urban material ow accounting based on the Lisbon case study. Journal of
Industrial Ecology, 13, 384405.
Odum, H. T. (1983). Systems ecology; an introduction. New York: Wiley.
Odum, H. T. (1996). Environmental accounting: Emergy and environmental decision
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Odum, H. T., & Odum, E. C. (2006). The prosperous way down. Energy, 31, 2132.
Oswald, F., Baccini, P., & Michaeli, M. (2003). Netzstadt: Designing the urban. Basel:
Birkhuser.
Pataki, D. (2010). Integrating ecosystem services into the urban metabolism framework.
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Energy Commission.
Pickett, S., & Grove, J. (2009). Urban ecosystems: What would Tansley do? Urban
Ecosystems, 12, 18.
Pickett, S. T. A., Buckley, G. L., Kaushal, S. S., & Williams, Y. (2011). Socialecological
science in the humane metropolis. Urban Ecosystems, 14, 319339.
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Robbins, P. (2004). Political ecology: A critical introduction. Malden, MA: Blackwell
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Rowley, H. V., Lundie, S., & Peters, G. M. (2009). A hybrid life cycle assessment model
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Sayer, R. A. (2000). Realism and social science. Sage, London: Thousand Oaks, CA.
Schulz, N. B. (2007). The direct material inputs into Singapores development. Journal
of Industrial Ecology, 11, 117131.
Smil, V. (2008). Energy in Nature and Society, General Energetics of Complex Systems.
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Solli, C., Reenaas, M., Stromman, A. H., & Hertwich, E. G. (2009). Life cycle assessment
of wood-based heating in Norway. International Journal of Life Cycle Assessment,
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growth. New York: United Nations Population Fund.
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To cite this article: Sabine Barles (2010) Society, energy and materials: the contribution of urban
metabolism studies to sustainable urban development issues, Journal of Environmental Planning
and Management, 53:4, 439-455, DOI: 10.1080/09640561003703772
To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/09640561003703772
1. Introduction
Sustainable development refers to the interactions between societies and the
biosphere, which are considered two interdependent systems in co-evolution. The
anthroposystem or socio-ecosystem concepts also incorporate these two systems:
the term socio-ecosystem is used in the United-States and in several European
countries; however, the term anthroposystem is preferred in France (Leveque et al.,
in Leveque and Van der Leeuw 2003; see also Baccini and Brunner 1991, Berkes and
Folke 1998). There are many interactions; the most tangible are the energy and
material exchanges between societies and the biosphere. Societies, cities in particular,
are signicant consumers of materials and energy, either directly on their land areas
or indirectly through the materials, goods and services they import or export. Urban
metabolism thus has upstream and downstream consequences in terms of the
removal of resources and the discharge of waste materials (to the atmosphere, water
and soils), with multiple impacts on ecosystems and on the biosphere. Moreover, the
pronounced trend that characterises urbanisation processes is an increase in
the consumption of resources and in related emissions, which explains in part the
*Email: sabine.barles@univ-paris8.fr
ISSN 0964-0568 print/ISSN 1360-0559 online
2010 University of Newcastle upon Tyne
DOI: 10.1080/09640561003703772
http://www.informaworld.com
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S. Barles
441
Several decades elapsed before a renewed interest in urban metabolism was expressed
within the context of two emerging worries: the rst, the capacity of the planet to
feed and maintain a growing population and, the second, the destructive power of
man due to Earths nite, limited and unique characteristics. This was an idea
particularly brought forward at the Intergovernmental Conference of Experts on the
Scientic Basis for the Rational Use and Conservation of the Resources of the
Biosphere, sometimes called the Biosphere Conference, held in Paris in 1968 (see
Acot 1988). In addition to these planetary worries, a severe criticism of the industrial
town was frequently expressed. To cite only one example, in The City in History,
Lewis Mumford, who was aware of developments in ecology, denounced the myth
of megalopolis and forecast, like many of his contemporaries, the decline of
industrial towns (Mumford 1961).
The resulting urban ecology, developed from the 1960s onward, fell within the
scope of scientic ecology and, in particular, of the ecosystem theory brought
forward by Eugene Odum (1953). In 1965, the engineer Abel Wolman thus
introduced the notion of urban metabolism. He dened metabolic needs all the
442
S. Barles
materials and commodities needed to sustain the citys inhabitants at home, at work
and at play, the metabolic cycle and urban metabolic problems (Wolman 1965,
179). Shortly after, Eugene Odum described the city as a heterotrophic system
(Odum 1975) and later as a parasitic ecosystem (Odum 1989). The Belgian ecologist,
Paul Duvigneaud, who played an important role in the implementation of
international environmental research programmes, very closely followed him and
gave the Urbs (the Latin word for city) ecosystem signicant coverage in his very
popular Synthe`se ecologique (Duvigneaud 1974). He wrote: [translation] Scientic
knowledge . . . is required to ensure proper urban planning of the areas where most
men live (Duvigneaud 1974, p. 245). These rst texts on urban ecology of
naturalistic origin were well received internationally, particularly in France
(Mirenowicz 1982, Beaucire 1985), and were especially well conveyed by the
UNESCO Man and Biosphere programme, launched in 1971 (Celecia 2000). In this
framework, the cities of Rome, Barcelona and Hong Kong (Boyden et al. 1981) have
been the subject of detailed analyses.
Nevertheless, this research did not lead to the anticipated opportunities and
received erce criticism during the 1980s (see for example, for the French case,
Beaucire 1985, Theys and Emeliano 2001). Indeed, some urban ecologists wanted
to make ecology a division of science of its own, of which social sciences would
constitute only a part; an idea tolerated with diculty by social scientists.
Furthermore, these urban ecologists stuck to an energy determinism and to antiurban views (the city as a parasite) that prevented them from considering approaches
to control the environmental impact of cities. Finally, the methods developed to
analyse urban metabolism remained very approximate.
2.3.
The history of industrial ecology, which developed at the same time as naturalistic
urban ecology,1 reviewed by Suren Erkman (2004) in broad strokes, shows that, until
the end of the 1980s, the initiatives remained relatively isolated and focused on
industrial metabolism (the study of materials and energy ows) and industrial
ecosystems (the study of industrial assembly) among the pioneer texts, see Kneese
et al. (1970), Ayres (1978) and Billen et al. (1983). A major characteristic of these
approaches was the emphasis they placed on the need to link economic and ecologic
analyses. They even incorporated some principles stemming from ecology and
physics (for example, the law of conservation of matter) into the economic theory
(Kneese et al. 1970).
The present-day industrial ecology boom dates back to 1989 following the
publication of a special issue of Scientic American Managing Planet Earth, which
included the article Strategies for Manufacturing by Robert Frosch and Nicholas
Gallopoulos (1989).2 In the next decade, the number of research projects, experiments
and publications multiplied in this eld: for example Baccini and Brunner (1991),
Ayres and Simonis (1994), ORourke et al. (1996). The founding of the Journal of
Industrial Ecology in 1997 and of the International Society for Industrial Ecology in
2000 contributed to the structuring of industrial ecology as a discipline.
At rst, the principle objective of industrial ecology was the study and the
optimisation of the metabolism of the industrial sector. The approach was clear and
had two major goals: the rst was to identify and reduce loss of materials in order to
reduce the environmental impact of industrial processes and the cost of raw
443
materials; the second was to develop industrial symbioses, i.e. industrial assemblies
in which the by-products and refuse of one industry become the source for raw
materials or energy of another, based on Kalundborgs highly emblematic symbiosis
(Jacobsen 2006). Industrial ecology often favoured a quantitative and accounting
approach to metabolism, as well as a technological approach approaches that are
necessary, but not sucient, insofar as they do not consider the eect of stakeholders
with dierent proles and objectives on the ows or the social dimension of
industrial ecology (Boons and Howard-Grenville 2009). Furthermore, industrial
ecology often considered only one part of the anthropogenic ow of materials:
mainly the production sector. This three-pronged criticism was expressed by various
authors at the end of the 1990s (ORourke et al. 1996, Anderberg 1998), and seems to
have been heard since the organisers of the penultimate ISIE conference, held in June
2007, promoted the necessity of a full partnership with the social sciences and to
consider consumption (so the industrial society more than the industrial sector) as
part of the objectives of industrial ecology, together with the new need to address
explicitly the issues around sustainability.3 This concept of industrial ecology was
accepted earlier by some researchers and adopted in France.4
2.4. Territorial ecology and social ecology
Cities were initially largely absent in industrial ecology because the approaches were
generally poorly spatialised: for example, one of the reference works in the eld
(Ayres and Ayres 2002) devotes, on very sectional themes, only two chapters to
cities out of a total of 46. However, urban issues gained in importance (see for
instance Baccini and Brunner 1991). In 2007 one issue of the Journal of Industrial
Ecology is devoted to the city (Bai 2007b), and in 2008 the ConAccount conference
held in Prague specically addressed the urban metabolism question (Havranek
2009). After 2000, this trend gave rise to a new expression specic to France:
territorial ecology.5 This eld of research is based on both the accomplishments of
industrial ecology and urban ecology as dened in section 1.2 and brings together
scholars from various elds such as industrial ecology, urban planning, urban
engineering, urban biogeochemistry and ecological economics. As such, it is an
industrial ecology that is considered in a spatial context and that takes into account
the stakeholders and, more generally, the agents involved in material ows,
questions their management methods and considers the economic and social
consequences of these ows. This expression, which also has the advantage of
replacing the term urban ecology, is not universally used; in order to not add to the
confusion, some of those in the eld argue for the continued use of the original
designation (industrial ecology) in view of its precedence and the existing structuring
of the eld. The emphasis on the spatial dimension of energy and material ows
closely relates territorial ecology to the eld of social ecology championed by the
Institute of Social Ecology in Vienna (Austria).
3. Recent work
In this context, research projects were launched that fell, implicitly or explicitly, within
the elds of urban ecology, of industrial ecology when focused on cities (or parts of
cities), of territorial ecology with the same focus, or of biogeochemistry applied to
urbanised systems. While not an exhaustive list, this section presents an inventory as
444
S. Barles
illustrative as possible of the issues and themes examined in these studies, thanks to an
overview about how four dierent methodological approaches (Material Flow
Analysis; Substance Flow Analysis; Energy Flow Analysis and Environmental
Footprinting) are used to quantify the biophysical exchange processes of cities.
The studies reviewed here either fall under the scope of primary research or of
applied research and decision support. In the rst case, they seek to understand how
urban biogeochemistry works, the implications of the material and energy needs of
cities on other spaces and the entire biosphere, and how biogeochemical and social
operations interact. In the second case, the research falls within the scope of the
issues of sustainable development (Walsh et al. 2006) and addresses the requirements
that need to be met for dematerialisation (the consumption of fewer materials),
decarbonisation (the consumption of less carbon), and closing the material loops,
decoupling (between material consumption and economic development). These
studies may involve constructing indicators, identifying special targets for sustainability (a material, an industry, etc.), developing decision support tools for strategies
to dematerialise, decarbonise, etc.
There are relatively few methods for analysis: material, substance or energy
balances and life-cycle analyses (however, some researchers involved in life-cycle
analysis do not necessarily claim to belong to the eld of industrial ecology). These
methods apply the principle of conservation of matter (Nothing is lost, nothing is
created, everything is transformed) and the principles of thermodynamics (most
often the rst principle of energy conservation, sometimes associating it with the
second: the entropy of the universe always increases). Other methods, from various
disciplines, can supplement these basic methods on a case-by-case basis: the history
of technology, urban engineering, management sciences, sociology of organisations,
urban planning etc. Yet, metabolism remains at the heart of the approach, whether it
is to understand, characterise or modify it. These studies on metabolism can lead to
modelling and even simulation. The research subjects are varied, even when the
analyses are restricted to projects with an urban dimension (central city, urban area,
region), or to a particular substance.
3.1.
In the last few years, (bulk) Material Flow Analysis (MFA) has become more rened
and precise (see Baccini and Brunner 1991, Bringezu et al. 1997, 1998, Kleinj et al.
1999, Hammer et al. 2003a, Brunner and Rechberger 2004, Barles 2009, Havranek
2009), although studies of this type remain rare at the urban level.
The key questions raised and discussed are:
. How should the system be dened and then limited? Does it correspond to a
geographic or administrative unit and its natural substratum or must a
boundary be placed between, on one hand, a social and economic system
that is characterised by its population, its organisation and its activities and,
on the other hand, the natural environment that supports it (the case in
Figure 1)?
. What is the relevant scale of the research? Should consideration be given to the
urban area as a whole, some subsystems within the urban area or a larger area,
that is a regional one? Statistical constraints may determine the scale, but may
lead to bias.
445
Figure 1. Schematic of the Local Bulk Material Balance, adapted from the National Balance
Method of the Statistical Oce of the European Community (Eurostat).
Source: Reprinted with permission from S. Barles, Journal of Industrial Ecology, 13(6), (2009)
898913. Copyright by WileyBlackwell.
Notes: BI: Balancing input, e.g. the oxygen consumed by combustion reaction. BO: Balancing
ouputs, e.g. the water produced from the combustion reaction must be considered. BI and BO are
necessary to balance the MFA. Many indicators can be dened from this analysis: TMR: Total
Material Requirement; TMI: Total Material Input; DMI: Direct Material Input; NAS: Net
Addition to Stock; DPO: Direct Processed Output; LEPO: Local and Exported Processed Output;
TDO: Total Domestic Output; DMO: Direct Material Output; TMO: Total Material Output.
. Should the material balance be based on inputs and outputs of the system
before a more detailed analysis of the involved processes (Figure 1), or is it
preferable to infer the balance from the analysis of the natural and social
processes that characterise material ows, that is, to describe these ows from
within the system (Brunner and Rechberger 2004)?
. What pertinent indicators can be inferred from the material balance?
. How can the indirect ows be counted?
Establishing a uniform methodology is important in view of allowing comparisons in
time and space of multiple studies. Nevertheless, it remains an open question at the
local scale.
Furthermore, one of the objectives of bulk material balances is to characterise
the impact of cities on the biosphere on a global scale pressure on resources, air
pollution and, more generally, the impact on global change. This multi-scale
approach is relatively recent and there are few studies of this type to date see, for
example, beyond those previously cited: Schulz (2005), Kaye et al. (2006), Hammer
et al. (2006), Bai (2007a), Kennedy et al. (2007). It allows the weight of the urban
operation, in the full sense of the term, to be known. Thus, in the case of Paris and
its suburbs, all emissions represent more than half of the total material inputs and
are, consequently, more signicant than conventional exports (i.e. those linked to
monetary ows) (Table 1). Paris imports approximately 20,000 Kt (8.8 t/inhab)
and discharges 11,000 Kt (5.1 t/inhab) of materials annually. These numbers reveal
446
S. Barles
Table 1. Material balance for Paris, Paris and its inner suburbs (PPC) and Paris Greater
Metropolitan Region (Ile-de-France, IdF), 2003.
Paris (2,166,000
inhab)
DMI
DPO
LEPO
DMO
NAS
DMCcorr
Recycling (local & outside)
PPC (6,321,000
inhab)
IdF (11,259,000
inhab)
kt
t/inhab
kt
t/inhab
kt
t/inhab
19,160
6860
10,960
19,340
3100
10,780
1850
8.8
3.2
5.1
8.9
1.4
5.0
0.9
69,530
27,410
37,020
77,430
4110
29,120
4660
11.0
4.3
5.8
12.2
0.7
4.6
0.7
137,990
76,290
76,360
134,860
29,460
79,490
7320
12.3
6.8
6.8
12.0
2.6
7.1
0.7
Figure 2. Direct Material Consumption (DMC) for Paris, its Inner Suburbs, Outer Suburbs
and Greater Metropolitan Region (Ile-de-France, IdF), 2003, t/inhab, rail transportation
excluded.
Source: Reprinted with permission from S. Barles, Journal of Industrial Ecology, 13(6), (2009)
898913. Copyright by WileyBlackwell.
447
large amount of construction materials are consumed in the outer suburbs due to
urban sprawl (both direct and, especially, indirect consumption linear infrastructure related to new housing). The link between land use and urban metabolism
is seen here.
It is also possible to compare and monitor local and national indicators. The
Hamburg case, analysed from 1992 to 2002, is revealing in this matter (Hammer
et al. 2003b): on the one hand, direct material inputs (DMI) are much higher than
the national average (65 and 22 t/inhab, respectively) as they are driven by
Hamburgs harbour functions; on the other hand, the direct material consumption
(DMC), which was lower than the German average at the beginning of the 1990s (10
and 20 t/inhab respectively), seems to catch up with, even exceed, this national
average 10 years later, suggesting that Hamburgs sustainability is lower in 2002 than
it was in 1992.
Material balances can also be used to dene targets for dematerialisation and,
more generally, for improvements to the ecologic performance of cities. Such
projects, still largely experimental, are on the cutting edge of research and actions
and can be directly dealt with by local communities. Within the framework of its
environmental policy, in 1995 the city of Stockholm launched an intensive study
linking material and substance ow analyses (Burstrom et al., in Bringezu et al.
1998). More recently, in the township of Geneva, a law on public action for
sustainable development (Agenda 21), adopted in March 2001, states in Article 12:
[translation] The State facilitates possible synergies between economic activities in
order to minimise their environmental impacts (Erkman 2006, p. 1). This principle
led to the realisation of a material and energy balance that will serve as the basis of
the townships sustainable development policies. For example, the balance of food
material reveals that barely 25% of organic waste is recovered. This nding leads to
the conclusion that both an increase in this rate and an intensication of
methanisation infrastructures, the process considered to be the most eective for
waste recovery, must be advocated for (Erkman 2006).
3.2.
Substance ows
Substance ow analysis (SFA) is used to address more specic questions (like water,
air or soil contamination by one substance or another), or to understand the role of
cities in global biogeochemistry. In view of the broad diversity of natural and
anthropogenic processes being considered, there is no standardised SFA method like
the one used for the material ows. Some of the questions that have been touched on
regarding bulk material remain (limits and scale, indirect ows), but they are solved
on a case-by-case basis. Compared to bulk materials, the characterisation of the
substance ows requires consideration of the processes internal to the system under
study (a city, for example), which can no longer be considered as a black box. More
generally, the same issues exist as for bulk material, from fundamental research
questions (e.g. what is a city from a biogeochemical perspective?) to applied research
questions.
Because cities produce little of their own food and food consumption has a
considerable impact on several biogeochemical cycles, the analysis of the ows of
biogenic elements is fairly developed. An initial set of research studies was carried
out over the (relatively) long term and raised questions on the evolution of urban
food needs and its consequence, not only in terms of agricultural production and
448
S. Barles
lands required to satisfy these needs, but also in terms of the management of the
resulting discharge and its release, in one form or another, into the environment.
The research was directed towards phosphorus and nitrogen and has revealed the
signicant stress imparted by a growing urban demographic on food production. It
has also shown the impact of the evolution of agricultural techniques (especially
fertilisers) and food practices (meat) on the agricultural areas farmed to meet the
dietary needs of cities (Schmid-Neset 2005, Billen et al. 2008), and the impact of
urban techniques on the varying return of nutrients to cultivated soils (Figure 3).
These studies constitute a textbook example of the analysis of the gradual opening of
biogeochemical cycles.
The topicality of these themes appears in several studies that stress the link
between land consumption and food production and/or the hugeness of the ows at
play, the low level of recycling and their impacts on the environment (eutrophication, oxygen decit) and public health (nitrates) (Gumbo et al. 1999, Frge et al.
2001, Danius and Burstrom 2001, Waggoner 2006, Forkes 2007). For example,
Jennifer Forkes (2007) shows that in Toronto despite the development of an organic
matter waste reclamation technique, the nitrogen recycling rate has decreased from
4.7% in 2001 to 2.3% in 2004. In Bangkok, 7% and 10% of dietary nitrogen and
phosphorus, respectively, are currently recovered (Frge et al. 2001). These studies
put in perspective the eect of the recycling policies that may be implemented and
demonstrate the need for a better understanding of the urban ow of biogenic
elements and an optimised waste reclamation technique. These ndings have
signicant consequences in terms of clean-up techniques (liquid and solid) that
adhere to ecological or sustainable sanitation perspectives.6
Because of their high toxicity, heavy metals are the subject of numerous studies
see for example, the Swedish programme Metals in the Urban and Forest
449
450
S. Barles
scientic communities dierent from the one dealing with urban metabolism (Barles
et al. 2010).
Ignoring the energy issue has resulted in major environmental and social issues
being overlooked. It explains why hydraulic power is considered sustainable and yet
its development has undeniable impacts; why, in a more urban perspective, the
thermal island issue, despite its signicance in climate change, is disregarded; why
what is at the origin of the extraction of certain materials is not considered: the
energy needs of societies, transportation demands, etc. Moreover, the energy issue is
much greater than the simple consumption of extrasomatic energy (beyond
physiological needs) since the food issue is closely linked to it. Finally, the biosphere
is a biosphere thanks to solar energy, whose utilisation, indeed appropriation, allows
the functioning of human societies.
These ndings are behind approaches now used that are somewhat distinguishable from the traditional analysis methods of industrial or urban metabolism.
Examples of such approaches are found in the research conducted at the Institute of
Social Ecology in Vienna, especially by Fridolin Krausmann (2005) and Helmut
Haberl (2001a, 2001b, 2006). These researchers compare the metabolism of societies
to their total energy consumption, both technical and non-technical, and on this
basis develop a set of indicators that characterise the impact of human societies on
the biosphere (especially human appropriation of net primary productivity or
HANPP, see Haberl et al. (2007)). The approach of these studies bears a causal
connection with the notion of ecological footprint (that does not generally claim to
belong to the eld of industrial, urban, or territorial ecology).
3.4.
The idea of a footprint has been widely disseminated thanks to William Rees and
Mathis Wackernagels concept of an ecological footprint (Rees and Wackernagel
1996a, 1996b). It represents the amount of biologically productive surface needed
to sustainably maintain a human society given its living standard and lifestyle; it
accounts for both the surfaces consumed and those that are needed to compensate
for the greenhouse gas emissions that result from the use of fossil fuels. A number
of criticisms have been aimed at the concept of an ecological footprint (Van Den
Bergh and Verbruggen 1999, Piguet et al. 2007, Billen et al. 2008, Fiala 2008),
including the non-location of the footprint, the mono-functional characteristic
attributed to soils, the bias inherent to the method (especially its aim to account
for too many phenomena thanks to a unique indicator a virtual area), the
possible pernicious eects of using it as a tool for action, and the fact that it
does not account for the sum of the interactions between societies and the
biosphere because it gives more weight to an energy approach (biomass and fossil
fuels).
The concept of environmental footprints or imprints is, however, particularly
important for characterising the impacts of metabolism (urban in the context of this
article) on the biosphere. The term footprint (or imprint) is used to designate both
the spatial dimension of the impacts (in three dimensions, the third one being its
depth, that is the intensity of its environmental impact) and their varying severity.
The plural of this term (footprints) is used to signify that there are many dierent
impacts. As such, each city has a set of footprints whose size, shape, localisation and
depth changes in time, but accurately reects the citys metabolism, the lifestyle of its
451
citizens and not only its urban, but also its national and international, socioeconomic, political and technical systems.
There is a lot at stake with this concept. The aim is to show the partial and
gradual delocalisation of resource consumption and the emissions and discharges
magnied by globalisation, and all the consequences that ensue in terms of intragenerational solidarity. Examples include studies on the water footprint that were
rst conducted on a nation-wide scale and aimed at describing, both qualitatively
and quantitatively, the virtual water transfers associated with international trade
(Chapagain and Hoekstra 2004). Some works are also conducted at the regional
(Peters et al. 2007) or urban level (Chatzimpiros and Barles 2009); cities import
goods whose development required the consumption of a certain quantity of water
elsewhere which also led to an impairment of the resource in the drainage basin
concerned. Similarly, studies on the food footprint or food-print (Billen et al. 2008)
have shown that it has decreased in area because the agricultural yield has increased
since the Second World War in developed countries. Its depth, however, has
increased as a result of the growing use of synthetic fertilisers and phytosanitary
products. Furthermore, the food-print is increasingly discontinuous and distant from
the cities supplied. In addition, the concept of environmental footprints allows
spatial limits to be placed where human and urban activities develop, while
emphasising the critical issue of land use and its competing allocations (Krausmann
2001).
4.
Although it is a relatively new eld of research, urban metabolism in its wide sense
as suggested by the French territorial ecology has a bisecular past and its
epistemology must still be rened (however, see Fischer-Kowalski 1999, FischerKowalski and Huttler 1999). Future progress, both in the scope of the research and
in the action to be taken, can be expected if the city begins to be considered not as an
unsustainable parasite, but as a source of physical, energy, social and intellectual
resources.
It would be necessary to consolidate the theoretical basis of urban metabolism
studies, in particular, by going beyond the problems that arise from using analogies
and metaphors that all too often characterise it. It would be also necessary to dene
methods for analysis and to infer from them disaggregatable synthetic indicators that
would allow built-up areas to be monitored in time or compared to other built-up
areas, whether it is to characterise or to control interactions between urban societies
and the environment. Particular attention should also be paid to the identication of
the latent and remote eects of cities in time and space, which are particularly critical
against the background of economic globalisation and global change: their
footprints are still too poorly known. In urban spaces, it would be important to
link urban structures, lifestyle and urban metabolism: the impact of urban structures
on energy consumption is relatively well known, but a lot less is known about their
impact on material ows (see, for example, Newman and Kenworthy 1991, Haase
and Nuissl 2007). Another issue that remains to be addressed is the creation of a
stronger link between energy and material approaches, one not being reducible to the
other.
Taking it a step further, urban metabolism studies must also go beyond energy
and material accounting. The link between economy and ecology in the urban
452
S. Barles
context has not been investigated enough, although there have been signicant
contributions in journals such as Ecological Economics. The analyses must consider
the spatial and the territorial contexts, as well as the agriculture industry city
triptych. In this way, it is possible to question the concepts of proximity, both spatial
and social; the governance of ows, including the role of lifestyle and urban practices
in material exchanges; and the role of local and territorial stakeholders. To date, this
eld of inter disciplinary research is fragmentary.
Notes
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
Naturalistic urban ecology refers to urban ecology developed under the wider umbrella
of the eld of natural sciences, and not urban ecology as a branch of urban sociology (see
Boons and Howard-Grenville 2009).
Several other founding papers in this eld were published at the same time: (Ausubel and
Sladovich 1989, Reconciling 1989).
ISIE Conference Introduction, Toronto, 1720 June 2007. Available online [reference date
26 June 2007] from: http://www.pdc.utoronto.ca/events/International_Society_for_Industrial_Ecology_ISIE_2007/Preliminary_Schedule.htm
See, in particular, the results of the Prospective reection workshops on industrial
ecology, created by the National Research Agency in 2006 to promote the development of
industrial ecology in France. Available from: http://www.arpege-anr.org/
The author obtained this expression from Beno t Duret (Auxilia) but does not know who
coined it rst.
The Environment Institute of Stockholm is piloting the project EcoSanRes. Closing the
loop on sanitation (http://www.ecosanres.org/). This project is the basis of the
International Conference on Sustainable Sanitation: Eco-Cities and Villages, Dongsheng
(China), 2631 August 2007. Available from: http://www.ecosanres.org/icss/
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Pergamon
S0197-3975(96)00022-7
Wastewater Infrastructure:
Challenges for the Sustainable City in the New Millennium
M.B. BECK* and R.G. C U M M I N G S t
ABSTRACT
Aspects of the technologies that might be employed in the wastewater infrastructures of
cities in the longer-term future are discussed. For this purpose a wastewater infrastructure
is defined as the string of unit process technologies used to recycle and return the waterborne residuals of a city to its surrounding environment. In the cities of Europe and
North America, for example, this infrastructure conventionally comprises the urban sewer
network, wastewater treatment plant, and receiving water body. To provide context and
direction for the discussion, the impact of the city and its wastewater infrastructure on
the surrounding environment is reviewed over a time-scale of centuries. Two analogies
are employed in order to illustrate this impact: the concept of a city's 'metabolism'
within the global cycling of materials; and the notion of gauging the 'health' of the
system through something akin to measuring the 'pulse-rate' of an organism. Three scenarios
are drawn for the possible pattern of adaptation and more radical change in the technological composition of the city's future wastewater infrastructure. These may culminate in a
structure altogether different from that with which we are familiar today, i.e. a decentralised, highly segregated system in which control and manipulation of the composition of
any residual at its source is maximised. Further, it is argued that the issue of reliability
of performance may be a critical (technological) factor in choosing a preferred form of
wastewater infrastructure. We do not discuss the economic, social or cultural dimensions
of our subject; we acknowledge that these are likely to be decisive considerations, the
seeming technological attraction of any option notwithstanding. Copyright 1996 Elsevier
Science Ltd
~TRODUCTION
The word 'sustainability' has entered common usage in recent years, such that developing what might be called a sustainable agriculture or a sustainable form of forestry has
become a matter of priority in research. This trend, doubtless fuelled by the approach
of a new millennium, has provoked interest in the concept of a sustainable city. 1Quite
what would constitute the 'sustainability' of a city is not something we shall attempt
to elucidate in this paper, for we note that there has been little in the way of progress,
in general, in making the concept of sustainability operational, z But in a commonsense fashion, merely conceiving of the notion of a sustainable city has forced us to
think through how the entity of a city relates to the surrounding natural environment
Correspondence to: M.B. Beck, Daniel B. Wamell School of Forest Resources, The University of Georgia, Athens,
GA 30602-2152, USA.
405
406
in which it exists. These considerations have led us to reflect on the city's impact on
that environment over geological time, on what might be a desirable form for the
relationship between the city and its environment, and on the choice of technologies
that might be preferred for the composition of the city's infrastructure. This last, which
will be the focus of our discussion, cannot, of course, be divorced from socioeconomic
questions of the acceptability to the public of technological change in an infrastructure.
For the purpose of this paper our interest in the sustainable city debate is in the
freedom it has engendered : to dare to break certain moulds of conventional thinking.
Thus, given the myriad problems facing cities that arise from a more complete exploitation of water resources, their more intensive use and re-use, and the threat (or actuality) of degraded water quality, a more profound form of enquiry has been brought to
bear on the question of whether the manner in which the wastewater infrastructure of
a city is organised is capable of improvement, perhaps even radical improvement. In
short, our task is to explore the question:
If we did not have the present urban system of sewer networks and wastewater
treatment facilities, would we re-invent and adopt them or, given what we know
now, would we opt for (potentially radically) different alternatives?
A complete answer to this question is well beyond the scope of this paper and is not
yet available (if it ever were to be). What is more, a city's infrastructure has many
parts and it is helpful only up to a point to separate out for analysis its wastewater
component. In the next section we shall discuss briefly how the structure and technology of a city's wastewater infrastructure has evolved, over decades and centuries. Our
purpose is to give a sense of the dynamics of change in the longer term, as a basis
from which to speculate on some possible extrapolations into the future. The following section examines two principles by which one might attempt to discriminate between
more and less desirable alternatives for this infrastructure. In developing these principles
we shall make an appeal - - common now in the late 20th century - - to the analogy of
the system, in our case the city, as an organism. Armed then with these principles, the
penultimate section sets out a vision of three strategic paths that might be pursued into
the medium- and long-term future: adaptation, with the use of some 'high' technology,
of the existing paradigm of wastewater infrastructures; a re-orientation of the purpose
of this paradigm; or change, of a more substantial nature, to a quite different structure.
The final section presents the conclusions to the argument.
Wastewater Infi'astructure
407
its burden of constituents as the outputs of primary concern to us. The system, therefore,
comprises just the terrestrial component of the hydrological cycle and the wastewater
component of the city's infrastructure. Still more narrowly, therefore, this does not
include the corresponding element of infrastructure for the supply of potable and industrial
water to consumers in the city.
Let us examine then how the city, and its associated wastewater infrastructure, have
evolved and what has been their impact, when viewed as a transient perturbation of
the pre-existing 'pristine' hydrology of a river basin, in an instant of geological time.
At the onset of the perturbation, there was migration of population into the city; then
the installation of a centrally organised water supply to the city; the installation of
sewerage for avoiding flooding from precipitation over the newly created impervious
surfaces; extension and adaptation of the notion of sewerage and the use of water for
the conveyance of wastes out of the confined spaces of the city; followed by wastewater
treatment at a regional facility; and then successively more effective wastewater treatment.
Over the decades and centuries a local problem of soil pollution, from the practice
of land application of sewage in an earlier rural society, has been transformed into a
regional problem of water pollution. As the wastewater infrastructure of the city has
become more comprehensive - - at least within the paradigm of European and North
American cities - - this regional problem of water pollution has, in turn, become a
problem of solid-waste management. For the concomitant of conventional technologies of wastewater treatment, driven by the goal of restoring the quality of the city's
liquid residual to a near pristine state, is an ever increasing volume of recalcitrant
sewage-derived solid residuals.
In short, urban development today in Europe, North America and elsewhere can
hardly be imagined in the absence of sewerage, i.e. a water-based system of waste
removal, and the biotechnical processes generally believed to be indispensable to
contemporary wastewater treatment. The tree-like pattern of the modern city's sewer
network with all routes leading to the 'centralised' wastewater treatment facility, is a
mind-set that has been hard to dislodge, no less so for ourselves than for anyone else.
408
treatment of wastewater flows through the city. To these seven cycles a vital interest in
the hydrological cycle may be added.
For any one of these cycles some quasi-pristine condition may be imagined, as
represented pictorially in Fig. l a. We suggest, therefore, that a minimal distortion of
whatever we agree may have been the nature of this cycle at some point in the past
should be one attribute of a sympathetic relationship between the city and its environment. 5 Thus, if the impact of the city has been a distortion of this cycle of material
flows (Fig. lb), this would accordingly be judged as movement away from sympathy.
And what we seek ultimately is a wastewater infrastructure that does not exacerbate
any such distortion, as in Fig. lc, but rather tends to compensate for it, as in Fig. ld.
If Fig. la were to represent the hydrological cycle, for example, the impact of the
city has indeed been in the form of evolution towards Fig. lb, with further divergence
towards Fig. lc through the introduction of sewerage for the purposes of draining the
(a)
Co)
(c)
(d)
Fig. 1. The cycle of global material flows: (a) pristine, pre-city status; (b) distortion introduced as a result of the city;
(c) introduction of (undesirable) wastewater infrastructure exacerbating the distortions of the city; and (d) introduction of (desirable) wastewater infrastructure compensating for the distortions of the city.
Wastewater Infrastructure
409
urban land surface. In the pre-city condition, precipitation falling across the land surface
would hax,e travelled towards the nearest river, reaching it at many spatially dispersed
points along a variety of natural paths, many of them of relatively long duration through
the soil and sub-surface environment. Creation of the impervious surfaces of the city,
with subsequently the impermeable conduits of the sewer network, has greatly accelerated the movement of water from its impact on the ground and its eventual delivery,
mostly in flows concentrated at a few spatial locations, to the receiving river.
If alternatively Fig. la were to represent the global flow of nitrogen-(N-)bearing
materials, the principal distortion introduced into this cycle by the city would be perceived
as a net accelerated transfer of these substances (via food chains and surface runoff)
from the land to the water sector of the environment. 6 Where previously nitrogen
would have been returned in gaseous form from the land to the atmosphere directly, it
is now first diverted into the aquatic environment (in the soluble forms of organic-N
and ammonium-N) before its eventual return to the atmosphere. In order to suppress
both the excessive oxygen demanding and potentially toxic consequences of these
diversions (or distortions), many contemporary investments in a city's wastewater
infrastructure seek to exploit the natural biological processes of nitrification and denitrification in the intensified, engineered setting of a wastewater treatment plant. What
happens slowly in the receiving water body is to be encouraged to occur very rapidly
(and to a greater extent) in the treatment plant. The distortion of diverting the N-bearing
materials into the aquatic sector of the environment is thus to be rectified - - or arguably compounded - - by a treatment technology that will shunt the nitrogen yet still
more rapidly into the atmosphere than would have been the case in the pre-city condition. If we lock on to such technology, this may come to be seen as an undesirable
move towards Fig. lc (rather than towards Fig. ld). 7
Should we wish, in effect, to reverse this movement towards Fig. lc, SchulzeRettmer s has recommended an alternative technology of chemical precipitation for
generating a solid by-product of wastewater treatment known as struvite (magnesiumammonium-phosphate), notably 'naturally' occurring in guano, for example. This unorthodox
alternative would instead: (i) eliminate the production of biologically unavailable, if
not harmful, gases from denitrification; (ii) eliminate the energy-expensive need of
nitrification; and (iii) produce a readily usable, nutrient-enriched solid by-product. The
application of this last to the land environment clearly has a substitution potential with
respect to industrially manufactured fertilisers. Such substitution, coupled with the
absence of the gaseous 'end-products' of wastewater treatment, must in principle alleviate any distortions in the global flow of N due to an accelerated rate of cycling of
this element out of the atmosphere - - by industrial fixation - - and back into it, through
artificially intensified biological nitrification-denitrification.
Should we wish similarly to move back from Fig. lc in respect of the hydrological
cycle, we would do well to refer to an article by Geldof et al. 9 An illuminating appeal
has been made there to the notion of the city as an organism (the human being), and
its predominant paradigm of the sewer network as the alcoholic beverage that has left
the city with a hang-over. The symptoms of the hang-over are as already outlined: a
rapidly delivered excess of output water at the receiving river during the transient
perturbations of precipitation events; a more persistent absence of water elsewhere in
the system, i.e. a lowering of groundwater levels in the longer term; and, occasionally,
flooding of streets with foul sewage in a city having combined sewerage (that is,
sewers that convey a mixture of foul sewage and urban runoff). The proposed cure for
the hang-over, at least as seen by Geldof e t al., 1o is to promote the introduction of
technologies of local infiltration of surface runoff into the ground. These would be
dispersed across the city and would, if taken to their logical limit, retum the urban
section of our notional hydrological cycle to its pre-city condition and leave the wastewater
infrastructure to deal exclusively with the processing of foul sewage.
410
Spectrum of perturbations
The idea of a city having a hang-over is perhaps overly dramatic and may have pushed
the analogy with an organism too far. Given that we have already had to side-step the
issue of defining sustainability, making any further appeal to the 'health' of a city or to
'environmental health' may be counter-productive. For these too are hotly debated
issues, especially the latter, and we shall yet again be forced to proceed with the
analogy without any deep intellectual justification for the terms we are using.
In order to establish this analogy, consider that the well-being of our own organism
is in many ways gauged by the amplitude and frequency of a host of oscillatory patterns in the observed behaviour of the body (pulse-rate; electrocardiogram signals ).
Our system herein - - the block of earth on which the city stands, between the point of
impact of the rain-drop and its emergence into the stream - - is subject and responsive
to perturbations across the entire frequency spectrum. Oscillatory changes are apparent in the long term over millennia, centuries and decades; we might call these lowfrequency disturbances, typically associated with changes in climate, society and the
prevailing industrial base. At the opposite end of the spectrum the system will also be
subject to relatively high-frequency perturbations at weekly, diurnal and hourly scales,
arising from the habits and working patterns of life in the city and isolated precipitation events.
Putting aside other changes of land-use, we could suppose that the frequency spectrum
of the environment surrounding the city in some pre-city, pristine condition might
have looked like the continuous line in Fig. 2a. Its absolute shape is not important to
the more 'relativistic' argument that follows. The dashed line in the upper figure is a
rough impression of how the frequency spectrum of the system's response (the
IPre-19751
(a)
Intensity
Urban
popfflation
)ristine,---~
....v_....- ~-
mo
Sewers
mi
.v
Frequency
[Post-19951
(b)
Intensity
fistine,--)
Iafi'as.tructure
,~
Failures
mo
mi
Frequency
Fig. 2. Frequency spectrum of system perturbations: (a) dashed line represents pre-1975 impact of city; (b) dashed
line represents possible post-1995 impact of city. Continuous line represents possible pristine, pre-city condition.
WastewaterInfrastructure
411
environment's response) has been modified by the impact of the city and the introduction of an associated urban drainage system. The accelerated conveyance of surface
waters through the sewer network has amplified the response of the receiving water
body at the higher frequencies. In other words, the introduction of sewers has lessened
the proportion of oscillations over weeks and months that make up the system's response
and increased the contributing proportion of high-frequency oscillations at the scale of
hours and minutes. One could say that an element of damping - - originally provided
by the attenuated movement of water through the natural sub-surface environment - has been lost through the introduction of engineered sewer conduits. At the same time,
the concentration of population in the city and the introduction of an infrastructure of
foul sewerage and wastewater treatment, has given rise to a dominant peak in the
system's frequency response in association with the natural daily rhythm of society
and industry (Fig. 2a).
In the same sense as before, for the metaphor of global material flows, we might
posit a return to the pre-city template of the frequency spectrum of Fig. 2a as a desirable move towards the well-being of the city's environment. And in order to see just
how this might be possible, there is a need to reflect on the essential role of a city's
wastewater infrastructure in the wider setting of environmental protection.
First, we shall make the assumption that in the long run legislation governing protection of the environment will continue to become more stringent and be applied more
comprehensively.11 Second, let us suggest that as the infrastructure of pollution control
and prevention becomes increasingly complete ambient environmental quality will, on
the average, improve. Third, it is in the nature of things that our technology for observing the environment will become more complete and ever more refined - - providing
access to the burgeoning dimensions of 'contamination' at ever smaller concentrations
over larger spatial domains at yet finer scales of temporal variation. Fourth, it should
follow that through one means or another the public's awareness of an improved
environmental quality will grow. Put more specifically, where wastewater treatment
facilities have been installed, and a fishery restored to waters of previously unacceptable quality (at least in living memory), fish kills following transient stormwater surges
will be immediately apparent failures in the infrastructure of pollution prevention. Put
yet another way, economic and social activities will continue to generate at least the
same potential for contamination of the environment as they have always done. In
river basins at a mature stage of development, however, the installed wastewater
infrastructure of the city (or of agriculture, or of forestry) now interposes a progressively larger 'barrier', as it were, between the receiving water bodies and this potential
for contamination thereof. The need to maintain the operational reliability of this protective barrier must become a priority in the longer term. 12
It is a fair bet that there will be more of us around in the future and that we shall
continue to expand the array of exotic chemicals we produce and use. The cycles of
water and materials around our environments (Fig. 1) will be narrowed and driven
ever harder and more intensively. These cycles seem destined to become ever more
compressed, like a coiled spring. Transient failure in the system may become ever less
likely, yet ever more devastating when (eventually) it occurs. And so it might now be
argued (in 1996) that the ever more complete and comprehensive deployment of urban
wastewater treatment technologies over the past two decades has succeeded in eliminating the dominant diurnal peak in the system's frequency response (Fig. 2a). We may
have moved thus in time from Fig. 2a to Fig. 2b. Yet this success may come to be seen
as having been bought at the expense of introducing very high-frequency perturbations resulting from infrastructure failures (Fig. 2b).
Should we in fact plan for the occurrence of such failure, rather as we plan for
epidemics of influenza by vaccinating the population with a mild form of the expected
oncoming perturbation? Would we consider more or less healthy an environment made
(arguably) more vulnerable to inevitable insult and injury through the success of our
city wastewater infrastructures? For it has been observed that transient pollution events
412
in the rehabilitated Rhine River are all the more significant because of a decline in
resident bacterial populations, which had previously been supported by ample supplies
of urban wastewater. 3 Nitrobenzene - - a synthetic organic chemical and in this instance
a potential pollutant - - will now be apparent in the river, as a result of an accidental
spill, whereas previously it would have been more swiftly degraded before propagating very far. Perhaps we should keep our aquatic environments on their toes, so to
speak, by inflicting minor doses of harm on them, so that when the real threat of
infrastructure failure comes the environment is neither as vulnerable, nor lacking in its
resilience, as it might otherwise have been?
But our original question is not straightforward to answer, since 'previously' (in the
example of the Rhine) means 'in living memory', which will clearly not stretch back
to the quasi-pristine, pre-city condition that we imagine may once have prevailed. We
might have argued a case in favour of returning to some equilibrium, or some invariant state of the environment, free from perturbation. Certainly, much of the engineering of wastewater infrastructures has been geared specifically to the assumption and
desirability of a steady state, 14 and equally confidently we might now presume that the
high-frequency perturbations of the environment that will result from infrastructure
failures (Fig. 2b) are in general not desirable. The undesirability of other forms of
perturbation (relative to a longer-term 'equilibrium') is far less clear-cut, however.
Ecosystems have evolved in response to perturbations ~5 such that in piedmont streams
of the south-eastern USA frequent floods that " . . . keep the macroinvertebrate community in perpetual disequilibrium . . . " can be argued to be the norm, 16 and therefore,
perhaps, desirable. We shall have to leave this debate to run its course. The essential
point of Fig. 2 is that the template of the entire spectrum of temporal perturbations and
fluctuations in the response of a system may be an appropriate vehicle for both describing the system's state (health) and compressing the immense volume of attributes of
which this description is comprised.
SOME CHOICES
We do not yet know how to engage quantitatively these principles - - of minimal
distortion of the natural flows of materials and of matching some pre-city template of
perturbations - - in discriminating among alternative choices for the wastewater
infrastructure as a whole or for its component parts.
Given only is the fact of the current European and North American paradigm, as
our point of departure towards a city and infrastructure having a more sympathetic
relationship with their environment. This paradigm - - the sewer network, with all
routes leading to a centralised treatment plant - - must perform the following services:
accept the water-borne residuals of domestic, commercial and industrial activities in
the city, and return them to the city's environment in a benign manner, with maximal
resource recovery and minimal energy input. Others, of course, have not fully implemented
this paradigm. At the end of 1990, for example, just 44% of Japan's population was
served by mains sewerage. 17 They, and still others who have not yet embarked upon
this infrastructural development, may not want it, 18 and we, from the perspective of
Europe and North America, might want to evolve away from the present paradigm, for
the reasons already given above.
The options may be many, but for the purposes of the present discussion just three
are identified: incremental adaptation of the present (European, North American) structure
towards what we might call a virtuoso performance of this system, in serving its present
purpose; a change of outlook on whether this current purpose is still the goal of principal,
contemporary concern; or evolution by way of a change in the structure of the system
itself, possibly as a result of some radical dislocation in the entire concept of what
constitutes a wastewater infrastructure. The distinction between the three paths is primarily
a useful means of organising our analysis. For it is hard to draw a line between when
incremental adaptation has in fact become structural change.
WastewaterInfrastructure
413
In order to begin to explore the first of these possible paths into the future, it is now
pertinent to try and answer the questions: how far can we go with the current European
and North American paradigm and how might this lead to a more sympathetic cityenvironment relationship?
414
gestions as to the benefits that would accrue therefrom, already for over two decades
now. 23 We have conventionally identified the sewer network, the wastewater treatment
plant, and the receiving water body as the three constituent sub-systems of this infrastructure.
The conceptual and institutional boundaries between the three have been sufficiently
strong for them to have been studied and managed, by and large, as independent entities, which clearly they are not. 24 In reality, there is but a strand of processing technologies that transfers a residual from its source and returns it, with certain transformations,
to the environment whence it came. Much as is presently the case with a petrochemicals
complex, so too could our wastewater infrastructure, the urban drainage complex, benefit
in the future from system-wide co-ordination of its processing operations. There is
scope for progress simply as a consequence of dislodging a mind-set - - of erasing the
conceptual distinctions among management of the parts - - and rectifying a historical
neglect of the three ingredients required for reaching the climax in engineered system
performance, i.e. the capacity to observe, to take action, and to understand nonequilibrium behaviour. 25
But how might all of this, our H-PIC of the city's wastewater infrastructure, lead to a
more sympathetic city-environment relationship? What, in fact, might we understand by
the word 'sympathetic' in this context? In the first place, the installation of a wastewater
infrastructure is a direct articulation of the fundamental concept of stabilising feedback
control. It is an action taken to modify the behaviour of the city in response to a perceived
mismatch between what is, and what is desired to be, the state of the environment in which
the city is located. It is, moreover, an action taken to modify behaviour in the long run,
over the left-hand side (over decades, years, months) of the frequency spectrum of Fig.
2. Notwithstanding the fact that this strategic action may have had deleterious consequences for the right-hand side of Fig. 2 (over weeks, days, hours and minutes), the
sparking of the feedback loop between the behaviour of the environment and the
behaviour of the city is a manifestation of some sympathy in the relationship between the
two. No such feedback can at present be articulated between the state of the environment
and the behaviour of the city in the short term (over the higher frequencies of the
right-hand side of the spectrum). Today's liquid product of the treatment plant cannot be
modified to match today's state of the receiving water body any more than the primary
sector of treatment can be changed as a function of the final liquid product, or the
behaviour of the sewer network manipulated as a function of the downstream crude
sewage it will deliver today to the treatment plant. Deliberate action cannot presently be
taken to modulate the high-frequency behaviour of the city's wastewater infrastructure in
sympathy with the surrounding environment, moved - - as it is - - by high-frequency
perturbations other than those emanating from the city. For the city's environment, quite
clearly, is not buffeted merely by the behaviour of that city alone.
To the extent that H-PIC can enable such deliberate (feedback) action, so it will
achieve greater sympathy in the city-environment relationship. It may also achieve
some modification of the high-frequency peak of infrastructure failures in Fig. 2b,
both for good and ill. For we shall be able to sail closer to the wind, as it were; make
much more complex manoeuvres at greater speed; get into difficulty perhaps more
easily; but equally so recover from failure more swiftly. On balance we might look to
the modern aircraft as the essence of what is achievable with H-PIC of a system. In
any event, H-PIC will be addressed to issues of infrastructure reliability and adaptation, and thus it is unquestionably of contemporary relevance. In the setting of the
natural material cycles of Fig. 1 it should ensure, at the least, that we shall be able to
do more of what is presently being done, more reliably and more efficiently (with less
consumption of energy). Yet what we do now, as is only too apparent, may not be
what we should be doing.
WastewaterInfrastructure
415
Abstracted from its physical manifestation, the strand of unit process technologies of
the current paradigm must be engineered in order to: (i) transport the water-borne
residuals of the city from their point of generation to their point of treatment; (ii)
separate particulate (solid) material from the liquid flux; (iii) promote the growth of a
microbial biomass, so as to manipulate the chemical status of the solutes in the liquid
product; (iv) destroy the separated solid material to the maximum extent possible; and
(v) remove the carrier material, i.e. the water, from the solid by-product. And this last,
through its use of the word by-product, epitomises much of the mind-set of the foregoing discussion. It has assumed - - tacitly - - that the city's environment is essentially
the water environment. Yet we know that the inevitable result of an infrastructure
geared to returning a high-quality liquid product to the water sector of the environment is an increasing volume of solid by-product into which most of the recalcitrant
materials from the activities of the city will eventually gravitate (the synthetic organic
chemicals, heavy metals and pathogens).
A basic and self-evident principle of chemical engineering is that the extent of manipulation of the chemical status of a substance is a function of the time allowed for certain
reactions to take place. In a wastewater infrastructure the time allowable is inversely
related to the capacity for storing (detaining) the flux of material en route from its
point of generation to its point of return into the environment. The very high-volume
liquid throughput of the system demands the engineering of relatively fast (microbial)
reactions, unless enormous tracts of land are to be occupied to provide sufficient detention in the passage of this flux. These processes consume energy. They are deliberately
engineered at a downstream location in the treatment plant. Therefore they do not
exploit the full detention time of the system; yet they are known to occur inadvertently
upstream (in the sewer network). They convert the more easily degradable forms of
the C-, N- and P-beating materials into the more recalcitrant form of surplus biomass;
and this then must be incorporated into the output solid product, arguably undermining the longer (but not limitless) detention time required - - and affordable - - for the
slower reactions exploited in processing the much smaller flux of separated solid material.
If we looked simply at the current paradigm in the abstract, as a strand of unit
process technologies from 'source' to 'sink', instead of its present physical manifestation (of the sewer network and the treatment plant), we might well want to overturn
some, if not all, of the five basic engineering principles by which we currently operate. We might want thus to dislodge the notion of the sewer network as a somewhat
passive conduit and replace it with the image of 'treatment' being pushed back upstream
from the 'end-of-pipe' plant towards the source of the residuals. 26 We might turn to
advantage the popular view of the solids in the system as a 'nuisance', whether as
deposits on the bed of the sewer network or as separated out from the liquid product
during treatment. On the one hand, the products of the slow reactions in the lowervolume, slower flux of solids might be used as precursors for subsequent manipulation
through the fast reactions in the higher-volume fast-moving liquid flux. Recycling of
these (intermediate) products from downstream to upstream is in turn a classic example
of engineering a longer residence time for reaction without increasing the volume of
the reactor (and such recycle will be much easier to realise with the concentrated
small volumes of solids processing products). On the other hand, we might prefer to
arrest destruction of the separated solids almost altogether, taking the view that the
raw material (as in the deliberate production of magnesium-ammonium-phosphate)
will add value to the land where its subsequent transformation (degradation) can take
place at a more leisurely pace. Last, we might tailor control of the microbial ecosystem
for treatment of the liquid product so as to shift the age-distribution of the population
more towards senescence, thereby to avoid the surplus solid product of excessive youthful growth.
HAB 20:3-E
416
In short, after two centuries of development we might seek to turn the historical
purpose of the wastewater infrastructure on its head. Imagine, for example, that its
goal were to be to recover an optimal solids product destined for return to the land, the
by-product of which m the water carrier - - would have to be siphoned off to the
receiving water body. Yet /f all these rotations of principle were to come to pass,
would our system be any further along a path to the pre-city conditions encapsulated
in Figs 1 and 2?
Figure 2 alas, is entirely a prisoner of the very same mind-set we have just attempted to overturn: it captures merely the essence of stimulus and response in respect
of the health of the water sector of the city's environment. We inhabit the land surface
of the globe, however, and have historically participated in cycles of C-, N-, P- and
possibly S-bearing materials, in which there were no rapid (accelerated) diversions
into the surface water-sector of the environment. Given this perspective, perhaps the
current paradigm, turned towards its other goal, would allow the city to sit more sympathetically in its environment, up to a point. For we have spun quite exotic materials - principally synthetic organic chemicals (not found to occur naturally) and heavy metals - - into the archetypal cycle of Fig. 1.
Changing the paradigm
The seeds of a more radical change of structure have been sewn. In the grand sweep
of things, why should the wastewater infrastructure be designed - - as we have said
throughout - - to accept the water-borne residuals of domestic, commercial and industrial
activities in the city? The language, let alone the purpose and engineering thereof,
may be profoundly wrong-headed. For that which we have scrambled comprehensively
in using water to convey material through the city is mightily difficult thereafter to
unscramble. Indeed, conventional wastewater treatment in European and North American
cities has wrestled with this problem since its inception.
'Sustainable development' is not the only contemporary maxim. There is 'clean
technology', which in our mind's eye will permit us to unhook industrial activity from
the city's wastewater infrastructure and thence eliminate many (although by no means
all) of the heavy metals and synthetic organic chemicals that gravitate towards the
solids product (see, for example, MacGarvin and Johnston 27 and Niemczynowicz28).
There is 'source control' too, as already reflected in Geldof e t al. 29 Armed with these
alternatives, we can attack our problem from other angles, dismantling the obstacles of
a few more prejudices in the process.
Where there are not separate sewer systems for moving foul sewage and urban surface
runoff across the city, by what principle might we wish to separate them? Before reaching
for the conventional response to this question - - of today's (supposedly) separate sewer
systems in the more modern cities - - let us pause to consider whence the majority of the
materials of concern derive and whither is their destination. With the current paradigm for
the wastewater infrastructure we have argued that the essential challenge may lie in returning the solid product to the land. In the presence of a clean industry, the most important
dividing line may fall not between foul sewage and surface runoff but between toilet
flushings and 'all else'. This latter comprises the remainder of the flux of liquid material
through a notional household, sometimes referred to as grey sewage, together with the
surface runoff. If we could, we might wish to re-engineer an alternative form of separate
sewer system, in which merely a second pipe is placed within the existing sewer for the
conveyance and strictly separate treatment of the solids product of the city. After all, in
terms of the heavy metals and synthetic organic chemicals that would otherwise be spun
into this product, what better evidence would there be of its acceptability for return to the
land than its prior passage through the human body, and through this alone? The thought
has some appeal; but, of course, it overlooks the pathogens that must still be removed
from the product.
The closer is the point of separation of the fluxes of materials to the activities of life
WastewaterInfrastructure
417
in the city, the more profound may be the implications for any downstream processing
of these fluxes before their return to the city's environment. The ways in which the
strands of unit process technologies may be drawn together, notwithstanding the explosion in seemingly novel methods of unit processing, may become combinatoriaUy many.
How, then, in the face of gross uncertainty with regard both to land requirements and
cost characteristics of the candidate technologies and to the level of service and reliability that would be expected of this infrastructure for sustainable cities of the mid21st century, should we identify promising strands of technology? We have reviewed
over 100 candidate technologies, and composed and run a screening model, in which
the strands may be generated at random and then selectively screened. 3 Among other
conclusions, it appears that if toilet flushings are separated at source from the remaining grey sewage and urban surface runoff, some of the most common forms of presentday biotechnical processes may well be substituted by physical and chemical means of
processing the resulting lower-strength liquid product.
For a variety of reasons such a possibility chafes uncomfortably against the urge to
design biodegradable products for consumption in the metabolism of the city. What,
we might ask, would be the benefit of incorporating this feature by design, if it is not
then to be exploited at the end of the product's life cycle? Any shift away from exploiting biological principles towards the use of physical and chemical principles would
likewise appear to run counter to the exhortation for Civil Engineers to work with
"ecosystems rather than concrete". 3~ Wetlands, the "kidneys of the landscape", 32 are a
salient attractor of contemporary attention, 33 not least because they may most aptly
symbolise the return to some pre-city condition. But in the context of the city we
could raise the obvious objection that these, and other forms of ecological engineering, 34 are expensive in terms of the limited land area necessary for achieving sufficient
detention times for reactions to proceed to a sufficient extent.
We might also raise the more subtle objection that the long-term behaviour of an
infrastructure founded on the properties of ecosystems is significantly less predictable
than one based on the properties of concrete or, more accurately, the properties of, say,
membrane and magnetic separation technologies. Failure may occur in any system not
because of the shocks to which it is subject but because of an inadequate understanding of its inner workings. In the spirit of Fig. 2b, an ecologically engineered infrastructure
may be less reliable in the long run than those we now have. ~5 What is more, and
perhaps precisely because of this inevitably inadequate understanding, ecosystems are
perceived to have a life of their own, which of course they do. They have an element
of 'self-design '36 that places them a little too far beyond the reassuring essence of a
conventionally engineered system, which is (arguably) that we have mastery over its
intended performance. Whether 'self-design' is but another label for 'inadequate understanding' or indeed a manifestation of structural change in the evolving behaviour of a
system, is a more philosophical question of some considerable interest. 37
Reliability of service and the minimisation of failure may in the end be the decisive
factors in conceiving of a wastewater infrastructure that is radically different from that
of today's European and North American cities, yet a desirable paradigm towards
which to proceed. Consider that we have now a paradigm of downstream, end-of-pipe
treatment of a mixed water/waste product of a 'less-than-clean' industry and city economy.
The ultimate destination (fate) of any xenobiotic substance confused with the natural
cycles of materials, at whatever point on their passage through the city, will most
probably be the solid product of downstream treatment. Yet there at least its further
propagation is arrested; it has been caught in a centralised, end-of-pipe barrier. A clean
technology in industry will confine some of these substances at source; separation at
source of toilet flushings, grey sewage, and urban runoff may confine their propagation downstream through some of the channels of the infrastructure; comprehensive
control at source of urban runoff38 would divert their potential movement into a host
of widely dispersed points of entry into the sub-surface, groundwater sector of the
city's environment; and the systematic migration of treatment upstream from the end
418
of the pi~e through the pipe and into the source, that is on-site treatment of domestic
sources, ~ will constitute the clean household, the companion of a clean industry and
a more sympathetic control of urban runoff at source. This, without the substitution of
water by air as the carrier, in a vacuum operated system of toilet flushing and sewage
conveyance,4 would leave us with an altogether different paradigm: of a decentralised, highly segregated infrastructure in which the engines of material manipulation
sit at the many heads of many pipes. If these many more engines fail, as they surely
will, including in the clean technologies of the new millennium, will the adverse
consequences thereof propagate far with any significance into the city's environment?
Wastewater Infrastructure
419
wider still, after three centuries of the wedge having been driven between reason and
emotion, 45 it has been argued that " . . . we are entering into a more philosophical
century where the unconscious logic of feeling [will play] an important background
role in steering our technology' .46 We are well aware, therefore, of the perhaps predominant
role social, institutional and philosophical considerations may have in fashioning the
technological fabric of a wastewater infrastructure of the future.
Acknowledgements - - Some of this work has its origins in a project on Environmentally Efficient Urban Drainage for
the 21st Century, supported by the UK Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) during 1992-1994.
We are grateful to the EPSRC for this support.
M.B. Beck is currently Visiting Professor in the Department of Civil Engineering at the Imperial College of Science,
Technology and Medicine, London.
NOTES
1.
2.
P. Ekins and I. Cooper, Cities and Sustainability, Background to a Research Programme (Clean Technologies
Unit, UK, Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council, Swindon, UK, 1993) and G. Haughton and C.
Hunter, Sustainable Cities (Jessica Kingsley, London, 1994).
As noted by Brooks [H. Brooks, "Sustainability and Technology", in Science and Sustainability (International
Institute for Applied Systems Analysis, Laxenburg, Austria, 1992), p. 30], reference to the sustainability concept
" . . . has a ring of scientific objectivity... (and enjoys) a rhetorical value in public discussions... " Further, "
there is still a challenge inherent in how to translate this concept (sustainability) into operational criteria for
the choice of development strategies and for the selection and adoption of new technologies to support these
strategies in a real world ecological, social, economic, political, and cultural context" (p. 29).
The parallel here is with Ayres' use of the expression "industrial metabolism" [R.U. Ayres, "Industrial Metabolism",
in J.H. Ausubel and H.E. Sladovich (eds), Technology and Environment (National Academy Press, Washington,
DC, 1989), pp. 23--49.]
In the cycle of things, it is hard to define what is a "waste" or a "contaminant"; hence the precaution of wrapping
such words in quotation marks.
M.B. Beck, J. Chen, A.J. Saul and D. Butler, "Urban Drainage in the 21st Century: Assessment of New Technology on the Basis of Global Material Flows", Water Science and Technology 30, 2 (1994), pp. 1-12.
A comprehensive assessment of the global nitrogen cycle in pre-industrial and modern times can be found in J.N.
Galloway, W.H. Schlesinger, H. Levy I1, A. Michaels and J.L. Schnoor, "Nitrogen Fixation: Anthropegenic EnhancementEnvironmental Response" (submitted).
In the first place, the diverted flows of N-bearing materials should perhaps not be residing for any significant
length of time in the water sector (they are there because we have a water-borne system of waste conveyance).
Second, the technology of biological nitrification-denitrification generates not only nitrogen gas but also nitrous
oxide. Inadvertent generation of this latter, in however small an amount relative to other sources, may be regarded
as undesirable, since nitrous oxide is suspected of the destruction of ozone and is known to be a greenhouse gas.
Third, it has been argued that the widespread use of biological denitrification would distort significantly and
adversely the balance of nitrogen between that which is biologically available in soils and that which is unavailable in the form of nitrogen gas in the atmosphere (see R. Schulze-Rettmer (1991) note 8).
R. Schulze-Rettmer, "The Simultaneous Chemical Precipitation of Ammonium and Phosphate in the Form of
Magnesium-ammonium-phosphate", Water Science and Technology, 23, 4--6 (1991), pp. 461-469.
G.D. Geldof, P. Jacobsen and S. Fujita, "Urban Stormwater Infiltration Perspectives", Water Science and Technology 29, 1-2 (1994), pp. 245-254.
Geldof et al. (1994), see note 9.
Unquestionably there are increasingly many planks in the platform of regulations on environmental protection,
as, for example, in the USA. See R.E. Balzhiser, "Meeting the Near-term Challenge for Power Plants", in J.H.
Ausubel and H.E. Sladovich (eds), Technology and Environment (National Academy Press, Washington, DC
1989), pp. 95-113.
M.B. Beck and A. Reda, "Identification and Application of a Dynamic Model for Operational Management of
Water Quality", Water Science and Technology 30, 2 (1994), pp. 31-41 and M.B. Beck, "Transient Pollution
Events: Acute Risks to the Aquatic Environment", Water Science and Technology (in press).
K-G. Malle, "Accidental Spills - - Frequency, Importance, Control, Countermeasures", Water Science and Technology 29, 3 (1994), pp. 149-163.
M.B. Beck (in press) see note 12.
S.R. Reice, R.C. Wissmar and R.J. Naiman, "Disturbance Regimes, Resilience, and Recovery of Animal Communities and Habitats in Lotic Systems", Environmental Management 14, 5 (1990), pp. 647-659; G.D. Grossman, J.F. Dowd and M. Crawford, "Assemblage Stability in Stream Fishes: a Review", Environmental Management
14, 15 (1990), pp. 661-671; and P.H. Whitfield, "From Transients to Trends: Time Scales and Environmental
Monitoring", in Using Hydrometric Data to Detect and Monitor Climate Change, Proceedings of NHRI Symposium
No. 8 (NHRI, Saskatoon, Canada, 1991) pp. 1-8.
See S.R. Reice et al. (1990), see note 15.
O. Fujiki, "Development of Sewage Works in Small and Medium Municipalities and Prefectural Masterplan of
Sewage Treatment", in Sewage Works in Japan 1992 (Japan Sewage Works Association, Tokyo, Japan, 1992), pp.
2-9.
J. Niemczynowicz, "New Aspects of Urban Drainage and Pollution Reduction Towards Sustainability", Water
Science and Technology 30, 5 (1994), pp. 269-277 and O. Varis, "Development of Urban Infrastructure - - The
Expanding Puzzle", in Human Settlements in the Changing Gh~bal Political and Economic Processes, Proceedings of the UNU/WIDER Conference, Helsinki (August, 1995).
. .
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.
9.
10.
11.
12.
13.
14.
15.
16.
17.
18.
420
19.
20.
21.
22.
23.
24.
25.
26.
27.
28.
29.
30.
31.
32.
33.
34.
35.
36.
37.
38.
39.
40.
41.
42.
43.
44.
45.
46.
To cite this article: Matthew Gandy (2004) Rethinking urban metabolism: water, space and the
modern city, City: analysis of urban trends, culture, theory, policy, action, 8:3, 363-379, DOI:
10.1080/1360481042000313509
To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/1360481042000313509
Water is a brutal delineator of social power which has at various times worked to either
foster greater urban cohesion or generate new forms of political conflict. In the paper which
follows, Matthew Gandy explores this statement by looking at the expansion of urban
water systems since the chaos of the nineteenth-century industrial city. In this early period,
the relationship between water and urban space can be understood by the emergence of
what he calls the bacteriological city, defined by features such as new moral geographies
and modes of social discipline based upon ideologies of cleanliness, a move away from laissez-faire policies towards a technocratic and rational model of municipal managerialism,
and a connection between urban infrastructures and citizenship rights. Gandy goes on to
discuss that while many cities never ultimately conformed to this model, the last thirty years
has seen a fundamental move away from the bacteriological city to a more diffuse, fragmentary and polarized urban technological landscape. Characteristics here include declining investment in urban infrastructures, a desire to meet shareholder rather than wider
public needs, oligopolistic structures amongst providers, the marketisation of goods such as
water, increased health scares and mistrust from consumers, and polarisation of the quality
of service provision. For Gandy, these shifts are better understood by more relational,
hybridised, rather than functional-linear, notions of urban metabolic systems.
Introduction
Water is the great connector and coordinator.
Garrett Eckbo1
Water is indispensable stuff for maintaining
the metabolism, not only of our human
bodies, but also of the wider social fabric. The
very sustainability of cities and the practices
of everyday life that constitute the urban are
predicated upon and conditioned by the
supply, circulation, and elimination of water.
Erik Swyngedouw2
Infrastructures, which were mutually reinforcing and totalising, are becoming more
ISSN 1360-4813 print/ISSN 1470-3629 online/04/030363-17 2004 Taylor & Francis Ltd
DOI: 10.1080/1360481042000313509
364
tions underlying this relatively stable configuration between space, society and
technology, which problematizes many of
the assumptions associated with conventional
accounts of the development of the modern
city. The second part of the paper considers
how the fracturing of this earlier urban form
has contributed towards the emergence of a
new kind of urban technological landscape.
The integrative impetus behind the development of modern hydrological networks has
given way to an emerging dynamic of fragmentation and differentiation with profound
implications for the future of the modern city
and a viable public realm.
366
urban symmetry belie contrasting conceptualizations of a rational urban order: anxieties over the loss of human manure rested
on a cyclical pre-modern understanding of
wealth creation whilst the diffusion of new
integrated sewer systems reflected a refashioning of relations between nature and society in the modern city to produce a
metropolitan nature quite different from
the organicist conceptions of nature which
predominated in the past. The modern city
was in other words at the forefront of a new
cultural sensibility towards nature as a focus
of contemplation rather than material necessity as the last vestiges of any cyclical interaction with a rural hinterland were replaced by
a metropolitan emphasis on nature as a
source of leisure (see Green, 1990; Gandy,
2002). By the 1890s advances in the science of
bacteriology in combination with the persistence of water-borne disease outbreaks had
largely supplanted the earlier organic
conceptions of urban order.11 The discovery
of pathogens and their role in disease epidemiology introduced the role of germs as
biological protagonists in the on-going
debate over urban sanitation and as a result
the physical transformation of the city and
the introduction of new water purification
technologies became a historical inevitability.
At the same time as the hidden city of
pipes and sewers was being extended beneath
the city streets a parallel transformation in
the private sphere was also taking place.
When reflecting on the relationship between
water and cities it is easy to underestimate
the significance of transformations in the
design, use and meaning of private space in
contributing towards the reshaping of urban
space as a whole. Indeed, one might argue
that the growing use of water within the
home, exemplified by the diffusion of the
modern bathroom, drove the hydrological
reconstruction of the modern city. The
spread of the private bathroom marked a new
bashfulness towards the body as emerging
fashions for washing, hygiene and bodily
privacy fostered increasing aversion to
human excrement. The modern home
368
Fractured spaces
Though we can delineate the characteristic
features of the bacteriological city it is much
more difficult to discern any clearly defined
infrastructural successor. The contemporary
city is being shaped by a different combination of fiscal and political pressures which
have generated new kinds of relationships
between the physical structure of space and
changing patterns of urban governance. The
era of municipal managerialism which
persisted under a range of different political
systems has been displaced by a more diffuse,
disconnected and differentiated urban form
in which the idea of the public as a clearly
defined political and ideological entity has
been thrown into doubt and in which those
activities formerly undertaken by the state
370
372
Conclusions
Water is not simply a material element in the
production of cities but is also a critical
dimension to the social production of space.
Water implies a series of connectivities
between the body and the city, between
social and bio-physical systems, between the
evolution of water networks and capital
flows, and between the visible and invisible
dimensions to urban space. But water is at
the same time a brutal delineator of social
power which has at various times worked to
either foster greater urban cohesion or generate new forms of political conflict. When we
think of what a city is we cannot avoid
contemplating the complex mass of structures that bind different elements of urban
space into a coherent functional entity. Yet
this integrated urban form is by no means the
prevalent model when we consider the
phenomenon of modern urbanism in a wider
geographical or historical context: the diversity of different institutional structures and
arrangements for water provision illustrates
374
Notes
1
1
2
3
4
10
10
11
11
13
13
14
14
15
15
16
17
16
17
18
18
19
19
20
376
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To cite this article: June S. Marks & Maria Zadoroznyj (2005) Managing Sustainable Urban Water
Reuse: Structural Context and Cultures of Trust, Society & Natural Resources: An International
Journal, 18:6, 557-572, DOI: 10.1080/08941920590947995
To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/08941920590947995
It is now widely accepted that the use of reclaimed water, termed water reuse, can
assist in achieving sustainable urban development (e.g., Anderson 1996). Accordingly, in Australia, various state governments have now set targets for cities to
recycle at least a fifth of their total sewage effluent. Reclaimed water is derived from
sewerage systems and treated to a standard that is satisfactory for its intended use.
As other natural resources and ecological research suggests (Lawrence, Higins,
and Lockie 2001; Nyhus et al. 2002), the findings in this article relating to water
reuse demonstrate that successful, sustainable management requires an interdisciplinary approach with input from social scientists that can address the nontechnical,
human aspects of resource management. It has also been demonstrated that the
character of social structures, social and legal institutions (Klug 2002), and social
relations of power (Gupte 2003; Sneddon et al. 2002) has a significant impact on
the sustainability of outcomes. History shows that technology can cause new problems while solving others (Arcury & Christianson 1990, 389390; Beck 1992).
The research reported in this article uses cross-national comparative case studies
at four urban water reuse sites and examines their differing social and institutional
structures in relation to residents levels of understanding and trust in water reuse.
Received 4 April 2004; accepted to November 2004.
Address correspondence to June S. Marks, Department of Sociology, Flinders University
of South Australia, GPO Box 2100, Adelaide SA 5001, Australia. E-mail: june.marks@flinders.
edu.au
557
558
559
Figure 1. The social becoming of trust model. Adapted from Sztompka (1990, 1999).
In essence, existing social theory suggests that two kinds of components are
important to the building of trust (Giddens 1990; Sztompka 1996; 1999; Misztal
1996; 2001). The first of these relates to structural conditions. For example,
Sztompka (1999) identifies five structural factors that provide opportunities to build
trust:
1. Normative coherencea general awareness that is developed through a
coherent, noncontradictory system of law that exerts influence on other
extralegal forms of regulation.
2. Stability of social orderthe extent to which the institutions or processes
have provided firm reference points through enforcement of regulations.
3. Transparencyof the principles and processes of the social organization.
4. Familiarityto facilitate knowledge of and confidence in the changed
environment.
5. Accountability promoted though properly functioning institutions that
provide checks and balances, a form of insurance that is essential to the
development of trust.
The second component comprises the personal and collective characteristics of
social actors important in shaping the prevailing cultural climate of trust
(Sztompka 1999, 120). The personal and collective characteristics of a community
influence its social mood, derived from its social networks and collective capital
in terms of quality-of-life values and awareness of and willingness to take up existing
structural opportunities (1999, 125132).
560
Replication logic was used for selection of multiple-case studies to strengthen the
analytic generalizations to the theory (Yin 1989, 44; Glaser and Strauss 1967, 49).
New Haven Village was chosen as the first site because, at the commencement of
the research in 2000, this eco village north east of Adelaide was the only site in
Australia where residents were using reclaimed water for toilet flushing and outdoor
uses in a purposefully built development. Following data collection and analysis for
the New Haven study, subsequent cases were selected in 2001 on the basis of theoretical replication, whereby different results were expected for predictable reasons
(Yin 1989, 53).
Mawson Lakes, north of Adelaide, was selected as the second site. This was the
only other purposefully designed development in Adelaide and, because the
reclaimed water was not yet on line, the expectations rather than experience of
nonpotable reuse comprised the main variation between the two case studies. A
cross-national comparator was required to include sites where residential reuse
was well established. Therefore, the third case selected was the city of Altamonte
Springs in Florida (USA), where an established municipal system has recycled water
for residential use for around 12 years. The fourth study was located in Melbourne,
Brevard County, Florida, where a centrally managed system similar to Altamonte
Springs has been on line for approximately the same period of time as New Haven.
Both Florida sites provide reclaimed water for outdoor uses only (garden irrigation,
car washing, hosing down), while the Australian sites extend the purple pipes into the
houses to enable the water to be used for toilet flushing. Table 1 summarizes the
background context to the sites.
Multiple sources of data were collected for each embedded case study to enhance
construct validity (Yin 1989, 41). As summarized in Table 2, data were collected for
each unit of analysis relating to the study community as a whole through to the
experience of individual residents. The type of project and intermediate-level data
varied according to availability and application to each case study. Additionally,
at New Haven, interviews were also conducted with the engineering contractor
responsible for maintaining the reclaimed water treatment plant, the accountant
for the local council, a nongovernment welfare housing manager, one of the original
project developers, and an engineer for the recycled water permitting authority.
Twenty householders were recruited through random selection from the residential
customer databases for each of the four sites. High response rates resulted, with
67% at Altamonte Springs, 80% at Brevard County, 85% for New Haven, and
87% at Mawson Lakes. Semistructured, face-to-face interviews were audiotaped at
each of the Adelaide sites and, due to time and budget constraints for the United
States field trip, Florida residents were interviewed on site by telephone with verbatim notes taken in shorthand.
The comparative case-study method provided the opportunity to identify similarities and differences between the sites. Although residents at Mawson Lakes had not yet
gained delivery of reclaimed water, the data complemented and strengthened findings
for the other case studies and underlined the significance of this early stage of preengagement. The qualitative data could not be generalised to the respective populations;
however, worthwhile comparisons could be made between the data sets, backed by
field observations and other data, as listed in Table 2. Face-to-face interviews with
the Florida respondents would have provided a more accurate comparator, yet this
was no barrier for these experienced end users in terms of understanding the interview
questions, and roughly half provided additional explanations and comments.
561
Neighborhood
Bathroom connection,
garden tap
Nil
$264 pa ($13=m),
equal to waived
sewerage rates
Scale
Equipment costs in
addition to irrigation
Connection costs
Charges
19941995
2700 and expanding
Brevard County, FL
$6b=month
$14 per month sewage
rates
$240
$9.62 per month
sewage rates
Metropolitan
Special subsurface hose connection if required.
Late 1980s
5477
Altamonte Springs, FL
This cost ranges from approx. $700 to $1200 at Mawson Lakes, depending on the number of toilets featured in the house design.
Australian dollars, August 2001 (AU$1 US$0.52).
Decentralized, locally
managed
Organization
1995
62 (completed)
On line since:
Households connected
562
Householders
Individual
managers
Subunits
Intermediate
Main unit
Project
Unit of analysis
Data sources
Quality of communications,
service
Knowledge, beliefs, attitudes,
behavior
Background, familiarity,
compliance with policies
End-users
563
Results
The findings for each of the four residential reuse developments relating to the structural context are drawn from all information sources. These are presented under the
five conditions theorised as trust-building factors (Sztompka 1999). This is followed
by an exploration of the characteristics of the social actors that shape the prevailing culture of trust, mainly based on interviews with residents at each of the four
locations.
Mawson
Lakes
Altamonte
Springs
Brevard
County
Weak
Strong
Strong
Ad hoc
Rigorous
Rigorous
Low
High
High
Informal,
developing
Unclear
Formal,
established
Clear
Formal,
established
Clear
564
garden taps. The only tenant among the 20 residents interviewed was unaware that
recycled water was connected. Enquiries with her landlord, a manager of five welfare
houses in the development, confirmed that tenants were not informed nor given
access to the water for garden irrigation because it was considered they would not
be able to understand the technology. At Mawson Lakes, 12 respondents were not
aware that the reclaimed water would be sourced from sewage effluent, and one-fifth
believed that the reclaimed water was already on line. Around one-third were
considering whether to use the water to fill swimming pools, a use clearly outside
appropriate guidelines.
The Florida Department of Environmental Protection (2003) is a strong and
vocal regulatory institution for the promotion and monitoring of recycled water
developments in Florida. Rules are reflected in city ordinances and county codes,
as confirmed in the information provided by Brevard County to recycled water users,
as follows:
The use of reclaimed water is regulated through Chapter 62610 of the
Florida Administrative Code and Chapter 23 of the Brevard County
code. The following rules were derived from those regulations. (Brevard
County 2001)
Residents at Altamonte Springs and Brevard County are required to read
through a package of information provided before signing a connection form that
acknowledges their obligations as well as the responsibilities of the provider. From
the descriptions given by respondents for the ways they use recycled water, it was
confirmed that residents are aware of the rules governing safe use.
Stability Through Enforcement of Rules
Some of the original settlers at New Haven reported that the developers used aboveground spray irrigation as well as subsurface, drip irrigation in display home landscaping. Since then, in the absence of regulatory follow-up, the council has adopted
a laissez-faire stance and also uses spray irrigation for common areas within the
development. Longer term residents are aware of the original stipulations but have
adapted the irrigation system to overcome clogging of drippers. Three-quarters of
the respondents use sprayers, sometimes in conjunction with drippers. Additionally,
several have installed taps that are not identifiable as standard issue recycled water
taps (purple with removable handle). A similar pattern characterizes the experience
at Mawson Lakes. Although building encumbrances specify requirements to the contrary, some builders have installed ordinary taps rather than purple recycled water
taps and half the households interviewed had no outdoor drinking-water taps.
Relative stability and consistency of policies are evident at Altamonte Springs
and Brevard. For example, permission must be obtained to use garden hoses, and
only a special hose connection is allowed, which is housed in a below-ground service
box. Site inspections are made by the local water department to oversee this practice,
and noncompliance can result in disconnection from the reclaimed water service.
Florida respondents referred to these arrangements that govern hand watering or
car washing, and site observations verified the installation and use of the specified
hose connection. Altamonte Springs respondents confirmed that a water restriction
policy, which affects reclaimed water, is being enforced through a system of
monitoring, warnings, and fines.
565
Transparency of Governance
Of the four sites, the exemplar with regard to organizational transparency is Brevard
County. Government board meetings are advertised well ahead, inviting public
attendance. The proceedings are televised locally and throughout the government
offices to facilitate input from managers if and when required. There is no parallel
to this in Altamonte Springs; however, both Florida sites use their web sites and
newsletters to disseminate reclaimed water policies. Such transparency of governance
is not evident in the Adelaide sites. At New Haven, no mention is made of meetings,
nor of the recycling system itself, on the local council web site. Residents do not
receive prior warning of interruption to the service due to periodic system maintenance. Mawson Lakes residents were not being kept informed of progress toward
the final design, commissioning, and which authority will be responsible for the
ongoing management of their recycled water system.
The lack of transparency at both Adelaide sites in relation to managing safe uses
of the water was further exemplified in the reclaimed water rates. Citing the benefits
of reclaimed water, Mawson Lakes respondents were expecting that the water would
be a quarter to a third of the cost of potable water. It was ascertained that these are
early estimates that were either advertised in the local press or relayed by real estate
salesmen. Respondents had not been updated with the fact that, based on current
estimates, the price is more likely to be three-quarters of the charge made for traditional mains water. New Haven householders are billed at a low ratethe equivalent of the sewerage rate for the service. However, their accounts imply that this rate
is being heavily subsidized when, in fact, this is not the case. The council attributes
the anomaly to the limitations of their computing system.
Familiarity With the Changed Environment Through Formal Communications
While advice and assistance can be accessed through the management of the system
at the Florida sites, this was less apparent for the Adelaide developments. In addition
to the information provided upon connection to the system, the city of Altamonte
Springs employed a public relations person for over 17 years to orient residents to
recycled water issues. Brevard County uses its comprehensive web site to convey
information and invite feedback from customers. Information is also channeled
through homeowners associations at each of the Florida sites. In Adelaide, apart
from promotional models of the developments that include basic details of the system, seen and noticed by a few of the respondents, there have been no proactive,
ongoing efforts made to inform householders about this new technology and indeed
there was no clear delegation of authority to do so.
Therefore, in the absence of formal communication in Adelaide, informal social
networks have emerged. Residents at both sites rely on social cues, copying what
their neighbors do or being directed by neighborly advice. At New Haven, the idiosyncrasies of the neighbourhood treatment and distribution system are managed by a
collaborative effort between the engineering contractor responsible for plant operations and maintenance and three self appointed residents (village big men). It was
explained by the engineer concerned and respondents that these three residents
report pipe damage caused by builders and variations to water quality, then keep
their neighbors informed of progress made in solving the problem. At both sites,
enquiries revealed that builders and plumbers also needed to be familiarised with
the recycled water system. The main hazard with the dual system is when pipes
become cross-connected, allowing the nonpotable reclaimed water to flow through
566
drinking-water taps. Confusion and a lack of know-how was observed by respondents, compounding the problematic access to information on safe practices to avoid
public health risks.
Accountability of Persons and Institutions
As most residents at the two study sites in Adelaide are either unaware of, or are not
obliged to follow, any particular rules governing the use of recycled water, they are
equally unsure of who is ultimately accountable for the quality of the recycled water
and the system as a whole. For example, one resident who has lived at New Haven
for over 2 years thought that the state water authority, SA Water, was responsible
for managing the decentralized reuse system. Mawson Lakes respondents did not
know whether SA Water, the local council, or both would be responsible. In contrast, the information package provided at the Florida sites ensures that all residents
involved are aware of which government utility is responsible for providing the
reclaimed water service and the main rules governing its use.
Characteristics of Social Actors
This section considers some of the findings that describe the capacity of these
communities to manage opportunities and constraints emerging from the structural
context. The variation in key responses is summarized in Table 4.
Collective Capital
The characteristics relevant to acceptance of and trust in nonpotable reuse include
social capital, forged through social networks, and cultural capital arising from an
awareness of the environmental drivers for undertaking water recycling, knowledge
gained from the experience of living in a residential reuse development, the level of
concern for the management of health risks, and trust in water reuse and the recycled
water provider.
Social Capital. Homeowners associations have a proactive communicative role
at the Florida sites, as already described. The information relayed by the social networks in the Adelaide sites is more problematic because it is generated informally,
Table 4. Characteristics of social actors
New
Haven
Collective capital
Social capital: social networks
Reactive Reactive Proactive Proactive
Environmental awareness
25%
60%
30%
30%
water issues
Benefit of saving natural resources
60%
30%
25%
30%
Health risk concerns
55%
30%
15%
40%
Need for more information
60%
80%
15%
25%
Trust in providers (mean levels)
Local council=city=county provider
6.2
6.5
7.7
7.2
SA Water (Adelaide sites)
5.2
5.6
Social mood
Uncertain Optimistic Positive
Positive
567
outside the sphere of responsible governance. At New Haven, the collaborative network of three residents and the treatment plant engineer helped others cope with
interruptions to the service. A lack of water due to poor quality or other problems
causes greater inconvenience than is the case in Florida, because the water is used for
toilet flushing. However, other advice received from neighbors at New Haven circulated misinformation. For example, a new owner believed taps were allowed in the
back garden when in fact only subsurface irrigation was specified in licensing criteria
for the New Haven system:
[A neighbor] said they werent allowed to put taps out in the front garden
or on the front of the house with the grey water going through, for any
passers-by that just happen to stop and drink it. So all of the taps concerning the grey water are located at the back.
Similarly, at Mawson Lakes, residents who have not had potable taps installed or
have had ordinary taps fitted instead of the specified type were reassured by the fact
that others were in the same situation. On the other hand, there were indications that
Mawson Lakes residents would protest if the system does not function properly.
They have taken the initiative to form a residents association and there are expectations for an acceptable quality of service. One respondent, a builder and foundation
member of the association, reflected: If it was offensive then I wont use it. . . . Ive
got every expectation they will monitor the quality all of the time. The response
from a mother of two echoed the reflexive nature of others statements: I dont have
any problems with it. I know it is going to be done correctly, and if its not, there will
be such a huge thing about it they will stop it straight away anyway. A recently
arrived resident, a business manager who has made a substantial investment in his
property, stated: If I could smell it Id be worried about it, yes. Id be shutting
the system down quite fast!
Environmental Awareness. Awareness of the environmental drivers for water
reuse was explored through general and more specific questions in the Adelaide
interviews, while Florida respondents were directly asked if they had any concerns
about water. As a result, a quarter of New Haven research participants voluntarily
identified the problem of the salinity of the Murray River, compared to over half of
those interviewed at Mawson Lakes. The depletion of water resources was nominated by around one-third of each of the Florida samples.
Benefits of Residential Reuse. All 80 respondents appreciated at least one of
the benefits of recycling water. These were identified by respondents as personal
cost savings and environmental benefits. Recycled water is supplied at a lower price
than traditional mains water, so it is no surprise that the majority at each site
appreciated this cost-saving factor. New Haven respondents were less sure of this
benefit, reflecting the confusion experienced over the billing. However, they were
more conscious of the saving of natural resources (see Table 4).
Health Risk Concerns. Several questions posed early in each interview indirectly
explored whether participants had any health-related concerns in using recycled
water. Most respondents knew the sewage source of the water, except at Mawson
Lakes where the water was not being distributed. None of the 80 residents
volunteered any problems with the recycled water. Finally, they were asked: Can
568
you describe any concerns you may have about recycled water? Few related any
concerns at the Florida sites, and initially only one respondent expressed concern
at each of the Adelaide sites.
At Altamonte Springs, two women were worried about exposure; for example, a
50-year-old musician reflected: I know its not safe to drink. I dont know if its
dangerous for bare feet. Health?
A consulting engineer in his sixties had some doubt: A concern if I had young
ones about the yardmight access it, drink it. As I understand itIm not a chemist.
Three respondents in Brevard wondered about the safety of reclaimed water. Its
safety for pets was raised by a homeowners association president, an Hispanic
mother queried the quality in relation to pathogens such as giardia (an intestinal
parasite). A young mother with a masters degree in communication cogently articulated the risk of delayed or secondary consequences:
I am trusting they are being truthful; that its not harmful. They would
not want you drinking it. I often wondered if there is a residue of anything [so] kids running in the grass bare feet and 20 years down the line
they may be saying: We were wrong. So I am taking them on face
value. They say kids should not have contact with it. Children like to play
in water.
A further two of the respondents who initially said they had no concerns qualified
that this was because they have no small children and no animals and they wouldnt
let visiting grandchildren out in it, revealing concerns for children and pets.
At New Haven, where recycled water is used for both toilet flushing and irrigating the garden, each respondent eventually revealed concerns. Problems with water
quality in relation to toilet flushing were experienced by all respondents who noticed
either odor, color, or sediment effects. A clerical assistant asked:
Have other people complained about the smell that you get from it? . . .
When you are brushing your teeth you want to throw up some mornings.
Its coming up the drains and sometimes up the toilet.
Additionally, two-thirds described disruptions to the service due to treatment plant problems or pipe breakages, when buckets would be required to flush toilets. An automatic
switch to potable water has now addressed this issue, but this was a problem for 5
years. Some reported that major events occurred once a year, others remembering them
happening about every 6 months or more frequently. An engineer and his wife
reported: When it breaks down, its dreadful. . . . When the water comes through,
again, its not very good quality and it smells in the toilet. In addition, three respondents wondered if the taps connected to the recycled water system might be accessible
to unwary children. Overall, 11 respondents nominated health-risk concerns.
Mawson Lakes residents had given little thought to the system, which was not yet
in operation, but six respondents queried the safety of using the water. One father,
an information technology training manager, considered the risk to his children:
If the water is coming back onto my land, I want to be sure that the water
that is coming back on is clean, as it needs to be, to not cause my kids to
get bugs from going outside and playing in the garden.
569
570
The things always broken down I suppose. . . . Thats why I dont like
councils. They say all these wonderful things like we do this and that
but they wont spend the money on it you know.
Social Mood
The interaction of the structural elements discussed in the previous section and
collective capital of the social actors involved contributes to the social mood that for
Sztompka (1999) has a significant impact on the development of trust. Compared to
the experience in Florida, there were barriers to the development of a trusting social
mood at the Adelaide sites. At New Haven, respondents expressed satisfaction with
the gains from using the water but uncertainty in relation to the competence of council
management and the cost of operating the system. A sense of inadequacy was conveyed
by the local council manager in relation to managing this decentralised system with limited resources. At Mawson Lakes, there was a preoccupation with establishing new
homes, and respondents were keen for the development to be the success promised
in the prolific advertising. Therefore, although there was disappointment in the delays
in establishing some services, including the recycled water, there was a general sense of
optimism for the future at this new subdivision. The development manager had a cautious approach to finalizing the design and building of the water reuse system, being
unsure of how this initiative would ultimately affect land sales and profits.
Respondents in Florida had a more matter-of-fact attitude toward the recycled
water system. Only the water restrictions and fines were a source of annoyance for a
few residents at Altamonte Springs. At Brevard, three householders drew attention
to the interruptible nature of the supply, although this feature of the system was
made clear to residents upon connection. Overall, however, there was a sense that
recycled water had become a taken-for-granted, routinized feature of these Florida
sites. The managers responsible for the operations and management of the reclaimed
water were water engineers, and both systems were a source of pride that, in turn,
encouraged vigilance to ensure continued success.
Summary
As already indicated, the four case study sites vary between the well-established,
centrally managed Florida developments and the newer, locally managed systems in
Adelaide. The more rigorous structural support for both Florida sites compared to
the Adelaide developments is evident (Table 3). As the qualitative data demonstrate,
the structural differences between the Florida and Adelaide sites are reflected in the
residents health risk concerns and the need for further information (Table 4). The
structural context also gives shape to the social mood observed through interviews
with respondents and managers of the respective system; this in turn is congruent
with the levels of trust in reclaimed water providers, despite relatively positive attitudes about the benefits of water recycling.
Conclusion
This comparison of the structural shapers of trust and characteristics of social actors
involved in the experience of water reuse reveals important differences between the
571
Florida and Adelaide sites. It illustrates that a supportive structural framework facilitates knowledge of and trust in the use of reclaimed water, as indicated at
Altamonte Springs and Brevard County. By contrast, weaker regulatory, managerial, and communicative mechanisms effect compensatory informal structures at
New Haven and Mawson Lakes. The knowledge of respondents in these sites is only
partial and incomplete with respect to the operations and risks associated with nonpotable reuse. While social cues may reassure neighbors and, in the case of New
Haven, provide networks to help householders cope with the irregularities of the
reclaimed water service, these types of informal social structures work against establishing safe practices. Misinformation and the lack of regulatory enforcement result
in illegal taps being installed, which run the risk of being mistaken for potable taps.
The lack of detailed information creates a false reassurance that the water is suitable
to fill swimming pools. And the neglect of educational and regulatory controls
creates confusion for tradesmen in managing the separation of the dual pipe system.
Three conclusions can be drawn that have policy implications. First, the data
suggest that the transparency of governance and regulatory institutions and the
two-way communications between expert management and residents associations
that characterize the centrally managed Florida sites need to accompany the shift
to decentralized water services. Second, if indoor uses of reclaimed water such as
toilet flushing are to be provided, stringent controls are all the more important to
ensure that indoor reuse is not confused with potable connections and that a
consistent quality and supply of water are provided. Finally, where residents informally create and manage the flow of information to their neighbors, a false sense
of confidence is established. Disruptions to the service, problems of water quality,
or deviation from permitting rules may be accepted as the norm of communityscale water recycling. The problem, of course, is that this exacerbates the issues
of transparency and accountability: Who is in charge? The informal network
has neither a legitimate regulatory role nor the resources to accurately inform
all residents.
This research demonstrates the significance of particular structural and institutional arrangements in developing trust in water reuse. In an increasingly reflexive
risk society, close attention is needed to ensure that the overarching legal institutional framework is reflected in enforceable policies to guide agency. In this
analysis of some of the characteristics identified by Sztompka for being important
to the development of trust, it is clear that variations in structural factors have a significant impact on a well-informed appreciation of water reuse and its associated
risks, as well as trust in the providers of the service. Managing these structural
arrangements is therefore critical to the sustainability of urban water reuse and to
the environmental improvements that may be effected through this practice.
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a r t i c l e i n f o
a b s t r a c t
Article history:
Received 24 September 2012
Received in revised form
22 November 2012
Accepted 29 November 2012
Available online 31 January 2013
Waste is the symbol of inefciency of any modern society and a representation of misallocated resources.
Signicant progress has been achieved in reducing waste but it varies from city to city. Currently, cities
use their waste diversion rate as a tool to measure the performance of their waste management systems.
However, diversion of waste from landll does not give a holistic picture of zero waste performance. This
paper conceptualises the concept of the zero waste city and proposes a new tool to measure the performance of waste management systems called the zero waste index. The zero waste index forecasts the
amount of virgin materials, energy, water and greenhouse gas emissions substituted by the resources
that are recovered from waste streams. Three high consuming cities (Adelaide, San Francisco and
Stockholm) were analysed using the zero waste index. The zero waste indexes in Adelaide, San Francisco
and Stockholm were found to be 0.23, 0.51 and 0.17 respectively (i.e. around 23%, 51% and 17% of
resources were recovered and potentially substituted for virgin materials). In addition, the zero waste
index estimated the potential energy, greenhouse gas (GHG) and water savings due to resource recovery
from municipal solid waste in each of the three cities. It is evident that the zero waste index is an
innovative tool to assess waste management performance and materials substitution by waste management systems in different cities.
Crown Copyright 2012 Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
Keywords:
Municipal solid waste
Performance indicator
Diversion rate
Material substitution
Zero waste city
Zero waste index
1. Introduction
In 1962 it took 0.7 years for the earths annual biological harvest
to regenerate and now it takes 1.25 years (Smith, 2005). Global
ecosystem services have been over-used signicantly in parallel
with world economic growth. Global economic growth has
increased 5 times since the mid-twentieth century and 60% of the
worlds ecosystem services have been degraded during the same
period (Jackson, 2009: 13). It is estimated that by 2050 we will have
9 billion people on earth. If every person achieved afuence similar
to the OECD nations then the global economy would need to be 40
times bigger than it is today (and 200 times bigger than in 1950) by
the end of this century (Jackson, 2009: 13e14).
Global non-renewable resources are depleted as a result of overconsumption. Continuous depletion of natural nite resources by
urban populations is leading to an uncertain future. Therefore, to
prevent further depletion of global resources, we need sustainable
consumption and strategic waste management systems based on
* Corresponding author. Tel.: 61883020654.
E-mail
addresses:
zamau001@mymail.unisa.edu.au
steffen.lehmann@unisa.edu.au (S. Lehmann).
(A.U.
Zaman),
0959-6526/$ e see front matter Crown Copyright 2012 Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jclepro.2012.11.041
124
The products that we consume every day are primarily produced using virgin materials, energy and water. From resources
extraction to waste generation, consumption depletes the environment by contributing greenhouse gases (GHG) to the atmosphere. The aim of this paper is to conceptualize zero waste based on
material ow analysis. The paper also aims to develop a measurement tool to account for the performances of waste management
systems in cities and to forecast the potential demands for virgin
materials, energy and water, and reductions in GHG emissions. This
paper therefore proposes a zero waste index (ZWI) as a new tool to
measure waste management performance. The comparative performance of the waste management systems in Adelaide, San
Francisco and Stockholm will be studied using the proposed zero
waste index.
2. Development of the zero waste concept
From outer space to the bottom of the ocean, generations of waste
is accumulating over time. On one hand, the estimated amount of
debris put into space by humans and no longer in function has
increased from 14,000 pieces in 2007 to 18,000 pieces in 2008 (SSN,
2011). On the other hand, accumulation of waste in the great Pacic
Garbage Patch (currently 1,760,000 sqkm, 12 times bigger than
Bangladesh) is getting larger every day (MNN, 2010; PPC, 2011).
Currently, the worlds cities generate about 1.3 billion tonnes of
solid waste per year and the volume is expected to increase to
2.2 billion tonnes by 2025 (Hoornweg and Bhada-Tata, 2012). Waste
generation rates will more than double over the next twenty years
in lower income countries. However, this current trend of generating waste is not a recent practice; it comes from the very early
stages of modern society. So how would it be possible to transform
current society into a zero waste society?
2.1. Background of hyper-consumption
According to Strasser (1992), households did not produce much
trash in the late nineteenth century by todays standards. Disposable products such as canned foods, safety razors and many
more were introduced in the early twentieth century, designed to
be thrown away after a brief use. They constituted a new kind of
waste (Strasser, 1992), imposing enormous pressure on city
authorities, which had to manage it properly.
Scholarly interest in the history of consumption rst emerged
during the Cold War, when the issue of consumption became a
vehicle in the political and ideological clash of capitalism and
communism. Consumerism satised in the capitalist West but not
the socialist East (Strasser et al., 1998). Consumption was seen as a
driver of economic growth from then on. Increasing economic
growth until the global economic boom in the late 1990s led
developed societies to become hyper-consuming societies. Disposable product design and never-ending market expansion were
rmly established well before the beginning of the Great Depression (Strasser, 2000: 9).
An enormous amount of natural resources are depleted every
day due to the high demand for new products. Globally 120e
130 billion tonnes of natural resources are consumed every year
and produce around 3.4 to 4 billion tonnes of municipal solid waste
(Giljum et al., 2008; Chalmin and Gaillochet, 2009).
2.2. The concept of zero waste and the zero waste city
Zero waste means designing and managing products and
processes systematically to avoid and eliminate waste, and to
recover all resources from the waste stream (ZWIA, 2004). Working
towards zero waste has become a worldwide movement that
125
Fig. 1. Drivers for transforming current cities into zero waste cities.
Fig. 2. Material ow in a zero waste city (adapted from Girardet, 1992, 1999).
126
Diversion rate
Weight of recyclables
Weight of garbage Weight of recyclables
100%
(1)
P
Zero waste index
potential amount of waste managed by the city substitution for the systems
Total amount of waste generated in the city
ZWI
Pn
1 WMSi*SFi
Pn
1 GWS
(2)
127
plastic shopping bags has been one of the key initiatives to avoid
creation of waste in Adelaide.
The composition of municipal solid waste varies widely, both
within and between countries and between different seasons of the
year (UN-HABITAT, 2010). Municipal solid waste in Adelaide
includes a signicant amount of construction and demolition
waste. Container deposit legislation was adopted in 1977; therefore, certain packing containers have been recycled for more than
three decades in Adelaide. The average person generated around
681 kg of MSW in Adelaide in 2008e2009. Around 46% of all MSW
was recycled, 8% was composted and the remaining 46% was disposed to landll. Fig. 3(a) shows the composition of MSW in Adelaide and Fig. 3(b) shows the waste management systems.
4.2. San Francisco, USA
The city and county of San Francisco is quite small for a large
city, covering 122 km2 with a population of 835,364 (UN-HABITAT,
2010). It is located on a hilly peninsula separating San Francisco Bay
from the Pacic Ocean. San Francisco has a long history in waste
collection systems from informal waste recycling in the early
twentieth century to the modern collection systems today. The
initiator of the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP)
Urban Environmental Accords, San Francisco is a national and
international environmental leader.
San Francisco is one of the leading cities in the USA and it has
considered zero waste as a waste management manifesto. The zero
waste challenge is reected in solid waste system support for
reducing consumption, maximizing diversion and encouraging
reuse, repair and green purchasing. Banning troublesome goods such
as plastic bags and superuous packaging, and promoting alternatives such as recyclable or compostable take-out food packaging
and reusable transport packaging are the prominent initiatives
for achieving zero waste goals (UN-HABITAT, 2010). A total of
Table 1
Substitution values for the zero waste index.d
Case
study
cities
Waste
management
systems
Waste
category
Total waste
managed
in the city
(tonnes)
Virgin material
substitution
efciency
(tonnes)
Energy substitution
efciency
(GJLHV/tonne)
GHG emissions
reduction
(CO2e/tonne)
Water saving
(kL/tonne)
Adelaide
Recycling
San Francisco
Composting
Landll
Recycling
Stockholm
Composting
Landll
Recycling
Paper
Glass
Metal
Plastic
Mixed
Organic
Mixed MWa
Paper
Glass
Metal
Plastic
Mixed
Organic
Mixed MWa
Paper
Glass
Metal
Plastic
Mixed
Organic
Mixed MWa
Mixed MWa
23,918
17,084
17,084
17,084
2,66,521
59,424
3,41,692
1,21,997
15,096
20,332
55,915
50,830
1,01,665
1,42,331
3,6552
10,083
3781
8823
66,805
4065
2,39,891
36,596
0.84e1.00
0.90e1.00
0.79e0.96
0.90e0.97
0.25e0.45
0.60e0.65
0.00
0.84e1.00
0.90e0.99
0.79e0.96
0.90e0.97
0.25e0.45
0.60e0.65
0.00
0.84e1.00
0.90e0.99
0.79e0.96
0.90e0.97
0.25e0.45
0.60e0.65
0.00
0.00
6.33e10.76
6.07e6.85
36.09e191.42
38.81e64.08
5.00e15.0
0.18e0.47
0.00e0.84c
6.33e10.76
6.07e6.85
36.09e191.42
38.81e64.08
5.00e15.0
0.18e0.47
0.00e0.84c
6.33e10.76
6.07e6.85
36.09e191.42
38.81e64.08
5.00e15.0
0.18e0.47
0.972e2.995b
0.00e0.84c
0.60e3.20
0.18e0.62
1.40e17.8
0.95e1.88
1.15
0.25e0.75
() 0.42e1.2
0.60e3.20
0.18e0.62
1.40e17.8
0.95e1.88
1.15
0.25e0.75
() 0.42e1.2
0.60e3.20
0.18e0.62
1.40e17.8
0.95e1.88
1.15
0.25e0.75
0.12e0.55
() 0.42e1.2
2.91
2.30
5.97e181.77
11.37
2.0e10
0.44
0.00
2.91
2.30
5.97e181.77
11.37
2.0e10
0.44
0.00
2.91
2.30
5.97e181.77
11.37
2.0e10
0.44
0.00
0.00
Composting
Incineration
Landll
a
128
Organic
26%
Recycle
46%
Landfill
46%
Others
52%
Paper
7%
Plastic
Glass 5%
5%
Metal
5%
Compost
8%
Glass
3%
Organic
34%
Paper
24%
Compost
20%
Plastic
11%
Fig. 4. Composition and waste management systems in San Francisco (UN-HABITAT, 2010).
Recycle
52%
Organic
31%
Recycle
31%
Glass
8%
Incinerate
59%
Paper
29%
Metal
3%
Plastic
7%
129
Compost
1%
Fig. 5. Composition and waste management systems in Adelaide (Stypka, 2007; Avfall Sverige, 2011).
Table 2
Potential substitution of resources in the zero waste index.
Cities
WMS (ii)
Waste
category
(iii)
Total waste
managed in
the city
(tonnes) (iv)
Potential total
virgin material
substituted
(tonnes) (v)
Total energy
substituted
(GJLHV)
Total GHG
emissions
reduction
(tonnes CO2e)
Total water
saving (kL)
Zero waste
index,
(ZWI v/iv)
Adelaide
Recycling
Paper
Glass
Metal
Plastic
Mixed
Organic
Mixed MW1
23,918
17,084
17,084
17,084
2,66,521
59,424
3,41,692
7,42,807
681 kg
20,091
15,375
13,496
15,375
66,630
35,654
000
1,66,621
153 kg
2,04,260
1,10,362
19,44,159
8,78,800
26,65,210
19,609
000
3,157,190
2.9 GJ
45,444
6833
1,64,006
23,917
3,06,499
29,712
1,43,510
4,21,901
387 kg
69,601
39,293
1,554,644
1,94,245
15,99,126
26,146
000
30,94,565
2.8 kL
0.23
Paper
Glass
Metal
Plastic
Mixed
Organic
Mixed MW1
1,21,997
15,096
20,332
55,915
50,830
1,01,665
1,42,331
5,08,323
609 kg
1,02,477
13,724
16,062
50,323
12,707
60,999
000
2,56,292
307 kg
1,041,854
98,508
23,13,781
2,83,691
5,08,300
33,549
000
42,79,683
5.1 GJ
2,31,794
6099
1,95,187
78,281
58,454
50,832
59,779
5,60,868
672 kg
3,55,011
35,072
27,60,212
6,35,753
3,04,980
44,732
000
28,64,254
3.42 kL
0.51
Paper
Glass
Metal
Plastic
Mixed
Organic
Mixed MW1
Mixed MW1
36,552
10,083
3781
8823
66,805
4065
2,39,891
36,596
4,06,596
480 kg
30,703
9074
2987
7940
16,701
2439
000
000
69,844
79 kg
3,12,154
65,136
4,26,863
4,53,855
6,68,050
1341
4,77,383
000
2,404,782
2.83 GJ
69,448
4033
36,297
12,352
76,825
2032
80,363
1536
2,79,814
330 kg
1,06,366
23,190
3,44,071
1,00,317
4,00,830
1788
000
000
7,75,928
0.92 kL
0.17
Composting
Landll
Total value
Benets per person per year
San Francisco
Recycling
Composting
Landll
Total value
Benets per person per year
Stockholm
Recycling
Composting
Incineration
Landll
Total value
Benets per person per year
130
Adelaide
Adelaide
San
Francisco
Stockholm
San
Francisco
Stockholm
Fig. 7. Energy savings from waste management systems in Adelaide, San Francisco and
Stockholm.
Stockholm
Fig. 8. GHG savings from waste management systems in Adelaide, San Francisco and
Stockholm.
warming and climate change. Landll is the main source of methane and other GHG emissions from waste management systems.
Resource recovery from waste eventually substitutes the emissions
that would otherwise reach the atmosphere if waste is managed by
landll. Each person in Adelaide, San Francisco and Stockholm
saved 387 kg CO2e, 672 kg CO2e and 330 kg CO2e of GHG each year,
respectively, from the waste management systems. In countries like
Australia where a carbon tax costs polluters a huge amount of
money, waste management authorities can claim carbon credits
that they have saved from waste recycling activities. Fig. 8 shows
the GHG savings.
5.3.4. Water savings
Water is not an abundant resource anymore; rather it is already
a scarce natural resource in many parts of the world. The relationship between water and waste is signicant at the point of
resource recovery because a signicant amount of fresh water is
used to process raw materials to produce products. Therefore,
substituting virgin materials can save water. Fig. 9 shows the per
capita water saved in the three cities. Adelaide, San Francisco and
Stockholm saved around 2800 L, 3420 L and 920 L per person per
year respectively.
Adelaide
San
Francisco
Adelaide
San
Francisco
Stockholm
Fig. 9. Water savings from waste management systems in Adelaide, San Francisco and
Stockholm.
6. Concluding remarks
From the previous discussion it is clear that the zero waste index
provides a better picture of the overall waste management performance of a city than the diversion rate. Moreover, a 100%
diversion of waste from landll would obviously be a milestone for
a waste authority but would not necessarily achieve zero waste
goals. The diversion rate does not give an indication of resources
that have been recovered and substituted, which eventually avoids
extraction of further resources. The zero waste index forecasts the
amount of resources that are recovered from the waste streams and
substituted for virgin materials. In addition, the ZWI also forecasts
the demand substitution of energy, water and emissions by the
waste management systems.
The overall performance of waste management systems in
Adelaide is higher compared to Stockholm. This difference is due to
the virgin material recovery and energy substitution by the waste
management systems. Adelaide substitutes more virgin materials
than Stockholm. The overall performance of the three cities was
analysed and San Francisco was found to be top among the three
cities.
The study aimed to develop a holistic tool for measuring the
waste management performance of a city. From the study results it
is evident that San Francisco has a higher zero waste index than
Adelaide and Stockholm. Virgin materials substitution, energy
savings, emissions saving and water savings were also higher than
the other two cities. This study was limited to the municipal waste
management systems in 6 broad waste categories: paper, plastic,
metal, glass, organic and mixed municipal solid waste. Further
research is required to develop a zero waste index system for other
types of waste such as commercial and institutional waste, industrial waste, and construction and demolition waste.
Acknowledgements
This article was supported by the Zero Waste SA Research Centre
for Sustainable Design and Behaviour (sdb) at the University of
South Australia. The study is a part of an ongoing research project
studying strategies for zero waste and urban material ows conducted at the sdb Centre. The authors thank two anonymous
referees for their insightful comments.
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132
R E S E A R C H A N D A N A LY S I S
Keywords:
construction materials
industrial ecology
material flow analysis (MFA)
regional MFA
urbanization
urban sprawl
Summary
The article presents the results of a research project aimed
at (1) examining the feasibility of material flow analysis (MFA)
on a regional and urban scale in France, (2) selecting the most
appropriate method, (3) identifying the available data, and (4)
calculating the material balance for a specific case. Using the
Eurostat method, the study was conducted for the year 2003
and for three regional levels: Paris, Paris and its suburbs, and
the entire region. Applying the method on a local scale required two local indicators to be defined in order to take into
account the impact of exported wastes on MFA: LEPO, local
and exported flows to nature, and DMCcorr , a modified domestic material consumption (DMC) that excludes exported
wastes (and imported ones if necessary).
As the region extracts, produces, and transforms less material than the country as a whole, its direct material input
(DMI) is lower than the national DMI. In all the areas, LEPO
exceeds 50% of DMI; in contrast, recycling is very low. The
multiscale approach reveals that urban metabolism is strongly
impacted by density and the distribution of activities: the dense
city center (Paris) exports all of its wastes to the other parts
of the region and concentrates food consumption, whereas
the agricultural and urban sprawl area consumes high levels of
construction materials and fuel. This supports the use of MFA
on an urban and regional scale as a basis for material flow
management and dematerialization strategies and clearly reveals the important interactions between urban and regional
planning and development, and material flows.
c 2009 by Yale University
DOI: 10.1111/j.1530-9290.2009.00169.x
Volume 13, Number 6
898
www.blackwellpublishing.com/jie
R E S E A R C H A N D A N A LY S I S
Introduction
Material flow analysis (MFA) is a powerful tool that helps elucidate national, regional,
and urban metabolism. It provides indicators of
(un)sustainability and can contribute to the definition of a public environmental policy (Bringezu
et al. 1998). MFA is now widely used at the national scale (see for instance Weisz et al. 2006),
although it is not extensively used in developing
countries.
Although MFA has proven to be useful on a
national scale, analyses focused on smaller areas
are necessary to gain a better understanding of
what material consumption is and how it can be
controlled and reduced. Most of the world population is concentrated in urban areas (77% in
France, just above 50% in the world), such that
the total consumption of these areas is inclined
to be higher than elsewhere. Furthermore, most
of the products consumed in urban areas are imported. Cities can thus be considered as types of
attractors for materials. Because these imported
materials come from various parts of the world,
the environmental imprint of cities is a worldwide
mosaic. Thus, the analysis of urban material flows
can help to elucidate not only urban functioning
but also issues on a larger scale.
Pioneering studies in the field highlight the
importance of urban metabolism and provide
some data on the urban material balance (Wolman 1965; Odum 1975; Duvigneaud 1980; Boyden et al. 1981). These studies, however, remain
quite focused and do not go beyond the condemnation of cities as parasites, importing fresh materials and exporting wastes. More recently, new
methodological developments and case studies
provide encouraging results and pave the way for
further studies. MFA has now been shown to be
relevant not only in describing socionatural interactions but also in supporting public policies
and action (see for instance for Vienna: Daxbeck
et al. 1997; for Stockholm: Burstrom et al. 1998;
for Geneva: Faist Emmenegger and Frischknecht,
2003; for Hamburg, Vienna, and Liepzig: Hammer et al. 2006).
Paris is, by far, the largest urban area in France
and one of the most important in Europe, together with London and the Ruhr conurbation;
its population ranks 20th in the world. Paris
899
R E S E A R C H A N D A N A LY S I S
Figure 1 Main flows and indicators in material balance according to the method adapted from Eurostat
(2001). Note the following: (1) The system (Society/Economy) is limited by its political or administrative
borders; it comprises the society as a whole (population and artifacts) and excludes nature from which it
extracts primary material. (2) Water balance is not included (except in the case of balancing outputs). For an
explanation of indicators, see table 1.
global indicators in the context of sustainability policies, while the Brunner and Rechberger
method cannot.
To capture the material impact of regional
and urban activities, we followed the territorial
principle rather than the residential principle:
Flows accounted are local ones and defined by the
physical boundaries of the system under study (resulting from administrative boundaries, see Case
Study section below). For the purposes of this
study, we used an adaptation of a methodological guide published by Eurostat in 2001 (Eurostat
2001). The principles of the adapted method, the
main flows to be determined, and the main resulting indicators are shown in figure 1. (See table 1
for an explanation of all indicators and abbreviations.) Our first adaptation of the method does
not depend on the local character of the case
study.
To balance the MFAthat is, based on the
conservation of mass principleit is necessary
to take into account the so-called memorandum
R E S E A R C H A N D A N A LY S I S
DMI
DMO
DPO
LEPO
NAS
TDO
TMI
TMO
TMR
Explanation
balancing inputs
balancing outputs
domestic material consumption =
DMI exports
corrected domestic material
consumption = DMI imported
wastes exports except wastes
direct material input DMI + BI =
NAS + DMO + BO
direct material output
domestic processed output
local and exported processed
output = DPO + exported flows
to nature
net addition to stock
total domestic output
total material input TMI + BI =
NAS + TMO + BO
total material output
total material requirement
901
R E S E A R C H A N D A N A LY S I S
Case Study
France is divided into administrative regions
that are themselves divided into departements
made up of many municipalities.3 Due to its
specific role, Paris is both a municipality and a
departement. The urban area of Paris is within
the administrative region of Ile-de-France, which
is itself currently divided into three zones
(figure 2 and table 2): (1) Paris (P); (2) its dense
suburb called Petite couronne (PC), which includes three administrative departements (Hautsde-Seine, Seine-Saint-Denis, Val-de-Marne);
and (3) the rest of the region called Grande
couronne (GC). GC is characterized by urban sprawl, industrial activities, and intensive agriculture and is made up of four
departements (Seine-et-Marne, Yvelines, Essonne, Val-dOise). Ile-de-France is the most
highly populated region of France and has the
highest population density and gross domestic
product (both in volume and per capita) in the
country.
Initially, the study focused only on the Paris
area, but it soon became apparent that such a
choice was very restrictive for proper analysis.
The administrative boundaries of Paris do not
contain the urban area as a whole; they just encompass the very dense city center within the
large urban zone. Material flows, however, can
be impacted both by urban shape (density versus sprawl) and a variety of activities (residential,
tertiary, industrial, and agricultural). As such, for
the purpose of this study, we defined three concentric areas around Paris and conducted an MFA
for each of these: (1) Paris (P); (2) Paris and its
dense urban Petite couronne suburbs (PPC); and
(3) the entire Ile-de-France region (IdF). Consequently, area 3 (IdF) includes area 2 (PPC), and
area 2 (PPC) includes area 1 (P). Internal flows
have, of course, been subtracted out when calculating MFA for areas 2 and 3 (PPC and IdF).
When possible, specific results for PC or GC are
discussed in the article.
R E S E A R C H A N D A N A LY S I S
Figure 2 Study areas of the Ile-de-France (IdF) region. inhab. = inhabitants; one square kilometer (km2 , SI)
0.386 square miles. Source (map): IAURIF (2008); copyright IAU Ile-de-France. All rights reserved. Used
with permission.
The origin of the data and its quality are summarized in table 3. The most precise, continuous,
and homogenous of the data were data on local extraction of biomass (thanks to agricultural
statistics), data on imports and exports, except
for fossil fuels (thanks to freight statistics), and
data on household wastes. Data on the local extraction of minerals, on imports, on the local extraction of fossil fuels, on other solid wastes and
P
3
7
0
12
39
5
18
15
1
100
PC
2
8
3
10
40
10
12
11
5
100
PPC
2
8
3
10
39
9
13
11
4
100
GC
1
24
55
4
7
1
2
2
3
100
IdF
1
22
48
4
12
2
3
3
3
100
903
R E S E A R C H A N D A N A LY S I S
Local extraction
Fossil fuels
Minerals
Biomass
Oxygen
Imports
Fossil fuels
Others
To nature
To air:
emissions
To air: water
Landfill
To water
Dissipative
flows
Exports
Recycling
R E S E A R C H A N D A N A LY S I S
t/cap
PPC (6,321,000
inhab.)
kt
t/cap
IdF (11,259,000
inhab.)
kt
t/cap
0
0
0
0
0.0
0.0
0.0
0.0
0
0
30
30
0.0
0.0
0.0
0.0
540
16,990
6,010
23,540
0.0
1.5
0.5
2.1
3,910
15,240
19,160
19,160
1.8
7.0
8.8
8.8
13,050
56,450
69,500
69,530
2.1
8.9
11.0
11.0
26,100
88,350
114,450
137,990
2.3
7.8
10.2
12.3
6,710
0
0
150
6,860
3.1
0.0
0.0
0.1
3.2
24,470
2,500
10
440
27,410
3.9
0.4
0.0
0.1
4.3
53,840
20,010
40
2,400
76,290
4.8
1.8
0.0
0.2
6.8
4,100
8,380
12,480
19,340
10,960
1.9
3.9
5.8
8.9
5.1
9,610
40,410
50.020
77,430
37,020
1.5
6.4
7.9
12.2
5.9
69
58,500
58,570
134,860
76,360
0.0
5.2
5.2
12.0
6.8
0
1,850
1,850
5,950
4,830
10,780
6,560
3,280
3,100
0.0
0.9
0.9
2.7
2.2
5.0
3.0
1.5
1.4
4,210
440
4,660
10,050
19,070
29,120
24,010
12,010
4,110
0.7
0.1
0.7
1.6
3.0
4.6
3.8
1.9
0.7
7,320
0
7,320
70
79,420
79,490
52,650
26,330
29,460
0.7
0.0
0.7
0.0
7.1
7.1
4.7
2.3
2.6
Note: P = Paris; PPC = dense urban area (Paris and its dense suburb, taken together); IdF = Ile-de-France region. One
kiloton (kt) = 103 tonnes (t) = 103 megagrams (Mg, SI) 1.102 103 short tons. t/cap = tonnes per capita. DMI =
direct material input; DPO = domestic processed output; DMO = direct material output; LEPO = local and exported
processed output; DMC = domestic material consumption; DMCcorr = corrected domestic material consumption; BI =
balancing inputs; BO = balancing outputs; NAS = net addition to stock.
General Results
The main results of our MFA are summarized
in table 4 and figure 3. As shown in table 4, fossil
fuel extraction, mineral and biomass extraction,
imports (fossil fuels and others), emissions to air,
905
R E S E A R C H A N D A N A LY S I S
agricultural activities, the region extracts, produces, and transforms less material than the rest
of the country. These processes upstream of social metabolism, lead to increased emissions and
wastes and, as a consequence, to higher DMI and
DMC values. In fact, the opposite occurs in this
region; it imports many goods that are produced
outside of its boundaries. The elaboration of these
goods requires much more consumption of materials than their final material content. As cities
generally consume significantly more than they
produce, further research is required on indirect
flows for regional and, especially, urban MFA.
DMC and DMI at the local level may also be
lower because an increase in stock is less important in the Ile-de-France region than in other
regions in France. For instance, only 10% of new
buildings (in terms of floor area) in France are
constructed in Ile-de-France (MEEDDM 2008)
although nearly 20% of the French population
lives there. The distance between DMI and DMC
is also important: The percent of DMI to DMCcorr
is 178% in Paris, 239% in PPC, and 174% in IdF,
while it is 125% at the national level.
We also examined the total flows to nature
as represented by LEPO. LEPO values were 5.1
t/cap for Paris, 5.9 t/cap for PPC, and 6.8 t/cap
for IdF. These data reveal that more than half
the regions DMI is returned to nature (57%,
53%, and 55% of DMI for Paris, PPC and IdF,
respectively). Furthermore, the data show that
flows to nature exceed commercial exports and
that limiting MFA to monetary flows is particularly irrelevant. The high emissions to air in
LEPO (61% of LEPO in Paris, 66% in PPC,
71% in IdF) clearly illustrate the importance of
R E S E A R C H A N D A N A LY S I S
Paris
PC
GC
IdF
98
115
1,654
0
0
4
1,872
83
67
1,746
0
18
4
1,919
150
64
1,301
32
63
7
1,617
116
75
1,533
14
34
6
1,778
907
R E S E A R C H A N D A N A LY S I S
Figure 4 Domestic material consumption (DMC), 2003 (tonnes per capita). P = Paris; PC = dense suburb
of Paris; PPC = dense urban area (PPC = P + PC); GC = urban sprawl and agricultural area; IdF =
Ile-de-France region.
1,009
554
3,915
156
1,336
100
7,070
908
Exports (Ex)
% of DMI
4.1
13.5
10.9
3.1
4.3
0.4
5.5
Rail (kt)
387
557
181
315
1,739
73
3,253
Internal traffic
(IT)
% of Ex
Rail (kt)
% of IT
2.7
14.2
2.7
8.4
7.0
1.1
5.4
5
120
124
5
26
214
494
0.0
0.7
0.2
0.1
0.1
4.0
0.3
R E S E A R C H A N D A N A LY S I S
PPC
GC
IdF
(2)
kt
t/cap
kt
t/cap
1,897
23,492
25,389
0.3
4.8
2.3
5,754
23,492
29,122
0.9
4.8
2.6
909
R E S E A R C H A N D A N A LY S I S
Figure 5 Expected floor area of construction begun in 2001, 2002, and 2003 in thousand square meters
(1,000 m2 ). Source of data: MEEDDAT, 2008. P = Paris; PC = dense suburb of Paris; GC = urban sprawl and
agricultural area.
from Paris and its urban area as they are less populated and larger and, therefore, less dense. Their
economic and political roles are also quite different: Hamburg is a major harbor, Vienna a capital, and Liepzig a regional center. As such, the
only indicator we were able to compare directly
is DMC. DMC for both Hamburg and Liepzig
are higher than that for Paris and IdF; DMC for
the Vienna center is equal to the DMC for Paris.
Of the three cities studied by Hammer and colleagues, Vienna also has the highest density (see
table 8).
Area (km )
Population
( 1,000)
Density
(inhab./km2 )
DMC (t/cap)
Vienna (2001)
Liepzig (2001)
Center
Urban
Area
Center
Urban
Area
Center
Urban
Area
PPC
IdF
755
1726
8616
3264
415
1550
4596
2120
298
493
4386
1091
105
2166
762
6321
12012
11259
2286
379
3736
461
1658
249
20629
8295
937
8.2
11.4
5.0
8.8
25.3
5.0
4.6
7.1
Source: Hammer and colleagues (2006) for Hamburg, Vienna, and Liepzig; present study for Paris. P = Paris; PPC = dense
urban area (Paris and its dense suburb, taken together); DMC = domestic material consumption; IdF = Ile-de-France
region; inhab./km2 = inhabitants per square kilometer; t/cap = tonnes per capita.
910
R E S E A R C H A N D A N A LY S I S
Although a more detailed analysis is required to take into account the various origins and uncertainties of the data, we nevertheless propose that Paris experiences a kind of
material saturation that explains its low DMC
(see also discussion above). Viennas low DMC
may also be explained by a similar material
saturation.
Conclusion
The first goal of our study was to examine
the feasibility of MFA on the regional and urban
scale in France. We conclude that such an analysis is possible and that the Eurostat method can
be applied successfully to this type of analysis.
Some adaptations of the Eurostat method were
necessary, however, to take into account the importance of exported wastes and flows to nature
and their impact on DMC. Two local indicators
were thus defined: LEPO, a measure of the local and exported flows to nature, and DMCcorr , a
modified DMC that is calculated by excluding exported wastes from exports (and, where necessary,
imported wastes from imports). Improvements to
the production and/or collection of public data
are necessary to allow for more precise and replicable analyses, over the short and long term.
MFA allows urban functioning to be weighed.
DMI, DMC, and DMCcorr are lower on the local
scale compared with the national scale, reflecting
the fact that urban areas import most of what they
consume and create large hidden flows. LEPO
are also considerable: They exceed 50% of DMI,
whereas recycling is nearly nonexistent. These
results question the validity of the current public
policies concerning waste recycling and emission
reduction.
The study was conducted at three levels, and
the results clearly highlight the value of using
such a multiscaled approach. Our data show that
Paris depends on a wide area for its material provision and on the suburbs and the region as a whole
for its waste treatment. These results demonstrate
the material consequences of both the concentration of activities in the city centerconsumption
of foodand urban sprawl in the regionhigh
consumption of construction materials and fuel.
The link established between construction materials flows and planning issues is also worth not-
Acknowledgements
Paris City Council and the French National
Research Agency (ANR-08-VILL-0008-02) provided the funding for this study. I thank Natacha
Lizerot and Tifenn Audrain for their valuable assistance in data collection.
Notes
1. More details are available in the research report
(Barles 2007).
2. They mention that additional activities can complete this list to analyse and solve a particular
resource-oriented problem (Brunner and Rechberger 2004, p. 44). Such a definition of main activities is perhaps relevant today in developed countries
but probably not in other parts of the world or during other times (cleaning was not so important two
or three hundred years ago and working simply does
not exist in some societies).
3. More precisely, departements are divided into cantons
consisting of municipalities. This distinction is not
necessary here.
4. One tonne (t) = 103 kilograms (kg, SI) 1.102
short tons.
5. It has to be kept in mind that this fuel consumption
does not represent all of the energy consumption
within the area as it does not take into account
imported electricity.
911
R E S E A R C H A N D A N A LY S I S
References
Barles, S. 2005. Le metabolisme urbain: Lazote,
XIXe-XXe si`ecles. [Urban metabolism: Nitrogen. 19th20th centuries]. PIREN-Seine report 2004. Paris: UMR CNRS 7619 Sisyphe.
www.sisyphe.jussieu.fr/internet/piren/. Accessed
15 August 2008.
Barles, S. 2007. Mesurer la performance e cologique
des villes: Le metabolisme de Paris et de lIle-deFrance. [Assessing urban ecological performance:
Paris and Ile-de-France metabolism]. Research
report. Champs-sur-Marne, France: Laboratoire
TMU (UMR CNRS AUS 7136). www.ifu.univparis8.fr/LTMU/IMG/pdf/rapports/Barles-EIParis.pdf. Accessed 15 August 2008.
Barles, S. 2008. Comprendre et matriser le
metabolisme urbain et lempreinte environnementale des villes. [Understanding and managing urban metabolism and urban environmental
imprint]. Responsabilite & Environnement (52):21
26.
Billen, G., S. Barles, J. Garnier, J. Rouillard, and P.
Benoit. 2009. The food-print of Paris: Long term
reconstruction of the nitrogen flows imported into
the city from its rural hinterland. Regional Environmental Change 9(1):1324.
Boyden, S., S. Millar, K. Newcombe, and B. Oneill.
1981. The ecology of a city and its people: The case of
Hong Kong. Canberra, Australia: Australian National University Press.
Bringezu, S., M. Fischer-Kowalski, R. Kleijn, and V.
Palm, eds. 1997. Regional and national material flow
accounting: From paradigm to practice. Proceeding
of the ConAccount workshop, Leiden, 2123 January 1997. Wuppertal: Wuppertal Institute for
Climate, Environment and Energy.
Bringezu, S., M. Fischer-Kowalski, R. Kleijn, and V.
Palm, eds. 1998. Analysis for action: Support for policy towards sustainability by material flow accounting.
Proceeding of the ConAccount workshop, Wuppertal, 1112 September 1997. Wuppertal: Wuppertal Institute for Climate, Environment and Energy.
Brunner, P. H., and H. Rechberger. 2004. Practical
handbook of material flow analysis. Boca Raton:
Lewis Publishers.
Burstrom, F., N. Brandt, B. Frostell, and U. Mohlander.
1998. Material Flow Accounting and Information for Environmental Policies in the City of
Stockholm. In Analysis for action: Support for policy towards sustainability by material flow accounting, edited by S. Bringezu, M. Fischer-Kowalski,
R. Kleijn, and V. Palm. Proceeding of the ConAc-
912
R E S E A R C H A N D A N A LY S I S
913
Humanity has just crossed a major landmark in its history with the
majority of people now living in cities. Cities have long been
known to be societys predominant engine of innovation and
wealth creation, yet they are also its main source of crime, pollution, and disease. The inexorable trend toward urbanization worldwide presents an urgent challenge for developing a predictive,
quantitative theory of urban organization and sustainable development. Here we present empirical evidence indicating that the
processes relating urbanization to economic development and
knowledge creation are very general, being shared by all cities
belonging to the same urban system and sustained across different
nations and times. Many diverse properties of cities from patent
production and personal income to electrical cable length are
shown to be power law functions of population size with scaling
exponents, , that fall into distinct universality classes. Quantities
reflecting wealth creation and innovation have 1.2 >1 (increasing returns), whereas those accounting for infrastructure display
0.8 <1 (economies of scale). We predict that the pace of social life
in the city increases with population size, in quantitative agreement with data, and we discuss how cities are similar to, and differ
from, biological organisms, for which <1. Finally, we explore
possible consequences of these scaling relations by deriving
growth equations, which quantify the dramatic difference between growth fueled by innovation versus that driven by economies of scale. This difference suggests that, as population grows,
major innovation cycles must be generated at a continually accelerating rate to sustain growth and avoid stagnation or collapse.
population sustainability urban studies increasing returns
economics of scale
SUSTAINABILITY
SCIENCE
Edited by Elinor Ostrom, Indiana University, Bloomington, IN, and approved March 6, 2007 (received for review November 19, 2006)
revealing underlying dynamics and structure has been instrumental in understanding problems across the entire spectrum of
science and technology. This approach has recently been applied
to a wide range of biological phenomena leading to a unifying
quantitative picture of their organization, structure, and dynamics. Organisms as metabolic engines, characterized by energy
consumption rates, growth rates, body size, and behavioral times
(3234), have a clear counterpart in social systems (14, 35).
Cities as consumers of energy and resources and producers of
artifacts, information, and waste have often been compared with
biological entities, in both classical studies in urban sociology
(14, 35) and in recent research concerned with urban ecosystems
and sustainable development. Recent analogies include cities as
living systems (36) or organisms (37) and notions of urban
ecosystems (38) and urban metabolism (17, 3840). Are
these terms just qualitative metaphors, or is there quantitative
and predictive substance in the implication that social organizations are extensions of biology, satisfying similar principles and
constraints? Are the structures and dynamics that evolved with
human socialization fundamentally different from those in biology? Answers to these questions provide a framework for the
construction of a quantitative theory of the average city, which
would incorporate, for example, the roles of innovation and
economies of scale and predictions for growth trajectories, levels
of social and economic development, and ecological footprints.
To set the stage, consider first some relevant scaling relations
characterizing biological organisms. Despite its amazing diversity and complexity, life manifests an extraordinary simplicity
and universality in how key structural and dynamical processes
scale across a broad spectrum of phenomena and an immense
range of energy and mass scales covering 20 orders of magnitude. Remarkably, almost all physiological characteristics of
biological organisms scale with body mass, M, as a power law
whose exponent is typically a multiple of 1/4 (which generalizes
to 1/(d 1) in d-dimensions). For example, metabolic rate, B,
(the power required to sustain the organism) scales as B M3/4
(32, 33). Because metabolic rate per unit mass, B/M M1/4,
decreases with body size, this relationship implies an economy of
scale in energy consumption: larger organisms consume less
energy per unit time and per unit mass. The predominance and
universality of quarter-power scaling have been understood as a
manifestation of general underlying principles that constrain the
dynamics and geometry of distribution networks within organisms (e.g., the circulatory system). Highly complex, selfsustaining structures, whether cells, organisms, or cities, require
close integration of enormous numbers of constituent units that
need efficient servicing. To accomplish this integration, life at all
scales is sustained by optimized, space-filling, hierarchical
branching networks (32, 41), which grow with the size of the
organism as uniquely specified approximately self-similar structures. Because these networks, e.g., the vascular systems of
animals and plants, determine the rates at which energy is
delivered to functional terminal units (cells), they set the pace of
physiological processes as scaling functions of the size of the
organism. Thus, the self-similar nature of resource distribution
networks, common to all organisms, provides the basis for a
7302 www.pnas.orgcgidoi10.1073pnas.0610172104
quantitative, predictive theory of biological structure and dynamics, despite much external variation in appearance and form.
Specifically, this theory predicts that characteristic physiological times, such as life spans, turnover times, and times to
maturity scale as M1 M1/4, whereas associated rates, such as
heart rates and evolutionary rates, scale as M1 M1/4. Thus,
the pace of biological life slows down with increasing size of the
organism.
Conceptually, the existence of such universal scaling laws
implies, for example, that in terms of almost all biological rates,
times, and internal structure, an elephant is approximately a
blown-up gorilla, which is itself a blown-up mouse, all scaled in
an appropriately nonlinear, predictable way. This concept means
that dynamically and organizationally, all mammals are, on the
average, scaled manifestations of a single idealized mammal,
whose properties are determined as a function of its size.
From this perspective, it is natural to ask whether social
organizations also display universal power law scaling for variables reflecting key structural and dynamical characteristics. In
what sense, if any, are small, medium, and large cities scaled
versions of one another, thereby implying that they are manifestations of the same average idealized city? In this way, urban
scaling laws, to exist, may provide fundamental quantitative
insights and predictability into underlying social processes, responsible for flows of resources, information, and innovation.
Results
Scaling Relations for Urban Indicators. To explore scaling relations
for cities we gathered an extensive body of data, much of it never
before published, across national urban systems, addressing a
wide range of characteristics, including energy consumption,
economic activity, demographics, infrastructure, innovation,
employment, and patterns of human behavior. Although much
data are available for specific cities, scaling analysis requires
coverage of entire urban systems. We have obtained datasets at
this level of detail mostly for the U.S., where typically more data
are available and in more particular cases for European countries
and China.
As we show below, the data assembled and examined here can
be grouped into three categories: material infrastructure, individual human needs, and patterns of social activity. We adopted
a definition of cities that is as much as possible devoid of
arbitrary political or geographic boundaries, as integrated economic and social units, usually referred to as unified labor
markets, comprising urban cores and including all administrative
subdivisions with substantial fractions of their population commuting to work within its boundaries. In the U.S., these definitions correspond to metropolitan statistical areas (MSAs); in the
European Union, larger urban zones (LUZs); and in China,
urban administrative units (UAUs). More detailed definitions of
city boundaries are desirable and an active topic of research in
urban geography (3).
Using population, N(t), as the measure of city size at time t,
power law scaling takes the form
Yt Y0 Nt.
[1]
Y can denote material resources (such as energy or infrastructure) or measures of social activity (such as wealth, patents, and
pollution); Y0 is a normalization constant. The exponent, ,
reflects general dynamic rules at play across the urban system.
Summary results for selected exponents are shown in Table 1,
and typical scaling curves are shown in Fig. 1. These results
indicate that scaling is indeed a pervasive property of urban
organization. We find robust and commensurate scaling exponents across different nations, economic systems, levels of
development, and recent time periods for a wide variety of
indicators. This finding implies that, in terms of these quantities,
Bettencourt et al.
95% CI
Adj-R2
Observations
Countryyear
New patents
Inventors
Private R&D employment
Supercreative employment
R&D establishments
R&D employment
Total wages
Total bank deposits
GDP
GDP
GDP
Total electrical consumption
New AIDS cases
Serious crimes
1.27
1.25
1.34
1.15
1.19
1.26
1.12
1.08
1.15
1.26
1.13
1.07
1.23
1.16
1.25,1.29
1.22,1.27
1.29,1.39
1.11,1.18
1.14,1.22
1.18,1.43
1.09,1.13
1.03,1.11
1.06,1.23
1.09,1.46
1.03,1.23
1.03,1.11
1.18,1.29
[1.11, 1.18]
0.72
0.76
0.92
0.89
0.77
0.93
0.96
0.91
0.96
0.64
0.94
0.88
0.76
0.89
331
331
266
287
287
295
361
267
295
196
37
392
93
287
U.S. 2001
U.S. 2001
U.S. 2002
U.S. 2003
U.S. 1997
China 2002
U.S. 2002
U.S. 1996
China 2002
EU 19992003
Germany 2003
Germany 2002
U.S. 20022003
U.S. 2003
Total housing
Total employment
Household electrical consumption
Household electrical consumption
Household water consumption
1.00
1.01
1.00
1.05
1.01
0.99,1.01
0.99,1.02
0.94,1.06
0.89,1.22
0.89,1.11
0.99
0.98
0.88
0.91
0.96
316
331
377
295
295
U.S. 1990
U.S. 2001
Germany 2002
China 2002
China 2002
Gasoline stations
Gasoline sales
Length of electrical cables
Road surface
0.77
0.79
0.87
0.83
0.74,0.81
0.73,0.80
0.82,0.92
0.74,0.92
0.93
0.94
0.75
0.87
318
318
380
29
U.S. 2001
U.S. 2001
Germany 2002
Germany 2002
SUSTAINABILITY
SCIENCE
Data sources are shown in SI Text. CI, confidence interval; Adj-R2, adjusted R2; GDP, gross domestic product.
Fig. 1. Examples of scaling relationships. (a) Total wages per MSA in 2004 for
the U.S. (blue points) vs. metropolitan population. (b) Supercreative employment per MSA in 2003, for the U.S. (blue points) vs. metropolitan population.
Best-fit scaling relations are shown as solid lines.
[2]
1
1
[3]
Y0
R
dNt
Nt
Nt.
dt
E
E
Y0
R
Y0
N10
exp 1 t
Nt
R
R
E
Fig. 2. The pace of urban life increases with city size in contrast to the pace
of biological life, which decreases with organism size. (a) Scaling of walking
speed vs. population for cities around the world. (b) Heart rate vs. the size
(mass) of organisms.
E
R 1
1n 1
N
0
1R
Y0
E
1
.
1R N 10
[4]
Fig. 3. Regimes of urban growth. Plots of size N vs. time t. (a) Growth driven
by sublinear scaling eventually converges to the carrying capacity N. (b)
Growth driven by linear scaling is exponential. (c) Growth driven by superlinear scaling diverges within a finite time tc (dashed vertical line). (d) Collapse
characterizes superlinear dynamics when resources are scarce.
Discussion
Despite the enormous complexity and diversity of human behavior and extraordinary geographic variability, we have shown
that cities belonging to the same urban system obey pervasive
scaling relations with population size, characterizing rates of
innovation, wealth creation, patterns of consumption and human
behavior as well as properties of urban infrastructure. Most of
these indicators deal with temporal processes associated with the
social dimension of cities as spaces for intense interaction across
the spectrum of human activities. It is remarkable that it is
principally in terms of these rhythms that cities are self-similar
organizations, indicating a universality of human social dynamics, despite enormous variability in urban form. These findings
provide quantitative underpinnings for social theories of urbanism as a way of life (12).
Table 2. Classification of scaling exponents for urban properties and their implications for growth
Scaling exponent
1
1
1
Bettencourt et al.
Driving force
Organization
Growth
Optimization, efficiency
Creation of information, wealth
and resources
Individual maintenance
Biological
Sociological
Individual
SUSTAINABILITY
SCIENCE
7306 www.pnas.orgcgidoi10.1073pnas.0610172104
50.
51.
Bettencourt et al.
Chapter 18
18.2.2.5
Economic Complexity
18.2.2.6
Future Dynamics
The energy demand and energy mix of urban settlements normally follows rather than leads urban expansion (Seto and Shepherd, 2009).
However, the historical generalities of urban growth hide the continual
adoption and invention within the settlements themselves. Even new
transport technologies that made such a fundamental contribution to
urban form usually arose from solving a problem caused by an existing
technology. So projecting the urban future on the basis of past trends is
18.2.3
1325
modern societies, with consequences for local energy use and policies.
In industrialized countries both urban and rural areas depend heavily
on energy-intensive industry, which may be located in or outside cities.
If heavy industry is located outside urban areas, urban energy use may
apparently be lower than rural energy needs, even though urban dwellers also consume the products from industrial activities.
High levels of energy demand open possibilities to reap significant
economies-of-scale effects in energy systems, in supply as well as in
transport and distribution. (It is not a coincidence that, historically,
many major, large hydropower resources were developed to supply electricity to large urban agglomerations, from Niagara Falls in the Unites
States to Iguacu (Itaipu) in Brazil.) Simultaneous to cities being loci of a
wide diversity of activities, significant economies of scope are possible.
The wide range of different energy applications from high-temperature
industrial processes down to low-temperature residential home heating,
and even to the energy provision of greenhouses, allows the maximization of energy efficiency through better source-sink matching of energy
flows in the system, be it through conventional cogeneration schemes
or through more complex waste-heat cascading. These can, however,
only be realized if diverse energy uses in a city are sufficiently mixed
and co-located to allow these concepts of industrial ecology to be the
implemented. On the negative side of density, typical urban agglomeration externalities are important: low transport efficiencies through
congestion and high pollution densities add urgency to environmental
improvement measures. Retrofitting a high-density built environment
can also incur many transaction costs that would not apply in low-density developments. However, it is no coincidence that cities have always
been the first innovation centers for environmental improvements (Tarr,
2001; 2005).
The latter perspective is perhaps the most fundamental for the transformation of energy systems. Urban agglomerations are the major centers and hubs for technological and social innovation (Khnert et al.,
2006), as they both dispose of and mobilize formidable resources in
terms of human, innovation, and financial capital. Bringing these transformations to fruition may ultimately be of greater long-term environmental significance than any short-term environmental policies. So,
energy and environmental policies in an urban context may have substantial leverage in inducing further much-needed innovation in the
core, where such activities take place.
18.2.4
18.2.4.1
Introduction
1326
Chapter 18
addressed. The seemingly easy question of How large is the energy use
(or associated GHG emissions) of a city and what can be done to reduce
it? can vary enormously as a function of alternative geographic and
system boundaries chosen. Therefore, this section reviews the different
issues that must be addressed in urban energy assessments and aims
to clarify the various concepts and definitions and help make their differences more transparent. In a modification of an old adage that only
what gets measured gets controlled, this chapter postulates that only
what is measured correctly and transparently at an urban scale is useful
for policy guidance.
As a simple example of the importance of boundaries in urban energy
assessments consider the issue of the administrative/territorial boundary chosen for defining a given city. Barles (2009) studied the fossil-fuel
use of Paris, its suburbs, and the larger Parisian metropolitan region. The
per capita fossil-fuel use was lowest in the city of Paris, and increased
as the region considered expanded. This phenomenon is caused by a
combination of inherent and apparent factors: the inherent factor is
the lower transportation energy required by areas of higher population
density (in central Paris with its formidable Metro system, compared to
its suburbs); the apparent effect is the changing of the system boundary
to encompass more energy-intensive industrial activities located beyond
the city center.
Generally, urban-energy assessments must be oriented either to physical, and hence local, energy flows (a territorial or production perspective) or, if trade effects are included, follow economic exchanges
linked to energy use (a consumption perspective). The joint consideration of the production and consumption perspectives is most likely
to yield a full assessment of urban energy,7 albeit to date the literature and data base for such a comprehensive perspectives is extremely
limited.
In assessing a variety of local and upstream contributions to the urban
metabolism, it is sometimes tempting to aggregate the disparate elements into one indicator. For instance, the ecological footprint (see Rees
and Wackernagel, 1996) is increasingly used to describe the impact
of urban resource use (e.g., in London, Barcelona, and Vancouver).
The ecological footprint of an urban area is invariably larger than the
surface area of the city itself, which leads to the facile (but erroneous) conclusion that the city is unsustainable. Cities are part of an
exchange process, whereby they produce manufactured goods and
services while depending on a hinterland for their supplies and the
existence of this hinterland cannot of itself be unsustainable. Better
indicators are the relative magnitude of resource use and emissions
(per capita, household, or income), compared to rural or other urban
populations, or environmental limits, like carbon accumulation in
the atmosphere. Since the ecological footprint is, in any case, driven
The terms direct and indirect energy are avoided here, since they have a different
meanings in each of the approaches considered. Instead, the terms nal, primary,
upstream, and embodied energy are used here.
Chapter 18
Data basis
Definition of energy
users
Position along
energy chain
Final energy
Physical
Final
Regional energy
metabolism
Physical
Region
Combination of nal,
secondary and primary
Regional economic
activity
Economic
(physical
extensions)
Energy
Input-Output
Economic
(physical
extensions)
18.2.4.2
Table 18.4 classifies the various methods used to estimate urban energy
use. This classification utilizes two main criteria: the basis of the data
and the definition of energy users. The first two methods are based on
physical flows, and as such produce territorial or production oriented
energy balances; the other two focus on economic flows, and are consumption oriented. The economic-based models (regional economic
activity and economic I-O (input-output) approaches) are further distinguished by the level of sectorial detail.
The final energy method uses physical data, such as energy statistics
from utilities or fuel sales, as the data basis. Users are defined as energetic end users within the city boundaries. Energetic end users are the
consumers of final energy (such as electricity, heat, gasoline, or heating fuels). It is important that both producers and consumers (i.e., firms
and households) use final energy. By disaggregating the final energy
use by sector, one can differentiate between residential, commercial,
and industrial uses. These sectorial accounts of urban final energy use
also allow comparisons with national level data or data of other cities
and can serve as a useful guide, e.g., for energy-efficiency benchmarking that can guide policy.
The direct final energy account can further be extended by estimating the upstream energy requirements needed to provide the final
energy, using e.g., lifecycle analysis. The upstream energy is the primary or secondary energy use linked to the final energy utilized by
the end users within a city. Depending on the estimation method,
the upstream energy may or may not include the energy required to
extract and transport the primary energy itself. For clarity, it is crucial
to specify which type of upstream energy is considered: secondary, primary, or primary, including energy for extraction activities themselves.
Territorial/Production or
Consumption approach
To avoid confusion with other terms used for upstream energy, this
section reserves the term upstream for energy-linked direct energy
flows (mobilized outside the geographic city boundary, but linked to
a citys final energy use), and the term embodied for goods and services linked to indirect energy flows (i.e., energy embodied in resources,
materials, and goods traded).
Final and upstream energy uses are not the total primary energy required
by urban activities, since they do not include the energy needed to produce goods and services imported into the city. Conversely, the final and
upstream energy uses of a city also include energy uses to manufacture
goods and provision of services exported from the city (and consumed
in other cities or in rural areas). Care therefore needs to be taken to
avoid double counting of energy flows, for example by adding imported
embodied energy flows to the final and upstream energy uses of a city,
but ignoring the (final and upstream) energy embodied in goods and
services produced in a city, but exported for consumption elsewhere.
This double counting is averted in I-O methods but can be a problem
in approaches that rely on lifecycle analysis (Ramaswami et al., 2008;
Hillman and Ramaswami, 2010).
The difference between the final and upstream energy use can be considerable. Take the example of electricity: typically, for 1 GJ of electricity
consumed in a city, up to 3 GJ of primary energy in the form of coal
must be burned in a conventional steam power plant. (This ratio is substantially lower for combined-cycle power plants fired by natural gas,
which illustrates the need to consider the actual urban energy system
characteristics rather than aggregate upstream adjustment factors.)
Heating fuels, such as gas and fuel oil, also have upstream energy use
through their extraction and transport. According to Kennedy et al.
(2009), who applied this method to the GHG emissions of 10 global
cities, the lifecycle GHG emissions associated with urban fuel use are
between 9% and 25% higher than their local emissions. This approach
is also that followed by the Harmonized Emissions Analysis Tool of the
International Council for Local Environmental Initiatives (ICLEI, 2009),
although since the software is proprietary (and not transparent),
1327
Chapter 18
Table 18.5 | Energy and material ows of selected cities showing the importance of energy ows in the total metabolism of cities.*
City
Reference
Population (millions)
Year
Cape Town
Geneva
Hong Kong
Singapore
Gasson (2007)
Faist (2003)
Newcombe et al.
(1978)
Barles (2009)
Schulz (2005)
0.4
3.9
6.3
4.1
2000
2000
1971
2003
20002003
Energy (GJ/cap/year)
Primary
40
Regional (city)
22
92
72
258
43
103
7.7
4.6
29.7
Fossils
1.8
2.1
5.2
Biomass
1.0
0.3
Construction minerals
4.8
22.5
0.1
1.71
Water
110
151
100
112
* Domestic material consumption = domestic extraction + imports exports, which in the urban case is dominated by imports.
1 includes other products
1328
Chapter 18
4.0
Embodied
3.5
Direct
3.0
2.5
2.0
1.5
1.0
0.5
0.0
Tokyo (1990)
Tokyo (1995)
Beijing (1992)
Beijing (1997)
Shanghai
(1992)
Shanghai
(1997)
Figure 18.5 | Estimates of direct (on-site) versus embodied (via imports of embodied
energy in goods and services) energy use of Asian megacities. Source: Dhakal, 2004,
based on Keneko et al., 2003.
From the I-O studies, the largest categories in urban household energy
use are housing, electricity, transportation, and food. Of these, food and
electricity have the largest upstream and embodied energy content.
Thermal electricity generation involves heat losses up to two-thirds during transformation, plus transmission and distribution losses. Food has
both nutritional and embodied energy components: a diet of 3000 kcal/
day corresponds to 4.5 GJ/year in nutritional energy per person. The
commercial primary energy required to produce food ranges from 2.5 to
4.0 GJ/capita for Indian urban households and from 6 to 30 GJ/household for Brazilian urban households (where the ranges correspond to
low and high income brackets) to around 40 GJ/capita for European
households (Vringer and Blok, 1995; Pachauri, 2004; Cohen et al., 2005).
The majority of the energy embodied in food production is consumed
outside city boundaries.
Comparison of energy-accounting frameworks
To compare and contrast the results from different accounting
approaches Chapter 18 initiated a collaboration among various
research teams to provide a quantitative illustration, applying two different methodologies (final energy and energy I-O) for two different cities: London and Melbourne. Recent (partial) results for Beijing
are also included for comparison. These two approaches are often
contrasted at the national level for energy or GHG, where they are
generally known as production8 or territorial (for the final energy
method), and consumption (for the energy I-O method) (see, for
instance, Peters, 2008).
For the Melbourne study, Manfred Lenzen and his group at the University
of Sydney used environmentally extended I-O methods coupled with
household expenditure surveys to map direct and embodied GHG emissions of household consumption (Dey et al., 2007). This method was
adapted to provide results in terms of primary energy use for the city of
Melbourne (Australia). Baynes and Bai (2009) scaled state data down to
the urban level, focusing on the (direct) final energy use of Melbourne
city. The London study compares final energy use from official statistics (UKDECC, 2010) and results from a multiregional, environmentally
extended I-O analysis with explicit representation of the household consumption vectors for the Greater London Authority. The yet unpublished
study is based on a method of Minx et al., (2009) and was carried out
by the Technical University of Berlin, the Potsdam Institute for Climate
Impact Research, and the Stockholm Environment Institute.9 The Beijing
study (Arvesen et al., 2010) only considered household energy use (and
hence misses the large industrial and service sector energy use) and
combined both the final energy method (with additional approximate
fuel-specific estimates of upstream conversion energy needs) with an
I-O approach.
1329
Chapter 18
Table 18.6 | Primary energy use for two different energy-accounting approaches for three cities for which (partial) data are available: Melbourne, London, and Beijing. All
values are expressed in GJ/capita (permanent) resident population. Dashes (-) indicate categories of energy use that cannot be compared directly between the two different
accounting methods.
Primary energy
GJ/capita for:
Melbourne 2001
Prod. acc.
Cons. acc.
Prod. acc.
Cons. acc.
Prod. acc.
Cons. acc.
Residential heating
22
12
28
Residential electricity
28
30
17
50
42
45
35
18
11
3341
27
10
197
56
n.a.
116
108
34
279288
184
111
143
25
52
Private cars
Nonresidential use
Household consumption of goods and services
Total
Pop = population; Prod. acc. = production accounting; Cons. acc. = consumption accounting; n.a. = not available.
1330
Chapter 18
Figure 18.6 | Total GHG emissions from Toronto (tonnes CO2-equivalent/capita/year). High-resolution images as well as maps for various energy-demand subcategories (residential, transport, etc.) are available from VandeWeghe and Kennedy, 2007.
18.2.4.3
Spatially explicit energy-use studies may be the key to understanding the influence of urban form and periurban and urban specificities.
For Sydney, Lenzen et al. (2004) disaggregated total primary energy
use in 14 areas, and followed this up with a GHG emissions atlas of
Australia at the postal district level (Dey et al., 2007). For Toronto,
VandeWeghe and Kennedy (2007) derived spatially explicit directenergy use based on transportation and energy-expenditure surveys
(see Figure 18.6). Andrews (2008) analyzed direct energy use of several districts in New Jersey, ranging from rural to urban. A comprehensive spatial GHG account, including discussions of uncertainties, was
1331
18.2.4.4
1332
Chapter 18
18.3
18.3.1
How large is the urban fraction of global energy use? This seemingly
simple question is hard to answer as, contrary to the data for countries, no comprehensive statistical compilation of urban energy use
data exists. With 50% of the world population being urban, a range of
(largely ballpark) estimates put the urban energy share between twothirds to three-quarters of global energy use, but such global estimates
have, until recently, not been supported by more detailed assessments.
This Section reviews the two detailed assessments of urban energy use
available to date: the estimate of the IEA published in its 2008 World
Energy Outlook (IEA, 2008) as well as an estimate developed by a team
of researchers at the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis
(IIASA) for this study.
In the absence of detailed, comprehensive urban energy-use statistics, two analytical approaches were pursued to derive global (and
regional) urban energy use estimates. One technique, which might be
labeled upscaling, uses a limited number of national or regional estimates of urban energy use and then extrapolates these results to the
global level. This is the approach followed by the IEA (2008) study that
estimated (direct) urban energy use at the primary energy level. The
second approach adopts downscaling techniques in which national
level statistics are downscaled to the grid-cell level, and then combined with geographic information system (GIS)-based data sets on
Chapter 18
18.4
The urban energy challenges are embedded within overall social, economic, and environmental development challenges and their numerous interdependencies and linkages. This energy assessment focuses
on the interdependencies that bear directly on urban energy. The linkages between development and energy are most straightforward in the
area of the literature on energy poverty, energy access, and adequate
housing and transport access for the urban poor. Hence the discussion
begins with a discussion of energy access and poverty within an urban
context (Section 18.4.1). The discussion then moves on to the nexus of
urban energy use and urban environmental quality and the challenges
imposed by the high densities of energy demand and the corresponding need for efficient and low-emission energy systems (Section 18.4.2).
Lastly, Section 18.4.3 discusses the challenges for urban energy infrastructures, including reliability and security.
Other urban development challenges with more indirect implications
on energy, such as urban transport, land-use, and density planning, are
discussed Section 18.5.
18.4.1
18.4.1.1
Introduction
17 This includes a shift to clean fuels clean in the sense of minimizing raw pollution
and health impacts for the users for instance, with electricity and gas or energy
derived from renewable energy sources being clean and coal and raw biomass being
dirty (how dirty these are depends on the technology used in the home). Kerosene
and charcoal fall between these two extremes. The term clean fuels is ambiguous in
that it is used to mean different things for instance, for fuels or energy sources that
have low or no CO2 emissions rather than lower health impacts for users. In addition,
electricity at the point of use may be clean, but it often comes from coal-red power
stations that have high CO2 emissions and often high levels of pollution.
18 For a more detailed discussion see also Chapter 4.
1339
Chapter 18
Table 18.9 | The housing submarkets used by low-income urban dwellers and their energy-use implications.
Housing type
As above
Walk to work
Source: Hardoy and Satterthwaite, 1989; Yapi-Diahou, 1995; Harms, 1997; Mitlin, 1997; Mwangi, 1997; Bhan, 2009.
Low-income groups in urban areas face limited choices in renting, buying, or building accommodation that they can afford and so have to
make trade-offs between a good location, housing size and quality,
infrastructure and service provision, and secure tenure (see references
One of the most extreme examples of this are the tens of thousands of
pavement dwellers in Mumbai, where the choice to live on the pavement (and usually with low lean-to shacks too small to sleep in) is from
a combination of their very low incomes, the central location of where
they earn their incomes (they walk to work), and the impossibility of
affording transport costs from less central locations (SPARC, 1990).
Another example are households in Indore (India) who choose to live on
land sites adjacent to small rivers that flood regularly. These have economic advantages because they are close to jobs or to markets for the
goods the households produce or collect (many earn a living collecting
waste). The land is cheap and, because it is public land, the residents are
less likely to be evicted. These sites have social advantages because they
are close to health services, schools, electricity, and water, and there
are strong family, kinship, and community ties with other inhabitants
(Stephens et al., 1996).
19 This section does not cover high-income nations and low- and middle-income
nations that were formerly part of COMECON (termed countries undergoing economic reform in GEA).
18.4.1.2
1340
Chapter 18
Table 18.10 | The proportion and number of the urban population that lacks electricity and access to modern fuels in developing countries, least-developed countries, and
sub-Saharan Africa.
Percentage and number of the urban
population
Developing countries
Least-developed countries
Sub-Saharan Africa
Source: UNDP and WHO (2009).20 Statistics on the urban population are drawn from UN Population Division (UN DESA, 2008) and are for 2005. The dates for the statistics on
access to electricity and modern fuels vary by country, with most being between 2003 and 2007.
building a home illegally (and so avoid paying a full rent, which is often
among the main reasons why distant informal settlements develop). But
this means high time- and monetary-transport costs, and it is difficult
to establish the high transport costs for those living in peripheral locations because most of the data on the proportion of income spent on
transport are averages for cities. In addition, it is likely that many household surveys under-represent those who live in informal settlements
for instance, a lack of formal addresses and maps makes it difficult to
include their inhabitants in surveys or those responsible for collecting
data fear to work in informal settlements (for an example of this, see
Sabry, 2009). Peripheral locations also constrain the inhabitants access
to economic opportunities, as many locations are too distant or too
expensive to commute to.
18.4.1.3
There are some general statistics on the forms of energy use for urban
populations for instance, in what fuels (and mix of fuels) are used and
whether or not they have access to electricity (Table 18.10). However,
there are no general statistics on how fuel use and access to electricity
vary within nations urban populations or within cities by income group.
In part, this is because many energy statistics for individuals or households are only available for national populations. Where these are disaggregated, it is often only as averages for urban populations when there
are very large differences between different urban centers and between
different income groups within each urban center. In part, this is because
the documentation of energy provision deficiencies has not been given
the same level of attention as, say, deficiencies in provision for water and
sanitation. The only exception is the very considerable documentation on
the health impacts of pollution from the use of dirty fuels (and other
factors, including poor ventilation and inefficient stoves), although much
of this literature is for rural households and perhaps underestimates the
extent of this problem among urban poor households.
20 This source is inconsistent in how it reports some of the gures for access to electricity; the gures above for the least-developed countries and sub-Saharan Africa
are from Figure 3, but the accompanying text (page 12) says that 46% of the urban
population of least-developed countries and 56% of urban dwellers in sub-Saharan
Africa lack electricity access. The report does not specify where its population gures come from, although it lists the UN Population Divisions World Population
Prospects: the 2006 revision in its sources.
1341
1342
Chapter 18
Table 18.11 | The main fuels used for cooking in urban areas in developing
countries, least-developed countries, and sub-Saharan Africa (in percent of urban
population using particular fuels).
Percentage of the
urban population
Developing
countries
Least-developed
countries
Sub-Saharan
Africa
18
68
54
20
57
20
11
11
than pay for it but probably the larger the city, the greater the commercialization of all fuels. Also, the very limited space within the homes
of most low-income urban households especially those that live in
central areas with, in many cases, less than 1 m2/person limits the
capacity to store bulky solid fuels.
Fuel use for cooking
Table 18.11 shows the contrast between the proportion of the urban
population using wood, charcoal, and dung in developing countries (less
than one-fifth of households), in the least developed nations (two-thirds
of urban households), and in sub-Saharan Africa (more than a half). In
developing countries close to two-thirds of the urban population use
gas or electricity for cooking; for the least-developed nations and subSaharan Africa, this is less than one-quarter. There are large differences
in this within the least-developed nations and in sub-Saharan Africa. For
instance, for many of these nations only a small percentage of the urban
population has access to electricity.
For most nations with per capita GDPs under $1100, 85% or more of
their urban population use wood and charcoal for cooking and all
these nations are in sub-Saharan Africa, except Haiti. For nations with
per capita GDPs above $14,000 virtually all urban households do not
use wood or charcoal. For nations with per capita GDPs of $11004000,
the variations in the percentage of the urban population that use wood
or charcoal are very large (UNDP and WHO, 2009).
Households select fuels for food preparation for reasons that include
cost, availability, convenience, type of food, and cooking equipment, as
illustrated by a study in Ibadan (Nigeria). Kerosene was the major cooking fuel for low- and middle-income households until subsidies on petroleum products were withdrawn in 1986. As a result of the increased
kerosene and cooking-gas prices, surveyed households in 1993 had
begun to use fuelwood, sawdust, and other cheaper energy sources.
A follow-up in 1999 discovered that households had switched back to
kerosene, while also reducing the frequency of cooking, eating cold leftovers, and substituting less nutritious but faster-cooking foods (Adelekan
Chapter 18
Space heating
Data on heating expenditures are limited, but it is clear that where
space heating is needed, low-income urban dwellers can face high costs
to keep warm. For instance, surveys in 1999 found that low-income citydwellers in Armenia, Moldova, and the Kyrgyz Republic devoted 510%
of their household incomes to heating (Wu et al., 2004). Poor households
may also heat their homes with inefficient, polluting fuels to reduce
expenditures. During the winter of 2002, Tbilisis poor households who
were not on the gas network resorted to using wood for heating and
cooking (ESMAP, 2007). Wood prices were cheaper than those of other
fuels, except natural gas. In Buenos Aires peripheral settlements of Villa
Fiorito and Budge, the average household relies on charcoal for space
heating and cooking, with space heating taking up nearly 13% of household annual net energy use (Bravo et al., 2008). In the heart of South
Africas coal-mining country, residents of Vosman Township rely on coal
for space heating, water heating, ironing, and cooking (Balmer, 2007).
Even in the United Kingdom, four million households were deemed to
live in fuel poverty in 2007 (defined by spending 10% or more of income
on maintaining an adequate level of warmth) (UKDECC, 2010).
In China, coal is a key heating fuel for the poor, particularly in cold northern cities where heating may take up as much as 40% of households
total energy needs (Pachauri and Jiang, 2008). Although data are not
Cooking with LPG is common in the Philippines, but poor urban households also buy kerosene or biomass fuels to keep costs down. In a survey
of two low-income districts in metro-Manila, LPG was the main cooking fuel in 75% of households (APPROTECH, 2005). However, as LPG
prices increased in 2004, low-income groups also began to cook with
kerosene, fuelwood, or charcoal. Although residents intended to reduce
expenditures, they still paid higher unit prices because they could only
afford to purchase small quantities (APPROTECH, 2005).
1343
1344
Chapter 18
Table 18.12 | The cost per household (in current US$) of providing electricity in
different cities.
City
Ahmedabad
114
Manila
154
Rio de Janeiro
226
Salvador
350
Cape Town
417
The costs of electricity access for the urban poor are generally low
(Table 18.12). Nonetheless, some caution is needed in using the figures in Table 18.12 because it is not clear whether these are just the
cost of extending electricity to these households or also include other
costs, such as the costs of extending overhead lines and upgrading the
power-generation system (USAID, 2004).
A study of the costs of different slum upgrading programs in Brazil
showed that the provision of electricity and lighting was 13% of total
costs, although these were comprehensive upgrading programs that
included provision of water and sewer connections for each house, and
building homes for those that had to be rehoused (Abiko et al., 2007).
The costs would be higher as a proportion of total costs within a more
minimalist upgrading program for instance, one that only provided
communal water provision and drainage and not piped water and sewer
connections to each household.
Further discussion on energy access issues beyond electricity is contained in Chapter 4.
18.4.1.4
Transport
Chapter 18
and a high proportion have to change to other buses or the metro for
their journey. High travel costs were one reason why few children went
to secondary school (Sabry, 2009). Other examples include:
Table 18.13 | Grouping households in India by the amount of energy they use and
the energy services available to them (average household of ve persons) in Wattyears (1 Wyr = 31.55 MJ).
Energy services of households
<15 W
1530
3060
60+
18.4.1.5
Various studies show how it is common for low-income urban households in low- and middle-income nations with electricity connections
to use 2050 kWh/month (see Kulkarni et al., 1994; Karekezi et al.,
2008). This is a small fraction of average household use in the United
States (6401329 kWh/month depending on the region) or Europe
(341 kWh/month). So it is likely that differentials of the order of 100
or more are present between the worlds wealthiest and least wealthy
households with electricity. Pachauri et al. (2004) considered how the
amount of energy used and the quality of energy services available varied by income-group (Table 18.13).
18.4.1.6
Some studies show how many low-income groups walk long distances
to keep their transport expenditures down (see, for instance, Huq
et al., 1996 for various cities in Bangladesh, and Barter, 1999 for central Bombay/Mumbai and Jakarta). So, while such individuals may pay
little for transport costs, they pay through long journey times and extra
physical effort. In the survey of Wuhan, China (Carruthers et al., 2005),
the bottom quintile reported walking for almost half of their journeys,
while 27% of their travel was by public transit and 22% by cycling.
Summary
1345
Chapter 18
18.4.2
18.4.2.1
Introduction
10 5
Coal fields
Oil fields
High-rises
10
Tokyo
23 wards
Supermarkets
Houses
1346
Steel mills,
refineries
Industry
Flat plate collectors
Photovoltaics
Tidal
10 1
The constraints on supporting the shift to clean fuels and providing all
urban households with electricity are less in energy policy and far more
in government policy and daily practice in regard to those who live in
informal settlements and work in the informal economy. A large part of
the population that lacks clean energy and electricity also lacks reliable
piped water supplies and good provision for sanitation and drainage.
They often lack access to schools and healthcare. Governments often
ignore them, even though their settlements house 3060% of the city
population, most of its low-wage labor force, and many of its enterprises.
Thermal
power plants
W/m2
The costs of connection to an electricity grid and the use of electricity can be burdensome for low-income groups, but innovations have
reduced these costs for instance, rising tariffs with low prices for
lifeline electricity use (or in South Africa no charge for up to 50 kWh/
month), pay-as-you-use meters, and standard boards that remove the
need for household wiring.
18.4.2.2
Cities
Hydro
Central solar
towers
Wind
Photosynthesis
10
-1
10 0
10 3
10 6
10 9
Area (m 2)
Renewable
Fossil
Figure 18.11 | Energy densities of energy supply from fossil (gray) and renewable
sources (green) versus density of energy demand (red) for typical settings, in W/m2
and m2 area. Source: modied from Smil, 1991.
Chapter 18
City of London or in the top 25 grid cells (i.e., top 25 km2) of the Tokyo
wards that use close to 18% of Tokyos total final energy. Such high
energy-demand densities are comparable to the entirety of the solar
influx, which equals 157 W/m2 in Tokyo and 109 W/m2 in London. Mean
energy densities, 28.5 W/m2 for the Tokyo 23 wards (621 km2) and 27.4
W/m2 for Inner London (319 km2), are similar. (For Greater London with
its larger size (1572 km2), lower population densities, and greater extent
of green areas, energy densities are naturally lower, at 13 W/m2.)
1000
100
Tokyo
London
10
1
1016
1017
1018
Figure 18.12 | Energy-demand densities (W/m2) for London (33 boroughs) and Tokyo
(1 km2 grid cells, 23 wards) versus cumulative energy use of these spatial entities (in
Joules). For comparison the energy ux of incoming solar radiation (W/m2) and the
electricity that could be generated (assuming photovoltaics (PVs) with a conversion
efciency of 20%) is also shown. Source: Dhakal et al., 2003; UKDECC, 2010.
Assuming that all the incoming solar radiation could be converted for
human energy use (e.g., to electricity with 20% efficient PV panels),
the maximum renewable energy supply density would range from 22
(London) to 31 (Tokyo) W/m2 in line with average demand densities
in the two cities, but only under the assumption that the entire city
area could be covered by PV panels! Even assuming an upper bound
of potential PV area availability (roofs, etc.), the results from a lowdensity urban area (Osnabrck, Germany, see below) of 2% of the city
area, solar energy could provide a maximum of between 0.4 (London)
and 0.6 W/m2 (Tokyo), which would cover between 2% (Tokyos 23
wards) and 13% (Inner to Greater London) of urban energy use in the
two cities. Local renewables can therefore only supply urban energy in
niche markets (e.g., low-density residential housing), but can provide
less than 1% only of a megacitys energy needs.23
Given that local renewables in large cities are at best marginal niche
options (because of the density mismatch between energy demand and
supply), what is their potential in small, low-density cities? Using aerial survey techniques, Ludwig et al. (2008) performed a comprehensive
assessment of suitable application of rooftop solar PVs for Osnabrck
(Figure 18.13). Osnabrck, with an area of 120 km2 and a population
of 272,000 (a density of 23 people/ha) is characterized by an incoming
solar radiation of 983 kWh/m2 (112 W/m2). In the study, all suitable roof
areas of some 70,000 buildings in the city were assessed (considering
optimal inclination as well as shadowing by adjacent buildings) and
the results published for local residents in a database per individual
dwelling.
22 Final energy use within the city limits and excluding bunker fuels (aviation, shipping). The latter are reported to be 0.28 EJ (0.2 EJ aviation fuel and 0.08 EJ marine
bunkers) for New York City compared to 0.76 EJ nal energy use in 2005 (Kennedy
et al., 2010). For London, aviation fuel also accounted for some 0.2 EJ for the year
2000 (Mayor of London, 2004).
23 This mind experiment considers a highly efcient conversion route of solar energy
via high-efciency PVs (with 20% net conversion efciency). Assuming biomass as
an alternative reduces the energy yield by a factor of up to 20, as the average conversion efciency of solar energy via photosynthesis is only around 1%. Conversely,
considering solar hot-water collectors (with a maximum efciency approaching
100% of incoming solar energy) also does not change drastically the conclusion of
the extremely limited local renewable potentials in high density cities, as solar hot
water typically provides only a few percent of energy demand (hot water accounts
for 2% of nal energy demand in Europe (Eurostat, 1988)). Even if this were provided entirely by solar energy where feasible (in low- to medium-density housing, as
high-rise buildings do not offer sufciently large roof areas) the yield is less than 1%
of energy demand in a densely populated large city.
1347
Chapter 18
Figure 18.13 | Example of assessing local renewable potentials: roof area (left panel) and suitable roof-area identication for solar PV applications (right panel) for the city of
Osnabrck, Germany. Red: roof area well suited for PV; orange: suitable; yellow, only conditional suitability for PV applications; grey: shadowed roof area (unsuitable). Source:
modied from Ludwig et al., 2008.
1348
the grid) can quickly turn negative if the building is situated in a lowdensity, suburban setting with a high automobile dependence.
Therefore, if renewable energies are increasingly to supply the urban
energy needs on a large scale, the resulting needs for conversion and
long-distance transport, as well as very large energy catchment areas
(the energy footprint of cities), needs to be taken into account.
In an attempt to quantify the implications of the energy supply and
demand-density mismatch, IIASA researchers used spatially explicit
energy-demand estimates for Europe to calculate related energy-demand
density zones (Figure 18.14). The study found that about 21% of final
energy demand in Western Europe is below the supply density threshold
of 1 W/m2, a characteristic upper bound for locally harvested renewable
energy flows. The corresponding value for Eastern Europe is somewhat
higher, with 34% of energy demand below 1 W/m2. Nonetheless, in all
densely populated, highly urbanized regions, the majority of renewable
energy supply has to come from areas of low population and energydemand densities, where renewable energy flows can be harnessed and
transported to the urban energy-use centers, which represents a formidable infrastructure challenge.
The findings of the IIASA study are also confirmed by a detailed, spatially explicit assessment of solar electricity (PV) potentials for all of
Western Europe by Scholz (2010; 2011) (see also Chapter 11).
The Scholz study identified a total solar (rooftop)24 PV generation potential of 638 TWh (equivalent to 2.3 EJ, or some 40% of the residential
24 Adding also building facades to the potential PV areas does not change the results
signicantly. In a study of solar PV potentials considering the entire building envelope Gutschner et al., (2001) estimated a total electricity potential of 600 TWh for a
sample of 10 European countries, which is good agreement to the Scholz study (638
TWh). Facades were estimated to add another 25% to the rooftop PV potentials by
Gutschner et al. (2001).
Chapter 18
40.0
40.0
Western Europe
Eastern Europe
30.0
% of population and energy use
30.0
20.0
10.0
0.0
20.0
10.0
0.0
<0.1
0.1-1
1-5
5-10
10-25
W / m2
WEU Population
WEU Final Energy Demand
>25
<0.1
0.1-1
1-5
5-10
10-25
W / m2
EEU Population
EEU Final Energy Demand
>25
Figure 18.14 | Top: Spatially explicit energy demand densities in Europe (W/m2): Blue and white areas indicate where local renewables can satisfy low-density energy demand
(<0.51 W/m2). Yellow, red and brown colors denote energy demand densities above 1, 5, 10, and 25 W/m2 respectively.
Bottom: Distribution of population (grey) and nal energy demand (black) (in percent) as a function of energy demand density classes in W/m2 for Western Europe (left panel) and
Eastern Europe (right panel). Only 21% (Western Europe) and 34% (Eastern Europe) of energy demand is below an energy demand density of 1 W/m2 amenable to full provision by
locally available renewable energy ows. The high energy densities of cities require vast energy hinterlands that can be 100200 times larger than the territorial footprint of cities
proper requiring long-distance transport of renewable energies. Source: IIASA calculations commissioned by Chapter 18.
1349
Chapter 18
Exposures (GEE)a
Indoor
Outdoor
Indoor
Outdoor
Total
Urban
100
70
<1
Rural
60
40
<1
Urban
255
278
19
26
Rural
551
93
62
67
87
13
100
Developed
Developing
Total
18.4.2.3
Pollution Densities
A corollary of energy densities is that of pollution density. High population density also leads to high exposure25 density to pollution risks.
However, at least for traditional air pollutants such as particulates, urban
pollution exposures also need to be seen in context, as only approximately one-third of the global pollution exposure is urban, whereas
two-thirds are rural, because of the dominance in global particulate
pollution exposure of indoor air pollution in rural households of developing countries (Table 18.14 and Chapter 4). Smith (1993) developed
the concept of global exposure equivalent (GEE), which represents a
renormalized index of the global summation of pollution exposure (pollution concentration times population exposed) calculated for a range
of human environments. According to Smith (1993), global human
exposure to traditional pollutants is dominated by indoor air pollution
in rural and urban households in developing countries as a result of the
continued use of traditional biomass for cooking.
For more modern forms of pollution (sulfur and nitrogen oxides (SOx
and NOx) and ozone (O3)), the corresponding GEEs have not been
1350
calculated, but it is highly likely that the respective role of indoor versus outdoor air pollution as the main source of a populations pollution
exposure risk is reversed; that is outdoor air pollution and urban settings comprise the dominant form of pollution exposure. As an example, consider emissions of sulfur dioxide (SO2). The hotspot of sulfur
emissions and pollution, which has for decades been the black triangle (the coal-rich border area of Poland, the Czech Republic, and East
Germany) in Europe, was remediated by successful European sulfuremission reduction policies. The current sulfur-emission hotspot is now
in China (Figure 18.15), where high elevated levels of sulfur emissions
particularly affect the urban populations and triggered policy responses
(see also Section 18.5.5 below).
From an environmental perspective high urban energy demand and
the resulting pollution densities hold two important implications.
First, energy use usually involves heat losses at well above ambient temperatures and high densities of urban energy use also imply
high densities of urban waste-heat releases. These combined with the
(high) thermal mass of buildings in densely built-up urban land give
rise to the urban heat island effect (see below) in which urban mean
temperatures are several degrees higher than those of surrounding
hinterlands.
Second, fuel choice becomes of paramount importance: pollutionintensive fuels (biomass or coal) used at the high demand densities
of urban areas quickly result in unacceptably high levels of pollution
concentration (such as the London killer smog of 1952 or the current air-quality situation in many cities, especially in the developing
world). Even low-pollution fuels, such as natural gas, can quickly overwhelm the pollution dissipative capacity of urban environments. So,
high energy-demand density requires zero-emission fuels: electricity
and perhaps, in the long run, hydrogen.
18.4.2.4
Chapter 18
Hong Kong
1.9
3.4
Shanghai
0.3
2.1
1.8
Beijing
1.4
1.7
0.6
Figure 18.15 | Human exposure to sulfur emissions (population emissions in million x Tg SO2, z-axis) in China (2000), based on an analysis of gridded socioeconomic and
emission data. (Units on x, and y-axis refer to geographical longitude and latitude). Note the high pollution exposure in major urban areas of China. Source: IPCC RCP scenario
database (IIASA, 2010).
Figure 18.16 | Sensible (left) and latent (right) anthropogenic heat26 emission in Tokyo (W/m2). Source: Ichinose, 2008.
surrounding air, and at individual locations in calm and clear nights temperature differences can exceed 12C (Klysik and Fortuniak, 1999). With
increasing energy use, the extent of urban heat island effects increases
(Figure 18.17), which results in local warming.
26 Sensible heat ux: air is heated directly by the heated ground surface. Latent heat
ux: evaporation from wet ground surface or from cooling towers settled on top of
buildings and evapotranspiration from vegetation. This type of energy exchange does
not change air temperature. Its energy is consumed in the phase change from water
to moisture.
Heat islands are, among other factors, caused by urban energy use
through anthropogenic heat release. Without planning or intervention
strategies there is a risk of maladaptation feedbacks, in which heat
island countermeasures trigger increasing energy use, which amplify
1351
Chapter 18
Also, the availability of cooling water for thermal or industrial plants can
be reduced as water bodies warm up.
A range of factors contribute to the formation of urban heat islands
and their relative contribution varies among urban areas (Seto and
Shepherd, 2009):
a)
b)
The replacement of natural vegetation with artificial surface materials for buildings, squares, and transport infrastructure results in
more incoming radiation being stored during daytime, particularly
if materials are dark, such as bitumen and asphalt. The albedo
changes and differences in specific heat capacity of construction
material result in more incoming energy being accumulated in surface material during daytime, which is later emitted as infrared
radiation (Taha, 1997). Thermal insulation of buildings can reduce
their specific heat capacity drastically.
c)
d)
e)
Figure 18.17 | Estimated urban heat island intensity in large Asian cities. Source:
Kataoka et al., 2009.
Figure 18.18 | Daily electric power demand and maximum temperature in Tokyo,
June to August 1998. Source: Kikegawa et al., 2003.
1352
Chapter 18
As energy demand is concentrated particularly in urban centers, the consequential release of anthropogenic heat is similarly
dense in these areas. Industrial and service-sector activity, residential housing, and transport functions are typically clustered in
close proximity. Electricity use and combustion processes in buildings and vehicles, for heating and cooling, lighting, or motion, all
result in vast quantities of waste heat being released (Rosenfeld
et al., 1995). To a small extent, the metabolic activity of biological
body functions of the human population also contributes to this.27
Global average estimates attribute a resulting climate forcing of
about 0.028 W/m2 to anthropogenic heat release (technical and
biogenic). In North America and Europe these figures are estimated
to be higher, at +0.39 and +0.68 W/m2, respectively (Flanner, 2009).
For the Ruhr area in Germany, average anthropogenic heat-related
forcing values of 20 W/m2 were calculated by Block et al. (2004). At
higher spatial and temporal resolution, the values are much larger,
often between 20 and 100 W/m2. Numerical simulations for heat
discharge of individual neighborhoods in the Tokyo metropolitan
region, for example, indicate radiative forcing values of up to 700
W/m2 during the day and in summer time (Dhakal et al., 2003).
However, urban heat islands do not always increase urban energy
demand. In higher latitudes the resulting reduction in heating
demand in winter can more than compensate the additional cooling energy demand in summer. Integrated climate-energy system
models increasingly aim to capture such effects (Kanda, 2006;
Oleson et al., 2010).
Mitigation
Strategies for heat-island mitigation include behavioral and technological solutions. They can provide various co-benefits, including energy
savings, peak-load reduction, air-quality improvements, and beneficial
health, psychological, and socioeconomic effects.
18.4.3
Building design and layout allow solar gains of houses in summer to be
minimized and increased passive gains during winter (e.g., in Passivhaus
designs). Reduction in cooling demand can also be achieved through
the use of deciduous vegetation for shading (including vertical greening
of facades) or the application of mechanical shades, shutters, or smart
27 Assuming about 100 W of biological energy use per person and maximum population
densities of 40,000/km2 in some cities in developing countries, this factor can contribute up to 4 W/m2 additional forcing. Typical urban population densities are lower.
1353
Italy and the rest of central Europe left most of Italy in darkness on
September 28. These major blackouts are among the worst powersystem failures in the past few decades. They had a profound effect on
power-system philosophy because these networks were some of the
worlds most sophisticated power-generation distribution systems. In
particular, the US failure was promoted by an early underlying failure
in software used to control networks, which meant the scale of the
emerging problem was recognized too late to protect the cascading
failure.
Energy efficiency and resilience are not coincidental outcomes. Thus, a
low-energy settlement might be even more sensitive to disruptions in
supply than a settlement with some slack in its energy system. A dense
city with no power for its elevators may be in a worse state than a
low-density urban settlement without power. Renewable power sources
based on wind or solar alter the reliability profile. As they are of a
much smaller unit size, they do not induce major dropouts, as happens
when a large nuclear power station needs to come offline very rapidly.
Conversely, the variability in available power they supply may require
them to be shadowed by a rapid-response plant. They may also exacerbate failure cascades because of switching out for self-protection when
the power system is stressed heavily.
The increasing dependency on power even for simple clerical work, let
alone for critical functions like hospitals, means that stand-by power
supplies could be an increasing feature in urban systems. One suggestion (Patterson, 2009) is that it is possible for the local distributed power
generation to become dominant and the national distribution systems
only handle back-up. This is already effectively the case for dwellings
that use microgenerators for power and heat. Another suggestion is that
more sophisticated metering and tariffs could incentivize the extension
of demand-side load management from large facilities of interruptible
supply at the microscale. In line with the efficiency-resilience argument it is expected that vulnerability to societal interruption is higher
in countries with generally very secure supplies in which the economy
has sought an equilibrium that assumes secure power supplies than in
countries with frequent brownouts and blackouts in which the economy
has adjusted to coping with the risk.
The winter of 2008/2009 in Europe showed the vulnerability of gassupply networks to urban areas. Gas can be stored both in the mains
and in dedicated storage facilities, but gas is currently supplied directly
to consumers and power generation, and so indirectly to mass-transit
systems. Thus, a failure of supply pressure has wide implications. Coastal
cities can increase their robustness with liquid natural gas (LNG) terminals, but LNG is a world-trade product and may come at a high price in
a regional emergency.
Liberalization of gas and electricity market pressures gives the lowest
prices to consumers, but the effect is to incentivize producers to sweat
their existing assets (e.g., Drukker, 2000). It may then become necessary
to introduce further complexity into tariffs to incentivize investment and
1354
Chapter 18
18.5
18.5.1
Introduction
18.5.1.1
The term sustainable city dates from the 1990s. The term sustainable development is usually dated from the World Commission on
Environment and Development Report (WCED, 1987), which devotes
a chapter to the urban challenge. The WCED concern was principally
about issues of the urban poor in rapidly growing large cities of the
South. The term sustainable development is now used more frequently
in the narrower context of the need to protect the environment that
underpins social and economic capital. For this reason the term sustainable cities is more often associated with civic initiatives in cities
of the North, addressing what is perceived as the unsustainable impact
of their citizens lifestyles, especially the generation of large volumes of
waste and GHG emissions. It is largely coincident with the earlier idea
of an ecocity. Ecocities essentially try to contain their ecological
footprint (Andersson, 2006; Jabareen, 2006; Kenworthy, 2006; Pickett
et al., 2008). This focus means that some projects are not always more
broadly sustainable, especially as economic units.
Attempts to achieve an optimal sustainable urban system in new settlements invariably resorts to some form of spatial organization. This may
be provided by a city authority, but it could equally be the covenants
imposed by a land developer. The intention is to gain from bringing the
various strands of urban activity together into a more integrated whole.
For example, reducing urban traffic noise through less need to travel by
automobile and the use of quiet road surfaces or electric vehicles enables
citizens to keep windows open in summer. This provides the opportunity
to avoid mechanical ventilation by recovering the opportunity for natural ventilation. Sustainable urban configurations are often expressed
in terms of optimal residential densities linked to low-profile transport
networks. This fairly crude metric is often employed in zoning regulations.
The optimal configuration then seeks to avoid a very high density with
highly congested services and a very low density automobile-dependent
networks. This configuration is expected to induce a stronger sense of
Chapter 18
Cities
Excellent I
Excellent II
Good I
Beijing, Busan
Good II
New Delhi
Moderate I
Moderate II
Colombo
Limited I
Hanoi, Surabaya
Limited II
Dhaka, Kathmandu
Minimal
18.6
18.6.1
An Urbanizing World
Transport polices that affect urban mobility choices need to complement vehicle- and fuel-specific policy measures. In their absence, any
air-quality improvements are likely to be quickly overwhelmed by
continued motorized transport growth.
Patterns of urban population growth have been and will remain heterogeneous. Most of the growth will continue to occur in small- to mediumsized urban centers, which explains the remarkable robustness of the
distribution of city-size classes over time and across different regions.
Growth in small cities poses serious policy challenges, especially in the
developing world. In small cities, data and information to guide policy
are largely absent, local resources to tackle development challenges are
limited, and governance and institutional capacities are weak. Despite
much public attention, the contribution of megacities to global urbanpopulation growth will remain comparatively small.
1385
18.6.2
The urban share in current world-energy use varies as a function of system boundaries in terms of spatial scales (cities versus agglomerations),
energy-systems definition (final commercial, total final, and total primary energy), and the boundary drawn to account for embodied energy
in a citys goods and services, both imported and exported. The direct
transfer of national energy (or GHG emissions) reporting formats to the
urban scale is often referred to as a production approach, and contrasts to a consumption accounting approach that pro-rates associated energy uses (or GHG emissions) per unit of expenditure of urban
consumer expenditures, thus accounting for energy uses irrespective of
their form (direct or embodied energy) or location (within or outside a
citys administrative boundary). Both approaches provide valuable information and should be used as complementary tools to inform urban
policy decisions. However, to be useful, urban studies need to adhere
to much higher standards in terms of clarity and documentation of the
terminology, methodology, and underlying data used. To improve comparability, this assessment recommends specifically that all accounts
based on the consumption approach (which are data- and time-intensive to prepare, and so exist only for a very limited set of megacities)
be complemented by corresponding production-based energy accounts
(which are much simpler and easier to determine). To ensure reproducibility, this assessment also recommends explicitly that no urban GHGemission inventory be published without the underlying energy data
used in the assessment.
Available estimates of current urban energy use based on a production
approach (direct final energy use, or primary energy use, i.e., including
pro-rated upstream energy sector conversion losses) suggest that urban
energy use accounts for between 60% and 80% of global energy use.
Total energy use is therefore already predominantly urban. Mirroring
the growing importance of urban areas in demographic and economic
development, urban energy use will continue to grow further as a fraction of total global energy needs. This implies that energy sustainability
challenges need to be addressed and solved primarily by action in urban
settings.
There is great heterogeneity in urban energy-use patterns, especially
when manufacturing and transport energy uses are included. In many
developing countries, urban dwellers use substantially more energy than
their rural compatriots, which primarily reflects higher urban incomes.
Conversely, in many industrialized countries per capita urban final
energy use (i.e., based on a production-accounting approach) is often
substantially lower than the national average, which reflects the effects
of compact urban form, settlement types (multi- versus single-family
dwellings) and availability and/or practicability of public transport
infrastructure systems compared with those in the suburban or rural
sprawl. The few available data, however, suggest that urban energy use
in high-income countries is not substantially different from national
averages using a consumption-based accounting approach that also
includes energy embodied in imports. So, the effects of lowered direct
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Chapter 18
Chapter 18
18.6.3
18.6.3.2
18.6.3.1
Urban Poverty
Urban density and form are not only important determinants for the
functionality and quality of life in cities, but also for their energy use.
Historically, the diversity of activities and ensuing economic and social
opportunities that are the major forces of attraction to urban settings
were provided by high density and co-location (mixed land-uses) of a
diversity of activities that maximize the activity zone of urban dwellers
while minimizing transport needs. This urban history contrasts with decades of trends toward lower urban densities, which include widespread
urban sprawl, and even ex-urban developments.
40 Evidently, individual cities can forge ahead or fall behind the overall distributional
pattern of aggregate uniform urban growth rates as outlined by the rank-size rule.
1387
the long-term all end-use energy fuels consumed in urban areas need
to be of zero-emission quality, as exemplified by electricity or (eventually) hydrogen, with natural gas as the transitional fuel of choice in
urban areas. (Evidently, pollution levels also need to be minimized to the
maximum technologically feasible at the point of production of these
fuels.) This zero-emission requirement for urban energy transcends the
customary sustainability divide between fossil and renewable energies,
as even carbon-neutral biofuels when used by millions of automobiles
in an urban environment will produce unacceptable levels of NOx or O3
pollution.
Second, the literature and above discussion repeatedly has identified important size and density thresholds that are useful guides for
urban planning. The importance of these urban thresholds extends
to specialized urban infrastructures, such as underground (metro)
transport networks that are, as a rule, economically (in terms of
potential customers and users) not feasible below a threshold population size of less than one million. It also extends to energy (e.g.,
cogeneration-based district heating and cooling) and public transport
networks, whose feasibility (both for highly centralized and decentralized, distributed meso-grids) are framed by a robust gross41 density
threshold between 50 and 150 inhabitants/ha (500015,000 people/
km2). Such density levels of 50150 inhabitants/ha certainly do not
imply the need for high-rise buildings, as they can be achieved by
compact building structures and designs, both traditional and new,
including town or terraced houses, while still allowing for open public
(parks) or private (courtyard) spaces but they do preclude unlimited
(aboveground parking) spaces for private vehicles. Zoning and parking
regulation, combined with public transport policies and policies that
promote non-motorized transport modes and walkability thus constitute the essential building blocks of urban energy efficiency and sustainability policy packages.
18.6.3.3
Chapter 18
41 i.e. a minimum density level over the entire settlement area that comprises residential zones of higher density with low density green spaces.
Attractive public transport systems require a dense public transport network and a high service frequency with short intervals, which are only
Urban transport is a key policy concern, both for its high visibility (potential opposition to top-down policies) and its crucial importance to the
very functionality of cities. Two fundamental observations need to guide
urban transport policies.
1388
Chapter 18
18.6.3.4
From all the major determinants of urban energy use climate, integration into the global economy, consumption patterns, quality of built
environment, urban form and density (including transport systems),
and urban energy systems and their integration only the final three
are amenable to an urban policymaking context and therefore should
receive priority.
Systemic characteristics of urban energy use are generally more important determinants of the efficiency of urban energy use than those of
individual consumers or of technological artifacts. For instance, the share
of high occupancy public and/or non-motorized transport modes in urban
mobility is a more important determinant of urban transport energy use
than the efficiency of the urban vehicle fleet (be it buses or hybrid automobiles). Denser, multifamily dwellings in compact settlement forms with
a corresponding higher share of nonautomobile mobility (even without
thermal retrofit) use less total energy than low-density, single-family
Passivhaus-standard (or even active, net energy generating) homes in
dispersed suburbs with two hybrid automobiles parked in the garage and
subsequently used for work commutes and daily family chores. Evidently,
urban policies need to address both systemic and individual characteristics in urban energy use, but their different long-term leverage effects
should structure policy attention and perseverance.
In terms of urban energy-demand management, the quality of the built
environment (buildings efficiency) and urban form and density that,
to a large degree, structure urban transport energy use are roughly of
equal importance. Also, energy-systems integration (cogeneration, heat
cascading) can give substantial efficiency gains, but ranks second after
buildings efficiency and urban form and density, and associated transport efficiency measures, as shown both by empirical cross-city comparisons and modeling studies reviewed in this chapter.
18.6.3.5
To a degree, the observed significant improvements in urban air quality caused by the elimination of traditional air pollutants, such as soot,
particles, and SO2, in cities of high-income countries are a powerful illustration that cities act as innovation centers and hubs for environmental
improvements that lead to a sustainability transition path.
The first signs of progress in these traditional air pollutants are evident in countries of lower income as well, and are illustrated by the
1389
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Chapter 18
18.6.4
The highest impacts of urban policy decisions are in the areas where
policies can affect local decision making and prevent or unblock spatial
irreversibilities or technological lock-in, or to steer away from critical
thresholds.
Examples include preventing the further development of low-density,
suburban housing and of shopping malls, or promotion of the colocation of high energy supply and demand centers within a city that
enable cogeneration and waste-heat recycling for heating and cooling purposes (e.g., in business districts). Buildings energy-performance
standards are also a prime example of policy interventions that need to
be implemented as early as possible to reap long-term benefits in terms
of reduced energy use and improved urban environmental quality. New
technologies, like smaller micro- and mesogrids are particularly attractive options that are also suitable for deregulated market environments.
The literature on urban energy use, particularly with respect to transport, also identifies a critical threshold of between 50 and 150 inhabitants/ha below which public transport (or energy cogeneration) options
become economically infeasible, which thus leads to overproportional
increases in energy use (e.g., longer trips using private automobiles). To
avoid such critical thresholds being crossed should be a high priority for
urban administrations.
Given capital constraints, it is entirely unrealistic to expect grand
new urban ecodesigns to play any significant role in integrating
some three billion additional urban dwellers to 2050 into the physical,
economic, and social fabric of cities. Building cities for these three billion new urban citizens along the Masdar (Abu Dhabi) model would
require an investment to the tune of well above US$1000 trillion, or
some 20 years of current world GDP!42 The role of such new, daring
urban designs is less a template for development, but rather a learning laboratory to develop and test approaches, especially to low-cost
options for sustainable urban growth in low-income countries and to
retrofit and adapt existing urban structures and systems across the
globe.
To address urban energy sustainability challenges will also require a
new paradigm for drawing systems or ecosystems boundaries that
extend the traditional place-based approach (e.g., based on administrative boundaries or ecosystems such as regional watersheds or
air-quality districts). Sustainability criteria need to be defined on the
basis of the functional interdependence among different systems,
which are not necessarily in geographic proximity to each other.
42 This extreme estimate does not suggest that energy efcient cities are prohibitively
expensive. A wide range of measures in building retrots and low-cost new energy
efcient housing as well as in public transport policies can result in signicant reductions of energy use at modest investment levels. For estimations of the investment
needs of the GEA transition pathways, see Chapter 17.
Chapter 18
System analytical and extended LCA methods are increasingly available to address the question of the social, economic, and environmental sustainability of urban energy systems that almost exclusively rely
on imports. However, clear methodological guidelines and strategies
to overcome the formidable data challenges are needed, a responsibility that resides within the scientific community, but that requires
support and a dedicated long-term approach for funding and capacity
building.
A common characteristic of sustainable urban energy system options
and policies is that they are usually systemic: for example, the integration of land-use and urban transport planning that extends beyond traditional administrative boundaries; the increasing integration of urban
resource streams, including water, wastes, and energy, that can further
both resource (e.g., heat) recovery and improve environmental performance; or the reconfiguration of urban energy systems toward a higher
integration of supply and end-use (e.g., via micro- and mesogrids) that
enable step changes in efficiency, for example, through cogeneration
and energy cascading. This view of more integrated and more decentralized urban infrastructures also offers possibilities to improve the resilience and security of urban energy systems.
And yet this systemic perspective reveals a new kind of governance paradox. Whereas the largest policy leverages are from systemic approaches
and policy integration, these policies are also the most difficult to implement and require that policy fragmentation and uncoordinated, dispersed
decision making be overcome. This governance paradox is compounded
by weak institutional capacities, especially in small- to medium-sized cities
that are the backbone of urban growth, as well as by the legacies of market deregulation and privatization that have made integrated urban planning and energy, transport, and other infrastructural policy approaches
more difficult to design and yet more difficult to implement.
However, there are good reasons for (cautionary) optimism. Urban areas
will continue to act as innovation centers for experimentation and as diffusion nodes for the introduction of new systems and individual technological options (Bai et al., 2010) by providing critical niche market sizes
in the needed transition toward more sustainable urban energy systems.
The task ahead is to leverage fully this innovation potential of cities and to
scale-up successful experiments into transformative changes in energy systems. Individual and collective learning, transfer of knowledge, and sharing
experiences and information across cities and among stakeholders will, as
always, be key objectives to which this chapter hopes to contribute.
1391
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Introduction
Globally, in the past hundred years, human population
increased fourfold while material and energy use
increased tenfold. At present humanity uses 500 ExaJoules of primary energy and extracts 60 billion tones of
raw materials annually [1,2]. However, huge inequalities
in per capita material and energy use pertain between
countries and world regions. The highest consuming 10%
of the world population uses 40% and 27% of the worlds
energy and materials respectively, and the richest 10%
accounts for 39% of the worlds GDP [3].
This scale as well as the ongoing dynamic of the socioeconomic material and energy throughput (social or
www.sciencedirect.com
For practical reasons we here use the terms city and urban area
interchangeable.
Current Opinion in Environmental Sustainability 2010, 2:185192
www.sciencedirect.com
Reducing energy and material flows in cities Weisz and Steinberger 187
accounted for more than 90% of the total energy consumption and that the implementation of various efficiency strategies could reduce those by more than 50%
[60].
Long-term simulations of the material life cycle of buildings have been conducted for the Netherlands, Norway,
the city of Trondheim, urban areas in the UK and Japan,
Germany as well as for urban and rural China
[61,62,63,64,65,66]. Using different methods such as
demand driven system dynamics models of the aggregated residential housing stock, or surveying and image
interpretation, these studies point to the so far largely
neglected potential of reducing the life cycle material
flows and surges in demolition wastes associated with the
material dynamic of the built urban environment. Fernandez examined the consumption of energy and
materials attributable to the rapid increase in Chinas
urban building stock. He pointed out that the pure size
and pace of Chinas urbanization has global implications
for resource use, thus making the large developing
countries decisive players to achieve overall material
and energy reductions [67].
Figure 1
Figure 2
earlier findings that household size is negatively correlated with per capita household energy use but also shows
explicitly that this applies to both direct and indirect
energy use, see Figure 2 [69].
Using a multivariate regression analysis to explain variations in per capita total (direct and indirect) household
energy use, Pachauri found that income by far was the
most important explaining variable. The expenditure
elasticity of total household energy amounted to 0.67
(implying that a 1% increase in per capita expenditure
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Reducing energy and material flows in cities Weisz and Steinberger 189
Figure 3
Expenditure for direct and indirect energy requirements by income class (US$ PPP 1996) and indirect and direct energy requirements by income class
in Brazilian urban households, source: [70], p. 559.
Figure 4
urban areas towards modern energy forms, such as electricity and LPG [69].
Similar results were found in a study on energy requirements of urban households in Brazil. The authors found
that per capita household energy use (both direct and
indirect) is strongly dependent on income and an increasingly larger share of indirect energy use is observed in
higher income brackets, see Figure 3 [70].
The income dependent expenditure elasticity of energy
requirements was found to be above 1 for direct energy in
most income classes. The direct energy elasticity curve
peaks in the mid-income class at almost 1.1. and declines
with higher incomes to reach 0.9 in the highest income
class. In contrast, the elasticity curve for indirect energy
use rises linearly with income but stays below 1 in all
income classes (Figures 3 and 4).
Acknowledgements
We acknowledge funding from the project Sustainable Urban Metabolism in
Europe (SUME); European Communitys Seventh Framework Programme
FP7/2007-2013 under grant agreement 212034. We are also very grateful to
Arnulf Gruebler, Xuemei Bai, Thomas Buttner, Shobhakar Dhakal, David
Satterthwaite, and other authors of the chapter Urbanization of the
forthcoming Global Energy Assessment (GEA) for their continued inspiration
and great discussion culture.
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3.
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Reducing energy and material flows in cities Weisz and Steinberger 191
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www.sciencedirect.com
Abstract
The field of interest of the Environmental Technology and Design (ETD) chair concerns
the interaction of nature, people, technology and design towards sustainable solutions.
At different scales, however starting mainly from the perspective of the urban
dynamics and of emerging theories of complexity related to this. It includes a
renewed look on the urban metabolism and the role of environmental technology,
urban ecology and environment behavior focus for the field. Relevant aspects are the
continuing transformation, economic-technological innovation and changing tasks in
the public sector before, during and after design and construction of buildings and
cities. Scale-free thinking and permanent insight in ecological, spatial, technical and
social backgrounds are of vital importance. As the field concerns both integrated and
reciprocal problems, or better said: challenges and potentials.
The perspective presented in this paper anticipates on this. An accurate and
permanent way of operational development will occur as a type of place-making,
incorporating self-organization, network & systems thinking and parametric design. This
implies that plans are tied together with surrounding projects as a total concept
within a structure supporting flexible and continuous processes of change.
Sustainable Development and the road towards a dynamic equilibrium
Since to 1950s the subject of sustainability and the need to reduce global ecological
overshoot has been at the center of debate on all fronts: social, economic and
environmental. Defined as a process or transition strategy rather than an end in
itself, sustainability has not yet been identified with a unified theory or approach.
It is important to link sustainability aiming urban solutions, that address to continuing
transformation, economic-technical innovation and changing tasks in the public sector,
to the use(rs) with optional help of technology and design.
Sustainable development is a moving target: knowledge, technologies, and skills are
still being developed every day. In fact, sustainability often relies in the management
of transitionsa shift to doing things differentlythat tends to be specific to each
site, rather than a constant recipe or one size fits all type solution. This is why it is
necessary to bring the knowledge and innovations of environmental technology and
TU Delft ABE/U/ETD | The concept of the Urban Metabolism (UM) | prof.dr.ir. Arjan van Timmeren |
design and especially the role adaptation to change and complexity related to this.
For sustainable (urban) development is mainly depending on peoples mind.
One of the big debates in environmental urban development and design today
concerns policy and strategic responses. Both public and private sectors look for
operational strategies that can be implemented in the development and retrofit of
sustainable urban areas. As a result, powerful market players working together with
governments are emerging as the new leaders in this debate.
The different approaches can be classified according to the actors involved by the
motivations and incentives, and the various implementation scales from regional and
urban plans to building sites (Timmeren & Rling, 2007). One way of addressing the
complexity of the task at hand, often used these days, is through certification
standards. Certification programs can cover most of the aspects of urban (property-)
development, including setting targets for site decontamination, use of recycled
materials, brownfield redevelopment, provision of public transport, options to
discourage fossil transport use, energy consumption and efficiency in buildings, water
recycling and waste management. There is however a certain risk attached to this
development. Urban sustainability should be more: plans will have to be tied together
in an integrated approach with surrounding projects as a total concept within a
structure supporting flexible and continuous processes of change.
The make-ability of our environment is limited and we have to develop new patterns
of interaction with the environment including inevitable adaptations of our way of
living, working and recreation. Even to those who are thoroughly inured to warnings
of impending catastrophe, the World Banks report on climate change, Turn Down the
Heat (PICIRCA, 2012), is made for alarming reading. Looking at the consequences of
four degrees of global warming, a likely outcome under current trajectories, the Bank
concludes that the full scope of damage is almost impossible to project. Even so, it
states: The projected impacts on water availability, ecosystems, agriculture, and
human health could lead to large-scale displacement of populations and have
adverse consequences for human security and economic and trade systems.
Simultaneously, one of the biggest technological transformations ever is taking place,
viz., the fusion of the various geographical markets in the world into one dynamic,
complex organism. In this, roughly forty global cities are taking up a key position
within the global economy. They can be called the hubs of modern global
economy, characterized by denationalization (Sassen, 1991). Urban areas thus
become the milieu for the worlds economic engines, control centers and workforces.
After over a century of ignoring cities, the economics profession is beginning to
come around; today, Urban Economics is now seen more often a growth discipline.
Most of todays urban economic theorizing aims to explain the productivity
advantages of large cities, taking inspiration from Alfred Marshalls observations of
external economies of scale (Marshall, 1920). But todays dominant theories in Urban
Economics have a distinctly single-E focus, downplaying issues of social equity and
TU Delft ABE/U/ETD | The concept of the Urban Metabolism (UM) | prof.dr.ir. Arjan van Timmeren |
the natural environment. According to Glaeser (2011) cities can be defined as the
absence of physical space between people and companies. It is important to realize
that besides this single-E focus, to understand cities fully, the other two Es Equity
and the Environment must be addressed. Modern studies of interest group politics
(e.g. Bartels, 2002) demonstrate that socioeconomic inequality tends to bring about
unequal access to the channels of policymaking. Glaeser however tends towards the
view that urban poverty is a temporary condition through which destitute rural
migrants pass on their way to wellbeing. This goes of course in particular for
growing cities in developing countries.
The new Urban Economics focus of today identifies urban environments as greener
than suburban or rural areas; city dwellers use fewer physical resources and emit
fewer greenhouse gases per capita than their suburban or rural counterparts. But in
terms of human well-being, the quality of the urban environment matters as much as
cities overall environmental footprint (Timmeren, 2012; Enelow, 2012). Protection from
air pollution and issues like lead poisoning, access to parkland and healthy food are
rarely equitably distributed within cities, with poor people shortchanged on all counts.
Environmental injustice hurts everyone; more equitable distributions of environmental
benefits are good for all residents of urban areas, not just the disadvantaged (Ash
et al., 2010).
While it not being immediately apparent to the average citizen of the west, a
tectonic technological shift is causing a sea change as markets around the globe
that were once isolated by geography are beginning to fuse into a complex sociotechnical-economic organism. The modern globalized economy is defined by a few
global cities that have undergone a denationalization, whose urban ingenuity (i.e.
Infrastructure, services, economy and social values) is more alike than when
compared to other cities and towns found within national boundaries. Thus, urban
areas have become the milieu of our global economy, its control centers and its
workforce.
Consequently, the typical global city is much more complex and chaotic as a
growing number of spatial and virtual connections extend across traditional political
boundaries. Harmful environmental development schemes are exacerbated by our
chaotic, disruptive and aggressive spatial changes and will undoubtedly continue to
intensify in the coming next decades if we maintain our current business-as-usual
path. On closer examination, however, the global economy itself might be
characterized as a system of structural exploitation that creates hidden dependencies
on other parts of the world, forcing people to give up their rights to their own
resources. The counter reaction to this, which I support, is called localization. It is
sometimes feared that this counter reaction, so-called localization, will lead to all
kinds of negative aspects, such as repression, dependence and intolerance. On
closer examination, however, it is clear that the opposite is true: the global economy
is itself might be characterized as a system of structural exploitation that creates
hidden dependencies on other parts of the world, and forces people to give up their
rights to their own resources.
TU Delft ABE/U/ETD | The concept of the Urban Metabolism (UM) | prof.dr.ir. Arjan van Timmeren |
governments (Brooks, 2013). Or as Katz and Bradley (2013) state: There really isn't
a national economy. There's a network of metropolitan economies where countries
talent, creativity and industry are concentrated. Holland (2012) calls this an
evolutionary transformation in citizenship that is now underway.
For large urban developments it is important to be aware of this, and to try to
focus its development on this principle, advancing a conception of sustainable urban
districts (Eco Districts) as a microcosm of society.
Well-known initiatives to improve their competitiveness in this respect are the World
Banks City-by-City help for (eco)development.
In Biology, metabolism is the totality of biochemical reactions in a living thing. Metabolism is
differentiated into consumption of energy by breaking down sources into smaller units to release energy
(catabolism) and synthesis of complex molecules from smaller units by using energy (anabolism).
1
TU Delft ABE/U/ETD | The concept of the Urban Metabolism (UM) | prof.dr.ir. Arjan van Timmeren |
Figure 2 Metabolism comparison between a plant cell and a photosynthetic human settlement.
When applied to more that one organism, the biological object is an ecosystem in which different actors
(i.e. plants, animals, bacteria, fungi) interact to form a collective metabolism; thus assuming that a
community of organisms are systematically integrated in the same way as an individual organism.
2
For example, Karl Marx used metabolism to describe the material and energy exchange between nature
and society as a critique of industrialization (1883): he advocated that urban metabolism becomes a
power in itself (like capitalism), and will control society unless society is able to control it (Nelson, 2010).
3
TU Delft ABE/U/ETD | The concept of the Urban Metabolism (UM) | prof.dr.ir. Arjan van Timmeren |
now defunct. The importance of community building and self organization will be
paramount to creating a more self-reliant society that thinks globally but acts locally.
Apart from our buildings and infrastructure, resilience, adaptability and
transformability need to be incorporated into the modern idiom.
To explore this there is a focus on four angles that make urban metabolism
interesting for urban planners and designers.
1.
The infrastructures of the flows are (often neglected) design challenges in their
own right;
2.
3.
4.
People. In some of the world cities access to the flows, can make the difference
between life and death. In other cities they open the way to well-being. In mature
cities, smart arrangements of the flows can determine not only the quality of
living but also the climate for places of business for international corporations.
Urban metabolism, however, is not without its critics. It has been challenged by
certain social scientists because it neglects the sociological fact that humans are
malleable and conditioned by their social environment (Mc.Donald et al., 2007), not
the natural environment.
rather than immutable natural laws. From this perspective, planning cities as a
metaphor for a large biological entity is nave because human relationships with the
environment and other humans are more complicated.
Though sociological studies of urban metabolism have shown the irrationality of
societies in regards to essential streams (water, nutrients, etc.), there is one,
TU Delft ABE/U/ETD | The concept of the Urban Metabolism (UM) | prof.dr.ir. Arjan van Timmeren |
Water supply; water extraction and purification, drinking water supply network;
TU Delft ABE/U/ETD | The concept of the Urban Metabolism (UM) | prof.dr.ir. Arjan van Timmeren |
Energy supply; electricity generators, electricity grid, heat network, pipelines for
liquid or gaseous energy carriers;
The urban environment is a high activity, densely populated area. These areas inevitable require lowentropy concentrated energy supply.
4
TU Delft ABE/U/ETD | The concept of the Urban Metabolism (UM) | prof.dr.ir. Arjan van Timmeren |
Like REAP (Rotterdam Energy Approach & Planning; Tillie et al., 2009), EPM (Energy Potential Mapping;
Dobbelsteen et al., 2011), Ecopolis strategy & S2N (Strategie van de twee netwerken; Tjallingii, 1996),
DPL (Duurzaamheids Profiel van een Locatie; IVAM, sd), Triple P (People, Planet, Profit /prosperity),
etcetera. But also new developed and operationalized political decision making approaches like TEEB (The
Economics of Ecosystems and Biodiversity; UN, 2008), and for instance in the Netherlands MKBA
(Maatschappelijke Kosten-Baten Analyse; NICIS Instituut, sd), Kader Afweging Duurzame Ontwikkeling
(KADO) and Provinciale Structuur visies (PSV) attached to possibilities within the WRo (Dutch law on
Spatial planning).
5
In the field of sociology, described as the way people have learned to control each other and
themselves (Goudsblom, 1974).
6
Communities are the social and institutional components of the city. They include the formal and
informal, stable and ad hoc human associations that operate in an urban area: neighbourhoods, agencies,
organizations, enterprises, task forces, and the like. In sum, the communities act as the brain of the city,
directing its activities, responding to its needs, and learning from its experience. (Godschalk 2002).
7
TU Delft ABE/U/ETD | The concept of the Urban Metabolism (UM) | prof.dr.ir. Arjan van Timmeren |
10
trust between the participants is considered the social capital in the area.
Empowerment, co-creation and placemaking than are important concepts to include
(or at least consider).
Winston Churchills speech in House of Commons on October 28, 1944 is often referred to as the
origin of this quote, but in the original version it goes: "We shape our dwellings, and afterwards our
dwellings shape us. However the first printed version is found in a Time Magazine article from 1960 which
provide the slightly different version "We shape our buildings; thereafter they shape us.
TU Delft ABE/U/ETD | The concept of the Urban Metabolism (UM) | prof.dr.ir. Arjan van Timmeren |
11
TU Delft ABE/U/ETD | The concept of the Urban Metabolism (UM) | prof.dr.ir. Arjan van Timmeren |
12
The amount of change the system can undergo and still retain the same controls
TU Delft ABE/U/ETD | The concept of the Urban Metabolism (UM) | prof.dr.ir. Arjan van Timmeren |
13
The ability to build and increase the capacity for learning and adaptation.
The citys innovative capacity is important for its ability to adapt and renew itself in
response to new future challenges. However, the resilience of a city not just depends
on its capacity to produce innovations. A citys ability to respond to new challenges
requires the ability to adapt itself, which does not necessarily require the
implementation of innovation.
Adaptive capacity is in part determined by the physical boundaries of the system.
However, systems are in general more able to respond to new conditions if the
systems components are more varied and the control of the system is executed at
the lowest level (Berkes et al., 2002). This implies that resilient cities should have:
Innovative capacity;
TU Delft ABE/U/ETD | The concept of the Urban Metabolism (UM) | prof.dr.ir. Arjan van Timmeren |
14
But at the same time resilience from the perspective of urban metabolism and
regenerative systems involves other aspects as well also need to use nature itself as
a form of backstop, or soft infrastructure.
And finally another issue plays a role: psychologists, sociologists and neuroscientists
are uncovering a wide array of factors that make you more or less resilient than the
person next to you: the reach of your social networks, the quality of your close
relationships, your access to resources, your genes and health, your beliefs and
habits of mind. These tools will have to find their way into wider circulation, as we
better prepare populations for the mental, and not just physical, dimensions of
disruption. Here, again community building will be of importance.
15
TU Delft ABE/U/ETD | The concept of the Urban Metabolism (UM) | prof.dr.ir. Arjan van Timmeren |
16
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TU Delft ABE/U/ETD | The concept of the Urban Metabolism (UM) | prof.dr.ir. Arjan van Timmeren |
19
Urban
Studies
http://usj.sagepub.com/
Three Challenges for the Compact City as a Sustainable Urban Form: Household
Consumption of Energy and Transport in Eight Residential Areas in the Greater Oslo
Region
Erling Holden and Ingrid T. Norland
Urban Stud 2005 42: 2145
DOI: 10.1080/00420980500332064
The online version of this article can be found at:
http://usj.sagepub.com/content/42/12/2145
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On behalf of:
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Urban Studies, Vol. 42, No. 12, 2145 2166, November 2005
Summary. The results of a recent survey conducted in eight residential areas in the Greater
Oslo Region support the hypothesis that there is a connection between land use characteristics
and household consumption of energy and transport. Findings from the survey also lend great
support to the compact city as a sustainable urban form. However, three distinct findings
indicate that decentralised concentration could lead to even lower energy use in households:
while the extent of everyday travel decreases in densely populated areas, the central urban
areas represent the highest level of leisure-time travel by plane; the access to a private
garden limits the extent of leisure travel; and, the difference in energy use for housing
between single-family and multifamily housing is reduced in housing built after 1980,
indicating that the established conclusions on the most energy-efficient housing should be
questioned.
Introduction
The resource use and environmental impacts
of private household consumption are identified as key aspects of sustainable development. However, not every consumption
activity necessarily represents a problem. A
number of studies point towards three distinct
consumption categories as the major problem areas: housing, transport and food
(Hille, 1995; National Consumer Agency of
Denmark, 1996; Holden, 2001; Lorek and
Spangenberg, 2001; Aall and Norland,
2002). These three categories account for
as much as 80 per cent of the direct and
indirect environmental impacts caused by
households.1
Erling Holden is in the Western Norway Research Institute, PO Box 163, 6851 Sognal, Norway. Fax: 47 57 67 61 90. E-mail:
erling.holden@vestforsk.no. Ingrid T. Norland is with the Programme for Research and Documentation for a Sustainable Society
(ProSus), Centre for Development and the Environment, University of Oslo, PO Box 1116, Blindern, 0317 Oslo, Norway. Fax:
47 22 85 87 90. E-mail: i.t.norland@prosus.uio.no.
0042-0980 Print=1360-063X Online=05=122145 22 # 2005 The Editors of Urban Studies
DOI: 10.1080=00420980500332064
Downloaded from usj.sagepub.com at UVA Universiteitsbibliotheek on April 16, 2014
2146
housing and transport. It is believed that physical planning and design make it possible to
achieve a more sustainable consumption
pattern. This view has received increased
attention since 1987 when
the sustainable development imperative . . .
revived a forgotten, or discredited idea: that
planning ought to be done, or can be done,
on a big scale (Breheny, 1996, p. 13).
According to Breheny (1996), the use of the
planning system seems to be a common solution for achieving major environmental
improvements and particularly for achieving
sustainable development.
However, according to Boarnet and Crane
(2001), this whole issue must be treated as a
hypothesis, rather than a fact and, therefore,
the relationship between travel patterns and
the built environment should be regarded
as a subject for research. While relating
energy use for housing to housing design is
a quite straightforward task (Nss, 1997),
studying the relationship between travel
and the built environment is a much more
complex matter. While most studies have
investigated how commuting is influenced
by urban form, some studies have given
attention to the correlation of everyday
non-work-related travel and urban form.
However, little attention has been paid to
the possible relationship between long
leisure-time travel by car and plane, and
the design and location of residential areas
within the city.
We have studied the relationships between
land use characteristics and four distinct consumption categories: energy use for heating
and operating the house; energy use for everyday travel; energy use for long leisure-time
travel by plane; and, energy use for long
leisure-time travel by car. Throughout this
paper we will refer to these four consumption
categories as household consumption. We
will discuss the implications of our empirical
findings for the theoretical stands of the
compact city and dispersed city, two
opposing viewpoints that present different
approaches to a sustainable urban form. Of
course, urban form is only one of many
2147
2148
2149
2150
New York, Melbourne, San Francisco, Copenhagen and Frederikshavn (Denmark). Furthermore, he claims that those studies rejecting the
influence of urban structural factors in
general, and the prospect of the compact city
in particular, all have three flaws in common
(Nss, 2005).
First, the conclusions of such studies stem
from model simulations where the results
might simply reflect that the assumption of
the model does not capture the actual influence of urban structure on travel behaviour.
Secondly, the apparent lack of any relationship between urban form and transport is
due to the absence from theoretical considerations of variables that could be expected to
exert the strongest influence on each other.
For example, some studies have focused on
trip frequency or travel time, while travel
distance and modal split represent the most
important variables regarding energy use.
Finally, in some studies, conclusions are
made about an absent or insignificant relationship between urban structure and travel, based
on a comparison of travel survey data from
cities of different sizes. However, according
to Nss, the number of inhabitants is hardly
a good indicator for testing whether urban
structure affects travel behaviour.
As an antithesis to Nss (and others)
compact city theory, there is a school of
thought amongst environmentalists that
the most sustainable way to live would be to
return to rural areas and local selfsufficiency, to reduce the importing of
goods and services from far-off lands, and
to commune more closely with nature
(Jenks et al., 1996, p. 170).
This theory challenges the compact city on
nearly all land use characteristics, thus promoting dispersed, low-density cities (Orrskog and
Snickars, 1992; Radberg, 1995; Troy, 1996).
Long-distance Leisure-time Travel:
Compensatory Travel?
Although housing location influences the
distances to different types of facilities and
the spatial location of most of these facilities
2151
Figure 1. Assumptions on causal relationships between characteristics of households and their houses,
behaviour, consumption and environmental demands.
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2152
The eight residential areas in this study represent different reflections of the six criteria
presented above, as illustrated in Table 1.
The areas do also represent key features of
the general housing situation in the region.
The map (Figure 2) shows the location of
the areas within the Greater Oslo Region; six
of the areas lie within the City of Oslo,
while the remaining two are located in the
Municipality of Brum (Rykkinn and
Sandvika).
The survey was conducted in March April
2003 and questionnaires were sent to 2500
randomly sampled individuals above the age
of 17. With a response rate of 40 per cent,
we averaged 120 respondents per area.
While the questionnaire was sent to individuals within households, they responded on
questions regarding their own and the households consumption of energy and transport,
as well as family structure, income and
housing facilities.
Multiple Regression Analysis
The multiple regressions give us an insight
into the relationship between the different
physical housing situations (representing
different land use characteristics) and the
households consumption of energy and
transport, when taking into consideration
demographic, socioeconomic and attitudinal
factors. These three factors are therefore
brought into the analysis merely as control
factors. However, this approach is not sufficient for identifying causal mechanisms with
regard to the variables and the consumption
patterns. Another critical aspect of the multiple regression approach is the impossibility
of including two significant and correlating
independent variables within the same analysis. It is therefore difficult to point to the
most important factor. The findings of this
study will therefore be further explored
using more qualitative methods in the projects second phase.
The results presented in this article are
based on a multiple regression analysis of
the material as a whole. The starting-point of
the analysis is that possible explanatory
Criteria
Type of housing
Relative housing density
Relative location from
city centre
Relative distance to
tram/subway
Relative location from
local sub-centre
Local mix
Bjrndal
(1)
Grunerlkka
(2)
Holmlia
(3)
Hovseter
(4)
Rykkinn
(5)
Sandvika
(6)
Silkestra
(7)
Valerenga
(8)
Single-family/
row housing
Low
Distant
Multifamily
housing
High
Close
Multifamily/
row housing
High
Distant
Multifamily
housing
High
Medium
Row
housing
Low
Distant
Multifamily
housing
High
Distant
Row
housing
High
Medium
Mix
Medium
Close
Distant
Close
Close
Close
Distant
Close
Close
Distant
Distant
Close
Close
Medium
Close
Close
Close
Medium
Low
High
Low
Medium
Low
High
Low
Medium
2153
2154
Figure 2. Map of the Greater Oslo Region, including the eight residential areas of the study (see Table 1
for numbering). Scale: 1:400 000.
variables must be searched for at three different levels: the residential area; the household
level; and, the individual level. The dependent
variables of the analysis are
Consumption data (consumption of
energy for housing, everyday travel and
long leisure-time travel by plane and
car), from the questionnaire.
The independent variables (the possible
explanatory factors for the registered consumption data) are
Land use characteristics: physicalstructural characteristics of the house
(such as type of housing, size, access to
private garden), from the questionnaire;
and, physical-structural characteristics
of the residential areas (such as location,
density, local mix, access to public transport), from national/local data and map
sources.
Socioeconomic and demographic factors
of the household (such as family structure,
2155
Figure 3. Annual household consumption per capita in eight residential areas in Greater Oslo Region.
Notes: N 445 (F 1.393; p 0.206).
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2156
Holmlia is a residential area that is dominated by multifamily housing but also has a
considerable number of row houses. This
housing mix is reflected by the relatively
high energy use for housing. Holmlia is
distant from the city centre, which might be
one cause for its higher level of energy
consumption for everyday travel compared
with other densely populated areas closer to
the city centre.
The above findings indicate the existence of a
connection between land use characteristics
and the consumption of energy for housing
and transport. However, this initial analysis
does not take into account the possible differences in socioeconomic and demographic conditions between the residential areas. The
variation in energy use between areas could
easily be the result of differences in
income level, the household structure or the
employment rate. Initially, we expect these
non-physical characteristics to contribute to
the identified differences in energy use. In
order to study the isolated effects of both physical and non-physical characteristics (including
attitudinal factors), we have conducted a multivariate regression analysis for each of the four
consumption categories.
The Influence of Land Use Characteristics
The results of the multivariate regression
analyses are shown in Table 2. For each
consumption category, we have included a
number of land use characteristics, socioeconomic and socio-demographic contextual
factors, as well as attitudinal factors. In this
paper, we emphasise the statistical correlations between land use characteristics and
household consumption. This is not to say
that the other two independent variables are
unimportant, but they are here brought in as
controls to single out the specific effects
caused by the physical-structural conditions.
Regarding energy use for housing, four land
use characteristics have significant and isolated effects. First, the type of housing is
important. Controlling for other factors,
there are significant differences in energy
use between single-family housing, row
Table 2. Results from a multivariate regression analysis of the influence of various independent variables on annual household consumption per capita
Housinga
Independent variables
Significancej
Bi
24,783
0.000
n.i.
n.i.
n.i.
22,306
0.003
n.i.
n.i.
n.i.
33
31
n.i.
2193
0.000
0.000
n.i.
n.i.
n.i.
22
0.684
n.i.
n.i.
802
102
n.i.
n.i.
213
213
n.i.
n.i.
5
108
0.585
0.001
n.i.
n.i.
n.i.
n.i.
n.i.
233
0.037
n.i.
n.i.
2845
212
2103
0.002
0.285
0.725
21050
0.019
0.968
0.000
0.278
n.i.
Bi
Significancej
Bi
0.035
Significancej
309
249
575
0.032
0.074
0.374
0.000
0.134
n.i.
Bi
n.i.
211k
n.i.
Significancej
0.044
0.423
0.002
Everyday travelb
n.i.
n.i.
2
0.034
0.000
n.i.
21727
0.000
n.i.
2547
0.204
20
n.i.
1
2697
0.662
0.000
0.000
2157
(Table continued)
Housing
Independent variables
Bi
n.i.
n.i.
n.i.
2205
17 103
0.778
0.000
0.425
44 630 (0.000)
591
Bi
Significancej
Significancej
Bi
Significancej
n.i.
140
0.690
n.i.
2415
0.000
0.030
n.i.
255
0.717
662
n.i.
0.016
29
280
0.778
0.856
n.i.
21 272
0.019
0.231
16 034 (0.000)
650
4 354
2 730
0.000
0.095
10 040 (0.000)
778
1 712
0.000
0.168
19 737 (0.000)
743
Annual energy use for heating and operating the house. Respondents that have stated an annual energy use of firewood exceeding 43000 kWh have been left out. The effect of paying all or
part of the energy use in the house through the rent (which is not counted for) is controlled for by introducing energy rent as an independent variable (B 1.781, significance. 0.001).
b
Annual energy use for everyday travel. Energy use during the week of the survey multiplied by 47 weeks (excluding holidays). Respondents that have experienced an unusual travel
pattern during the week of the survey have been left out. Extremes ( 14 735 kWh per capita/year) are also left out.
c
Annual energy use for long-distance leisure-travel by plane. Extremes ( 20 846 kWh per capita/year) are left out.
d
Annual energy use for long-distance leisure-time travel by car. Extremes ( 5999 kWh/capita/year) are left out.
e
Percentage of developed area for housing within a residential area.
f
Special discount public transport tickets for multiple rides, such as flexi-cards, daily, weekly, monthly and annual passes.
g
Likert scale. Higher values indicated a positive attitude towards environmental issues.
h
Represent the basis alternative when all independent variables are given the value zero. However, in our analysis giving the value zero is meaningless for a number of independent
variablesfor example, age of household members, size of house or distance between the residence and the city centre. The figures constant is here reported, but cannot be given any
reasonable interpretation.
i
Non-standardised regression coefficient.
j
Two-sided p-value.
k
Average age of the adults in the household.
n.i. Not included as an independent variable for the given consumption category (either because of problems with high multicolinearity or lack of theoretical foundation).
Attitudinal factors
Environmental attitudeg
Membership of environmental NGO
(yes 0; no 1)
Constant h
Adjusted R 2
F (significance)
N
Significancej
Everyday travelb
2158
Table 2. Continued
a
2159
Figure 4. Energy use for everyday travel/long leisure-time travel by plane and housing density.
Downloaded from usj.sagepub.com at UVA Universiteitsbibliotheek on April 16, 2014
2160
2161
Figure 5. Annual energy use for housing as a function of housing type and the age of the house.
period, energy use per square metre in multifamily housing has increased.
Three factors explain this pattern. First, in
recent decades there has been, through
public information campaigns, an increased
focus on the reduction of energy use in
single-family housing. Households in singlefamily housing have caught up with more
energy-efficient households living in multifamily housing by investing in energy-saving
equipment. Secondly, recent public regulations on energy use in new buildings (such
as standards for insulation) have reduced
energy use for heating relative to the overall
energy consumption for housing. While in
older housing energy use for heating accounts
for approximately 60 70 per cent of total
energy use, in new housing it is 50 per cent,
and even less in low-energy housing. This
implies that the importance of housing type
is reduced. Finally, household size matters.
We found that in single-family housing built
after 1980, family size is larger than family
size in older single-family housing. This
also contributes to lower energy use per
household member, which can be seen in
Figure 5. At the same time, family size in
multifamily housing of all ages is about
the same. This tendency cannot necessarily
be regarded as a tribute to single-family
housing; rather, it is a possible consequence
of complex socio-demographic tendencies in
our society. Even so, it explains some of the
and
Policy
2162
Figure 6. Annual energy use per capita for housing and transport as a function of housing density.
Downloaded from usj.sagepub.com at UVA Universiteitsbibliotheek on April 16, 2014
1. High-energy-consumption residential
areas. Here we find Rykkinn and
Bjrndalresidential areas that are dominated by low-density and single-family
housing located at the urban fringe. Additionally, these areas are located far from both a
local sub-centre and a tram/subway/railway
station.
2. Medium-energy-consumption residential
areas. Grunerlkka, Valerenga and Silkestra
fall into the medium category. Highdensity and mainly multifamily housing
characterise these areas, which are located
relatively close to the city centre with proximity to workplaces, public transport systems
and private and public services. Residents
use, however, a large amount of energy for
travel by plane.
3.
Low-energy-consumption
residential
areas. The residents with the lowest energy
consumption for housing and transport reside
in Sandvika and Hovseter. These areas are
dominated by high-density, multifamily
housing. They are located close to local subcentres that to a varying extent represent
proximity to workplaces, public transport
systems and private and public services.
Decentralised Concentration in the Greater
Oslo Region
As the categorisation in the previous section
showed, decentralised concentration within
cities having more than 500 000 inhabitants
could lead to lower energy use in householdsa conclusion that seems to be enjoying
widespread support (Breheny, 1992; Banister,
1992; Owens, 1992; Newman and Kenworthy,
2000; Buxton, 2000; Masnavi, 2000; Hyer
and Holden, 2001; Holden, 2004).
According to Breheny (1992), the concept
of decentralised concentration is based on sustainable development and urban form policies,
such as slowing down the decentralisation
process. At the same time, it is based on realising that extreme forms of the compact city are
unrealistic and are, moreover, undesirable.
Therefore, Breheny makes clear that various
2163
2164
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.
10.
11.
Notes
1.
9.
References
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Bustad, forbruk og kologiske fotavtrykk
[Housing, consumption and ecological footprints]. Report 16/2003, Western Norway
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BANISTER , D. (1992) Energy use, transport and
settlement patterns, in: M. J. BREHENY (Ed.)
Sustainable Development and Urban Form, pp.
160181. London: Pion Ltd.
BOARNET , M. G. and CRANE , R. (2001) Travel by
Design. The Influence of Urban Form on Travel,
New York: Oxford University Press.
BREHENY , M. J. (1992) The contradictions of the
compact city: a review, in: M. J. BREHENY
(Ed.) Sustainable Development and Urban
Form, pp. 138159. London: Pion Ltd.
BREHENY , M. (1996) Centrists, decentrists and
compromisers: views on the future of
urban form, in: M. JENKS , E. BURTON and
K. WILLIAMS (Eds) The Compact City. A Sustainable Urban Form?, pp. 1335. London: E
& FN Spon.
BUXTON , M. (2000) Energy, transport and urban
form in Australia, in: K. WILLIAMS , E.
BURTON and M. JENKS (Eds) Achieving Sustainable Urban Form, pp. 54 63. London: E & FN
Spon.
CEC (COMMISSION OF THE EUROPEAN COMMUNITIES ) (1990) Green Paper on the Urban
Environment. Brussels: European Commission.
DJUPSKA S , O. T. and NESBAKKEN , R. (1995) Energibruk i husholdningene 1993 [Energy use in
households 1993]. SSB Report 95/10, Statistics
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ECIP (2003) European Common Indicators:
Towards a Local Sustainability Profile.
Milano: Ambiente Italia.
ELKIN , T., MCLAREN , D. and HILLMAN , M. (1991)
Reviving the City: Towards Sustainable Urban
Development. London: Friends of the Earth.
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2166
R E S E A R C H A N D A N A LY S I S
Keywords:
economic impact
environmental impact
household metabolism
industrial ecology
social impact
sustainable consumption
Summary
This article links databases on household consumption, industrial production, economic turnover, employment, water use,
and greenhouse gas emissions into a spatially explicit model.
The causal sequence starts with households demanding a certain consumer basket. This demand requires production in
a complex supply-chain network of interdependent industry
sectors. Even though the household may be confined to a
particular geographical location, say a dwelling in a city, the
industries producing the indirect inputs for the commodities that the household demands will be dispersed all over
Australia and probably beyond. Industrial production represents local points of economic activity, employment, water
use, and emissions that have local economic, social, and environmental impacts. The consumer basket of a typical household is followed in Australias two largest citiesSydney and
Melbournealong its upstream supply chains and to numerous production sites within Australia. The spatial spread is described by means of a detailed regional interindustry model.
Through industry-specific emissions profiles, industrial production is then translated into local impacts. We show that annually a typical household is responsible for producing approximately 80 tonnes of greenhouse gas emissions, uses around
3 million liters of water, causes about A$140,000 to circulate
in the wider economy, and provides labor worth just under
three full-time employment-years. We also introduce maps
that visually demonstrate how a very localized household affects the environment across an entire continent. Our model
is unprecedented in its spatial and sectoral detail, at least for
Australia.
c 2009 by Yale University
DOI: 10.1111/j.1530-9290.2009.00190.x
Volume 14, Number 1
www.blackwellpublishing.com/jie
73
R E S E A R C H A N D A N A LY S I S
Introduction
With environmental issues worldwide becoming more pressing and therefore more topical every year, an abundance of databases relate environmental variables to spatial entities. Examples
of such databases are maps that reflect the spatial
distribution of variables such as land use; species
density; emissions of toxic compounds to land,
air, and water; changes in mean temperatures;
rainfall; and water availability. In Australia, the
themes of climate change, land use, and water
management receive considerable attention because the country is, on the one hand, characterized by thin and poor topsoils as well as a dry
and unpredictable climate. On the other hand,
Australias agricultural industries are significant
exporters. In response to an increased need for
information supporting land and water management, national governmental agencies have produced, for example, the National Land and Water
Resources Audit (2008).
Although such reference works provide a valuable overview of environmental pressures across
an entire region at a given point in time, they
do not generally offer insight into the industries
that are responsible for these environmental pressures. In contrast, databases linking industry sectors with environmental informationsuch as
the National Greenhouse Gas Inventory (AGO
2008) and the Australian Water Accounts (ABS
2006; Vardon et al. 2006)do not typically contain any spatial information.
One consequence of this situation for researchers working in the fields of industrial ecology and sustainable consumption is that widely
applied inputoutput analyses (IOAs) of consumption cannot be undertaken in spatial detail. With respect to Australia, this situation
has improved recently with the construction of
a multiregion inputoutput (MRIO) database
at the state level (Gallego and Lenzen 2009).
In addition, publications of an integrated regional database on land use (Australian Collaborative Land Use Mapping Program 2008) and spatially explicit Australian business registers (ABS
2007a), labor surveys (ABS 2008), and national
pollutant inventories (National Pollutant Inventory 2008) contain information on production
characteristics for statistical subdivisions (SSDs)
and statistical local areas (SLAs).
74
The main aim of this article is to demonstrate how combining an MRIO of Australia
with spatial databases on industrial production
can enable IOA-type modeling of impacts at a
detailed spatial disaggregation. Furthermore, we
show that because of its consistent treatment
of system boundaries, inputoutput modeling is
ideally suited for simultaneously quantifying environmental, social, and economic impacts across
upstream product life cycles and thus enables
valid comparisons and trade-offs across sustainability objectives.
In the following discussion, we describe how
consumption at one site causes economic, environmental, and social impacts at other locations
across Australia. In short, demand for an initial
bundle of commodities at a particular place drives
regional industries, which, in turn, engage in productive activity and exchange a wide range of intermediate commodities through a sectoral and
spatial network of intraregional and interregional
supply chains. Summing up all industrial activity
yields total levels of regional sectoral turnover
that can be translated into regional impacts. We
are thus able to add to the existing notions of carbon footprint and virtual water an economic
and social footprint measured in terms of turnover and employment, all at fine spatial detail.
This approach is much in line with innovations in life cycle assessment (LCA) over the
past decade, as researchers have moved to sitedependent and receptor-dependent impact assessment (Potting et al. 1998; Sadamichi and
Kato 2006). Examples of this phenomenon include the Japanese SAME (Spatial Area of
iMpact Equivalency) approach, which overlays
spatial emissions distributions with population
density distributions to arrive at a measure of vulnerability (Nansai 2005), and efforts in Europe
and North America to elaborate regional differences in the effect of eutrophying and acidifying emissions (Huijbregts et al. 2000; Bare et al.
2003).
The objective of the current analysis is to
apply MRIO modeling to enumerate the impacts of typical households in Australias two
main citiesSydney and Melbournein terms
of two environmental indicators (greenhouse gas
emissions and water use), one economic indicator (turnover), and one social indicator (employment). The remainder of the article is organized
R E S E A R C H A N D A N A LY S I S
Methodology
Generalized MRIO for Australia
Our MRIO is essentially a collation of regional
transaction tables {Tijrs } connecting supplying in-
+ Domestic final
demand (S L)
+ International
exports (1)
= Gross output
yid,rs
l : domestic final
demand from
sector i in region
r for destinations
l in region s
Domestic
intermediate
supply (R I)
Ti rsj : domestic
interindustry
transactions
from sector i in
region r to sector
j in region s
yif,r : international
exports of
sector i in
region r
+ Domestic
primary inputs
(R K)
vkld,rs : domestic
vkf,r : international
vkrsj : domestic
primary inputs of
primary inputs of
exports of
origin k in region
origin k in region
primary inputs
r into sector j in
r into domestic
of origin k in
region s
final demand of
region r
destination l in
region s
+ International
imports (I)
m is j : international
imports from
foreign sector i
into domestic
sector j in
region s
m id,s
l : international
imports from
foreign sector i
into domestic
final demand of
destination l in
region s
m if : international
reexports of
international
imports from
foreign sector i
Mir : international
state imports
from foreign
sector i in
region r
= Gross input
X sj : gross state
input (GSI) into
sector j in
region s
E: international
state exports
Note: Indexes i and j are industries, r and s are regions; k = domestic primary input origins (wages and salaries,
gross operating surplus, net taxes on production, import duties); l = domestic final demand destinations (private and
government final consumption, gross fixed capital expenditure, changes in inventories); d = domestic; f = foreign.
Lenzen and Peters, How City Dwellers Affect Their Resource Hinterland
75
R E S E A R C H A N D A N A LY S I S
Intermediate demand
Region r
Regions s
Region r
Regions s
T rr
+ T sr
+v rr
+ v sr
Final demand
T rs
s =r
s =r
Final demand
Region r
Regions s
s =r
v rs
s =r
T +v +
sr
rr
+y f,r
= Xr
v d,rs
+v f,r
= Vr
+v d,rr
+ v d,sr
s =r
s =r
(1)
s =r
v sr + m r .
(2)
Inserting
y d,rr = Y r s =r y d,sr v d,rr
d,sr
d,r
m ; carrying out similar replaces =r v
ments for y f,r , v rr , and m r ; and arranging terms
finally yields the regional accounting identity
Y r + Tr + y d,r + vr + v d,r + E r
= V r + Mr ,
(3)
(4)
The dimensions of the regional table estimated in this work are hence R = S = 8 regions,2
I = J = 344 industry sectors, K = 5 primary
76
y d,rs
+y d,rr
d,sr
+
y
+m d,r
= Yr
Gross
output
Regions s
s =r
+m r
= Xr
Imports
Gross input
Exports
Region r
= Er
= Mr
input origins,3 and L = 7 final demand destinations4 (cf. table 1). The core transaction matrix T of the interindustry model hence contains
(8 344)2 = 27522 7.5 million data points.
The economic interindustry system is accompanied by matching physical data on greenhouse gas
emissions (AGO 2008), water use (ABS 2006),
employment (ABS 2008), and many more indicators (a total of 1,273)5 that are assembled in
a matrix Q, which matches the industry and regional classification of the interindustry transactions matrix T. For further details about this generalized MRIO, see work by Gallego and Lenzen
(2009) and Lenzen (2008).
The literature on subnational MRIOs provides
abundant evidence for the fact that the integration of physical and economic data at this spatial level is generally fraught with difficulties,
because physical and financial industry statistics
exist at different levels of industry sector detail.
Although greenhouse gas statistics may contain disaggregated information only on large fuel
users, such as electricity generators, metals manufacturing, and transport, water use statistics may
focus only on water-intensive industries, such as
rice and cotton growing, and financial and employment statistics may disaggregate service sectors with high turnover. To integrate physical
R E S E A R C H A N D A N A LY S I S
A practical example may highlight the importance of working at the greatest possible level of
detail. Consider a model application concerned
with the embodied water passed on from wool
growing to wool-textiles manufacturing. Assume
that in water-data sources, wool growing and cotton growing are disaggregated and that cotton
uses much more water than sheep. Assume further that other applications of the model could
be about employment in manufacturing sectors
and that employment figures are only available
for agriculture as a whole. Assume finally that
in all data sources wool and cotton textiles are
aggregated in one textiles manufacturing sector
and that financial gross output exists at the disaggregated level for cotton growing. Our strategy
would be to
1. estimate employment for wool and cotton
by prorating aggregate employment in agriculture across subsectors according to gross
financial output;
2. split the textiles manufacturing sector into
two subsectors, called wool textiles and cotton; and
3. estimate gross financial output of wool and
cotton textiles and split all inputs into
the two textiles subsectors according to
gross financial output, except set to zero
the transactions wool into cotton textiles
and cotton into wool textiles.
Subsequent analyses of, for example, the effects on water use as a consequence of demand
shifts for wool and cotton textiles, would make
use of the fact that disaggregated water-use figures were available for both wool and cotton
growing, which are the main suppliers of wool
and cotton textiles, respectively. Even though all
other (e.g., financial, employment) quantities for
these subsectors are not based on specific data but
rather are prorated according to the gross output
proxy, this would not matter, because water use
is the quantity of interest. In summary, there is
no penalty for generating a large number of uncertain but small estimates in an interindustry
model as long as important (large) data items are
sufficiently accurate.
Lenzen and Peters, How City Dwellers Affect Their Resource Hinterland
77
R E S E A R C H A N D A N A LY S I S
MRIO Analysis
A standard application of IOA is the evaluation of indirect emissions, water use, turnover,
and employmentor environmental, economic
and social footprints (see work by Lenzen [2001a]
for prior discussion in this journal and work by
Foran et al. [2005] for a review). Our MRIO
accomplishes this task at the regional level of
detail by calculating
a 2,752 2,752 direct requirement
coefficients matrix A = Tx1 from the
regional inputoutput table T and
diagonalized (2,752 2,752) gross state
output x ;
the 1,273 2,752 physical coefficients matrix q = Qx1 ;
the 2,752 2,752 Leontief inverse L =
(I A)1 ;
1,273 2,752 generalized multipliers m =
qL ; and
1,273 7 impacts Q = qLy on emissions,
water, turnover, and employment as a consequence of final demand y (2,752 7).
The multipliers m are interpreted as follows.
Let element q kir describe the impact k (emissions,
water, turnover, employment) caused by industry
sector i in region r. Let element L rsij describe the
gross output of industry sector i in region r necessary to satisfy final demand from industry sector k
in region s. Then (q #L)rskij = q kir L rsij is the impact
of final demand from industry sector j in region
s in terms of the quantity k caused by industry
sector i in region r.
(5)
j A j
k Ajk . ..
n Amn yn . In our
model, for example, for any final demand bundle {yn }, there are 2,752
one-step paths
originatn Amn yn
ing from a supplying industry of type
m, 2,7522 7.5 106 two-step paths
m Alm
n Amn yn originating from a
supplying industry of type l, and so on.
With such a large number of upstream
impact origins, it is statistically improbable
that indirect impacts are concentrated in
a few specific SLAs within a particular
Australian state, instead of distributed
homogeneously across all the states SLAs
that host industry .
Many industries appear only in a few
SLAs within each state, and our procedure
localizes these correctly. Examples for
such concentrated industries are iron-ore
mining in Western Australia, uranium
mining in South Australia and the
Northern Territory, and rice and cotton
growing in New South Wales. Further
industries that are characterized by a
R E S E A R C H A N D A N A LY S I S
datathat is, by land use, employment, economic turnover, and pollutant emissions.
The analyst selecting a proxy for prorating is
faced with the problem of preferring false positives or false negatives. Consider the example of
prorating greenhouse gas emissions. In achieving
geographical distribution from states to SLAs by
proxies, the method may cause a false positive (an
emission allocated to an SLA where it does not
actually occur) or a false negative (no emissions
allocated to an SLA where they do occur).
Our approach to the use of proxies is based on
a high aversion to false negatives. We consider
that the user of any tool based on this method is
interested primarily in his or her own SLA, and
the possibility of an impact being missed would
generate less desirable policy outcomes than an
impact being allocated to a relatively pristine
location.
In this work, we have used the following
proxies:
All Australian regions feature an electricitydistribution network. South Australia (SA), Victoria (VIC), New South Wales (NSW), and
Queensland (QLD) are even linked into the socalled South-East grid. It is hence generally impossible to trace the electricity consumed by any
end-user to a specific power station in a particular
SLA. This argument extends to fossil-fuel mining and extraction operations. In general, QLD
consumers indirectly consume an equal share of
brown coal from all Victorian mining operations,
even though no brown coal is mined in QLD
itself.
Similar to the MRIO construction strategy described above, the localization of environmental,
social, and economic impacts is carried out at the
maximum level of spatial detailSLAs. A consequence of this strategy is that whenever data
are only available at the regional (state) level,
disaggregation into SLAs can only be achieved
through prorating according to proxy variables.
For example, in this work, greenhouse gas emissions and water use as calculated from the regional inputoutput model are only available by
state and by industry. Although turnover and
employment are directly available by SLA, we
distributed greenhouse gas emissions and water
use across SLAs according to SLA-based proxy
Lenzen and Peters, How City Dwellers Affect Their Resource Hinterland
79
R E S E A R C H A N D A N A LY S I S
Results
Overall Results
Two family archetypes were selected to represent typical high-income, inner-city-dwelling,
well-educated, possibly environmentally aware,
busy professionals with no children or only
one child (see table 2). Socioeconomic and
Average weekly
dispensable household
income (A$)
% persons under 18 years
Average no. persons in
the household
Tenure type (%
homeowners, with or
without a mortgage)
% employed persons in
household
House type (% persons
who live in a detached
house)
Education (% persons
with a degree)
% persons who travel to
work by car
Car ownership
(vehicles/household)
Sydney
Melbourne
1,174.20
1,067.89
24
2.7
24
2.7
69
74
75
73
72
82
43
44
68
80
1.41
1.57
R E S E A R C H A N D A N A LY S I S
Table 3 Total annual impacts per household for Sydney and Melbourne in terms of four indicators
Impacts
Sydney
Melbourne
Total
77.4
2.3
130,549
2.85
91.3
3.4
150,735
2.90
Direct
9.3
0.5
61,058
1.88
13.0
0.7
55,530
1.84
Indirect
68.2
1.9
69,490
0.97
78.3
2.7
95,205
1.07
Note: t = tonnes; A$ = Australian dollars; one megaliter (ML) = 106 liters (L) 2.64 105 gallons (gal); FTE =
full-time equivalent.
Lenzen and Peters, How City Dwellers Affect Their Resource Hinterland
81
R E S E A R C H A N D A N A LY S I S
Figure 1 Spatial distribution of greenhouse gases (tonnes CO2 -equivalents) emitted across Australia as a
consequence of consumption by a Sydney family. One tonne (t) = 103 kilograms (kg, SI) 1.102 short tons.
Spatial Results
The maps presented in the following distinguish 1,406 SLAs across the entire Australian
continent. The size of SLAs is determined by
their population. As a consequence, SLAs in the
arid interior of Australia are much larger than
inner-city SLAs.
Greenhouse Gas Emissions
Consumption by the Sydney family causes
greenhouse gases to be emitted all over Australia (see figure 1). Prominent contributions to
the households greenhouse footprint8 are emissions from large power plants in NSW, two
around Muswellbrook in the Hunter Valley, one
near Lake Macquarie, and two near Lithgow.
These power plants are all colocated with coal
deposits and energy-intensive industries. Our
Sydney household also draws indirectly on interstate power from the Latrobe SLA in VIC, from
QLD (Nanango, Banana, and Gladstone SLAs),
and (despite the absence of a direct power connection) the Collie SLA in Western Australia
82
R E S E A R C H A N D A N A LY S I S
Figure 2 Spatial distribution of greenhouse gases (tonnes CO2 -equivalents) emitted across Australia as a
consequence of consumption by a Melbourne family.
more electricity than it consumes, with the remainder being sent to SA and NSW. Moreover,
VIC includes a major part of the Murray-Darling
Basin, where most of Australias food, especially
dairy products, is produced. As a consequence,
VIC is relatively self-sufficient in terms of
emissions-intensive products. Major contributions to the familys greenhouse gas budget
are
Lenzen and Peters, How City Dwellers Affect Their Resource Hinterland
83
R E S E A R C H A N D A N A LY S I S
Figure 3 Spatial distribution of water (ML) consumed across Australia as a consequence of consumption by
a Sydney family.
For the Sydney household, the top interstate water-use points are untreated milk (Loddon, Shepparton, Gannawarra, and Campaspe
in VIC) and grapes for wine (Mildura in VIC).
For the Melbourne household, the top interstate
water-use points are unginned cotton (Moree,
Narrabri, Walgett, and Warren in NSW), rice
(Griffith and Murrumbidgee in NSW), grapes for
wine (Gawler in SA), and beef cattle (Berrigan
in NSW, and Johnstone in QLD).
Economic Turnover
In contrast to the two environmental
indicatorsgreenhouse gas emissions and water useeconomic turnover consequences of
our households consumption occur much more
within the population centers and in very different sectors (see figures 5 and 6). The payment of
rents and mortgages for private dwellings creates
considerable turnover in the wealthy residential
areas of Inner Sydney and Melbourne; Woollahra, Ku-ring-gai, and North Sydney (NSW);
and St. Kilda, Brighton, and Caulfield (VIC).
84
Hotels, clubs, restaurants, and cafes (Inner Sydney and Marrickville, NSW, and Inner Melbourne and Prahran, VIC) also form a large
part of the households economic footprint. Further important components are large city retail
malls (Penrith, Rockdale, Marrickville, and Warringah, NSW, and Ringwood, Dandenong, and
Frankston, VIC), followed by banking, clothing, telecommunications, and other city-based
businesses.
Prominent agricultural producers are, for example, wine (Cessnock, NSW), poultry (Casey,
VIC), fish (Bega, NSW), and fresh meat (Melton,
VIC). These are rare and generally low-ranking
occurrences in the components list, however, and
this goes to show that although agricultural commodities generate substantial environmental and
resource impacts, they do not fetch high prices
and are hence not endowed with large monetary
turnovers.
Significant interstate turnover is generated,
for example, for trade advertisers in Flynn
(Australian Capital Territory [ACT]) and for
R E S E A R C H A N D A N A LY S I S
Figure 4 Spatial distribution of water (ML) consumed across Australia as a consequence of consumption by
a Melbourne family.
liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) and liquefied natural gas (LNG) producers in Toodyay (WA).
Employment
The employment impacts of our households
consumption are distributed across a wide range
of mostly service industries, such as banking, market research, business management, medicine,
dentistry, optometry, clothing, retail trade, legal
services, hotels, clubs, restaurants, cafes, property
services, education, insurance, and community
services. Because these industries are mainly located in urban centers, the main employment
impacts also occur there (see figures 7 and 8).
Also, because these service industries often require personal interaction, there is very little interstate trade of service commodities and, hence,
very few interstate employment impacts. Needless to say, modern agricultural and resource industries are highly mechanized, so that these industries do not feature at all amongst the top
employment impacts.
Conclusions
This study models the indirect impacts that
occur as a consequence of the consumption of
households in terms of environmental, social, and
economic indicators at a high level of spatial detail across the Australian continent. The modeling framework is at present the most detailed
of its kind in Australia in terms of indicators,
industry sectors, and spatial entities. Such a spatially detailed model is perhaps most justified for
a large country, such as Australia, where regional
production regimes are vastly different due, for
example, to different climate zones.9 Our results
demonstrate that consumption by a household in
a particular city has emissions, water, monetary,
and employment consequences that spread across
the entire country.
Given that the focus of this work is on households, the most obvious policy application is in
providing information to the general public. In
this respect, our spatial model has already been
Lenzen and Peters, How City Dwellers Affect Their Resource Hinterland
85
R E S E A R C H A N D A N A LY S I S
Figure 5 Spatial distribution of economic turnover (A$) stimulated across Australia as a consequence of
consumption by a Sydney family.
Figure 6 Spatial distribution of economic turnover (A$) stimulated across Australia as a consequence of
consumption by a Melbourne family.
86
R E S E A R C H A N D A N A LY S I S
Lenzen and Peters, How City Dwellers Affect Their Resource Hinterland
87
R E S E A R C H A N D A N A LY S I S
tants that have predominantly local impacts. Finally, we seek to integrate specific data for major trading partners and to trace impacts beyond
Australias borders by building an international
MRIO.
Acknowledgements
This research was supported partly by the
Australian Research Council (ARC) through its
Linkage Project LP0347812 and partly by Sydney Water Corporation. The National Computational Infrastructure facility in Canberra granted
runtime on their Altix Cluster. The authors
thank Margaret Kahn for continuing excellent
advice. We also thank Rowena Joske from the
Australian Conservation Foundation for help
with sourcing and screening data on household
expenditures and interstate trade. Christopher
Dey from the Centre for Integrated Sustainability Analysis, Owen Price from the University
of Wollongong, and Craig Davis from Sydney
Water Corporation produced the maps for this
article.
Notes
1. E = exports; GDP = gross domestic product;
GNE = gross national expenditure; M = imports.
2. Australian states and territories, referred to in this
study, are as follows: New South Wales (NSW), Victoria (VIC), Queensland (QLD), Western Australia
(WA), South Australia (SA), Tasmania (TAS),
Northern Territory (NT), and Australian Capital
Territory (ACT).
3. Primary input origins include wages and salaries,
gross operating surplus, taxes on production, decreases in stocks, and imports.
4. Final demand destinations include household and
government final consumption, gross fixed capital
expenditure by private and public enterprises and
the government, increases in stocks, and exports.
5. www.isa.org.usyd.edu.au/research/Information
Sheets/ISATBLInfo6_v1.pdf.
6. Broadacre agriculture is large-scale farming, generally including cropping and stock, in which large
areas of land are used to farm a single crop.
7. The situation is reversed for low-income households, which create more jobs indirectly than they
contribute themselves.
8. Our figures go beyond the carbon footprint because
they include CH4 and N2 O.
R E S E A R C H A N D A N A LY S I S
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Sustainability
The notion of a low carbon transition is beguilingly simple. We use too much of
the wrong sort of energy. We need to use the right sort of energy, and we need to
use less of it.
24
and within different countries. Equally important are the processes of transition: what are
the mechanisms that can be used to affect
such a fundamental shift? Given the highly
embedded structure of energy systems, from
the grids that cover much of Europe and
North America, to forms of energy market,
and cultures of energy consumption, our energy worlds appear rather fixed.
Cities are central, we believe, to answering these questions. While the exact date at
which it occurs will always remain unknown,
it is thought that the worlds population is
already more urban than rural (UN-Habitat,
2010). Over the next few decades, this trend
is set to increase rapidly. For example, the
United Nations predicts that urbanization in China will grow rapidly, reaching
73 per cent, or 1.02 billion of urban dwellers,
in 2050 (Dhakal 2010: 73). In a recent essay,
Shobhakar Dhakal (2010: 73) argues that
the past three decades of government
policy in China have effectively created
a high carbon urban transition through
their efforts to increase urbanization and
economic growth. Little wonder then
that the International Energy
Agency suggest that some 70%
of global energyrelated green-
Strategic imperatives
Figure 1:
Total GHG
(MtCO2e)
Moscow 15.4
St Petersburg 15.4
Los Angeles 13.0
Chicago 12.0
Miami 11.9
Philadelphia 11.9
Shanghai 11.7
Toronto 11.6
Dortmund 11.6
Tianjin 11.1
Bangkok 10.7
Beijing 10.1
Tianjin 2316
Beijing 1107
Shanghai 1063
St Petersburg 971
Moscow 922
Lagos 893 (total=27Mt)
Bangkok 799
Riyadh 726
Tehran 560
Wuhan 554
Kinshasa 598 (total=6Mt)
Istanbul 384
1. Figures in italics are derived from national estimates and should be treated with caution.
ments and will require the involvement of the private sector and of
communities.
The development of a more strategic approach to low carbon
urbanism has been particular marked in some of the worlds largest
cities. This approach is being developed through three, related, processes: strategic protection; self-reliant urbanism; and new networks
of global cities (Hodson and Marvin 2010). In terms of the strategic
protection of world cities, understanding the long term impacts and
implications of climate change for cities and their critical infrastructure requires new forms of impact assessment and forecasting at the
urban scale, which seek to combine climate change science and local knowledge to create robust analyses of future risks including sea
level rise, water shortages and heatwaves. This knowledge, in turn, is
informing public and private actors in cities about the levels of investment, protection and insurance that might be required to adapt to a
climate changed world, and, in some cases, to the development of alternative forms of adaptation which focus on increasing the resilience
of local communities.
A second feature of the strategic response of global cities is the
construction of more self-reliant urbanism. Whereas in the past cities
may have looked to expand the networks and resource flows that
sustain them, what is apparent about the move to address climate
change is that it is leading to a significant rethink about the continued viability of this model of urban development. As cities grapple
with the triple challenge of rising energy prices, energy security and
climate change, many are seeking to reduce energy use, develop their
own energy sources, and re-use wastes within the city, in order to
foster independence from national and international energy systems.
As with efforts targeted at the protection critical infrastructure, such
forms of low carbon energy autonomy require new forms of knowledge and new ways of working. To this end, cities have adopted a
third strategy, of developing new global networks through which to
share information, develop measurement and monitoring tools, and
lever additional resources.
www.europeanfinancialreview.com
25
Sustainability
Experimental responses
26
As these various examples suggest, recognising that cities are critical to any low carbon transition does not provide a single pathway
through which it can be achieved. It does, however, point to some
new starting points. First, it suggests that we cannot invent our way
towards a low carbon future without also engaging society (Bulkeley et al. 2010; Coutard and Rutherford 2010). The sorts of changes
that are required to urban infrastructure networks require not only
new technologies, but also new forms of investment, new practices
of energy use, and new ways of working between the public and the
private sector. Business models that may have worked for the provision of large, centralised infrastructure systems come under pressure
as new forms of decentralised energy provision take centre stage.
Relationships between governments and their citizens, in relation
to what sorts of energy service should be provided to whom and at
what cost, for example, come into question. Second, responding to
these challenges requires not only capacity at the urban level and a
proactive political climate, but also willingness to create new forms of
knowledge about cities and to operate beyond established practices
and ways of doing things (Aylett 2010, Hodson and Marvin 2010). It is
in this regard that the capacity to experiment and collaborate, to try
alternative ways of doing things and to accept some levels of failure,
may be particularly important. Third, bringing transition to the city
reminds us that what is at stake is not a simple choice between different paths to the future, but rather a complex and negotiated process.
We find that that a wide range of social interests are staking a claim
to speak for the city in undertaking or aspiring to undertake low carbon transitions. The field of such social interests is not an equitable
one, and particular coalitions are often able to mobilise financial, relational and knowledge resources through which they produce the
symbolic visions of what the low carbon future of the city should
become, shutting down the possibilities that things could be otherwise. Building resilient, low carbon, cities may, however, require a
different approach one that is flexible and open to alternative possibilities. Creating spaces in the city where diverse social interests can
articulate and experiment with their visions for the future is therefore
a pressing policy challenge.
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www.europeanfinancialreview.com
27
Abstract
In recent years, attention has been drawn to the fact that now more than half of the worlds population is urbanised, and the bulk
of these urban dwellers are living in the global South. Many of these Southern towns and cities are dealing with crises which are
compounded by rapid population growth, particularly in peri-urban areas; lack of access to shelter, infrastructure and services by
predominantly poor populations; weak local governments and serious environmental issues. There is also a realisation that newer
issues of climate change, resource and energy depletion, food insecurity and the current financial crisis will exacerbate present
difficult conditions. As ideas that either the market or communities could solve these urban issues appear increasingly
unrealistic, there have been suggestions for a stronger role for governments through reformed instruments of urban planning.
However, agencies (such as UN-Habitat) promoting this make the point that in many parts of the world current urban planning
systems are actually part of the problem: they serve to promote social and spatial exclusion, are anti-poor, and are doing little to
secure environmental sustainability. Urban planning, it is argued, therefore needs fundamental review if it is to play any meaningful
role in current urban issues.
This paper explores the idea that urban planning has served to exclude the poor, but that it might be possible to develop new
planning approaches and systems which address urban growth and the major environment and resource issues, and which are propoor. What is clearly evident is that over the last two to three decades, urban places in both the global North and South have changed
significantly: in terms of their economy, society, spatial structure and environments. Yet it appears that planning systems,
particularly in the global South, have changed very slowly and some hardly at all, with many approaches and systems reflecting
planning ideas from the global North simplistically transferred to Southern contexts through complex processes of colonialism and
globalisation. The persistence of older forms of planning in itself requires explanation. The paper briefly reviews newer approaches
to urban planning which have emerged in both the global North and South to see the extent to which they might, at the level of
principle, offer ideas for pro-poor and sustainable planning. The dangers of further inappropriate borrowing of ideas across
contexts are stressed. It concludes that there are some important shifts and new ideas, but no ready-made solutions for Southern
urban contexts.
# 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
Keywords: Urban planning; Urbanisation; Marginalisation; Informality; Master planning; Global South
Tibaijuka (2006).
* Tel.: +27 21 6502360; fax: +27 21 6502383.
E-mail address: Vanessa.Watson@uct.ac.za.
0305-9006/$ see front matter # 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
doi:10.1016/j.progress.2009.06.002
152
Contents
Chapter 1. Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Chapter 2. Urban settlements in the 21st century: Setting the context for urban planning . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
2.1. Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
2.2. Globalisation and cities . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
2.2.1. Labour markets and income changes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
2.2.2. Urban government . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
2.2.3. Civil society . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
2.2.4. Urbanisation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
2.3. The environmental and natural resource challenge for planning . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
2.4. Urban socio-spatial change . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
2.5. Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Chapter 3. Planning in the global North: Concerns of poverty and sustainability . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
3.1. Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
3.2. Emergence of urban planning in the global North: Master plans, development control and urban modernism. . .
3.3. Planning shifts in the global North and contemporary approaches . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
3.3.1. Decision-making in planning . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
3.3.2. Forms of spatial planning . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
3.3.3. Planning, environment and sustainability . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
3.3.4. Land management and regulation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
3.4. Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Chapter 4. Urban planning in the global South . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
4.1. Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
4.2. Spread of urban planning ideas to the global South . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
4.3. Urban modernism as an ideal city form . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
4.4. Zoning ordinances and building regulations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
4.5. The dark side of planning . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
4.6. Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Chapter 5. New planning approaches and ideas in the global South . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
5.1. Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
5.2. Innovations in the institutional context of planning. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
5.2.1. Integrated development planning . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
5.2.2. Participatory budgeting . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
5.2.3. UN Urban Management Programme (UMP) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
5.2.4. Strategic planning. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
5.3. Regulatory aspects of urban planning . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
5.3.1. State intervention in the land market: The Brazilian Special Zones of Social Interest (ZEIS) . . . .
5.3.2. Urban land law and tenure . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
5.3.3. Planning in the peri-urban areas . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
5.3.4. Planning in post-conflict and post-disaster areas . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
5.4. Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Chapter 6. Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
6.1. Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
6.2. On the problem of idea borrowing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
6.3. Assessment of recent shifts in planning and new planning ideas . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
6.4. Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Acknowledgement. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Biography . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
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Chapter 1. Introduction
In recent years, world attention has been drawn to
problems of urbanisation and urban settlements in the
global South.1 UN-Habitat has been at the forefront of
this campaign, using World Urban Forum meetings, the
Habitat Global Report series, and a range of programmes and interventions to highlight urban issues.
The World Urban Forum in Vancouver in June 2006 was
a particularly important event, as it called for a major
shift in global thinking about the future of Southern
cities. In the first place, there was recognition that by
2008, for the first time in history, the majority of the
worlds population will live in cities, and in future years
most of all new population growth will be in cities in the
global South. A second important insight was that the
rate and scale of this growth, coupled with impending
issues such as climate change and resource depletion,
posed massively serious problems in these towns and
cities and required specific intervention if large-scale
urban disaster was to be avoided. In a significant shift
away from the conventional wisdom that either the
market or local communities would ultimately
provide corrective mechanisms to urban problems,
UN-Habitat identified urban planning as a central tool
of governance, through which these major issues of
urban development will have to be addressed. In effect,
UN-Habitat was suggesting that urban planning should
be fundamentally reviewed to see if it was able to play a
role in addressing issues in rapidly growing and poor
cities.
UN-Habitat Executive Director Anna Tibaijuka, in
an address to the 2006 World Planners Congress (held to
coincide with the World Urban Forum), gave an
indication of the kind of new role which planning
was expected to play. She pointed to the urbanisation of
poverty as the most important urban issue of the future,
as well as the need to address this as part of an
environmental sustainability agenda. But she also
pointed to planning as a factor which often tends to
increase social exclusion in cities, through anti-poor
measures and a belief that . . .in the planned city . . ..the
poor should at best be hidden or at worst swept away
153
(Tibaijuka, 2006: 5). She called on planning practitioners to develop a different approach to planning that
is pro-poor and inclusive, and that places the creation of
livelihoods at the centre of planning efforts.
This paper explores the extent to which the
profession and discipline of urban planning2 might be
capable of taking on the challenge posed in 2006 in
Vancouver: that of changing what is currently perceived
as its highly negative role in Southern cities, and
becoming a mechanism through which 21st century
urban issues of poverty, inequality, rapid growth and
environment, can be addressed. Significantly, this is
happening at a time when additional pressures might
reinforce a shift in direction for planning. Lovering
(2009: vi) argues that the 2008 global financial crisis has
upset the neoliberal model within which planning has
been conceptualised and practised for the last couple of
decades, to the extent that planning as we have known
it is at an end. The focus of planning on providing
private interests with public resources, he suggests,
will have to give way to demands that planning revert to
its earlier intentions: . . .protecting the needs of
ordinary people rather than privileged minorities, the
public rather than private interest, the future rather than
the present (Lovering, 2009: 4). This, of course, may
not apply to those parts of the world less affected by the
economic crisis (India, China), where traditional
planning approaches could continue unchallenged.
While the pressure on planning to recall certain of its
founding social and environmental goals might therefore be coming from various sources, and with
relevance to both global North and South, the focus
in this paper will be on that part of the world where the
bulk of the global urban population will in future be
residing, i.e. the global South. The aims of this paper are
to consider, firstly, what are the current dynamics which
are shaping urban settlements (particularly in poorer
parts of the world), to which a revised view of
planningin a post-neoliberal erawill have to
respond; secondly, how it has come about that planning
can stand accused of exacerbating poverty in Southern
cities (and if this is indeed the case); and thirdly,
whether there are innovative approaches to urban
planning (in any part of the world) which can be drawn
on to inform planning reform in contexts of rapid
growth and poverty. It cannot, of course, be assumed
that urban planning can solve these 21st century urban
issues. Their origins lie in political, economic and
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6
Noting that this idea has a long pedigree in planning, and particularly in the work of Geddes, Mumford, Abercrombie and the
Regional Planning Association.
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160
and struggles. It is common, moreover, that globalisation acts to intensify already existing patterns and
trends, rather than imposing entirely new urban forms.
For example, the racial divisions put in place in South
African cities under apartheid have been exacerbated in
the post-democracy period as the country has opened up
to the global economy, although now taking the form of
class rather than racial divides (Turok & Watson, 2001):
the outcome is that South African towns and cities are
now more spatially divided and fragmented than they
have ever been.
An important point emerging from this debate is that
the negative effects of globalisation on urban space are
not entirely inevitable, and that, given strong state
policies and planning at both national and local level,
these effects can be countered. In a comparison of the
impacts of globalisation on cities under market-centred
and state-centred political systems, Hill and Kim (2006)
show that neither Tokyo nor Seoul conforms to the
world city model: there are relatively smaller income
disparities, less socio-spatial polarisation, and the
maintenance of a domestic manufacturing sector in
both the Asian cities, largely due to the nature of state
intervention and the particular national developmental
models followed in these countries.
In most parts of the world, however, either for
ideological reasons or for lack of capacity, governments
have done little to mediate the effects of globalisation
on their economies and cities. Devas (2001) notes that
none of the nine Southern cities in his study had a clear
poverty policy. Hence planners have been faced with
rapidly changing urban conditions, the sources of which
lie well beyond their control. Two aspects of change
have been important here: rapid urban growth and urban
socio-spatial change. But while these two areas of
change have to a greater or lesser degree affected most
urban places, the nature of these impacts has been
highly varied.
In relation to rapid growth, the 2003 UN-Habitat
report: The challenge of the slums, as well as the World
Urban Forum of 2006, played an important role in
drawing attention to what has been termed a global
demographic transition. While the period 19501975
saw population growth more or less evenly divided
between the urban and rural areas of the world, the
period since has seen the balance tipped dramatically in
favour of urban growth. In 2008, for the first time in
history, more than half of the worlds population lived in
cities, and by 2050 this will be 70%. Significantly,
however, the bulk of this growth will be taking place in
the global South and East. Currently, 73% of the worlds
population lives in developing regions and by 2050
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10
www.peakoil.net.
163
and even if that capacity did exist, few could afford to pay
for such services. In fact, the attractiveness of these kinds
of locations for poor households is that they can avoid the
costs associated with formal and regulated systems of
urban land and service delivery. Because of this, however,
it is in these areas that environmental issues are
particularly critical, both in terms of the natural hazards
to which these settlements are exposed, and the
environmental damage that they cause. Roys (2009)
point is that (in Indian cities and more widely) these urban
forms do not simply indicate the failure of traditional
master plans to be implemented. Rather, planning
facilitates and promotes inequality and exclusion through
criminalising certain forms of informality (such as
informal settlements) and sanctioning others (developer
and middle-class driven property development and
speculation). Both may be in violation of the plan, but
those who have access to state power will prevail.
2.5. Conclusion
The purpose of this chapter has been to argue that
urban settlements are currently faced with a range of
urban socio-spatial and environmental issues and trends
which are relatively new, in the sense that most have
only emerged in the last 2030 years. Institutionalised
urban planning systems and practices, on the other
hand, tend to change very slowly and there is frequently
a major time lag between the emergence of issues and
the ability of governments and civil society to respond
to them (whether through planning or other mechanisms). Processes of global economic change have
worsened income inequality and poverty in many cities,
giving rise to growing job and residential informality
and resulting tensions between imperatives of survival
and of administration and regulation. This, together
with continued high urbanisation rates, now predominantly in cities of the South, has meant a growing
concentration of poor people in cities and increased
competition for land. This growth and concentration is
occurring, moreover, in contexts where local government capacity is weak, where corruption and clientelism in the planning system is frequent, and the ability to
manage growth and deliver services equitably is
lacking. Weak and fragmented civil societies are unable
to compensate for this.
Rapid urban growth and forces of economic change
have given rise to new urban forms, socio-spatial
fragmentation and divides in cities, and tensions in
government between the drive for global positioning in
cities and the demands to address socio-spatial
exclusion. In many Southern cities, the phenomenon
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3.1. Introduction
The purpose of this chapter is to briefly review the
extent to which urban planning in the global North
has addressed the issues raised in the introductory
chapter: poverty, environment and urbanisation.
While not all of these issues are high on Northern
planning agendas (although they certainly should be),
the reason for considering them here is that planning
in that part of the world holds both potentials and
dangers for planning in Southern countries. There is
always the potential that positive planning approaches
in one part of the world will be of use in another (if
differences in context are correctly understood).
Certainly, the use of planning to address climate
change impacts is currently receiving a great deal of
attention in the North, and given the urgency and
global nature of this issue, ideas should be shared as
widely as possible. Planning ideas and approaches in
the global North have also had a negative effect on
Southern contexts in the past and will probably
continue to do so. There is a long history (as Chapter 4
will suggest) of imposition of Northern planning ideas
on Southern countries, as well as borrowing and
sharing of ideas with the intentions of promoting
concepts of urban improvement or just profit. Chapter
4 will argue that this flow of planning ideas and
practices (and, of course, their articulation with local
interests) has often resulted in the kind of planning
systems and approaches which now stand accused of
being anti-poor and unsustainable.
This chapter will argue that early 20th century
approaches to urban planning in the global North
had little concern for poverty11 and sustainability, and
were aimed at dealing with urbanisation in very
particular ways. Yet it was these approaches that
had a significant impact on planning in the global
South. While many of these older approaches have
persisted in the South, in the North there has been
extensive reform (as well as continuity). The latter
part of this chapter will consider these revisions and
innovations.
Modern town planning12 emerged in the industrialising world in the latter part of the 19th century as a very
direct response to concerns of rapid urbanisation,
unhealthy and polluted living conditions for the poor,
vanishing open green space, and threatened political
upheaval as a result. The concerns themselves were not
very different from those facing city managers and
planners in Southern cities today. What is significant is
the early forms of response to these issues, the spread of
these ideas to other contexts, and the ways in which they
have been operationalised for purposes often far
removed from their original intentions.
Visions of a better urban future put forward by
particular individuals (the founding fathers of planning) in the UK, in Europe and in the USA in the late
19th century were to shape the objectives and forms of
planning, which in turn showed remarkable resilience
through the 20th century. These visions can in turn be
traced to intellectual movements of the post-Enlightenment period. Huxley (2006), drawing on Foucaults
concept of governmentality, shows how notions of
governable spaces were used to construct the idea of a
causal relationship between spaces, environments, and
the conduct and deportment of bodies. Concerns to deal
with populations which were chaotic and uncontrolled,
which suffered from various forms of medical and
moral decay, or were in need of social and spiritual
development, gave rise to constructions of truths
(governmental rationalities) about how these could be
achieved through towns planned in particular ways.
Huxley (2006) uses the examples of plans for the
Model Town of Victoria (James Silk Buckingham in
1849)a forerunner of Howards Garden City, descriptions of the model town of Hygeia (Richardson, 1876),
and Patrick Geddes ideas at the end of the 19th
centurywhich drew on discourses of creative
evolution to develop his profoundly influential ideas
about settlements and placeas examples of these
spatial rationalities.
Broadly, there was an ambition to produce urban
populations which would lead ordered and disciplined
12
11
Urban planning itself has a much longer history and has occurred
in many different parts of the world. Intervention in cities which can
be described as physical design also took place through the 17th and
18th centuries. But it is generally accepted that what is known as
modern town planning has its roots in Enlightenment philosophies,
and in the industrial revolution in advanced capitalist countries.
166
13
The Charter of Athens, initiated in 1928 and later strongly
influenced by Le Corbusier, was an important document (by 1944)
in terms of establishing modernist urban principles.
14
The term blue-print is borrowed from architecture and refers to
the final and fully detailed design that an architect would produce for a
building.
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168
15
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16
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17
See UN-Habitat statement that urban planning had become
increasingly important in managing climate change because well
planned cities provide a better foundation for sustainable development
than unplanned cities (7/5/07, Bonn) www.unhabitat.org accessed 15
May 2009.
18
For example, the Large Cities Climate Leadership Group, Climate
Alliance, and ICLEI.
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19
173
Many African countries still have planning legislation based on British or European planning laws from
the 1930s or 1940s, which has been revised only
marginally. Post-colonial governments tended to reinforce and entrench colonial spatial plans and land
management tools, sometimes in even more rigid form
than colonial governments (Njoh, 2003). Enforcing
freehold title for land and doing away with indigenous
and communal forms of tenure was a necessary basis for
state land management, but also a source of state
revenue and often a political tool to reward supporters.
Frequently, post-colonial political elites who promoted
these tenure reforms were strongly supported in this by
former colonial governments, foreign experts and
international policy agencies: in 1950 the UN passed
a resolution on land reform, contending that informal
and customary land tenures inhibited economic growth.
In Cameroon, for example, 1974 legislation required
people to apply for a land certificate for private land
ownership. Yet the procedures were complex and
expensive and seldom took less than seven years to
complete. Few people applied, yet in 1989 the
certificate became the only recognised proof of land
ownership and all other customary or informal rights to
land were nullified (Njoh, 2003). Controls over land
were also extended to housing in the post-colonial
period. Accompanying the master plans were (and
mostly still are) zoning ordinances, which stipulated
building standards and materials for housing, as well as
tenure requirements. Without an official building
permit, an approved building plan and land title, a
house in Cameroon is regarded as informal (Njoh, 2003:
142). Yet securing these is a long and expensive process,
which most poor people cannot understand or afford.
Inevitably, the bulk of housing in African cities is
classed as informal.
Important and capital cities in Africa have often
been the subject of grand master planning under
colonial rule, sometimes involving prominent international planners or architects. Remarkably, in many
cases, these plans remain relatively unchanged and
some are still in force. The guiding vision in these
plans has been that of urban modernism, based on
assumptions that it has always been simply a matter of
time before African countries catch up economically
and culturally with the West, producing cities
governed by strong, stable municipalities and occupied by households who are car-owning, formally
employed, relatively well-off, and with urban lifestyles similar to those of European or American
urbanites. As Chapter 1 has indicated, nothing could
be further from reality.
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20
The previous chapter noted that in the global North, where these
ideas emerged in the early 20th century, there has been some movement away from these urban forms.
21
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179
22
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23
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24
Key issues are: the balance of development rights between property-owner/occupier and the state; the rights of third parties in relation
to proposed development; the conditions under which the state can
take property and/or development rights away from property-owners/
occupiers; the obligations of the state to consult/involve the public in
the making of plans which (a) establish spatial policy and/or (b)
indicate the allocation or disposition of development rights and/or (c)
indicate the means to implementation.
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25
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5.4. Conclusion
This chapter has reviewed innovative planning
initiatives and ideas in the global South. In some cases,
these represent applications of ideas tried in the global
North, but other ideas and approaches are responses to
particular conditions in Southern cities. In an unusual
case of reverse borrowing, participatory budgeting
(although wider than urban planning) was initiated in
Latin America and has been adopted by a number of
European cities. Responding to rapid urbanisation and
attempts to develop pro-poor urban policies and
strategies have been the primary areas of focus; how
to incorporate the issues of environmental sustainability
and climate change has received far less attention. The
long-standing tension between the green and brown
agendas in Southern cities still appears to be unresolved.
The chapter has drawn attention to the fact that
innovative ideas have tended to focus on how to change
the directive aspect of planning systems, and reforms
introduced by international development agencies have
tended to focus on this aspect of planning. As the Urban
Management Programme demonstrated, it was possible
to do this, but it left untouched the regulatory aspect of
planning systems, which is far more difficult to reform.
The danger has been that reformed directive planning
approaches function as an additional parallel system to
existing systems, are not institutionally embedded, and
are easily dropped when administrations or political
parties change. This indicates the importance of new
approaches which encompass both the directive and
regulatory aspects of planning systems, the linkage
between these systems, and the institutional embedding
of new ideas into the particular local culture of planning
and governance.
Of particular interest, therefore, are new approaches
which attempt to change the land use management
system in directions which can address rapid urbanisation and poverty. In practice, this has occurred where
normal market forces have been suspended, or
constrained: through state intervention in the case of
the ZEIS; or where disasters or conflict have required
emergency responses. Research into practice has also
highlighted ways in which formal and informal systems
of land and service delivery can work together to
produce new and hybrid approaches more appropriate to
the complexities of rapidly growing and poor urban
areas.
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Chapter 6. Conclusion
6.1. Introduction
The purpose of this concluding chapter is to return to
the call for new forms of urban planning which can
address issues of urbanisation, poverty and sustainability, particularly in that part of the world where the
bulk of future urban growth will be concentrating (the
global South), and to consider, given the current trends
and patterns in these urban areas, whether there are
indications as to what these new approaches to planning
might be. Chapters 3 and 5 have reviewed innovative
aspects of urban planning in the global North and South,
respectively, to see what might be gleaned from these
initiatives or ideas. A central conclusion in this paper is
that planning in many urban areas in the global South
adheres to older and outdated approaches (in particular,
master planning and urban modernist built forms) and
that a significant gap has opened up between the current
realities and future challenges of 21st century towns and
cities, and the nature and use of prevailing planning
systems. The current global financial crisis is undoubtedly exacerbating this. Understanding new and innovative ideas is important, but the point has also been
made that the reason for this gap is very often not due
to a lack of understanding or capacity, but because the
planning system can be used for reasons of political
advantage, social exclusion, and profit, and there are
therefore vested interests in maintaining the status quo.
This paper has examined some of the newer and
more innovative approaches to planning in both the
global North and South, but not in order to promote the
simplistic borrowing of best practice ideas from one
part of the world to another. In fact a central argument in
this paper is that many (perhaps most) of the
inappropriate and exclusionary planning systems in
place in the global South have been imposed or
borrowed from very different contexts, usually
(although not always) from the global North. If planning
systems are in need of change, then it is important that
this mistake is not repeated. New ideas from various
parts of the world are reviewed here to see if they can
yield principles (not models) which are more generally
useful.
This chapter firstly considers further the question of
borrowing of ideas from one part of the world to
another. It then draws on both existing and innovative
forms of planning to highlight the directions in which
planning systems might need to go, if they are to be of
relevance to issues of urbanisation, poverty and
environment (including climate change). It is also
obvious that planning systems and planning professionals on their own can make very little difference to
these issues without certain broader conditions being in
place. The aim here is not to attempt to present
solutions to Tibaijukas (2006) call for a new approach
to planning in the global South, but rather to build on the
assessment of current and new approaches to indicate a
way forward for this task. The point has also been made
(above) that with regard to one of the most important
urban planning issuesresponding to climate change
work in the field has only just begun.
6.2. On the problem of idea borrowing
A central argument in this paper has been that the
dominance of universalist perspectives on planning
(master planning, urban modernism, etc.), which have
nonetheless been shaped by the particular worldviews
and geographical regions from within which they have
originated, have impoverished and limited planning
thinking and practice, and have left it open to
accusations of irrelevance and of directly worsening
urban poverty. These perspectives have shaped a
dominant and persistent planning rationality, which in
turn sets standards of normality regarding proper
living environments, the proper conduct of citizens,
acceptable ways of reaching consensus, notions of the
public good, and so on. This concept of normality is,
however, directly at odds with the reality of sociospatial dynamics and practices in cities and regions
which have been increasingly subjected to particular
global economic forces. These practices, which find
expression in informality, in dis-orderliness, in
violations of rules and regulations, come about as
people step outside of the law in order to provide
themselves with shelter and income. In doing so, they
render themselves even more vulnerable to political and
criminal threat than they might otherwise have been.
This international transfer of urban models is not
something of the past. Despite the frequency with which
imported models fail to achieve the success which their
proponents claim for them, processes of globalisation
facilitate an increasing scale and pace of best practice
dissemination and application (Tait & Jensen, 2007).
These authors argue that the particular representations
of space contained in the international translation of
planning and urban models help to understand how they
come to be regarded as potentially universal ideas. The
essentialist, Euclidean, view of space, based on the
assumption of space as abstract (as independent of the
objects that inhabit it), and as having a determining
effect on objects (spatial determinism), allows spatial
187
requirements implied in planning and land use management systems, and the human requirements of survival
and making do under conditions of poverty and
inequality, as a conflict of rationalities (Watson, 2003,
2009). The forms and processes of land use, buildings,
activities and conduct required to meet conventional
master planning and urban modernist environments, are
simply incompatible with the fragile, fluid, improvised
and temporary practices (including informal and
illegal shelters, acquisition of water, energy, income
generation, mobilisation of networks) needed to survive
in poor environments (see Simone, 2004).26 This is not
to suggest that this conflict arises from some kind of
simple misunderstanding: it has its roots in global and
local economic and political processes which are
exploitative and which entrench inequality.
If planning is to shift in the direction of becoming
pro-poor and inclusive, a far better understanding will
be needed about the nature of this interface between
institutionalised systems of land management and
development and the survival strategies of the poor.
Some of this understanding is beginning to surface in
research on formal and informal forms of land tenure
and land management in Africa, and on practices of coproduction (see Section 5.3.2). It is at the interface
between what may sometimes be formal and informal
systems, or at other times public and private sectors, that
conflicts of rationality arisebetween politicised
technical and managerial efforts to direct human
conduct towards particular ends, and the messy and
complex reality of human efforts to survive and thrive.
Conflicts and divisions around economy, identity, race,
religion, etc. shape this reality. Significantly, the notion
of interface does not set up a questionable binary
between a will to order and something that escapes it
(Osborne & Rose, 1999). Rather, it is a site of struggle
in which engagement can take on diverse, unpredictable
and hybridised forms, having sometimes negative and
sometimes positive outcomes. It is at this site of struggle
(the interface), which is also highly contextually
specific, that the most interesting possibilities for
understanding and learning arise. Effective new ideas
about planning are most likely to arise from research
and reflective practice at this interface.
Important to an understanding of unpredictable
outcomes of engagement, is the view of planning as a
rationality of government, offering the possibility both
26
It is acknowledged that this is just one potential driver of change in
planning. Others are new environmental and resource challenges, and
new spatial and built forms of economic development in cities.
188
27
28
189
190
191
192
Roy, A. (2009). Why India cannot plan its cities: Informality, insurgence and the idiom of urbanization. Planning Theory, 8(1), 7687.
Sandercock, L. (1998). Towards cosmopolis. Planning for multicultural cities. Chichester, UK: John Wiley.
Shatkin, G. (2006). Fourth world cities in the global economy: The
case of Phnom Penh, Cambodia. In N. Brenner & R. Keil (Eds.),
The global city reader (pp. 210216). London and New York:
Routledge.
Shatkin, G. (2007). Global cities of the South: Emerging perspectives
on growth and inequality. Cities, 24(1), 115.
Simone, A. (1999). Thinking about African urban management
in an era of globalisation. African Sociological Review, 3(2),
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Simone, A. (2000). On informality and considerations for policy.
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193
Vanessa Watson, PhD teaches in the City and Regional Planning masters programme in the School of Architecture,
Planning and Geomatics, Faculty of Engineering and the Built Environment, University of Cape Town. Her research
focuses on planning theory and practice, systems of spatial planning, local governmental institutions and urbanisation
processes, and she has undertaken national and international consultancies on these issues. She has authored,
co-authored and co-edited six books and numerous articles. She is executive member of a new research initiative at
UCT: the African Centre for Cities. She is on the editorial boards of Planning Theory (UK), Planning Practice and
Research (UK) and the Journal of Planning Education and Research (JPER). She represents the Association of
African Planning Schools on the Global Planning Education Association Network (GPEAN) and is chair of this
committee.
Sustainable Development
Sust. Dev. 18, 194201 (2010)
Published online 1 July 2010 in Wiley InterScience
(www.interscience.wiley.com) DOI: 10.1002/sd.489
ABSTRACT
Although many global policies refer to the need to reconcile growth, equity and sustainability, there is little that demonstrates what this entails, especially in fast growing developing countries. The sustainable cities literature focuses on environmental constraints, and
the institutional economics literature on governance. The aim of this paper is to provide a
conceptual synthesis that makes it possible to understand the complex dynamics of technological and institutional innovation. The evolution of Cape Towns strategies to deal with
post-apartheid inequalities within a context of severe resource constraints is reviewed.
Copyright 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment.
Received 31 August 2009; Revised 11 February 2010; Accepted 9 March 2010
Keywords: sustainable urban development; sustainable resource use; sustainable cities; Cape Town; poverty; institutional change;
innovation
Introduction
IKE ALL POST-APARTHEID CITIES, AFTER 1994 CAPE TOWN FACED THE CHALLENGE OF OVERCOMING THE INEQUALITIES
of the apartheid era. A new non-racial Metropolitan Government was created to address development disparities (Haferburg and Obenbrugge, 2003; Jaglin, 2008; Smith and Hanson, 2003; Swilling, 2006;
Watson, 2002; Wilkinson, 2004).
Formerly segregated local authorities were amalgamated to ensure greater equity between rich and poor communities. Progressive municipal nance policies were introduced that remained consistent despite regular party
political changeovers (Jaglin, 2004; Smith and Hanson, 2003; Smith, 2004). However, these policies are now
coming up against complex natural resource limits, prompting new thinking about more sustainable ways of using
resources (Crane and Swilling, 2008; Swilling, 2006).
Although mainstream sustainable development discourse is replete with platitudes about the need for a balance
between growth, equity and the environment (United Nations Development Programme, 2007; United Nations,
2006), in reality there is little practical guidance in the academic literature for cities in fast growing highly unequal
middle developing countries. Except for signature cases like Curitiba and a recent Worldwatch Institute publication
(Schwartz, 2004; Worldwatch Institute, 2007), the sustainable cities literature is dominated by case studies from
developed economies where there is a capital and technological resource base for managing change without the
* Correspondence to: Professor Mark Swilling, Sustainability Institute, School of Public Management and Planning, Stellenbosch University,
Private Bag X1, Stellenbosch 7602, South Africa. E-mail: swilling@sun.ac.za
Copyright 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment
195
challenge of also dealing with the fact that anything between 25 and 75% of the urban population lives just on or
below the poverty line.
The sustainable cities literature is also largely concerned with environmental and resource use issues (Beatley,
2000; Hardoy et al., 2003; Satterthwaite, 2001), with very little mention made of the nexus between sustainability
planning, institutional governance and municipal nance (for useful exceptions see Guy et al., 2001; Heynen et
al., 2006). If it is accepted that institutions are key to effective policy interventions, then we need to turn to institutional economics, which is all about the need for appropriate institutions to drive growth and poverty eradication
(Evans, 2005; Evans, unpublished; Hoff and Stiglitz, 2001; Rodrik et al., 2004). However, this literature, does not
adequately address sustainable resource use questions.
There is, of course, a small but growing literature seeking a more explicit meeting point between ecological
economics and institutional development, both generally (Boulding, 1991; Ekins, 2000; Fischer-Kowalski and
Haberl, 2007; Greenwood and Holt, 2008; Swilling, in press) and with respect to urban development in particular
(Guy et al., 2001; Heynen et al., 2006; Hodson and Marvin, 2009). This literature provides the conceptual framework for this paper. In essence, ecological economics (and, for that matter, the bulk of the sustainable cities literature) sees natural resource limits as the fundamental obstacle to future growth and development strategies. The
conclusion is either no growth (which is not an option for developing countries) or else the decoupling of rates of
growth from rates of resource consumption (often also referred to as dematerialization) (Behrens et al., 2007;
Bringezu et al., 2004; Gallopin, 2003).
The core hypothesis of this article is that job-creating growth can be stimulated by municipal interventions that
reinforce the decoupling of economic growth rates from the rate of consumption of energy, solid waste, water and
sanitation, especially in cities facing ecological threats to these resource ows managed using traditional technologies and service delivery systems. The case study of Cape Town demonstrates that even in a highly unequal developing country city, the early signs of a trend (admittedly reversible) towards this kind of decoupling are evident.
The policies and strategies that are required to reinforce this trend are also briey reviewed. The primary research
for this analysis was conducted by the Sustainability Institute (see www.sustainabilityinstitute.net) over the period
20059, with a strong focus on urban infrastructure services (energy, waste, water and sanitation), municipal
nance and resource ows (see Crane and Swilling, 2008; de Wit et al., 2008; de Wit and Swilling, 2008; Sustainability Institute and E-Systems, 2009a, 2009b, 2009c; Swilling, 2006).1
Socio-Economic Context
There are nearly 800 000 households in Cape Town, with a rapidly expanding population of around 3.5 million
people. Just over 50% of households are poor, 16% are wealthy elite, with a relatively small middle class comprising 31% of households. Despite many political changeovers in Cape Towns municipal government since 1994, a
constant theme of successive administrations has been the need to address the service backlogs in the poorer areas
of the city. As will be demonstrated below, R9.3 billion or 47% of the municipal budget was spent on capital
and operational expenditures for energy, water, waste and sewage (EWWS) services for 2007/8. This equates to
8% of the gross geographic product (GGP) of the Cape Town metropolitan economy.
Cape Towns economy grew at an average annual rate of more than 4% between 2000 and 2006, reaching a
high of 5.4% in 2004. The economy is increasingly orientated towards nancial and business services as well as
to wholesale and retail trade (including tourism). From 2000 to 2004, economic growth was mostly driven by
consumption, but a shift towards xed investment spending in areas such as construction, electricity, gas and
water, nance and business services and trade has stimulated growth since 2004 and was expected to continue
for a few years until the global nancial crash in October 2008.
Although unemployment statistics are not considered entirely reliable, there is some optimism that overall
unemployment until 2008 was declining, from 21% in September 2005 to 15% in September 2006. Signicantly,
this estimated drop in unemployment coincided with a period of low economic growth, which may signal that
1
Funding for this research was provided by the United Nations Foundation via the United Nations Development Programme, DANIDA, Isandla
Institute and the Sustainability Institute.
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M. Swilling
underlying structural factors have started to be addressed. The post-recession recovery pattern may or may not
conrm this speculation. Absolute unemployment gures remain substantial though (almost 225 000 in 2006)
(City of Cape Town, 2006).
The core challenge that has faced ofcials since 1994 has been to nd scally viable ways to expand the EWWS
services into poorer areas while maintaining and operating the EWWS services for the city as a whole (City of Cape
Town, 2003; City of Cape Town, unpublished document; City of Cape Town, 2008; Jaglin, 2008). Since 2006
there has been a growing realization that development strategies need to address the question of sustainable
resource use. This has been recognized in government policy documents (City of Cape Town, 2008) as well as
academic literature (Clark et al., 2007; Crane and Swilling, 2008; Petrie and Ocran, 2007; Swilling, 2006). A 10%
saving on a R9.3 billion expenditure on EWWS services via efciency interventions would amount to a saving
equal to double the housing subsidy grant that Cape Town received from the national government in 2007/8.
This section draws on research by Jaglin (2008) and enriched workshops and discussions with ofcials conducted during 2007/8 with ndings reported by de Wit et al. (2008).
Copyright 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment
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As for rates, the 2007/8 budget provided for properties with lower market values to pay a lower rate than higher
value properties. Finally, since 2003/4, tariff increases have taken into account the affordability levels of poor
households below ination increases for poor households (and in some cases even decreases) compensated for
by much higher increases for richer households.
To complement the progressive aims of rates and tariff policies, the general approach to services from the mid1990s onwards was that the levels and standards applied in the former white areas must be applied to all areas.
However, from 2005 onwards, municipal engineers and the consulting industry started issuing increasingly strong
warnings that cross-subsidization coupled to funding of service expansion to achieve uniform levels and standards
of service were undermining the operating budgets.
Unsurprisingly, the CCTs capacity to continue to nance urban service delivery depends heavily on whether
the economy can grow in a way that reduces the levels of unemployment, improves the incomes of the working
poor and increases the size of the middle class.
Could a sustainable resource use approach contribute to solutions to the imbroglios described above? The institutional economics of the negative feedback loops of Cape Towns service delivery system will more than likely be
exacerbated as the costs of water, sanitation, energy and solid waste are driven upwards as the nancial implications of regional resource constraints start to take effect. Unless the ecological economics of resource ows is taken
into account, the chances are that, despite the commitment to universal services approved in 2003, the poor will
lose out over the long run. What the ecological economics of sustainable resource use potentially offers is systemwide efciencies (doing more with less) and cost reductions at strategic points in the system (in particular the
capital costs for more appropriate technologies, and system-wide operating costs).
These summary data are derived from the results of a set of research reports compiled by research teams managed by the present author
(de Wit et al., 2008; Sustainability Institute and E-Systems, 2009a, 2009b, 2009c). Supplementary data have been drawn from the work of
Gasson (2002)and Hansen (2010).
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M. Swilling
stronger sensitivities to growth are apparent in energy use and solid waste generation, but lower sensitivities are
apparent for electricity use and inuent received at wastewater treatment plants. The percentage change in water
used per percentage change in economic and population growth is the most volatile, and even negative for ve
out of the ten years. An interesting disparity is that, although growth in energy use has strongly increased from
2004 to 2006, growth in electricity use has declined from a high year-on-year growth of 4.8% in 2001/2 to 2.1%
in 2006/7.
Unlike water and electricity use, where there has been absolute and relative decoupling over the past decade,
during the period 19982007 waste ows have grown at 7% per annum. More recent research based on updated
data reveals that, in response to the introduction of limited waste recycling by the CCT and the growing volumes
of building rubble recycled and reused by private sector operators since 2006/7, there is evidence of absolute
decoupling since then.
This analysis suggests that future projections of the demand for EWWS services cannot simply be generated via
the linear extrapolation of an economic growth or a population coefcient. The growth factors that are used for
projections by the city are as follows.
Electricity: 2.7% for 2007/8 and 3.5% thereafter (City of Cape Town, 2007). Water use: 3% pa unconstrained
demand (Department of Water Affairs and Forestry, 2006). Solid waste: 7% (without waste minimization) (City
of Cape Town, unpublished document).
The growth factors referred to above are important projections, which provide strategic estimates of required
capital and operating expenditure on EWWS services. However, they are out of line with the actual rates of growth
of these resource-intensive services.
Towards a Synthesis
If it were possible to factor out the ecological economics of resource constraints, then Cape Towns challenge of
nancing the full inclusion of everyone into the citys service infrastructure would be articulated purely in terms
of the institutional economics of EWWS expenditures, governance arrangements (including private sector investments), economic growth and the size of the tax base. Instead, it has been argued that resource constraints must
be taken into account because if the technologies of service delivery remain the same, a severe blockage to future
economic growth is inevitable, with negative implications for the poor who will suffer the consequences of unemployment. The early signs of decoupling suggest that it may well be possible to do more with less this needs
to be factored into future planning and budgeting. Recent work by Hodson and Marvin, who analysed the activities
and aspirations of the C40 Cities Climate Leadership Group, suggests that many cities are now identifying resource
constraints as the core focus of their institutional investment strategies, resulting in signicant and far-reaching
changes in their socio-technical systems (Hodson and Marvin, 2009).
This is, in effect, where ecological and institutional economics meets to provide a new point of departure for
urban theory and city governance. Specically, it will mean reconguring the technologies and governance of
EWWS services in order to manage resource ows through the city in ways that both enhance developmental
growth and restore eco-system services. Like the global cities that Hodson and Marvin discuss (2009), the following key infrastructure alternatives are already being considered by ofcials and high-level strategies that span the
public bureaucracies, inuential private consulting companies and universities.4
Water and sanitation. In 2007 the CCT adopted a radical new water demand management strategy, which if
properly and fully implemented over time could cut total water consumption by 50% against 1999 levels.
Energy. Nearly 50% of Cape Towns energy is derived from oil, primarily for transportation, with just on 30%
provided by electricity sourced from a mix of coal, nuclear, hydro- and solar power. The solutions lie in reducing
oil dependence to 25% by increasing the use of electried transport (trains, trams, electric vehicles) and busses,
4
Once again, these alternatives are drawn from the research reports compiled by the Sustainability Institute (2009; 2009a; 2009b) that have
already been cited and subsequent research by de Wit that was commissioned by the Sustainability Institute (de Wit and Nahman, 2009).
These reports thoroughly explore the various alternatives.
Copyright 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment
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and then implementing the Western Cape Provincial Governments proposal to install 7452 MW of renewable
energy power generation (wind, wave, solar, hydro-, solar thermal and pumped storage), which is substantially
more than the total supplied by coal (2600 MW) and nuclear (1800 MW).
Solid waste. Cape Town disposed of 2.9 million tons of waste in 2007, with only 0.4 million tons recycled.
During the course of 2009, the CCT put in place an Integrated Waste Management Bylaw that could result in
the recycled fraction increasing to a total of 1.2 million tons (41% of total). This would be achieved by getting
richer households to separate their waste at source, diverting most of the building rubble and compostable green
waste into recycling operations, and paying for waste in informal settlements and low-income suburbs.
Conclusion
By merging the insights from institutional economics and ecological economics, it has been possible to identify
the challenges and opportunities from a sustainable resource use perspective. There is evidence that without much
collective and concerted effort the rate of consumption of materials and energy (natural resources) in the Cape
Town metropolitan economy is starting to decouple from economic growth rates. Budgetary planning in the EWWS
sectors should no longer rely entirely on economic and population growth coefcients as a basis for forward projections for capital and operating expenditure. The decoupling trends that have been identied in all three sectors
do not appear to be temporary aberrations. It needs to be recognized that the continuation of unsustainable
resource use may well negatively affect economic growth and, therefore, unemployment reduction if municipal
infrastructure systems fail to be congured to do more with less. By enhancing the citys capacity to fully spend
the capital budgets of, in particular, the EWWS departments, substantial capital injections will be made into the
Cape Town metropolitan economy that will reinforce the kind of growth that has pro-poor effects and benets. If
these investments demonstrate in practice that a lot more can be done by reducing the material and energy ows
through the citys networked infrastructures, then it becomes possible to envisage employment-creating growth
taking place that is less constrained by municipal infrastructures. If this does happen, then a larger tax base is
created that can then be used for funding the improvement of operations, maintenance, refurbishment and
upgrade. By contrast, business as usual will mean nancial investments in infrastructures that will require more
and more resources at precisely the moment when these resources are becoming increasingly expensive as resource
constraints set in.
Acknowledgements
This paper draws on earlier research jointly conducted by the present author and Martin de Wit (see de Wit and Swilling, 2008;
Swilling and de Wit, in press).
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DOI:10.1068/b31103
Faculty of Technology, Policy and Management, Delft University of Technology, PO Box 5015,
2600 GA Delft, The Netherlands; e-mail: ellenb@tbm.tudelft.nl, e.f.tenheuvelhof@tbm.tudelft.nl
Received 27 July 2003; in revised form 14 September 2004
Abstract. Governance to support sustainable development always seems to encounter the same
difficulties. The chances of successful governance increase when governance arrangements are better
tuned to the environment that it tries to change. However, a better fit leaves less room for change.
Governance arrangements supporting sustainable development are more prone to failure, as they aim
at changing that environment. Radical institutional change is at the core of sustainable development,
but without the help of external factors, such as major crises like the oil crisis in the 1970s, the sense
of urgency for such radical change is lacking, and incremental change seems to be the only road
available. The authors explore how governance arrangements deal with this recurring barrier to
institutional change. Their conclusion is that the more governance arrangements respect the institutional context in which they are used, the higher their quality. To speed up the incremental track, the
design of governance arrangements should include positive incentives for actors to cooperate.
48
their acting in accordance with institutions, the institutions are confirmed and
reconfirmed. Institutions are therefore often referred to as `the rules of the game'
(March and Olsen, 1989; Weimer, 1995). As in games, institutions influence decisionmaking to a large extent, but they do not determine the course and outcomes of the
game (Ostrom, 1990).
The great advantage of institutions is that they bring structure into chaos and they
make the world, including policy processes, more predictable; but at the same time, the
reliability and predictability of institutions make them difficult to change (Hendriks,
1999). Within a stable institutional environment, actors formulate the governance
arrangements by which they try to change some of the organizations, patterns, and
practices: actors try to change the institutional environment, an environment that is
resistant to change (Clay, 1994; Holm, 1995; Hood, 2002). From the point of view of
this institutional rigidity, contingent governance design is to be preferred: to a certain
degree, governance arrangements should match the institutional environment in which
they are to have effect. Otherwise, the chances that they will fail are high (see, for
example, Hajer, 1995; Weaver et al, 2000).
A complicating factor is that many of today's policy problems, such as sustainable
urban development, are ill structured. They consist of multiple dimensions and causeand-effect chains which are complex and difficult to determine unambiguously. The
problems are dealt with at different administrative levels, such as local, regional, and
national or international levels, and there are different issues at stake that receive
attention from actors from different networks. In sustainable urban development
processes, for example, the actors involved belong to networks formed around issues
such as housing, construction, planning, energy supply, and water management, and
the problem is addressed in multiple arenas in which actors from different networks
participate and in which the actors are guided by different rules for interaction. The
heterogeneous character of the institutional environment of complex policy problems,
with the multiple networks, interaction patterns, interdependencies, rules, arenas,
etc, makes contingent governance design a difficult task, which is likely to end in
highly incremental, piecemeal decisionmaking that will not result in groundbreaking
changes.
In the Netherlands policies for sustainable urban development, as developed in the
1990s, have been based on the concept of governance and contingent design (Glasbergen,
1995). The basic idea was that governance arrangements were more likely to be
successful when they were tuned to the environment, with its multiple actors and
institutions, in which they were supposed to have effect. From the 1989 National
Environmental Policy Plan (Ministry of Housing, Spatial Planning and the Environment,
1999) onwards, governance arrangements were therefore formulated in close cooperation
with stakeholders, and institutional factors played an important role in governance
design. Fifteen years later it is interesting to see whether these governance arrangements have contributed to institutional change and what factors in the governance
design have contributed to the success or failure of these arrangements.
The quality of governance for sustainable urban development
In this paper we explore the complicated relationship between governance and institutional change within a rather elementary framework. The aim of the framework is that
it should be able to identify the institutional changes to which a governance arrangement has contributed, and the factors in the design of the arrangement that have
contributed to its success or failure.
The framework is constructed from different theories in governance, which evaluate
governance from a process point of view and not from a substantive point of view, as is
49
50
51
urban development, and how these arrangements manage to combine rational with
communicative elements effectively.
Another reason for selecting these particular governance arrangements is of a more
practical nature: we have studied them for other research assignments, and we therefore
had much material available for the analyses that we wanted to performranging from
reports and documents to transcripts of interviews with key stakeholders. The results
from the individual studies of these cases have been discussed with representatives of
the key stakeholders involved.
In the following sections the arrangements are only briefly described, as they have
previously been documented at length.(1) Our emphasis here is on the analysis of the
arrangements. After the description of the arrangements, they are evaluated by the four
criteria of our framework. Each section ends with a table summarizing the analysis, and
our conclusions are to what extent the arrangement has contributed to institutional
change that enhances sustainable urban development.
Case 1: the spatial contours arrangement
Space is a scarce good in the Netherlands. In white papers on spatial planning, the
Netherlands government sets out the spatial planning policies for the coming five to
ten years. It is left to the provinces and the municipalities to implement these policies
in their provincial and municipal spatial plans. The 1993 white paper, the Vinex
Vierde Nota over de Ruimtelijke Ordening Extra (Ministry of Housing, Spatial Planning
and the Environment, 1993) introduces policies to restrict urbanization of the countryside by concentrating new urban developments in or adjacent to already urbanized
areas. The goals of these policies are threefold: (1) to protect the spatial and ecological
values of the countryside; (2) to reduce the need for mobility; and (3) to improve
support for urban facilities. The spatial contour is a new instrument introduced in
the white paper to implement this policy. Other important instruments in this arrangement are nationally planned large-scale residential developments, the so-called Vinex
locations, indicated on a map in the white paper; and a municipal quota for housing
and business parks allocated by provincial governmentan instrument that already
existed. The spatial contours add a spatial dimension to this quota instrument; the
quota should be realized within the contours.
The spatial contours are an administrative version of medieval city walls: red lines
indicate the borders for urbanization. The contours have to be implemented by the
provincial governments by drawing red lines around the urbanized cores of the municipalities on the maps of their provincial spatial plans. They have to do this for all
municipalities that fall within the nationally restricted areas indicated on the map in
the white paper. The red lines have to be tight, leaving municipalities just enough room
for the dwellings and business parks allocated to them for the next ten to fifteen years.
The national inspectorate for spatial planning, an enforcement agency of the Ministry
of Housing, Spatial Planning and the Environment, has to approve the provincial plans
of which these contours form part. Besides the `national' contours, the white paper also
indicates areas in which provincial governments should implement the contours. The
main difference from the national contours is that here the provinces are free to choose
the way they implement the contours, as long as they add a spatial dimension to their
urbanization policies.
(1) The
case study about the national packages for sustainable building is presented in Van Bueren
et al (2001) and in Van Bueren and Van Keeken (2000). The spatial contours case study is described
in detail in De Bruijn et al (1998) and in Van Bueren (1998).
52
Although simple in design, the spatial contour instrument led to highly polarized
debates during its implementation stage. Municipalities saw this instrument as an extra
form of intervention by higher authorities in a decentralized policy area. Moreover,
they were restricted in their own spatial developments in favor of the Vinex locations,
which were situated in large municipalities and whose commercial success depended on
there being sufficient demand for dwellings. Many of the municipalities confronted
with the contours consisted of small villages in the countryside that already faced a
housing shortage, which was forcing young people to move out of their home towns,
and declining support for facilities such as shops and public transport. Instead of
a debate on spatial quality, the drawing of the contours led to a dispute between
national, provincial, and municipal authorities about decisionmaking powers and the
problems of small villages that feared for their existence.
The provincial authorities were caught in the middle of these disputes. As implementers of the national policy, they had to deliver the contours in their provincial
plans. These had to be approved by the national inspectorate for spatial planning,
which is responsible for implementing national policies. Some provinces performed
their task to the letter and became deeply involved in instrumental debates with the
municipalities about the exact location of the red lines, sometimes even at the level of
individual dwellings and premises. Other provinces claimed that this was not their
concern, and they trusted the municipalities to make proposals for the contours. Some
provinces and municipalities refused to collaborate at all, claiming that this policy did not
contribute to the spatial quality of the urban environment; however, the Minister of
Housing, Spatial Planning and the Environment finally forced them to comply.
The provincial contours offered more room for constructive debates about spatial
quality. Municipalities were allowed to draw the contours in collaboration with other
municipalities. In some cases, this led to detailed studies of the spatial quality of the
urban cores, their surroundings, and their future potential. Plans were developed that
were based on spatial quality, as intended by the governance arrangement. Although
the contours in these plans might not be as rigid and tight as expected, the plans took
account of the transition area between towns and countryside. Drawing the contours
from a regional point of view allowed solutions for the problems of small villages to be
sought on a regional level, which offered more opportunities than did problem solving
on an individual level.
We now analyze the success of the spatial contours arrangement for the four
variables in our framework.
Satisfactory policy outcomes
The national contours did not lead to satisfactory policy outcomes. Although the
contours were drawn on the provincial maps, it is not expected that they will contribute to the formal policy goals within the intended period of ten to fifteen years.
Many of the municipalities had already planned developments for housing and business parks, plans for which the legal procedures had already been started and which
could not be withdrawn. As a result, the contours could not be drawn as tightly as was
intended in the white paper. The contours are not likely to contribute to spatial and
ecological values in the countryside in the next few years. The contribution to the other
two policy goals can also be questioned. These policy goals were formulated from the
point of view of the Vinex locations and the municipalities where they are built. The
small municipalities point to the increasing dependence of their inhabitants on cars to
reach the facilities in the cities. The link with the support for urban facilities is rather
indirect, with many other interfering variables, and it is very difficult to claim any
contribution of the contours arrangement to this goal yet.
53
In some cases the provincial contours have led to more satisfying policy outcomes.
The provinces and municipalities had the freedom to implement the contours in such a way
that they reached the best trade-off between their own interests and the environmental
interests, that is, the ecological values of the landscape.
The spatial contours were presented and formulated from the point of view of the
large municipalities where the Vinex locations were planned, and not from the point of
view of the small municipalities that faced the restrictions resulting from the contours.
These small municipalities perceived the contours as a red border that threatened their
existence by diminishing the opportunities to build the new dwellings needed to
support facilities.
The provincial contours left more room for interpretation, which the provincial
and municipal authorities used to reframe the contours in line with their interests and
goals. The provincial contours acknowledged the authority of municipalities for their
spatial policies. Decentralizing the responsibility for drawing the contours made great
demands on the self-organizing capacities of local authorities. The interdependencies
between local authorities turned out to provide sufficient checks and balances to make
sure that the package deals were in line with the formal policy goals of the spatial and
housing policies.
Cognitive learning about the nature of sustainable development
In theory, the Ministry of Housing, Spatial Planning and the Environment, which
issued the white paper, assumed that drawing the contours would lead to a debate
within municipalities about the values of the landscape in the urban cores and the
surroundings. This debate would not only form the basis for fixing the contours,
but would also provide incentives to reflect on the ways in which the space was used.
For instance, the land scarcity created by the contours would lead to a revitalization
of derelict places in urban cores rather than to the building of new residential areas in
the countryside.
However, these learning processes did not take place in the case of the national
contours, and the contours were discussed from a rather instrumentalist point of view.
Municipalities and provincial authorities, hardly willing to collaborate, were drawing
lines on the map without much reflection. There was no incentive to stimulate discussions about spatial and ecological qualities. Neither the white paper nor the ministry
provided criteria or guidelines for drawing the contours, even though municipal
and provincial authorities explicitly asked for guidelines. Furthermore, the spatial
contours were not clearly linked to other issues about spatial quality in the urban
environment, which had a prominent place on the political agenda at the time. There
was no learning process about spatial and ecological qualities. Instead, the municipalities questioned and contested the national contours and the policy goals they should
contribute to, sometimes in coalition with the provinces, and the contours became
nothing but red lines on maps. In addition, the contours were established for a period
of ten to fifteen years. Considering that the time span for local politicians is four years
at most, the contours offer many municipal governments enough space for urban
developments in the period that they are in office. They experience no incentive
to learn about spatial qualities or to use the space within the contours efficiently;
they assume that their successors will find ways to deal with the lack of space or will
succeed in obtaining more space.
The freedom offered by the provincial contours offered more opportunities for
cognitive learning processes. Municipalities, often in collaboration with other municipalities in the region, explored the present and potential ecological and spatial values
in the urban landscape and the surrounding countryside, as well as the way in which
54
a symbiosis between the two could be established or improved. In these cases the
contours were integrated into plans and developments, instead of being just red lines
on a map.
Changed patterns of interaction
As we have seen above, the national contours in particular led to strategic learning
processes in which municipalities tried to make the contours as wide as possible and
the provincial and national government tried to make them as narrow as possible.
Local authorities claimed that the red lines left them insufficient room to meet
demands for urban activities like housing, offices, and recreation. According to the
national spatial and housing policies, problems like these should be solved on a
regional level. Making the red lines the problem of individual local authorities, and
sometimes even of individual urban cores, enabled the municipalities to reframe the
debate on a local level. The debate was no longer about spatial quality. It was reframed
in terms of the survival of local communities, a debate in which municipalities put
much effort into claiming more space than was needed and into finding ways to avoid
the restrictions of the red contours.
Case
Result
Satisfactory
policy
outcomes
national
contours
nooutcomes
frustrating for all
actors
Arrangement ignores
decentralized decisionmaking powers;
autonomous developments (planning
procedures already started);
goals and interests of actors to be
governed.
provincial
contours
yesoutcomes
are satisfactory
to all actors
Arrangement
makes use of existing institutions and the
self-organizing capacity of regional
actors;
adds a new dimension to existing
interaction patterns;
offers actors to be governed
opportunities to couple contours with
other goals and interests;
relies on interdependencies preventing
misuse.
national
contours
nothe rigid
definition of
contours left
no room for
learning
provincial
contours
yesactors have
learned about
present and
future spatial
qualities in their
region
national
contours
nointeractions
were restricted to
formal
interactions
provincial
contours
yesspatial
quality has
become an issue
on the agenda of
regional arenas
Arrangement
has resulted in new arenas in which the
regional contours were discussed;
has been anchored in existing
institutional structures.
national
contours
nostrategic
learning by all
actors
Implementation arrangement is
characterized by
mistrust and denial of interdependencies;
instrumentalist approach to the contours
by all parties;
lack of incentives to comply with
arrangement;
making a collective problem a problem
of individual municipalities.
provincial
contours
yesroom for
package deals
Cognitive
learning about
the nature
of sustainable
urban
development
Changed
patterns of
interaction
56
Social learning did take place in the case of the provincial contours. Implementing the
contours on a regional level made the area in which spatial and environmental qualities
should be established much larger. It enabled actors to seek win ^ win situations
between spatial qualities in the urban areas and the countryside. In some cases the
package deals were extended to other issues of local concern, which required coordination on a regional level. The regional approach of the contours offered opportunities to
deal with the contours in existing arenas in the region, which will also provide an arena
for implementing the policy goals of the contours in the future.
Summary and conclusions
Table 1 summarizes the successes and failures of the spatial contours, and the most
important institutional explanations. Based on this overview, the following conclusions
can be drawn about the contour arrangement. The most important question is, of
course, that of whether the arrangement contributed to sustainable institutional
change. For the national contour arrangement the answer is no. The process was
frustrating to all actors, and did not lead to any learning or changes in interactions;
the minister in office has proposed the complete abolition of the national contours
in the near future. The provincial contours present a more positive story. In the provinces
studied, sustainable institutional change took place: new and durable patterns of
interaction emerged, with an explicit focus on sustainable regional development.
The provincial contour arrangement succeeded in mobilizing regional forces that were
interested in sharing and developing knowledge about sustainable regional development,
whereas the national contour arrangement discouraged initiatives of municipalities in
this direction. The provincial contour arrangement offered provinces and municipalities the opportunity to mold the provincial contours to an arrangement in which policy
goals in adjacent fields could be integrated, and which could become part of the
existing institutional structures. The national contours did not offer this possibility of
matching the arrangement with the institutional context. Instead, the national contour
arrangement ignored the decentralization of powers with respect to local planningand
was contested because of this.
Case 2: the national packages for sustainable building
The Netherlands national packages for sustainable building are packages of measures containing dos and don'ts for sustainable building. The goals of the packages were twofold:
(1) to harmonize and disseminate the knowledge on sustainable building amongst all
actors in the building sector; and (2) to put an end to the diversity in the sustainable
building requirements formulated by municipalities, that is, the harmonization of decentralized policies (Ministry ofHousing, Spatial Planning and the Environment, 1995).
The idea for the packages was laid down in the 1995 white paper on sustainable
building by the Ministry of Housing, Spatial Planning and the Environment (1995).
This white paper launched many policies and activities to put sustainable building on
the agenda of Netherlands policymakers, practitioners, researchers, and, of course, the
building sector. To create support and commitment for the ideas in the white paper, it
appealed to the self-organizing capacity of the building sector. Government intervention
and involvement were to be reduced to a minimum.
The building sector, whose interests were at stake in these packages, was happy to carry
out this task. The existing checklists formulated by the municipalities or environmental
organizations endangered their interests; the checklists tended to ban products and
practices without clear scientific evidence. There was also great variety in municipal
policies, which resulted in high interaction costs. The building sector had to negotiate
with each municipality separately about the local sustainable building policies.
57
The building sector used its existing institutional structures, such as networks,
organizations, and procedures, to set up the national packages. This resulted in
four national packagesone for each subsector. The packages were developed in a
relatively short time. The package for residential buildings was published in 1996
(SBR, 1996); for nonresidential buildings in 1998 (SBR, 1998); and for urban planning
(Nationaal Dubo Centrum, 1999) and for infrastructures in 1999 (CROW et al, 1999).
Each of the packages was developed by a platform consisting of umbrella organizations, private and public, within the building sector. The packages for residential and
nonresidential buildings, and for infrastructures, were developed within stronger
institutional structures than was the case for the package for urban planning. Urban
planning is a profession rather than a sector, and as such is not as strongly dominated
by industrial and commercial interests as are the building sectors: this resulted in
a package that differed from the other three.
The packages for residential and nonresidential buildings and for infrastructures are
widely known and used (Ministry of Housing, Spatial Planning and the Environment,
1999). They have become a sort of a sustainable building standard in the Netherlands.
These packages have similar structures and have been developed in similar processes;
they are therefore grouped together in the following analysis. They present measures in
a simple and clear format; they use lifecycle analysis (LCA) as the scientific method
to prove the sustainability of measures; they classify the measures according to
the sustainability issues to which they contribute; and they give a cost indication
of the measures. Decisions within the platform (for example, about the proposal and
revision of measures) should be based on unanimity. The measures are presented
on paper and on CD-ROM; and the CD-ROM especially directs users quickly to the
measures that are relevant for the project they are working on. The package for urban
planning is well known, but not widely used. It is presented as a book, with lots of text
and pictures, and pays a lot of attention to the pros and cons of measures and the
interference between the measures.
The status of the packages is diffuse. Although initiated and approved of by the
Ministry of Housing, Spatial Planning and the Environment, they were formulated by
the building sector. The packages are applied on a voluntary basis, although various
national, provincial, and local government organizations encourage the use of the
packages.
Determination of the success or failure of the national packages according to the
variables of the analytical framework gave the following results.
Satisfactory policy outcomes
The building sector has succeeded in harmonizing knowledge about sustainable building and in disseminating this knowledge amongst the target groups within a short
period of time. This outcome is satisfactory both for the ministry and for the building
sector. The packages for residential and nonresidential buildings and for infrastructures are widely known and used. The urban planning package is also widely known,
and the actors involved in formulating the package are also satisfied with the result.
However, this package is hardly used, despite special workshops on how to use it.
The building sector saved a lot of time by using existing institutional structures
to establish the packages. The interaction costs were limited to setting up a new arena
for interaction and designing decisionmaking rules, but it was possible to copy most of
these institutions from existing arenas and rules. The actors involved in setting up the
urban planning package could not fall back on existing institutions that were familiar to all.
The actors involved in setting up this package thus had to invest a lot of time and effort
in the development of an arena for interaction. The absence of strong institutionalized
58
structures was again felt when the urban planning package was ready for use: a natural
distribution chain was lacking. In addition, the incentive structure to use this package
was less strong than in the other three cases. Group pressure was lacking and by the
time it appeared, in 1999, sustainable building was less prominent on the political
agenda than it had been in 1996 and 1997 when the packages for residential buildings
and commercial buildings were published.
The package for infrastructure, which also appeared in 1999, was less troubled by
the lack of public and political attention as the target group consisted of actors who
were well organized and it was dominated by a number of large constructors and by
the Directorate-General of Public Works and Water Management the ministerial
department that is responsible for the construction, maintenance, and exploitation of
public works in the Netherlands and is the main principal in assigning projects in this
field.
Cognitive learning about the nature of sustainable development
59
than on shared interests in sustainable development. This has had effects on the
decisionmaking rules in the packages platforms. They are directed more towards
protecting commercial interests than towards supporting sustainable building.
LCA, for example, is a method that can be manipulated because the results depend
heavily on the assumptions used. The sustainability ambitions of the measures were
based on the extra costs compared with the use of traditional materials and practices,
without considering future benefits. And the requirement for unanimity of votes
made certain that only those measures which were acceptable to all, that is, those
measures with moderate sustainability ambitions which were easy to apply without
much disruption of the building process, were adopted.
The package for urban planning was also developed within an arena that was
especially created for this purpose but, unlike the arenas for the other packages,
this arena could not make use of strongly developed rules for interaction and
decisionmaking. This created the opportunity to focus strongly on sustainability
ambitions, instead of on the protection of interests, but it led to a lengthy process
in which not much attention was paid to the representation of interests and to
the needs and wishes of potential users. There were no clear criteria to decide
on the content of the package and the link with financial implications of the suggested measures was limited, whereas cost is a dominant factor in decisionmaking
in building projects.
The absence of existing institutions in the case of the urban planning package did
create the opportunity to focus on sustainable urban planning. However, when complete, the package could not command the same authority as the other packages, and a
distribution channel was lacking. Also, although there was no coordination with the
other packages, the urban planning package made use of the same jargonwords such
as `package' and `measures', words that were in contradiction with the professional
freedom of the urban planner who considers each assignment as a unique one to which
no blueprint applies. By presenting the many lessons on sustainable urban planning in
the form of a package with measures, the package could not count on the sympathy of
its potential users.
Changed patterns of interaction
The packages for residential and nonresidential buildings and for infrastructures were
developed in arenas that were specially created. However, existing patterns of interactions and interdependencies amongst actors in the building and construction sector
formed the basis for these arenas. The advantage of these new arenas was that they
offered actors the opportunity to focus the discussion on sustainable building and on
the design and implementation of the packages, and thus this did lead to some new
interactions that had not taken place before. For example, it created arenas in which
industry, research institutes, and governmental and nongovernmental organizations
could discuss sustainable building. Because only umbrella organizations were allowed
to participate, it also contributed to a further structuring of the industry: industries
that wanted to participate in the debate to protect their interests had to join one of the
participating organizations.
The creation of new arenas to develop the packages led to very goal-directed
processes in which new patterns of interaction were formed. However, the interactions
in these arenas were strongly influenced by the existing interdependencies amongst
actors. The strict rules for interaction and decisionmaking in the building and construction industry also dominated the interactions in the newly created arenas, and
commercial interests influenced decisionmaking heavily.
60
Table 2. Explanation of the success or failure of the national packages for sustainable building.
Success
or failure
Case
Result
Satisfactory
policy
outcomes
packages for
residential
and
nonresidential
buildings and
infrastructures
yespackages
created
sustainable
building
standards that
are widely used
urban
planning
package
nono
harmonization
and dissemination of
knowledge
packages for
residential
and
nonresidential
buildings and
infrastructures
nodiffusion of
existing
knowledge, but
no development
of knowledge
urban
planning
package
yesactors
involved in
formulating the
package learned,
and the package
offers its readers
the same
opportunity
packages for
residential
and nonresidential
buildings and
infrastructures
yesbut these
interactions are
dominated by
existing rules and
interdependencies
urban
planning
package
nonew arena
was created but
durability of
arena is
questionable
Cognitive
learning about
the nature of
sustainable
urban
development
Changed
patterns of
interaction
61
Table 2 (continued).
Success
or failure
Case
Result
Social learning
about
implementation
of sustainable
urban
development
packages for
residential
and
nonresidential
buildings and
infrastructures
noespecially
strategic learning
by actors
urban
planning
package
yesthe package
offers lessons on
this in theory,
but these lessons
are not applied
a LCAlifecycle
analysis.
Although interaction patterns have changed, the assumption that continuation of these
interactions provides opportunities for learning is not valid in this case. The high entry
barriers and the strict decisionmaking rules within the arenas reduce the chance of
innovative ideas or perceptions on sustainable building gaining ground in these platforms.
In 2004, the arenas in which the packages are updated and revised still exist, but the
changes are of an incremental nature, aimed at a piecemeal tightening of the measures and
at improving the usability of the packages by adding new functionalities in the software.
The package on sustainable urban planning led to the creation of an entirely new
arena that did not come out of existing structures. Actors participated out of interest
in the issue of sustainable urban planning, and because they felt they could make a
contribution to the issue. Only the umbrella organizations, such as the association of
town and country planners and the association of architects, felt the need to participate
because of the interests that they represented. Together, the participating actors had to
determine the scope and goal of the package and the measures it would contain. There
were no clear rules for decisionmaking. Actors who did not support the idea of such
a package with measures for sustainable urban planning did not participate, and the
actors who did participate, like the associations mentioned, did not have the power to
ensure that the package was used nor could they provide incentives to members to use
the package. In the case of the urban planning package new interactions were created,
but these interactions were not institutionalized. After the creation of the package the
interactions did not continue.
Interactions between the arenas in which the different packages were developed and
revised were limited to cases of double membership of some of the participants. The
content and format of only two of the packagesfor residential and for nonresidential
buildingswere tuned to each other to some degree. This was because the developments
of these packages were prepared by the same consultancy firm and the negotiations were
chaired by the same research institute. Coupling between the substance and format with
the other packages was restricted to the accidental participation of the same actor in more
than one arena. The result is that the packages, each addressing different spatial scales,
do not present a coherent vision on sustainable urban development, and some of the
measures in the different packages are even in contradiction with each other.
62
Actors especially learned strategically. They used the opportunity to frame the sustainable
development concept in accordance with their interests. On the level of the development of the packages, they learned how to get their product or process a `sustainability'
label. On the level of the implementation of the packages, they learned how to give
their building project a `sustainable' label with a minimum of cost and effort. Incentives to future learning processes about sustainable urban development were limited.
Because of the procedure for revision of the packages, changes in the packages
will only be incremental, that is, measures will be modified, added, or removed. The
decisionmaking rules thus reward strategic behavior.
The improvements in the user interface of the packages are especially aimed at
making it easier to integrate the measures in the planning process. However, the result
is that users are even less aware of the rationale behind the measures, and they are
stimulated to use the packages in an instrumental way, without much reflection.
A lack of coordination between the packages is also seen in the implementation
of the measures. The lack of coordination between the measures in the different packages
prevents integrated design of the urban environment. There is no identification of
interference among the measures or contradictions between the packages.
The package for urban planning pays more attention to social learning. Specific
chapters are dedicated to the integration of the package in urban planning processes.
However, these learning processes remain theoretical because of the limited number of
users of the package.
Summary and conclusions
Table 2 summarizes the analysis of the national packages for sustainable building.
Based on this overview, we can answer the question of whether the arrangement has
resulted in institutional changes that contribute to sustainable urban development. At
first sight, one would be inclined to answer this question positively for the packages for
residential and nonresidential buildings and for infrastructures. After all, the packages
have resulted in the creation of new arenas that still form a place to exchange perceptions on sustainable building in the different sectors, and the packages are widely used
in building practice. On second sight, however, the new arenas have not led to any
change in the interdependencies amongst actors in these sectors. Also, the packages
have not led to a greater knowledge of sustainable building amongst their users, and
the institutionalization of the packages in building practice seems to block rather than
stimulate innovation in this field.
What seems to have happened is that the building sector has successfully captured the
concept of sustainable development into packages that they consider to be acceptable. By
making the packages highly contingent to the institutional context in which they are
supposed to have effect the arrangement managed to get the support from the actors
whose behavior it aimed to change, but the changes were of such an incremental and
incidental nature that there were no resulting institutional changes to facilitate further
developments in the field of sustainable building and sustainable urban development.
Also, the package for sustainable urban planning did not result in institutional change.
Although actors involved in developing the package succeeded in developing knowledge
on sustainable urban planning, they did not succeed in disseminating this knowledge.
They overtly focused on the content of the package, emphasizing the importance of
the message that they wanted to bring, and they did not pay much attention to the
audience and its characteristics, such as the strong professional codes that make urban
planners insusceptible to lessons in the form of generally applicable principles and
measures.
63
Conclusions
The case studies clearly show the dilemma central to this issue: the tension between
governance and institutional change. With the national contours, central government
aimed for radical changes by pursuing a strategy in which substantive views on how
municipalities can contribute to sustainable urban development were forced upon
stakeholders, thereby ignoring existing patterns of interactions and interdependencies
between actors. Instead of sustainable urban development, this strategy contributed
to strategic actor behavior and undesirable outcomes. The provincial contours resulted
in more positive conclusions: by giving stakeholders the opportunity to tune the
meaning and form of the arrangement to their own goals, interests, and institutions,
the contours came to be based on a mixture of substantive and process criteria.
The national packages for sustainable building followed a contingent approach,
leaving the design and implementation of the governance arrangement to the building
sector. In the case of the packages developed for subsectors which are characterized by
strong institutional structures, the results are arrangements that outstandingly achieved
the formal policy goals, but which failed to contribute to learning processes about
sustainable urban development. Institutional change did take place, but the changes
make only a limited contribution to sustainable urban development. With the urban
planning package, actors participating in the development of the package aimed for
more radical changes, but ignored the institutional environment in which these changes
should materialize and the package could not realize its ambitions.
The cases show two recurring strategies in governance design that explain the
success or failure of the governance arrangements. The first concerns making use of
existing institutional structures. To improve the institutional fit of the arrangement with
its environment, it is important that actors or stakeholders in this institutional environment have the opportunity to tune the arrangement to this environment. After all,
they know best what this environment looks like and what rules and relationships
should be respected. In addition, this contributes to the efficiency of the arrangement
by saving on the costs required to establish new patterns of interactions and rules
for decisionmaking, and to the effectiveness of the arrangement by making the actors
responsible for the arrangement produced.
The second strategy accounting for the success or failure of governance arrangements is the extent to which actors have the opportunity to reframe the arrangements.
Reframing the arrangement provides actors with the opportunity to couple the policy
goals to their own goals and interests, and to tune the arrangement to other decisionmaking processes. In this way, use can be made of the interdependent relationships
between actors; actors often depend on each other on multiple issues, in multiple
policy arenas, and at multiple moments in time, which gives them the opportunity to
create package deals and thus transform zero-sum games into win ^ win situations.
In combination, these strategies can contribute to the success of governance
arrangements. But even when governance arrangements are designed according to
these strategies, they are likely to lead to incremental rather than radical changes.
For example, the arrangement of the packages for residential and nonresidential
buildings and for infrastructures followed a strategy aimed at an institutional match
and which gave actors the opportunity to reframe the arrangement.
Of the case studies in this paper, that of the provincial contours arrangement
seems to offer the best mix of these strategies. Provinces force municipalities to draw
contours, but leave the organization and actual framing of the contours to the municipalities themselves. The municipalities, who in many cases already cooperated with
other municipalities in their region on other issues of regional concern, used these
arenas to discuss and draw the contours. This allowed the municipalities to present the
64
contours as part of an integrated plan which addressed the problems of the region from
several points of view, such as spatial planning, ecological development, and housing.
This forced the municipalities to set the priorities for the sustainable development of
their region themselves, and reduced the risks that they would make excessive claims
on one of the issues addressed in the plan. By making the contours part of the
integrated plan, the municipalities also committed themselves to continued interactions, decisionmaking, and innovation on this point, which increases the chances
of more radical changes in the long term.
The inclusion of incentives in the design of governance arrangements may increase
the likelihood of more radical institutional change resulting from the arrangement.
In the case of the provincial contours, the following incentives were part of the design.
(a) Reward compliance, that is, on the issue of the contours or on another issue.
(b) Benchmark the proposals of the regions. Some of the plans were presented and
promoted by the provincial authorities as `best practice'.
(c) Safeguard continuation of the development and implementation of the contours by
coupling them to other decisionmaking processes.
(d) Stimulate innovative ideas on the contours. This reduces the risk that spatial
quality, the value promoted by the contour arrangement, will be exchanged for other
values to which the contours are coupled.
(e) Put pressure on the decisionmaking process. The municipalities were free to
suggest plans for the contours themselves within a limited amount of time. If they
exceeded this time limit, the provincial authorities would draw the contours for the
municipalities.
Together, strategies and incentives such as those mentioned in this section are able
to keep alive the learning processes about sustainable urban development initiated by
governance arrangements. They can do so without ending as satisfactory processes
with unsustainable outcomes, or in dialogues of the deaf, in which parties involved
all claim to pursue sustainable, but different, goals, resulting in unsatisfying and
stagnated decisionmaking processes.
To conclude, there is one incentive in the provincial contour arrangement that we
have not mentioned: the presence of the national contour arrangement. It is possible
that the rigid red contour regime might have provided a strong incentive for actors to
develop and implement the provincial contours as intended by national government
and to refrain from strategic behaviour. The potential threat, where strategic behavior
by municipalities falling under the provincial contour arrangement could be `punished'
for strategic behavior by making their land part of the national contour arrangement,
perhaps created a strong incentive for actors to cooperate.
This brings us back to policy practice in which governance design is often based
on a mixture of substantive, rational, theories of planning and decisionmaking and
of communicative, process-oriented theories. The contour arrangement shows that a
combined design may contribute to sustainable institutional change. It would be
worthwhile to explore the potential of such a strategy in future empirical research,
especially because the strategy seems to answer the needs of policymakers who want to
aim for substantive, ambitious, goals while respecting the institutional environment
as wella combination that is also increasingly asked for by citizens, who call for
visionary politicians who take their needs into account.
Acknowledgement. This publication is the result of work carried out at the Delft Center for
Sustainable Urban Areas.
65
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66
DOI:10.1068/a38269
Department of Geography, Durham University, South Road, Durham DH1 3LE, England;
e-mail: H.A.Bulkeley@durham.ac.uk; Matt.Watson@durham.ac.uk
Ray Hudson
Abstract. From recent debates on governance and governmentality, two key analytical imperatives
arise: the need to engage simultaneously with the structures and processes of governing, and the need
to recognise the plurality and multiplicity of governing sites and activities. In seeking to address these
imperatives, we develop an analytical approach, the modes of governing approach, which engages with
the rationalities, agencies, institutional relations, and technologies of governing that coalesce around
particular objectives and entities to be governed. Drawing on the example of municipal waste
management, we illustrate how this framework can illuminate the dynamic and multiple nature of
governing, and outline the key modes of governing which currently shape the policy and practice
of municipal waste.
Introduction
As the ``territorial order of modern government'' implodes (Hajer, 2003, page 183),
scholars of public policy are forced to confront not only how policy is made and
implemented, but also the political arenas, institutional arrangements, and networks
within which such processes take place. Reflecting the challenges this presents to social
and political sciences, concepts of governance have been increasingly deployed and
debated, opening up new perspectives on the institutions and structures of governing
(Jessop, 1997; Jordan, 2001; Kooiman, 2003; MacLeod and Goodwin, 1999; Pierre and
Peters, 2000; Rhodes, 1996). In this paper, we build upon this to offer an alternative
analytical framework for considering the processes of governing, one which draws on
literature of governance and governmentality to analyse the multiple modes through
which governing takes place.
In developing this framework, we draw on research conducted over the period
November 2003 ^ October 2005 which examined the changing UK waste policy landscape and the processes and practices of governing waste in the North East of England.
The research involved the analysis of UK and regional waste policy documents and
approximately fifty interviews with national and regional policy makers; three detailed
case studies in Newcastle City, Durham County, and Stockton Borough Councils
involving analysis of the development of municipal waste policy through documentary
analysis, semistructured interviews, and workshops; and the study of six different
`waste practices'including furniture reuse, cloth nappy promotion, kerbside box
schemes, home composting, the use of civic amenity sites, and a children's education
campaignthrough interviews with public and professional practitioners, and participant observation.(1) Through this research, we found existing frameworks for
considering environmental governance wanting, both in relation to their engagement
(1) Details of the `Governing sustainable waste management' project and its findings can be found
via http://www.dur.ac.uk/geography/research/researchprojects/.
2734
with the processes through which governing occurs and in providing a means through
which to consider the relations between policy and practice.
In the first part of the paper we examine the literature on governance, metagovernance, modes of governance, and governmentality and derive two key analytical
imperatives for developing research in this area: the need to engage simultaneously
with the structures and processes of governing, and the need to recognise the plurality
and multiplicity of governing sites and activities. In seeking to address these imperatives, we develop an analytical approach, the modes of governing approach, which
engages with the rationalities, agencies, institutional relations, and technologies of
governing that coalesce around particular objectives and entities to be governed.
In the second part of the paper, we consider how the modes of governing framework
can be used to illuminate the policies and practices of governing municipal waste. We
argue that a `diversion' mode, bearing the hallmarks of advanced liberal government
(Dean, 1999), has come to dominate municipal waste policy in England. However,
this mode is simultaneously unravelling as it encounters particular places and seeks
to enrol households and individuals in ever more complex waste practices. At the
same time, alternative modes of governing, notably those based on the objective of
eco-efficiency or seeing waste as a resource, are also important in shaping municipal
waste policy, opening up new possibilities for defining waste and the nature of
sustainability. (2)
In this paper our aim is to develop an analytical framework which can capture the
dynamic and multiple nature of governing, attending to its forms and processes, and
the ways in which policy and everyday practice are structured, mediated, and evolve.
We use the case of municipal waste policy in the UK as illustrative, and in conclusion
consider how such an approach might be developed within the arena of environmental
politics and policy more broadly.
Governance and governmentality
In the wake of a growing consensus that ideas of the nation-state as a single site of
political power, as a unified and discrete entity, and as territorially sovereign in the
traditional Westphalian sense are to be rejected, debate is growing over how governing
can be conceptualised. Broadly defined as the means for ``authoritatively allocating
resources and exercising control and co-ordination'' (Rhodes 1996, page 653) or as
``purposive acts of `steering' a society or polity'' (Lowndes, 2001, page 1961), the
term `governing' implies a focus on how collective action is organised and conducted.
For some, the state has been all but replaced in the shift from `government'
to `governance' (Rhodes, 1996), while, for others, governing continues to take place
`in the shadow of hierarchy' (Scharpf, 1994, in Whitehead, 2003, page 8). However,
neither account adequately addresses the complexities of how authority is attained,
maintained, and exercised, with the practice of governing. In this section, we review
the governance debate, examine those approaches which have sought to engage with
a plurality of governance modes, and consider how the concept of governmentality
might be employed in order to overcome the limitations of governance approaches
and to enable an analysis which recognises the plurality of modes of governing.
(2) The
2735
Given the popularity of the term and its deployment in a range of different fields, a
diversity of interpretations of `governance' is to be expected. It is possible to identify
three readings of governance around which arguments have coalesced. In the first, and
broadest, interpretation of governance, it is seen to incorporate a diversity of governing
processes, including those associated with the state (hierarchy), coordination and
cooperation among social and political actors, as well as self-governing mechanisms
(Kooiman, 2003). Governance is simply used to ``refer to the modes and practices of
the mobilisation and organisation of collective action'' (Coafee and Healy, 2003,
page 1979). Governance is here a catchall term, conceived as `the instituted process'
that is created by and serves to guide processes of governing (Lowndes, 2001,
page 1961). In contrast to this broad approach, the second reading of governance
is associated with one particular form of governing and institutional arrangement,
that of steering and coordination through networks or partnerships between (state
and) nonstate actors (Borzel, 1998, page 260; Haahr, 2004, page 210; Kohler-Koch,
1999; Schout and Jordan, 2003; Skogstad, 2003). Here, governance is seen as a means
of governing which necessarily involves nonstate actors, acting either in self-governing
networks or in partnership with state bodies, and is defined in opposition to hierarchical forms of authority associated with the processes and institutions of government.
The possibility therefore arises of `governing without government' (Rhodes, 1996). A
third reading of governance is as a multilevel phenomenon, taking as its starting point
the shifts which are occuring in the role and functions of the nation-state, upwards to
international and transnational organisations and institutions, downwards to cities and
regions, and outwards to nonstate actors (MacLeod and Goodwin, 1999). Originally
conceived as a basis for the analysis of transitions within processes of decision making
within the European Union (EU) (Hooghe and Marks, 1996; Jordan, 2001), the concept
has since been extended to different political arenas
Despite the popularity of the term, a critique of the value of governance as ``both
an analytical category... and an empirical shift'' (Whitehead, 2003, page 6) has arisen.
At the heart of such criticisms are concerns that the focus of the governance literature
has been on identifying and describing new institutional arrangements, rather than on
explaining ``how and why these structures are being produced'', while at the same time
the emphasis ``on transition and change within political and economic relations'' has
been questioned (Whitehead, 2003, page 6; see also Davies, 2002). Moreover, there
is significant potential for analytical confusion across and within different governance
interpretations. Certainly, engagements with the concepts of governance have shifted
attention away from the nation-state as the sole location of (political) authority and
have opened up analysis of the arena of governing to multiple actors and across
multiple domains. However, seeking to identify (multilevel) governance as analytically
distinct from government, or interpreting all forms of political relation as governance,
obscures an understanding of how governing takes place.
Governance in the plural
Rather than reject governance concepts, some authors have sought to counter critiques
by engaging with the plural means through which governance is structured and
deployed. One such approach is that based on the concept of `metagovernance',
derived from the work of Jessop and colleagues (Jessop, 2002; 2003; Uitermark,
2005; Whitehead, 2003). Building on previous concerns with the market, hierarchy,
and network, Jessop identifies four forms of governance, ``the anarchy of market, the
hierarchy of command, the hetarchy of self-organisation, and solidarity based on
relatively unconditional social commitments'' (2003, page 228). For Jessop, the state
2736
plays a key role in processes of metahetarchy, organising the conditions for network
governance, and metagovernance, ``rearticulating and callibrating different modes
of governance'' (2002, page 241). The new institutional arrangements and forms of
interdependency which characterise governance are, in this account, created by the
(central) state as a means of pursuing its own ends, and are only partially autonomous
from the exercise of hierarchical power. One casualty of this approach is the possibility
for analytically engaging with the multiple sites through which state power is exercised.
Despite the relational and multiscalar nature of much of the work conducted in this
tradition, Uitermark (2005, page 138) suggests that the focus of the metagovernance
approach on state strategy means that ``the relation between developments on different
spatial scales ... has not been properly dealt with''. Such an account, by itself, could not
help to explain the multiple ways in which subnational governments have, for example,
been involved in the definition and pursuit of sustainable development, frequently
either independently of, or in direct confrontation with, central state strategies.
A second, and growing, body of work is concerned more explicitly with analysing
the `modes of governance' which constitute (European) polities (Borzel et al, 2005;
Risse, 2004; Tenbensel, 2005; Trieb et al, 2005). There is, however, little consensus on
what a mode of governance entails. For somebuilding on the work of Rhodes (1997),
Jessop (2002), and Kooiman (2003), amongst others modes of governance signify
different institutional arrangements ``the `hierarchies, markets and something else'
approach'' (Tenbensel, 2005, page 268). For others, the distinguishing characteristics
are the `modes of steering' involved, considered broadly as hierarchical (command and
control) or nonhierarchical (through the use of positive incentives or persuasion)
(Borzel et al, 2005; Risse, 2004), or in more narrow terms as the policy instruments
deployed for governance (Trieb et al, 2005). Some authors seek to integrate more than
one dimension in the analysis of modes of governance the structure (defined in terms
of the actors involved) and process (mode of steering) (Borzel et al, 2005, pages 4 ^ 6;
see also Risse, 2004)while others suggest that the analysis should focus only on one
dimension to retain analytical clarity (Trieb et al, 2005). While across these accounts
there is a degree of confusion as to what a mode of governance entails, they draw
attention to the multiplicity of modes through which governance is accomplished.
However, the lack of coherence and the relatively narrow interpretation of the process
of governance and how it is practised limit the utility of these approaches for our
purposes. We suggest that the concept of governmentality, with its recognition of
the relational nature of power and the multiple ways in which it is enacted, offers
an alternative basis from which to conceptualise the nature of governing.
Governmentality and the processes of governing
2737
2738
(Herbert-Cheshire, 2003, page 458). This means that, third, while ``neo-Foucauldian
theory provides a framework for examining how governmental programmes and technologies are received and experienced by sub-national institutions'' (MacKinnon, 2000,
page 311), to date little analytical attention has been directed to the geographical
variation in government, and the ways in which institutional structures, routinised
practices, and, significantly in the case of environmental issues, infrastructural networks
mediate regimes of practice. Fourth, in an approach which prioritises network relations,
there has been little consideration of the potential multiscalar nature of governmentalities (Uitermark, 2005) and of the possibilities for multiple centres of calculation.
Collectively, such criticisms suggest that governmentality approaches can appear to
lack the space for the development of alternative, and critical, politics, and for change
in dominant government rationalities (Raco, 2003, page 77).
Emerging analytical imperatives
Some authors have sought to integrate these different bodies of conceptual work,
in order to analyse practices of policy making and implementation (MacKinnon,
2000; Uitermark, 2005). Despite differences in some of the theoretical assumptions
underpinning concepts of governance and governmentality, they share common starting
pointsfor example, in seeking to unpack homogenous treatments of the state,
in stressing the importance of network forms of coordination, and in identifying the
nature of the contemporary liberal state (Uitermark, 2005, page 147). We suggest that
an approach which draws items from across this literature has the potential to address
two analytical imperatives for understanding the nature of contemporary processes
of governing. First, it provides a means of understanding the forms and processes of
governing which goes beyond either/or categories and engages with the coevolution
of the structures and means of governing. Here, governmentality can be seen to be
contributing to an understanding of how the strategic selectivity of the state takes
place, specifying the ``precise mechanisms which give state authorities the reach and
capability to monitor and steer the activities of local institutions'' (MacKinnon, 2000,
page 311). In turn, the relatively aspatial accounts of governmentality can be enriched
through those governance perspectives which draw attention to the institutional
contexts within which governmental rationalities and technologies are deployed, translated, resisted, and recast (Uitermark, 2005, page 148), and specifically by the focus
of metagovernance on the key role played by certain forms of authority in selecting
and mobilising particular forms of power ^ knowledge.
Second, accounts of metagovernance, modes of governance, and governmentality
point to the need to engage with the multiple means through which governing is enacted.
The emerging work on `multiple modes of governance' is explicit in this recognition.
At the same time, government, in the Foucauldian sense, ``is an undertaking conducted
in the plural. There is a plurality of governing agencies and authorities, of aspects of
behaviour to be governed, or norms invoked, of purposes sought, and of effects,
outcomes and consequences'' (Dean, 1999, cited in Bryant, 2002, page 268). This multiplicity is figured both in terms of competing rationalities (Murdoch, 2000, page 510)
and in the coexistence, overlap, intersection, and fragmentation of, and contestation
between, regimes of practice (Dean, 1999, page 21). As Bryant (2002, page 273)
suggests, this results in ``a number of regimes of practice which criss-cross both conventionally understood state/civil society divisions and each other.'' The ``multiple regimes
of governmentality'', which Foucault identifies, might then serve ``as the rubric for an
analysis of a range of distinct modes of pluralization of modern government'' (Gordon,
1991, page 36, emphasis in original). Here, the analytical task is to understand the
multiple ways in which governing takes place around particular objects, and within
2739
which state and nonstate subjects are variously involved (Bulkeley et al, 2005; Cowell
and Murdoch, 1999; Jessop, 1997; Jordan et al, 2003). These important insights suggest
that an approach which focuses on governance alone can not capture the elements of
multiplicity with which analysts of contemporary polities should be concerned. Instead,
we suggest that an alternative analytical framework, one focused on modes of governing, can provide a means of examining policy landscapes which brings these key
dynamics into view.
A modes of governing approach
The twin imperatives emerging from debates on governance and governmentalityto
combine an understanding of the forms and processes of governing, and to recognise
the multiplicity of modes through which they are established and exercised suggest
that a new analytical framework for understanding the nature of governing is needed.
Our contention is that a modes of governing approach offers this potential.
In our approach, a mode of governing is a set of governmental technologies
deployed through particular institutional relations through which agents seek to act
on the world/other people in order to attain distinctive objectives in line with particular kinds of governmental rationality. Each mode is defined in terms of its objectives,
and its components include: a governmental rationality, and associated objectives and
programmes (policies); governing agencies; institutional relations between the agencies
involved; technologies of governing; and the entities, in human and nonhuman terms,
which are governed (table 1). Modes do not exist as discrete entities defined by hard
and fast boundaries. Rather, an analytical approach which seeks to differentiate modes
is a means of constructively engaging with the constellation of different components
of governing which gives a mode its coherence and significance.
We suggest that this constellation is dynamic. The power and authority of governing agencies which share a particular governmental rationality are configured
through institutional relations. These in turn provide the means through which
governmental technologies are deployed to govern particular entities. At the same
time, governmental technologies can act to reshape governmental rationalities
through their material and cultural durability, and by exposing the limited reach of
such rationalities acting `at a distance'. As Murdoch (2000, page 508) contends,
``these techniques of government only work in [a] prescriptive fashion if they succeed
in keeping the complexities of space at bay. They work best if their passage from the
national to the local is unhindered.'' Once they are ``more robustly situated in particular
spatial contexts'', he argues, such technologies might ``lose their power to configure''
the action of those entities which are to be governed. The active resistance of particular
entities, or the failure of governmental technologies to reach into everyday practices
and routines, can therefore lead to shifts in governmental rationalities, in turn reconfiguring the agencies and institutional relations involved in governing processes. A mode
of governing is therefore at once a form, or structure, for governing, and a process, and
this dynamic can lead to the disintegration and formation of modes. Multiple modes
are found in any one policy area as different constellations of actors, rationalities,
technologies, institutional relations, and entities are brought together as problems are
defined and solutions sought. Below, we develop this approach in substantive terms in
relation to the case of municipal waste policy, where we argue that the concomitant
development of different governing modes is creating a fractured landscape of policy
and practice and only limited progress towards sustainability.
Mode
2740
governmental technologies
(examples)
governed entities
Disposal
Economic efficiency
Public health
Environmental efficiency
Local authorities
Regulator
Devolved
hierachy
Dustbins
Weekly collections
Landfill sites
Contracts
Best Practicable Environmental
Option assessment
Municipal waste
Ratepayers
Diversion
European Union
DEFRA
Local authorities
Multilevel
Strongly
hierarchical
Successively lower
government tiers
Individuals as passive citizens
Differentiated waste streams
Ecoefficiency
Reducing the
environmental impacts
of waste; recovering value
(waste hierarchy; meeting
targets)
Local authorities,
waste contractors,
community-waste-sector
organisations
Heterarchy
Networks
Kerbside collections
New technologies
Reuse and reduction practices
(eg nappies, compost)
Waste as
resource
Reducing the
environmental impacts
of waste; social and
economic benefits
Nongovernmental
organisations and
networks
Solidarity
Community
Provision of alternative
infrastructures and
collections
Individuals as community
members
Waste as a resource
governmental rationality
governing agencies
(policies and programmes)
N:/pdf-prep/
2741
For over a century, municipal waste management in the UK was the province of
relatively autonomous local authorities concerned with the most economically efficient
means of collecting and disposing of waste. In this disposal mode of governing,
authority lay primarily within the local state, and in particular with waste disposal
authorities, and was informed by rationalities of service delivery, economic efficiency,
and, insofar as they existed, meeting health and environmental regulations (Darier,
1996; Gandy, 1994). Institutional relations were relatively straightforward inasmuch as
they were devolved to local authorities with some oversight from the regulator, and
involved a degree of coordination between different authorities. The governmental
technologies which sustained and supported this mode of governing were largely
infrastructuralthe wheelie bin, the local tip, and the landfill site. Waste was treated
as something to be disposed of and householders seen as ratepayers doing little more
than paying for a service and putting their bin out on the appropriate day.
During the late 1980s and early 1990s, this mode of governing became subject to
problematisation. First, far-reaching changes wrought by the central state on the
structure and purpose of local government both changed the institutional structures
within which authority for waste management was created and deployed, and served to
undermine the service delivery rationality of waste policy. Second, as environmental
issues moved up public and political agendas, the regulation of waste disposal became
subject to tighter scrutiny and the remit of authorities external to local government.
Third, waste services were contracted out, either to private companies or to localauthority-owned, but `arms-length', waste disposal companies (Davoudi, 2000), creating
new institutional relations between different governing agencies in this mode of governing. With the increasing priority given to the rationality of environmental efficiency and
(3) Municipal
waste includes all waste for which local authorities have designated responsibility.
Approximately 89% of it is household waste; the remainder includes street litter, waste taken to
council recycling or disposal facilities, and waste from municipal sites.
2742
Title
Policy
developments
Policy
initiatives
Date
Description
2000
Waste Strategy 2000 includes national targets to recycle or compost at least 25% of
household waste by 2005, at least 30% by 2010, and at least 33% by 2015. It articulates the
principles of proximate disposal and self-sufficiency at a regional level, and promotes
adherence to the waste hierarchy.
2002
Published by the COSU in 2002, this report focused in particular on the barriers to
achieving EU and UK targets for landfill diversion and on the additional measures needed
to support achievement of landfill directive targets.
Municipal Waste
Management Strategies
2001
Encouraged in guidance for local authorities since 2001; joint strategies were made
compulsory in 2004 in two-tier areas to facilitate the Landfill Allowance Trading Scheme
(LATS).
2005 06
Progress review of Waste Strategy 2000 across all waste streams in the light of progress in
the UK and the development of EU policy.
Sets the planning guidance for the location and development of waste facilities. Currently
under review with the ODPM and DEFRA in response to criticism that the structure of
waste policy is too disjointed.
Waste Implementation
Programme
2003
Provides support for local authorities (such as national and regional advisory groups,
briefing notes, best practice, calculation tools); waste research (such as market
development, sustainable consumption, decision support tools); a national data strategy.
Jointly delivered with WRAP.
2003
WRAP is a not-for-profit company supported by funding from DEFRA, the DTI, and
the devolved administrations of Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland. It was established
to promote sustainable waste management by creating stable and efficient markets
for recycled materials and products, but has recently extended its responsibilities to
waste-minimisation initiatives.
2743
Table 2. National policy interventions for municipal waste management 2000 ^ 05.
Title
Legislation
Policy
instruments
Date
2004
Description
Sets the maximum amount of biodegradable municipal waste which can be sent to landfill
and establishes the LATS. Established Joint Municipal Waste Management Strategy as
compulsory in two-tier authorities, and strengthened the power of direction for counties
over their districts' waste collection activities.
Statutory performance standards for recycling and composting are complemented with nine
further performance indicators relating to waste, including proportions of waste sent for
recovery and landfill, for which targets are set locally with reference to national policy
goals.
Statutory Performance
Targets
Targets for recycling and composting waste for each local authority, determined by past
performance (less challenging targets are set in areas with historically low rates of
recycling). Typically, the targets set for individual local authorities involve a doubling of
1998/99 recycling rates by 2003/04, with subsequent targets set for 2005/06 and anticipating
further progressive targets to 2020.
2001 06
Competitively allocated funding scheme for local authorities; funding has been provided
primarily for the establishment or extension of kerbside collection of dry recyclables or
green waste.
WRAP
2001
2003 04
Funding
schemes
2744
Table 2 (continued)
Title
Funding
schemes
Date
Description
Demonstrator Programme
2003
2004
2005
Local authorities will receive 45 million in 2005/06, 105 million in 2006/07, and 110
million in 2007/08. In 2005/06, 40 million will be allocated directly to local authorities and
the remainder to a pilot project (see below). The allocation of finance is based on
population, commuters, and day visitors, and relative waste operatives wage costs in each
local authority area. From 2006/07, DEFRA has expressed a preference to allocate funding
in two-tier areas to a partnership of authorities.
2005 06
5 million available for pilot projects to evaluate the costs and benefits of different types
of incentive schemes for reduction, reuse, recycling, and composting (though not home
compost bins).
2003
In the 2002 Spending Review, 355 million was allocated for waste infrastructure over the
period 2003/04 2005/06, while an additional 275 million PFI credits were allocated in
the 2004 Spending Review for the period 2006/07 2007/08.
Table 2 (continued)
2745
2746
New sources of funding have been fundamental in technically enacting the dominant
rationality of the diversion mode. Awards under one such initiative, the Waste Minimisation and Recycling Fund (WMRF), were largely devoted to the roll out of kerbside
recyclables collection, involving the provision of dedicated containers to households, the
deployment of new dedicated vehicles and collection teams, as well as local publicity.
Another priority under the fund was the upgrading of civic amenity sites to `household
waste recycling facilities', through infrastructural provision enabling the separation
of waste. The WMRF has therefore been a governing technology in itself, through which
central government has enrolled local authorities to effect changes to waste infrastructure.
As infrastructural technologies are likewise shiftedfrom single bins and local tips to
green boxes, blue bags, kerbside recycling collections, household waste recycling facilities,
and so onthe entities to be governed are recast. Far from being passive, households are
transfigured into active citizens, needing to fulfil their civic responsibilities for the sorting
and recycling of waste (Darier, 1996), while waste itself is unbundled from a lumpen mass
into constituent components of differentiated values.
As Murdoch (2000) suggests, governmental technologies not only are reflective of
particular rationalities, but constitute the domains to be governed. Through these
processes, multiple governing agenciesat the EU, national, and local-authority
levelshave been created through which waste collection and its separation into
different streams, with different destinations, are being conducted. The hierarchical,
multilevel nature of the institutional relations through which this mode of governing
is constituted and worked in turn means that agents are constructed as both subjects to
be governed (national governments governed by the EU, local authorities by national
governments, and households by local authorities), and authorities which should
entrain others into their governmental network (national governments over local
authorities, and local authorities over other local actors).
As this mode of governing has emerged, it has become the subject for its own
problematisation from central government (COSU, 2002). Concern has focused upon
whether, in conditions of growing waste volumes, the national targets will be met.(4)
In response, governmental technologies which specifically seek to divert biodegradable
material from landfill have been deployed with increasing fervour (table 2), including
new policy initiatives, instruments, targets, indicators, and incentives. The use of
targets, financial incentives, and performance measures as governmental technologies
is a central feature of advanced liberal government. As Raco and Imrie (2000,
page 2198) suggest, ``discourses of monitoring, appraisal, performance targets, and
feedback mechanisms have come to dominate and structure the actions of local players.''
The constant and immutable character of numeric indicators of performance (such
as tonnes of waste recycled) allows governing agencies both to define the object to be
governed, and to compare, evaluate, reward, and sanction agents, effectively enabling
`governing at a distance' to take place. In relation to municipal waste, as elsewhere, the
achievement of targets, in this case for recycling, composting, and the diversion of
biodegradable waste from landfill, becomes the basis of governing, so that the conduct
of government is self-reflexive. However, as Murdoch (2000, page 508) contends, governmental technologies are not all encompassing and, in encountering the geographies
of particular places, they can lose their ability to govern at a distance, leading to the
potential unravelling of any one mode of governing.
(4) In 2003/04, 19% of municipal waste in England was recycled or composted (DEFRA, 2005a).
This slightly exceeds the statutory target of 17% by 2003/04; this represents a significant increase
from 6% in 1995, but leaves substantial ground to be made up to meet the national target of 25%
by 2005/06.
2747
As the diversion mode of governing encounters the particularities of place and everyday practice, its coherence starts to unravel and new modes of governing start to
crystallise. With the introduction of the technologies of performance which characterise
the diversion mode, and in particular the achievement of targets, local authority actors
have become increasingly dependent on, but demanding of, private contractors, while
at the same time needing to engage with those community-sector organisations whose
experience with the waste management sector takes them beyond the back gates and
kerbsides where local authority waste relations with households tend to terminate. It is
at this relatively local level that a key alternative mode of governing, the eco-efficiency
mode, can be identified. The governing rationality in this mode is one of moving waste
management options up the waste hierarchy, though, in addition to the global premises
2748
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processes through which governing takes shape and recognise the multiple sites
through which governing takes place. We suggest that the modes of governing approach
provides a framework in which there is the conceptual space to conduct critical
analysis of the structures and practices through which authority is exercised, maintained, and contested; such a framework has relevance beyond the environmental
domain.
Acknowledgements. We wish to thank our colleagues Kye Askins and Paul Weaver for their
contributions to the project. The project team acknowledges the support of H J Banks and
Co. Ltd funders of the project through the Landfill Tax Credits Scheme, facilitated by Entrust.
We are also grateful for the support of the International Centre for Regional Regeneration and
Development, University of Durham. Finally, we wish to thank our many respondents for the
time and support they have given to the project.
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