Governing Urban Sustainability: Comparing Cities in the USA and Germany by Lisa Pettibone

Author:Lisa Pettibone [Pettibone, Lisa]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Technology & Engineering, Public Policy, City Planning & Urban Development, Agriculture, Political Science, Sustainable Agriculture
ISBN: 9781317125440
Google: WOsGDAAAQBAJ
Goodreads: 29999540
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2016-04-22T00:00:00+00:00

Plans and Sustainability Principles

Although all the cities studied here developed some sort of strategic plan, the last section highlighted that sustainability was generally not the main goal of these plans. Thus it is important to evaluate the extent to which the plans studied here incorporated sustainability principles. This is done on the basis of both the plans’ content and their development process. Most of the plans studied here addressed all five principles to some extent, but to different degrees. Long-term considers and policy integration, which reflected complexity, were seen as the two principles best incorporated into plans and planning. These principles are also key to good planning, independent of sustainability consideration. Most plans included deliberative elements by including the public or key stakeholders in key ways, but more work is needed to help structure and guide such processes. Acknowledgment of limits and reflexivity were the least well incorporated principles, particularly considering the importance of growth in most plans. In many cases it was difficult to operationalize these principles for the planning context: for example, how long is “long-term”? As such, this analysis should be understood as an early attempt to evaluate urban strategy plans based on sustainability principles. Further development of such evaluative techniques is needed.

Acknowledgment of limits. This principle was the least well incorporated into the plans. To some extent, this reflects the challenge of operationalizing limits in an open system like a city. Some cities mentioned limits, but few policies were seen in these plans to reduce cities’ resource use to some limited total. Still, climate change reduction targets were included in all plans, and some cities’ land-use policies reflected an understanding of limited space. On the other hand, most of the plans studied here were developed to deal with growth. While Portland and Seattle sought to manage what they saw as inevitable growth, Hamburg’s 2002 vision framed population growth as necessary for quality of life and, indeed, sustainability. Hamburg, New York, and Berlin discussed growth as both inevitable and positive for the city.

Long time scales. All plans studied used an initial timeframe of at least 20 years, suggesting limited relevance of this principle. Because much of a city’s built environment must stand for 100 years or more, long-term planning can be advantageous. At the same time, projections have proved unreliable, making accurate long-term planning difficult. It is thus not necessarily advantageous for cities to develop plans longer than 20–30 years in advance. However, many plan updates did not extend the target year, reducing the long-term dimension of the plan. This issue also demonstrates limited reflexivity in planning processes.

Systems-thinking. All plans, by virtue of being strategic, acknowledged complexity or used a limited systems approach. New York in particular made explicit the interconnections between different policy areas; one of Hamburg’s visions mentioned the complex interactions between policy sectors. Full inclusion of this principle would require coherent multi-level planning (that is, at the regional and state level), which several cities have attempted. The biggest shortcoming of the plans seen here is where they are developed and implemented within city government.

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