Chapter Title: INTRODUCTION: SUSTAINABLE CITIES IN SUSTAINABLE SOCIETIES

Chapter Author(s): David Simon

Book Title: Rethinking sustainable cities

Book Subtitle: Accessible, green and fair
Book Editor(s): DAVID SIMON
Published by: Bristol University Press; Policy Press

Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctv47w457.9

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 1
INTRODUCTION:
SUSTAINABLE CITIES IN
SUSTAINABLE SOCIETIES
David Simon

Sustainable urbanisation has moved to the forefront of debate, research

and policy agendas over recent years. There are numerous reasons for
this, differing in precise combination across countries and regions.
Among the most important of these is a growing appreciation of the
implications of rapid urbanisation now occurring in China, India
and many other low- and middle-income countries with historically
low urbanisation levels. Much of this urbanisation is emulating
unsustainable resource-intensive patterns from high-income countries,
with the demonstration effect enhanced by greater global mobility,
globalisation of architectural and urban planning consultancies and
construction firms, and the power of the media and information and
communications technologies.
Similarly, the related challenges posed to urban areas and regions
worldwide by climate/environmental change have now become more
widely understood and the urgency of taking action increasingly
appreciated, even in poor cities and towns. This constitutes remarkable
progress from a situation of just a few years ago when such arguments

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 RETHINKING
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fell on deaf ears since the problems were held to be too distant in the
future compared to meeting immediate demands for scarce resources.
Almost everywhere, the realities of fluctuating and unpredictable
weather patterns, and especially the increasing frequency and severity
of extreme events, as well as extensive loss of life and both economic
and environmental damage, are changing perceptions among elected
urban representatives, officials and residents alike.
A key marker of the increasing importance of urban issues is how
they have risen up the international agenda. This is symbolised by the
inclusion of a specifically urban Goal (no 11) – to make cities inclusive,
safe, resilient and sustainable – in the set of 17 Sustainable Development
Goals (SDGs) adopted by the UN at the 2015 General Assembly. The
SDGs have now replaced the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs)
from 2016 (Parnell, Chapter Four, this volume; Simon, Chapter Three,
this volume). Unlike the MDGs, the SDGs were formulated through
an unprecedentedly lengthy and diverse consultative process involving
national and sub-national governments, international agencies, non-
governmental organisations (NGOs), the private sector and community
organisations in every country. Importantly, too, the Goals apply to all
countries, regardless of per capita income or position on the Human
Development Index. This demonstrates the shared fate of humankind
in the face of sustainability challenges, be these related to inadequate
access to the resources for meeting basic needs and an acceptable
quality of life or to excessive consumption and the associated health,
resource depletion and environmental problems.
Symbolically, too, given their consistently growing demographic,
economic, environmental and socio-cultural importance worldwide,
cities and other sub-national entities were mentioned explicitly for
the first time in the Paris Agreement reached at COP21 of the United
Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) in
Paris in early December 2015. This gives special recognition to the role
of urban areas in meeting the climate change challenges. Meanwhile
the New Urban Agenda, launched officially at the Habitat III global
summit in Quito, Ecuador, in October 2016, and which will shape
global efforts to promote more sustainable urbanisation and urban areas

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 1. INTRODUCTION
WHAT YOUTH WORKERS DO

for the following 20 years, has been under active preparation through
UN member states and diverse stakeholder groups worldwide.
That the importance of urban sustainability is now receiving wide
recognition represents the first prerequisite for progress towards that
objective. However, therein lies a double paradox. While it might
at first sight seem feasible to make well-resourced, orderly towns
and cities in high-income countries more sustainable, changing the
entrenched resource-intensive, high-consumption economic processes
and lifestyles there, and the power relations and vested interests bound
up with them, will require immense effort, finance and political will.
Conversely, to many people, the widespread poverty, resource and
service deficits and chronic traffic congestion of large, fast-growing
cities in poor countries represent the ultimate challenge or ‘wicked
urban problem’. Yet, although powerful vested interests exist there too
and can be highly resistant to change, the example of Lagos under the
previous governor, Babatunde Fashola, demonstrates how an energetic
champion untainted by personal corruption, committed to the cause
and possessing the right connections can bring about remarkable results
in a relatively short period, even in the face of some of the most severe
problems in any megacity.
Naturally, though, however sustainable or otherwise, cities do
not exist as isolated islands of bricks, concrete, steel, glass, tarmac,
corrugated iron, wood and cardboard. Indeed, they form integral parts
of wider natural and politico-administrative regions, as well as national
and supranational entities, on which they depend for resources, waste
disposal, human interaction and the circulation of people, commodities
and finance. Urban areas can lead or lag in sustainability transitions
but ultimately sustainable towns and cities exist only as components
of more or less sustainable societies. This is both a truism and shown
historically, with evidence accumulating from various ancient urban-
based societies on different continents (Simon and Adam-Bradford,
2016). This further complexity creates ‘boundary problems’ since
the interactive systems span often numerous administrative areas,
complicating yet further what are already complex development,
economic, environmental, political, social and technical challenges.

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 RETHINKING
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Sustainability is itself a complex and contested notion at all spatial

scales, containing diverse elements, some relatively easy to measure and
others more qualitative. Moreover, like development, sustainability has
the triple characteristics of being simultaneously a normative aspiration,
a state of being and the means of attaining that state. It has been
theorised, appropriated, used and abused in numerous discourses and
practical applications, to the point that some critics claim that – also like
development – it has lost any usefulness. Some of these complexities
are examined in the urban context in Chapter Three, especially the
differences between ‘weak’ and ‘strong’ sustainability discourses,
policies and practices and the need to integrate economic, socio-
cultural and environmental dimensions within holistic approaches.

Distinctiveness of this book

While the literature on various aspects of urban sustainability is

substantial and growing apace, the immediate justification for this
book is its originality and the absence of any comparable volume.
Most existing books adopt specific conceptual approaches, deal with
particular countries or regions, and/or focus heavily on environmental
and/or economic aspects. Many of the books on equity/fairness
within sustainability (such as Agyeman, 2013; Agyeman et al, 2003;
Atkinson and Wade, 2014) are not specifically urban in focus. Some
of these issues, as well as broader concerns relating to urban inequality
and poverty, are well covered elsewhere, with a range of theoretical
and more applied emphases (see, for instance, Myers, 2011, 2016;
Pieterse, 2008; Pieterse and Simone, 2013; Satterthwaite and Mitlin,
2014; Tannerfeldt and Ljung, 2006). However, the early books on
sustainability challenges in cities, which appeared some two decades ago
(such as Pugh, 1996; 2000) reflect the thinking and concerns of that
time, whereas debates and our understanding have moved on. Many
more recent urban titles provide general introductions to the role of
urban planners or urban planning principles and practice, nowadays
increasingly emphasising sustainability (for example, Rydin, 2011).

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 1. INTRODUCTION
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Others focus on particular aspects of planning (city centres,

neighbourhoods) or the UK (for instance, Flint and Raco, 2011; Imrie
and Lees, 2014). Hodson and Marvin (2014) has some similarities to
this book, especially with respect to elements of green agendas, but also
a focus on energy and other themes. Accordingly, the importance of
and reasons for organising this book around the three key dimensions
of sustainable cities, namely accessibility, greenness and fairness, are
set out below. The final section of this chapter provides an overview
of the rest of the book.
This compact book seeks to make a signal contribution to the
understanding of sustainable urbanisation agendas through authoritative
interventions contextualising, assessing and explaining clearly the
relevance and importance of three central dimensions of sustainable
towns and cities everywhere, namely that they should be accessible,
green and fair. These three dimensions inform the work of Mistra
Urban Futures (MUF), an international research centre on sustainable
urbanisation based in Gothenburg, Sweden, and operating through
transdisciplinary co-design/co-production research platforms there,
in Skåne (southern Sweden), in Greater Manchester (UK), Cape
Town (South Africa) and Kisumu (Kenya). These platforms bring
together groups of researchers from universities and research institutes,
parastatals, local and regional authorities and official agencies to identify
shared problems and to undertake joint research to find and then
implement solutions. A new partnership in Asia and/or Latin America
is planned in 2016/7 in order to establish a research presence in most
continental regions, which will enhance MUF’s ability to undertake
comparative research into principles and guidelines of good practice
and thereby to influence urban sustainability agendas at all spatial scales.
In order to assess the state of the art and to inform the second
phase of its research programme in terms of intellectual coherence,
MUF has undertaken substantive reviews of the existing literature
in relation to accessible, green and fair cities. The nature of this
work lends itself to wider distribution in order to inform evolving
urban sustainability debates and policy dialogues worldwide. Many
of these debates came together in the preparatory process for the

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 RETHINKING
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Habitat III summit in October 2016 and the ‘New Urban Agenda’
for the following two decades within the UN System and – at least
as important – outside it. That constitutes the context and rationale
for this book as local, national and international policymakers and
practitioners grapple with the twin challenges of building numerous
new urban areas (sometimes dubbed ‘the cities yet to come’) and new
urban segments in growing cities while also redesigning old urban areas
and segments in accordance with emerging principles of good urban
sustainability practice in different contexts around the world. Equally,
these principles are increasingly finding a central place in university
courses and professional training modules on sustainable cities and
urban design. Hence this book should also be of value in the classroom.
The three thematic chapters survey the origins, evolution and
diverse interpretations and applications of the respective dimensions
– accessible, green and fair – in different contexts internationally and
how they inform current debates and discourses, as set out below.
In order to provide more integrated coverage and minimise overlap,
cross-referencing has been included where appropriate.
In order to enhance the accessibility and usefulness of this book, a
selective annotated list of relevant websites provides information on
internet resources in different aspects of the theory, policy and practice
of urban sustainability to the diverse audiences at which this book is
aimed, not least urban practitioners.

Organisation of the contents

In Chapter Two, ‘Accessible cities: from urban density to

multidimensional accessibility’, James Waters advocates the concept
of ‘accessible cities’, where accessibility is the freedom or ability to
obtain goods and services and urban opportunities of various kinds to
facilitate human wellbeing. Multiple dimensions of the concept are
discussed, as well as how it might be achieved in different contexts.
In these terms, accessibility constitutes an advance over density, a
more limited but widely used term – not least within World Bank
and UN-HABITAT discourses and policy documents over many

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 1. INTRODUCTION
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years – to describe a key urban characteristic in diverse conceptual

and normative framings that include density of social networks and
employment and other opportunities. In physical terms, purported
benefits of high-density development include efficiency and reduced
environmental impact, agglomeration and economic benefits, as well as
improved social equity but the evidence is mixed and trade-offs occur.
Moreover, in some contexts, especially within poor areas of certain
South and Southeast Asian metropolises, excessive population density is
problematic. Accordingly, this chapter reflects the intellectual journey
of MUF over recent years, having initially adopted the UN-HABITAT
focus on density but now advocating multifaceted accessibility – which
also chimes with the appropriate mobility/accessibility target and
indicator in SDG 11.
In Chapter Three, ‘Green cities: from tokenism to incrementalism
and transformation’, David Simon picks up the discussion commenced
in the opening section above in explaining how sustainability concerns
in relation to urban areas have arisen, evolved and been applied over
time and in different socio-spatial contexts. Utopian thinking and
urban design, as manifest, for instance in the Garden Cities Movement,
date back to the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Explicit
urban greening initiatives can be traced back to the 1980s, although
its widespread emergence in discourse and practice is much more
recent. The diversity of meanings and associations attached to urban
greening – indicative of its appeal in numerous contexts – is examined.
Various ‘weak’ or instrumental approaches to urban greening can be
distinguished from ‘strong’ versions that imply more fundamental
transitions and transformations. In this regard, deployment of a
threefold division of socio-economic, socio-technical and socio-/
social-ecological analytical frames is helpful in aiding understanding.
The value of the ecosystem services approach to valuing natural assets
within urban areas is assessed, including in relation to green and
green–blue infrastructural agendas.
A key driver behind the recent popularisation of city greening
initiatives is the imperative of addressing climate change and reducing
disaster risk (DRR).

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 RETHINKING
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Conventional thinking has bifurcated climate change actions into

tackling mitigation versus promoting adaptation (see, for instance,
Bicknell et al, 2009; Bulkeley, 2013; Bulkeley et al, 2013). Recent
evidence shows that this is an artificial division and that carefully
targeted interventions can achieve both and also provide health
and other co-benefits. Paradoxically, too, a portfolio of individually
modest and incremental interventions can have aggregate effects where
the whole becomes more than the sum of the parts and hence has
important transformative value. Nevertheless, the challenges of political
will and resources to move beyond key thresholds of investment and
inertia are very real in urban areas of all kinds and degrees of socio-
technical sophistication. Conversely, grand high-tech eco-city schemes
may prove elitist and of very limited replicability and longer-term
sustainability, at least to the majority of poor urban residents.
Susan Parnell starts Chapter Four, entitled ‘Fair cities: imperatives in
meeting global sustainable developmental aspirations’, with questions
about what an increasingly urban world implies for fairness at the
national or global scale in the twenty-first century. She then traces
divergent and contradictory intellectual and practice-based traditions
that the notion of fairness in the city implies, including work on urban
equity (rights, opportunity, access, affordability); justice (electoral,
procedural, distributional, and enforcement); redistribution (urban
welfare and post conflict); the public good, the good city and the
right to the city. The central argument is that ideas and practices about
fairness and social, economic, environmental and spatial justice in the
city vary over time and space. On the one hand, there is appropriate
concern about rising exclusion and the withdrawal of social protection
in some centres (typically in older, more affluent cities) and from new
urban nodes (largely in the global South). On the other hand, counter-
tendencies and new innovations support the utopian aspiration that
cities will provide a better future for the millions of new residents
who will call them home.
The book ends with a substantive concluding chapter, in which
Henrietta Palmer and David Simon pull together and assess the central
strands of the book’s intellectual and practice-oriented arguments about

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 1. INTRODUCTION
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accessible, green and fair cities. They relate these to the recurrent
utopian thinking within urban planning and design, highlighting the
challenges that these imply in relation to operationalising a coherent,
if not truly holistic, urban sustainability agenda in different contexts.

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