LAND USE BUDAPEST, OCTOBER 2006 PART 2: INPUT PAPERS OF THE EXPERTS D.2.2.3

SIXTH FRAMEWORK PROGRAMME PRIORITY 8.1

THEMATIC WORKSHOP ON INFRASTRUCTURES/LAND USE BUDAPEST, 26-27 OCTOBER 2006

PART 2: INPUT PAPERS OF THE EXPERTS D.2.2.3

February 2007

The Regional Environmental Center for Central and Eastern Europe (REC) Jozsef Szlezak and Robert Nemeskeri

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SIXTH FRAMEWORK PROGRAMME PRIORITY 8.1

Contents of Part 2: Input papers of experts Input papers were provided by the following experts (in alphabetical order) Cooper, Ian: Towards Sustainable Construction – what are the potential Policy Measures and Actions in Europe? Dilly, Oliver , et al.: Visions on sustainable land use in industrial regions Farrell, Katharine N.: Towards a Sustainable Built Environment – some potential applications of Ecological Economics to support European policy making Fleischer, Tamás: Fenntartható Fejlódés - Fenntartható Kózlekedés Hull, Angela: Sustainable transport logics and the disconnection with action: a case study from England Nuissl, Henning: Land use and urban sprawl – implications for sustainability and policy measures Vida, Gabor.: Built Environment and Biodiversity: Implications for Sustainability

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Development of a Forecasting Framework and Scenarios to support the EU Sustainable Development Strategy SIXTH FRAMEWORK PROGRAMME PRIORITY 8.1 Policy-oriented research, Scientific support to policies, Integrating and Strengthening the European Research Area Fore Scene Workshop: Infrastructure/built environment Budapest, 26-27 October 2006 Workshop Input Paper:

Towards Sustainable Construction – what are the potential Policy Measures and Actions in Europe? Ian Cooper Eclipse Research Consultants, Cambridge, UK e-mail: [email protected] Introduction Authors of input papers have been asked to:  introduce their specific focal issue/area of expertise and its importance for creation of sustainability scenarios  define and describe long term sustainability goals and targets for this issue with high relevance for the activity field ‘infrastructure/built environment’  describe key elements of integrated sustainability scenarios (if possible, integrating experiences from other scenario building projects)  Define and describe key possible (policy) instruments and measures deemed promising to reach the identified sustainability goals. In this input paper, I will attempt to address these requests by: 1. referring to previous EU-funded research in this area which is used to establish a range of system boundaries, provide a conceptual framework, and outline a scenario-based roadmap against broader EU policy imperatives 2. briefly discussing current EU-level approaches to sustainable construction (especially its framing in terms of the improved environmental performance of buildings) 3. outlining the recent policy development of sustainable construction in the UK as a worked example of formulating priority issues, targets, milestones and identifying implementation mechanisms 4. pointing to alternative framings of sustainable construction and to the broad range of policy measures and mechanisms available for implementing it at a range of spatial scales 5. offering an over-arching recommendation about the future development of European policy for implementing sustainable development of the built environment. The short answer provided to the question posed by the workshop organisers – What are the potential policy measures and actions on sustainable construction in Europe? – is that this depends on: a) how broadly we frame the landing points we want to backcast our scenario from, and b) the stage(s) in the development process for the built environment that we are trying to impact. This answer is elaborated below focusing primarily on those areas that the EU can influence directly through regulation rather than indirectly through, for example, restructuring fiscal regimes or stimulating market demand. Though both of the latter are important weapons in the EU’s arsenal for promoting the delivery of a more sustainable built environment, they have to lie beyond the scope of this short input paper.

Eclipse Research Consultants

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Previous EU-funded research The EU funded BEQUEST – a ‘concerted action’ focused on building a common language and framework for assessing urban sustainability across a range of built environment professions including planners, architects, and engineers, see Curwell et al. (2005) and http://www.research.scpm.salford.ac.uk/bqextra/. Figure 1 shows the framework developed. BEQUEST Framework 6 Development Activity

Environmental & Societal Issues

Planning

Spatial level

Environmental

Strategic

Global

Nat'l Resources

Local

Time scale

Long-term < 20yrs

National

Mid-term 5-20yrs

Urban region

Short-term > 5yrs

Env'l Pollution

Property Development

City

Land Use

District Biodiversity Public

Neighbourhood

Economic Private

Estate

Design

Production Building Stock

Urban

Building Compon't & Material

Trans't +Utilities Buildings Finance Components Social Construction Access New Build Safety+Security

Refurbishment

Health & Well-being Demolition Community Operation Institutional Use Governance

Facilities Man't

Justice Maintenance Ethical Systems

Figure 1. The BEQUEST Framework (Curwell et al., 2005)

This framework emphasises that decision-making about the production of a more sustainable built environment occurs during a sequence of development stages, across a range of sustainability issues, at a range of spatial and temporal scales: not shown in the framework is the wide range of stakeholders involved, see, for instance, page 7 below. In its development of a shared, cross-disciplinary language, BEQUEST used PICABUE – probably the simplest specification of the principles underlying sustainable development distilled from the 1992 Earth Summit (Mitchell et al., 1995).

Futurity

Environment

Concern for future generations

Concern for the integrity of ecosystems

Concern that individuals are able to participate in decisions affecting them

Concern for today’s poor and disadvantaged

Participation

BEQUEST identified that each of these principles needs to be applied to each issue, at each development stage and spatial and temporal scale. Use of PICABUE has revealed that those involved in providing the built environment feel most capable, through what they do at work, of delivering against the Environment principle and least able to do so against the Participation and Equity principles (Cooper, 2002 and Eclipse, 2006).

Equity

Figure 2. Graphic representation of PICABUE sustainable development principles (Cooper, 1997)


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Figure 3 was produced to help BEQUEST identify where it should focus its attention. Increasing complexity Sustainable Development

Sustainable Communities Sustainable built environment

Sustainable Construction

Increasing number of actors Figure 3. Four potential landing points for the construction industry on sustainability issues (CRISP, 1999)

As the nested boxes imply, the construction industry can simply attempt to put its own (sectoral) house in order or, by building cross-boundary coalitions with:  planners, help to deliver a more sustainable built environment, and  those involved in social and economic development, help to deliver more sustainable communities. INTELCITY was a follow-on EU-funded project focused on exploring new opportunities for sustainable development of cities through the intelligent use of Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs), see http://ndmodelling.scpm.salford.ac.uk/intelcity/. It sought to integrate the knowledge of experts in sustainable urban development (SUD) and ICTs to deliver a roadmap that relates the range of potential ICT development options to planning and urban re/development processes, see Figure 4. EU Policy Goals: 2010 Knowledge Society

INTELCITY Landing Places

2003

2006

Basic eSkilled, SustainabilityAware Society

2008

2030 Sustainable Development

2013

Environmentally Responsible Networked Society

2030

Culturally Cohesive Post Fossil Fuel Knowledge Society

Sustainable Society in Smar t Cities – the eAgora

Key SUD Research Steps Sustainable Aware Soc. Common vision Participation Meeting pollution targets

Environ mentally responsibl e Society & Life-styles CSR Political stability Conflict resolution

Culturally Cohesive Society Agreed SD/SUD Plans Sustainable post fossil fuel lifestyles

Sustainable Society Closed urban metabolism Fully implemented incentive system e-planning

Development of Sustainable Knowledge City Vision Up 2006

Up to 2008

Up to 2013

Beyond 2013

e-Skilled Society.

Networked Society

Knoweldge Society

e-Agora

Enabling protocols & standards.

Implement IOSCP

Ambient Intelligence

Integrated SMART City implemented

Intelligent city systems

IOSCP based eGov.

Full eDemocracy

Nano tech’y data capture

DSS linked to sensors

Dematerialise goods + e-services

ICT interoperability Specification of IOSCP

Key KS Research Steps

Figure 4. INTELCITY summary roadmap diagram showing related EU policy goals


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The EU Sustainable Construction Agenda When Rydin et al. (2006) reviewed the EU’s sustainable construction agenda recently, they identified four relevant components:  the European Working Group for Sustainable Construction (2001) which produced an agenda report focused on promoting the competitiveness of construction sector  the Directive on Energy Performance of Buildings (CEC, 2002) – to be followed in 2009(?) by a CEN standard on the Environmental Performance of Buildings  the Standing Committee on Construction whose work includes producing standardised methods for assessment of building through life-cycle analysis (CEC, 2004a), and  the draft for consultation of the Urban Thematic Strategy (CEC, 2004b). The draft strategy saw sustainable construction as: “… a process where all the actors involved … integrate functional, economic, environmental and quality considerations to produce and renovate buildings and a built environment that is: o attractive, durable, functional, accessible, comfortable and healthy to live in and use, promoting the well-being off all that come into contact with it o resource efficient, in particular with respect to energy, materials and water, favouring the use of renewable energy sources and needing little extra energy to function, making appropriate use of rain water and ground water and correctly handling waste water and using materials that are environmentally friendly, that can be readily recycled or reused, that contain no hazardous compounds and can safely be disposed of o respects the neighbourhood and local culture and heritage o is competitively priced, especially when taking into account longer term considerations such as maintenance costs, durability and resale prices.” This draft appeared significant because it recognised that sustainable construction is concerned with more than just the environmental performance of buildings and the use of resources. It also embraced that sustainable construction has contributions to make to people’s well-being (quality of life) and, beyond individual buildings, to neigbourhoods and to cultural heritage (i.e. to the ‘sustainable communities’ level in Figure 3). However, the final version of the Urban Thematic Strategy (2005), adopted by the Commission in January 2006, emphasised process rather than the substantive themes listed above and mentioned sustainable construction specifically as a means of addressing climate change. The Sustainable Construction and Climate Change agendas It is clear that the agendas for sustainable construction and climate change do overlap, especially around the shared issues shown at the centre of Figure 5. Retreat to protected ground

Protect intra-generational equity

Promote social inclusion

waste

Make space for water

water light weight construction low thermal mass large windows natural ventilation

energy materials

Implementing Sustainable construction

heavy weight construction high thermal mass small windows mechanical ventilation/ air conditioning Adapting to Climate Change

Figure 5. The overlap in and divergence of the sustainable construction and climate change agendas


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However, it also becoming evident (in the UK at least) that these agendas are not synonymous and can stand in opposition. For instance, recent work by Arup on Future Proofing UK Buildings, see www.arup.com/ard/project.cfm?pageid=3297, suggests that the impact of climate change will require a movement towards heavy weight construction with high thermal mass and mechanical ventilation systems in Britain in both the domestic and non-domestic buildings. Conversely, sustainable construction has over the past decade has focused renewed attention on lightweight construction (around timber and steel frames) with natural daylighting and ventilation systems. Nor is the environmental design and performance of buildings the only area in which these agendas appear to be diverging. Sustainable construction - as a subset of sustainable communities and sustainable development - shares concern for intra-generational equity and social inclusion, most obviously in terms of access to affordable housing. Adapting to climate change may, in time, impose severe pressures on achieving this objective. The UK’s Environment Agency has a policy of ‘making space for water’ – of managed retreat in the face of flooding, coastal erosion and sea level rise, see http://www.environmentagency.gov.uk/yourenv/639312/641102/643337/644011/?version=1&lang=e. The Association of British Insurers is engaged in dialogue with the UK Government about how the cost of continuing to protect vulnerable properties can be shared, http://www.abi.org.uk/Display/File/Child/652/SH_opening_remarks.pdf. In future, events may introduce even stronger pressures causing these two agendas – implementing sustainable construction and adapting to climate change – to diverge more explicitly. Formulating sustainable construction policy: the UK as worked example The UK offers an interesting case study of what the construction industry wants to offer in responding to sustainable construction. A series of stakeholder engagement workshops has been undertaken with the industry in support of the UK government’s recently completed review of its Sustainable Construction Strategy. These workshops were held - by the Sustainability Forum, the industry body charge with promoting sustainability in the sector - with a wide range of service providers in the construction industry; 1 designers, contractors, product manufacturers and facilities managers. Participants in the workshops were asked to identify how the construction industry’s contribution to sustainable development should be prioritised and its progress measured. During the workshops, participants were asked to work through a series of exercises gauging:  what types of changes (small v. large, voluntary v. involuntary, sector-specific v. cross sector) the industry should be pursuing to implement sustainable construction, and  what targets, measures, mechanisms, should be pursued by whom, over what timescales. Participants were asked, for instance, where they thought the construction industry should be heading, using Figure 3 above. Their responses (taken from Eclipse, 2006) are plotted on Figure 6. Landing points Sustainable construction

Sustainable built environment

Sustainable communities

Sustainable development

Where should the construction industry be in 2010?

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Figure 6. Possible landing points for the UK construction industry up to 2050 1

A small number (50) of self-selected, leading edge/early adopters attended the original workshops. The results were then taken to a Stakeholders’ Engagement Workshop, held by the UK’s Department of Trade and Industry, and scrutinised by another set of (>100) equally self-selected participants. The ‘priority issues’ table generated, see below, was subsequently circulated nationally for comment and amendment in the DTI’s Consultation Document used in its review of the UK’s Sustainable Construction Strategy, see http://www.dti.gov.uk/files/file34979.pdf.


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As the individual responses plotted in Figure 6 shows, there was no consensus amongst the workshop participants about how broadly the construction industry should frame its contribution to sustainable development, nor about how quickly it should be attempting to deliver on this front. Some wanted to achieve sustainable development almost immediately by 2010, others that the sector would not have put its own house in order before 2050. The modal scores do show a clear pattern. Over time the trend is that participants believe the construction industry should reach out beyond its own boundaries and contribute to delivering a more sustainable built environment, then sustainable communities and, eventually, sustainable development. Participants were also asked what types of change the construction industry should be pursuing. Figure 7 shows the types of change proposed, with examples. Business as usual This assumes that the construction industry will continue to act as it does now. Incremental change This assumes that the construction industry will make small, regular, incremental changes in the direction of sustainable construction. This notion of change that underpins Constructing Excellence Key Performance Inidcators. Here adoption of ‘continuous improvement’ delivers small annual incremental improvements that, however, over extended time add up to a significant degree of change, http://www.constructingexcellence.org.uk/productivity/kpis/kpis.jsp Step change This assumes that the construction industry will make large changes over a shorter period of time. A good comparison is the Step Change programme in the Oil and Gas industry. This undertook in 2000 to deliver a 50% improvement in the whole industry's safety performance over 3 years, http://step.steelsci.org/general/main_general_fs.htm. Other examples of step change are Factor 4, 10 and 20, e.g. www.wupperinst.org/FactorFour/, www.factor10-institute.org/, and http://mitpress.mit.edu/catalog/item/default.asp?tid=4065&ttype=6 (Designing for Factor 20). Paradigm Shift This assumes that the construction industry will change its view of the world and that this will occur very quickly once it has accepted irrefutable evidence that change is completely unavoidable. An example of this approach is the joint BioRegional and WWF One Planet Living initiative. This takes as its starting point that we would need 3 planets if everyone alive today were to have access our European standard of living. Instead the initiative’s vision is of a world where everyone can live happy, healthy lives within their fair share of the earth’s resources, www.wwf.org.uk/filelibrary/pdf/opl_brochure.pdf

Figure 7. Types of change proposed.

It was explained that these different types of change can be located along two different axes – the size of the change required and whether it is introduced voluntarily or not, see Figure 8.

large change One Planet Living

Factor 20

Factor 10

voluntary change

High-level climate change scenario

involuntary change

Factor 4 Low-level climate change scenario

Constructing Excellence Business as usual

small change Figure 8. Types of change mapped against each other. (Here ‘involuntary’ can mean either driven by regulation/legislation or by some change in the construction industry’s operating environment – such as climate change.)


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Here the workshop participants did express clear preferences. None of them thought that the construction industry could continue with business as usual. Instead they sought a step change in the industry’s performance, frequently leading to a paradigm shift. And they wanted both voluntary and particularly involuntary change, operating in tandem. Next the workshop participants were asked to prioritise which issues should be used to measure the industry’s progress on sustainability. The results are shown in Table 1. Issue

Aggregated priority

Climate change/energy Waste Materials Costs Water Quality/aesthetics Skills Safety Equity/Respect4People

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9

Aspect of sustainability addressed Environmental Environmental Environmental Economic Environmental Social Social Social Social

Table 1. Workshop participants’ aggregated priorities for measuring the construction industry’s progress on sustainable construction

In aggregate, workshop participants strongly prioritised environmental aspects of sustainable construction. Four of the top five priority issues are environmental - climate change/energy, waste, materials and water. Social aspects were also priorities but typically only as second order concerns. Workshop participants were highly ambitious about what should be done to implement sustainable construction. The targets participants set frequently employ the term ‘zero’ - zero energy, zero CO2 emissions, zero waste, zero accidents, zero skills shortages, see Table 2 over page. And they frequently defined (very) short to medium time scales for delivery against targets set. Achievement of targeted improvements by 2010 or earlier was common: only climate change typically attracted a longer time scale running on to 2030. The metrics for measuring progress are typically under-developed. Workshop participants commonly identified the UK’s central government, particularly the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister - now the Department of Communities and Local Government (responsible for delivering the UK’s Sustainable Communities Plan - and the Treasury, aided by local planning authorities, as primarily responsible for initiating the actions required. The penultimate column of Table 2 lists the wide range of mechanisms that participants saw as appropriate for implementing sustainabile construction. The Vision A UK construction industry that is capable of delivering its services to customers with zero negative impacts on the environment, society and the economy by 2030.

The Strategy The Sustainability Forum will: o help to develop the leadership necessary to implement the vision o build an alliance within the industry and beyond to achieve it o identify the issues on which action is required, and o assemble an inventory of the tools available to tackle these issues effectively.

The Issues

• Zero CO2 emissions from new and existing buildings • Zero waste to landfill from construction sites • 100% use of sustainable materials in construction activities • 100% use of whole life costing in the procurement of public and private assets

• 50%

reduction in the use of water in both the construction and operation of buildings

•

Application of high aesthetic and quality standards in all building procurement

• Zero

skill shortages amongst trainees and the existing workforce in both the professions and trades

• Zero

reported injuries, diseases and dangerous occurrences on construction sites

•

100% commitment to fair trade and Respect for People within the industry and its suppliers.

A description of how to tackle these issues is presented in Table 1.

The Tools

Participants often expressed a strong appetite for regulation and enforcement, backed up by taxes and financial incentives And they identified a wide range of stakeholders as having primary or secondary responsibility for implementing aspects of sustainable construction - from financial institutions and funders, developers, clients, designers and contractors, through to product manufacturers, along with training and professional organizations. These priority issues, targets and milestones, established at its stakeholder workshops, have been written into the Sustainability Forum’s Framework document for promoting the take-up of sustainability in the UK construction industry, see Figure 9 (taken from Eclipse, 2006). Figure 9. The Sustainability Forum’s Sustainable Construction Framework

An inventory of tools available for tackling these issues is provided in Table 2.


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Table 2. Prioritised issues, targets, metrics and mechanisms for sustainable construction

Table 2 continued below


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Table 2. continued

Taken from the DTI’s Review of Sustainable Construction (2006) pages 100-102, http://www.dti.gov.uk/files/file34979.pdf

These priorities, established by the Sustainability Forum’s stakeholder workshops and then propagated through the UK government’s review of its strategy, frame sustainable construction primarily in terms of ‘environmental sustainability’; i.e. the environmental performance of buildings and resource efficiency. And this framing confines the contribution of the construction industry to sustainable development to the smallest and least demanding ‘solution space’ available, see Figure 10.

Figure 10. The ‘solution space’ offered by the UK construction industry for sustainable concsttuction


Sustainable Development

Sustainable Communities


E n v i r o n m e n t a l

E c o n o m i c

S o c i a l


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Regulatory and sector-based mechanisms for implementing sustainable construction in the UK There is no (or only very little) market demand for sustainable construction in the UK. So it remains primarily a policy imperative driven by central government (DTI, 2006), with the statutory responsibility for implementing it now passed to regional and local government – for example by provisions in the Planning and Compulsory Purchase Act (2004). At face value, there is no shortage of mechanisms for implementing (aspects of) sustainable construction in the UK. These include  EU Directives (e.g. the Energy Performance of Buildings: yet to be implemented)  national Planning Regulations  national Building Regulations and the associated Code for Sustainable Homes  public sector Sustainable Procurement practices  regional (economic and spatial) strategies  local planning mechanisms (Local Development Frameworks, Development Control and Supplementary Planning Guidance)  Local Building Control (based directly on application of national Building Regulations), and  Constructing Excellence - the construction industry’s own ‘best practice’ sectoral performance improvement programme, see http://www.constructingexcellence.org.uk/ In practice, these mechanisms are poorly aligned and poorly connected, especially as the regulatory baton is passed down the spatial scale from national to regional and on to local for implementation (Cooper, 2006). Historically in the UK, the Planning Regulations have been employed to control what is built where (land use and zoning) and the Building Regulations to control how it is built (building standards). Sustainable development (and climate change) appear to have fractured this historic division of labour. Because the Building Regulations have not been revised to keep up with the mounting demands of responding to sustainable development and climate change, the Planning Regulations are increasingly being used for this purpose – both centrally by the UK government and individually by local planning authorities (Rydin et al., 2006). This is clearly evident in the use of Supplementary Planning Guidance (SPG) on sustainable construction, published by local planning authorities to advise those seeking planning permission to build in their area, which exceeds the building standards enshrined in the national Building Regulations (see, for example, LGA, 2006). Typically these SPGs employ the same narrow framing of the contribution of the construction industry to sustainable development enshrined in the DTI’s strategy review: they replicate the supply sidedriven focus both on environmental performance of buildings and on the production stages (design and 2 construction) of the life cycle of the built environment (see Figure 12 below). One of the highest profile, and most demanding, examples of such Supplementary Planning Guidance was recently published by the Mayor of London (Greater London Assembly, 2006). It covers:  re-use of land and buildings  maximsing use of natural systems  conserving energy, water and other resources  reducing noise, pollution, flooding and micro-climatic effects  ensuring developments are comfortable and secure for users  conserving and enhancing the natural environment and biodiversity, and  promoting sustainable waste behaviour. Its appendices contain Sustainable Appraisal methodologies and checklists and ‘best practice’ guidance. The whole document runs to 65 pages. The Mayor’s Code for London employs ‘essential’ and ‘preferred’ standards in the guidance it offers, see Figure 10.

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Nor should this be seen as surprising. Typically local planning authorities are employing expertise drawn from within the construction industry itself to produce these SPGs which then replicate the dominant framing of sustainable construction in the sector (Cooper, 2006). This would appear to be a clear case of the poacher being employed to draw up the operating instructions for the game keeper.


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Energy-based examples of essential and preferred standards in the Mayor’s London Code Essential standards • Carry out energy demand assessment • Maximise energy efficiency • Major commercial and residential developments to demonstrate that consideration has been given to the following ranking method for heating and, where necessary, cooling systems o o o o o o

• •

passive design solar water heating, then combined heat and power for heating and cooling (i.e. trigeneration), preferably fuelled by renewables, then community heating and cooling, then heat pumps, then gas condensing boilers

Wherever on site outdoor lighting is proposed as a part of a development, it should be energy efficient, minimising light lost to sky Carbon emissions from the total energy needs (heat, cooling and power) of the development should be reduced by at least 10% by the on-site generation of renewable energy

Preferred standards • All developments to demonstrate that consideration has been given to the following ranking method for heating and where necessary cooling systems and should incorporate the highest feasible of the following options: o o o

solar heating, then combined heat and power/trigeneration, preferably fuelled by renewables, then community heating

New developments should always be connected to existing community heating networks preferably fuelled by renewables where feasible. •

• • •

Where outdoor lighting or other electrically powered street furniture is proposed on site, it should be solar powered and minimise light lost to the sky. Lighting, heating and cooling controls should enable services to operate efficiently under different loadings and allow for localised control Major developments should be zero carbon developments Major developments should make a contribution to London’s hydrogen economy through the adoption of hydrogen and/or fuel cell technologies and infrastructure.

Figure 10. Examples of the use of ‘essential’ and preferred standards in an SPG

The London School of Economics has used ecological footing, employing REAP (the Resource and Energy Analysis Programme), to assess the impact of the draft of the Mayor’s Code on new housing in the capital (Nye and Rydin, 2006). This analysis indicates that implementing the Code could produce a ‘best case’ 3 reduction of 38% in the ecological footprint for new housing over current ‘housebuilding as usual’. This calculation assumes application of all of the Code’s preferred standards, or the most stringent levels of essential standards, and avoidance of any potentially adverse standards where possible. The bulk of the reductions from implementing the Code come from just two of the standards evaluated - the provision of facilities for recycling household waste and from installation of community combined heat and power in large developments. 90% of the total footprint savings in the ‘best case’ scenario stems from just these two measures, see Table 3. Installation of combined heat and Best case scenario power in developments requires Impact of ‘preferred’ standards (listed in order of magnitude) early (pre-design and construction) engagement with developers, see Recycling household waste Figure 12 below. The waste CHP/gas condensing boilers/solar water heating savings predicted may be more Photovoltaics influenced by how occupants use High mass/passive solar their house than by how it is Recycled materials designed and constructed – an Re-use of existing buildings issue over which the SPG has no Increased density control. Shading/green roofs/reflective paint Local sourcing of materials Water saving measures Recycled aggregates Table 3: the impact of the ‘preferred’ standards in the Mayor’s draft Code for London on reducing the ecological footprint in comparison to ‘housebuilding as usual’

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One Planet Living, as embraced by the UK government in its latest Sustainable Development Strategy (Defra, 2005) would require a 66% reduction.


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A broader, alternative framing of ‘sustainable construction’ There are other possible framings of sustainable construction. Just one is offered here. This is demand side-driven and seeks to capture the economic and community benefits that can be gained from intervening in the built environment. Its focus of attention is not solely on design and construction but on post-production, legacy benefits. The example is drawn from the use of Sustainable Procurement practices by UrbanVision, a public private partnership between: 

Salford City Council (one of the poorest local authority areas in the UK)

and its construction service providers: 

Capita Symonds (a professional services consultancy) and



Morrison (a support services group), see http://www.salford.gov.uk/urbanvision.htm.

By using public sector ‘sustainable procurement’ practices, embedded in its Framework and Partnership Agreements with its supply chain, UrbanVision is aiming to keep as much the revenue impact of its investment in regeneration as possible within the local economy. It has estimated (UrbanVision, 2006) that its £300m investment over 10 years could result in: 

£21m trading profits for developers



£20m trading profit for local main contractors



£7m trading profit for local sub-contractors



£9m trading profit local materials suppliers



476 local people employed for 10 years



£125m of materials supplied by local suppliers (creating/securing 100 local jobs for 10 years)

This broader demand-side definition, focused on legacy impacts, expands the contribution of the property development and construction industries to sustainable development to more a extensive ‘solution space’ - so that they help, rather than hinder, the delivery of sustainable communities, see Figure 11. Sustainable Development

Sustainable Communities




E c o n o m i c

S o c i a l

Figure 11. A broader framing of the contribution of the property development and construction industries to sustainable development, based on sustainable procurement practices

The example above illustrates that the specific policy measures and actions available for implementing aspects of sustainable construction, and sustainable development, depend upon the stages of the development process for the built environment where influence and impact are being sought, see Figure 12. Some measures and actions are best deployed at one stage in the process, and at a particular spatial scale, others can only be implemented effectively at others.


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Pre-development negotiations

Design

Construction

Use Operation Management

Demotion and disposal

Figure 12. Stages in the development process for delivering the built environment.

In the UK most attention is currently being focused - through planning authorities’ SPGs, the government’s Code for Sustainable Homes, and the Building Regulations – on the design and construction of buildings. But the LSE’s ecological footprinting analysis of the Mayor’s Code for London suggests that greatest buildingbased impacts – energy use and waste management - occur after this during the use, operation and management of buildings. And the Joint UK-Sweden Initiative on Sustainable Construction, see http://www.ukswedensustainability.org/, indicates that the most important opportunities for reducing these impacts occur during early, pre-development engagement between planning authorities and developers. It is here, in pre-development negotiations that strategic, whole-district, economies of scale and opportunity can be grasped (for instance for the provision of integrated resource management/services/infrastructure for energy, water, waste, ICTs and transport). Likewise, public sector sustainable procurement practices also point to the need to focus on pre-development negotiations, here in the form of pre-contractual frameworks and agreements with services providers in order to achieve post-construction legacy benefits. This suggests that a critical set of issues that need to be confronted is:  which policy mechanisms are most appropriately applied  to which stages in the development process  to impact on which aspects of the built environment, and  at which spatial scales to achieve effective delivery of more sustainable development. In the UK at least, the balance of mechanisms is strongly skewed towards improving the environmental performance of buildings and the use of resources, see Figure 13. To date there has been comparatively little emphasis on influencing the activities of the property development and construction industries directly to help achieve the social and economic goals underpinning sustainable development. This imbalance needs to be redress, not least through the use of sustainable procurement practices, in both the public and private sectors, to achieve lasting, post-construction, legacy benefits from intervening and investing in the built environment. EU Directives

Sustainable Development

National Planning Regulations National Building Regulations National Code for Sustainable Homes


Public sector Sustainable Procurement practices Regional (economic and spatial) strategies

Local planning controls Local building control

E c o n o m i c

S o c i a l

Sustainable Communities Sustainable built environment


Constructing Excellence Figure 13. The unbalanced focus of attention of policy measures and mechanisms for promoting constructionrelated aspects of sustainable development in the UK


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Recommendation arising One positive action that the EU could take to secure a broader and deeper contribution from the property development and construction industries to achieving sustainable development would be at the level of a new EU directive. This would seek to drive the introduction and take-up of sustainable procurement practices first in the public sector, and then in the private. Although this directive could be pitched at the scale of individual buildings, it would be more effective if it covered whole developments to allow for integrated solutions (for energy, water, waste and ICT) achievable only with economies of scale. Indeed, ideally the directive would be focused on the sustainable procurement of the built environment as a whole, since this would enable it to address infrastructure and transport issues as well as local governance – beyond and between individual sites, locations and administrative boundaries. References Arup, Future Proofing UK buildings, www.arup.com/ard/project.cfm?pageid=3297 (accessed 9/11/06) BEQUEST, EU-funded ‘concerted action’, http://www.research.scpm.salford.ac.uk/bqextra/ Commission of the European Communities ( 2002) Directive on the Energy Performance of Buildings, Directive 2002/91/EC Commission of the European Communities ( 2004a) Development of Horizontal Standardised Methos for the Assessment of the Integrated Environmental Performance of Buildings, M/350 Commission of the European Communities ( 2004b) Towards a Thematic Strategy on the Urban Environment, COM(2004)60 final Commission of the European Communities ( 2006) Thematic Strategy on the Urban Environment, COM(2005)718 final3)283-296 Cooper, I. (1997) Environmental assessment methods for use at the building and city scales: constructing bridges or identifying common ground, in Brandon, P., Bentivegna, V. and Lombardi, P. (eds.), Evaluation of the Built Environment for Sustainability, E&FN Spon, London. Cooper, I. (2002) Transgressing discipline boundaries: is BEQUEST an example of the ‘new production of knowledge’? Building Research and Information, 30 (2): 116-129. Cooper, I. (2006) Sustainable Construction and Planning: the Policy Agenda, LSE SusCon Project, Centre for Environmental Policy and Governance, London School of Economics, London, http://www.lse.ac.uk/collections/geographyAndEnvironment/CEPG/sustainableConstruction.htm (accessed 9/11/06) Construction Research & Innovation Strategy Panel, 1999, Sustainable Construction: Future R & D Requirements, CRISP, London. Curwell, S., Deakin, M. & Symes, M. (eds.) 2005 Sustainable Urban Development: Volume 1 The framework and protocols for environmental assessment, Routledge, London. Department for Environment, Farming and Rural Affairs (2005) Securing the Future: the UK Sustainable Development Strategy, Defra, London, http://www.sustainable-development.gov.uk/publications/ukstrategy/index.htm Department of Trade and Industry, 2006, Review of Sustainable Construction, DTI, London, http://www.dti.gov.uk/files/file34979.pdf (accessed 9/11/06) Eclipse Research Consultants, (2006) Where next for sustainable construction? Report to the UK Sustainable Construction Forum, ERC, Cambridge. Environment Agency, Adapting to Sea Level Rise, http://www.environmentagency.gov.uk/yourenv/639312/641102/643337/644011/?version=1&lang=_e (accessed 9/11/06) Greater London Authority (2006) Sustainable design and construction: the London Plan Supplementary Planning Guidance, GLA, London Haddrill, S (2007) Opening remarks, Coastal Flood Risk - Thinking for tomorrow, acting today, Association of British Insurers, Climate Change Conference, 7 November 2006, London, http://www.abi.org.uk/Display/File/Child/652/SH_opening_remarks.pdf (accessed 9/11/06) INTELCITY, EU-funded Roadmap, http://ndmodelling.scpm.salford.ac.uk/intelcity/ Mitchell, G., May, A. and MacDonald, A. (1995) PICABUE: a methodological framework for the development of indicators of sustainable development, International Journal of Sustainable Development World Ecology, 2: 104-133


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Local Government Association (2006) Planning policies for sustainable building - guidance for Local Development Frameworks, http://www.lga.gov.uk/PublicationsList.asp?lsection=761&ccat=28& Office of Public Sector Information (2004) Planning and Compulsory Purchase Act, http://www.opsi.gov.uk/acts/acts2004/20040005.htm Rydin, Y., Amjad, U., Moore, S., Nye, M. and Whitaker, M. (2006) Sustainable Construction and Planning: the Academic Report, LSE SusCon Project, Centre for Environmental Policy and Governance, London School of Economics, London, http://www.lse.ac.uk/collections/geographyAndEnvironment/CEPG/sustainableConstruction.htm (accessed 9/11/06) Working Group for Sustainable Construction (2001) Sustainable Construction: the final report, www.europa.eu.int/enterprise/construction/suscon/sustcon.http UrbanVision (2006) Keeping regeneration investment in the local community, private communication.


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Development of a Forecasting Framework and Scenarios to support the EU Sustainable Development Strategy SIXTH FRAMEWORK PROGRAMME PRIORITY 8.1 Policy-oriented research, Scientific support to policies, Integrating and Strengthening the European Research Area

Visions on sustainable land use in industrial regions Workshop in Budapest October 26 – 27, 2006 O. Dilly1, B. U. Schneider1, T. Plieninger2, R. F. Hüttl1 and T. Stuczynski3 1

Brandenburg University of Technology, Cottbus, Germany Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences, Berlin, Germany 3 Institute of Soil Science and Plant Cultivation, Pulawy, Poland 2

Introduction Industrial regions are territories where the human activity changed apparently the pattern of the natural landscape by sediment transformation and a range of side-impacts. Some industrial regions are also named brownfields which are abandoned, idled, or underused industrial or commercial facilities where expansion or redevelopment is complicated by real or perceived environmental contamination (http://commpres.env.state.ma.us/content/glossary.asp). Here we summarize main issues for sustainable land use towards 2030 in industrial regions. Methodology To address sustainability issues in industrial regions, impact assessment seems to represent a key tool since identifying the policy problem, defining the objectives, developing the main policy options, analysing their impact, comparing the options and outlining policy monitoring and evaluation (COM 2005a). This is particularly relevant to refer to crosscutting issues. The consideration of the DPSIR approach seems helpful in addition (Fig. 1). The following elements need to be included: (1) Strategy-related prioritisation, (2) the development of the implementation plan, (2) the identification of essential and preferred standards with the identifying appropriate levels of planning (‘governance tradition’) and finally (4) the inclusion of age-dependent visions (‘3rd generational planning’). Effective measures need to be identified on a European, national and regional scale keeping in mind that the most essential is to support the regional development. The appropriate regional development will lead to benefits at the national and European level.

Oliver Dilly et al., Brandenburg University of Technology

26/2/07

Pressures

Drivers

Resource limitation, pollution, climate change

Accessibility of good and services

Infrastructure and land use state 2030 Efficient transport system and energy use, high food, air, water + soil quality and public entertainment

≠

Responses Strategy + implementation, National regulations, Local responses

Impact Biodiversity loss, Social in-cohesion

Infrastructure and land use state 2006 Transport system, Energy requirement, Food, Air, Water, Soil Quality, Entertainment

Fig. 1. The DPSIR framework applied to the identification of sustainability vision in industrial regions towards 2030 (COM 2000, modified) Recommendations arising The sustainable vision for land use in industrial regions should use the regional potentials and will need to address multifunctional optimisation of land use, e.g. for food + energy and tourism. Specific research is needed to study the impact of land-use changes, e.g. for bio-energy production, on cross-cutting ecological, social and economic issues. The impact assessment guidelines (COM 2005a) should be checked. Special attention needs to be given on contaminated sites, e.g. when used for food production. It is needed to increase the awareness on pollution on life and food quality and address the awareness on energy and water use efficiency. The economic growth needs to be adjusted to social and environmental goals and the anthropocentric perspective on the need of biodiversity should be sensitized. In highly populated industrial regions, the ethical basis on human equitability will be an important issues and the paradigm co-operation (social cohesion) will be discussed in comparison to competition. Business as usual is not sustainable and non-technocratic but integrative management is needed with the use of step change and paradigm shift. ‘Energy’ may be a key in helping Europe to achieve its objectives for growth, jobs and sustainability (COM 2005b). References COM 2000. Indicators for the integration of environmental concerns into the common agricultural policy, 20 final (Brussels), 26 pages COM 2005a. Impact assessment guidelines. SEC 791 (Brussels), 48 pages COM 2005b. Communication from the commission. Biomass Action Plan. Brussels, 628 (SEC_2005_1573).

Oliver Dilly et al., Brandenburg University of Technology

26/2/07

Towards a Sustainable Built Environment – some potential applications of Ecological Economics to support European policy making Katharine N. Farrell1 Marie Curie Intra-European Fellow ALIVE - Accountability and Legitimacy of Governance Institutions that support Viable Environments UFZ – Centre for Environmental Research, ÖKUS – Division of Social Sciences, Permoserstr. 15, D-04318 Leipzig, Germany

Visiting Research Fellow Gibson Institute for Land, Food and the Environment, Queen’s University Belfast, Northern Ireland

Invited Expert Contribution to the EU Sixth Framework Programme Priority 8.1 FORESCENE project (Development of a Forecasting Framework and Scenarios to Support the EU Sustainable Development Strategy Project) “Infrastructures/Land Use” Workshop, Budapest, Hungary, 26-27 October 2006 Abstract: The aim of this paper is to illustrate how and where the political economy aspect of ecological economics analysis can be useful for building scenarios and implementing strategies for sustainable development of urban infrastructures and built environments. The empirical reference material, used to illustrate and elaborate this argument will be drawn from ongoing research taking place under the Marie Curie EIF Project ALIVE (Accountability and Legitimacy of Governance Institutions that support Viable Environments). The paper begins with a brief introduction to the field of Ecological Economics (EcoEco), highlighting some special descriptive and normative perspectives that EcoEco offers for researchers and policy makers concerned with understanding and implementing sustainable development: economic processes are embedded within - part of - the ecological processes that we often describe as ‘nature’. The specific position of the ALIVE research project within EcoEco is explained. Then ALIVE’s relevance for management and design of sustainable infrastructure and built environments is discussed. Because the focus of the ALIVE research is policy making and political discourse, it is not appropriate to recommend specific goals and targets (whats) for long term sustainability strategies; such specific desired outcomes are presumed to be publicly determined. Instead, the focus within ALIVE is on identifying better practices and procedures for setting sustainability goals and targets (hows). In keeping with this view, a ecological political economy hypothesis is being tested in the ALIVE research: that new formal modes of inter-disciplinary multi-level government and governance may help improve both the scientific and political quality of the sustainability goals and targets that we set. Specific recommendations regarding one possible structure are currently being evaluated through the ALIVE research, to see how robust and realistic they are. Very provisional first data analysis and insights suggest that, while the ALIVE recommendations may not be entirely realistic, their underlying ecological political economy presumptions, regarding how sustainability planning decisions making processes function, are plausible. In this respect, it is proposed that simultaneous attention to the democratic legitimacy and scientific robustness of infrastructure and built environment planning processes, while certainly a challenging area of research and practice, seems to be a promising, if not necessary, measure for reaching sustainability goals that simultaneously support human and non-human systems, which together comprise our built environments.

1

phone: +49.176.652.14.193; fax: +49.341.235.2825; mobile: +49.176.652.14.193; email-QUB: [email protected]; email-UFZ: [email protected]

FENNTARTHATÓ FEJL DÉS – FENNTARTHATÓ KÖZLEKEDÉS Fleischer Tamás1 BEVEZETÉS

2

A Nemzeti Fejlesztési Hivatal megbízásából, az ELTE e célra felállított Programirodája koordinálásával 2005 folyamán a Nemzeti Fejlesztési Terv kötelez háttéranyagaként készül a Fenntartható Fejlesztés Nemzeti Stratégiája. A dokumentumot húsz ágazati tanulmány alapozta meg, ezek egyike volt a jelen sorok szerz je által kidolgozott, fenntartható infrastruktúrával és közlekedéssel foglalkozó szakanyag. Ez az 50 oldalas tanulmány, ahogy a többi szakágazati tanulmány, valamint az összefoglaló stratégia is, vitaanyagként elérhet és letölthet a http://www.fenntarthatosag.hu/ honlapról. Az alábbiakban kifejtettek nagymértékben támaszkodnak a szerz tanulmányára, ezen belül els sorban a fenntarthatósági kérdéskör megközelítésére és a közlekedési célrendszer megalapozására vonatkozó meggondolásokra. Így a következ kben el ször a fenntartható fejl dés értelmezésér l és a fenntarthatóság küls és bels feltételeir l lesz szó, ezt követi a fenntarthatósággal szemben álló mechanizmusok jellemzése és kapcsolatba hozása a közlekedés nagy technológiai korszakaival. A közlekedés jöv ben várható és kívánatos irányai stratégiai fókuszainak kijelölésével zárul az összeállítás.

1 2

tudományos f munkatárs, MTA Világgazdasági Kutatóintézet A cikk jelenlegi formája a Gy rött, a Széchenyi István Egyetemen Scharle Péter egyetemi tanár köszöntése alkalmából rendezett tudományos ülésre készült el adás szerkesztett változata.

2

MTA VILÁGGAZDASÁGI KUTATÓINTÉZET

A FENNTARTHATÓ FEJL DÉSR L

A fenntartható fejl dés definíciójaként leggyakrabban az ENSZ 1987-es Közös jöv nk (más néven Bruntland-) jelentésének meghatározását szokták idézni: „A fenntartható fejl dés olyan fejl dés, amely kielégíti a jelen szükségleteit, anélkül, hogy veszélyeztetné az eljövend generációk lehet ségét arra, hogy k is kielégíthessék a szükségleteiket”. A f mondatból kiragadható megállapítás (olyan fejl dés, amely kielégíti a jelen szükségleteit) sajnálatos lehet séget ad az egész megállapítás gyakori félremagyarázására, elfedve azt a tényt, hogy itt éppen a lehetséges fejl dés-értelmezések egy sz kítésér l, behatárolásáról van szó. A Bruntland definíció valójában a fenntarthatóság id beli dimenzióját, az intergenerációs szolidaritás szükségességét húzza alá. Más helyen3 felhívtuk a figyelmet arra, hogy amikor hálózatokról beszélünk, a fenntarthatóság térbeli dimenziója is megfogalmazandó, nevezetesen az intragenerációs viszony, – azaz az egyid ben él k közötti kötelezettség (t.i. anélkül elégíteni ki a helyben lév k szükségleteit, hogy ez veszélyeztetné a máshol él k lehet ségét arra, hogy k is kielégíthessék a szükségleteiket). Környezet, társadalom, gazdaság A fenntarthatósági kérdéskör másik leggyakoribb megközelítése a fenntarthatóság három pillérére irányítja rá a figyelmet. Az elterjedt metaforikus ábrázolásban három egymásba metsz kör jelöli a környezetet, a társadalmat és a gazdaságot, és a fenntarthatóságot a három kör közös része jelképezi. (1. ábra) KÖRNYEZET

GAZDASÁG

TÁRSADALOM

1. ábra Mindenképpen fel kell hívni a figyelmet arra, hogy ebben az esetben nem definícióról van szó, hanem azt megkerülve a fenntarthatóság összetev inek a felsorolásáról, – akkor is, ha ezt kiegészíti az a közlés, hogy a három pillér egyforma fontosságú.

3

Ld. Fleischer T (2004)

FENNTARTHATÓ FEJL DÉS – FENNTARTHATÓ KÖZLEKEDÉS

3

E hárompilléres megközelítésnek fontos szerepe van abban, hogy ráirányítja a figyelmet arra, hogy léteznek a gazdaságon kívüli pillérek, melyek figyelembevétele nem mell zhet ; ennél több eligazítással azonban a továbbiakra ez a metafora nem szolgál. A David Pearce által használt u.n. gyenge fenntarthatósági kritérium nem is támaszkodik többre, eszerint a természeti, az emberi, továbbá az ember által alkotott t ke összegére kell kimondani azt a feltételt, hogy az id el rehaladtéval ne csökkenjen. Valójában már azzal is kiemeljük az egyenl k közül a gazdaságot, ha a t kék összegezését pénzben fejezzük ki; de ezen túlmen en is a gyakorlatban a gyenge fenntarthatóság alkalmazása mindig támaszul szolgál annak a helyzetnek az elfogadtatásához, hogy a környezet és a társadalom egyel re kénytelen t kevesztéssel hitelezni a ’gazdaságilag nagyon el nyös’ fejlesztések lebonyolítása érdekében. Az értelmezésnek ezt a csapdáját kiküszöböli, ha a fenntarthatóság pilléreit nem egyszer en felsoroljuk, hanem érvényre juttatjuk a köztük lév rendszerösszefüggéseket. A lassabban változó, meghatározó rendszernek alrendszerét képezi a fürgébb változásra képes összetev : ezt fejezi az egyes köröket egymáson belül elrendez ábrázolás. (2. ábra) KÖRNYEZET

GAZDASÁG

TÁRSADALOM

2. ábra Az ábrázolásnak megfelel en érvényesített rendszerösszefüggésen alapul Herman Daly u.n. er s fenntarthatósági kritériuma: aminek az értelmében a környezeti korlátokat önmagukban be kell tartani. Ugyanakkor e feltételek betartását úgy kényszerülünk elérni, hogy közben nem közvetlenül a környezetre, hanem annak alrendszereire vagyunk csupán képesek hatni, nevezetesen a ‘gazdaság’, esetleg a ‘társadalom’ folyamatait tudjuk közvetlenül befolyásolni. A hatások az alrendszereknek a küls kapcsolatain keresztül, közvetve érik el a környezet szintjét. A rendszer fenntarthatóságának küls

és bels

feltételei

Azt, hogy a gazdasági és társadalmi mozgások hol lehetnek hatással a környezetre, – elvben legalább is – könny behatárolni. A környezetet ugyanis nyilván azok a folyamatok befolyásolhatják, amelyek onnan er forrásokat vesznek

4


igénybe (inputok); vagy ellenkez leg, megterhelik valamivel a környezetet (outputok). Az ilyen típusú áramlásokat természetesen nem lehet megszüntetni, de mértéküket olyan korlátok között kell tartani, hogy a környezetet ne érje visszafordíthatatlan változás. Ennek alapján a fenntarthatóságnak két küls feltétele állapítható meg: egyfel l a környezetb l származó inputok igénybevételének a tempója ne lépje túl az er források regenerálódási ütemét; másfel l a környezetbe kibocsátott output ne haladja meg a természet felvev képességét. Ez Herman Daly két fenntarthatósági kritériuma. (Daly ehhez hozzátesz egy harmadikat, ami tulajdonképpen nem a fenntartható rendszerm ködésnek a része, hanem a mai nemfenntartható helyzetb l a fenntartható állapotba vezet átállásnak tett engedmény: t.i. a nem-megújuló er források használatát nem állítja le [ahogy a szigorú fenntarthatóság tulajdonképpen megkívánná] hanem használatukat kifuttatja a megújulókkal való helyettesítésük fokozatos kialakulásának üteme szerint). A fentiek szerint tehát könny belátni, hogy mi a fenntarthatóság küls kritériuma. A következ kérdés, hogy milyennek kell lennie annak a bels alrendszernek, (például annak a gazdaságnak, annak a közlekedésnek) amelyik ezt a kritériumot képes betartani. Az alrendszerre vonatkozó ennek megfelel követelményeket nevezhetjük a fenntarthatóság bels , (rendszerm ködési) feltételeinek. Ilyen feltételek, hogy az alrendszer egyfel l érzékelje a peremfeltételeket, másfel l annak megfelel en m ködjön; alakuljanak ki e m ködés bels önszabályozó folyamatai (azaz ne állandó beavatkozásokkal kelljen a fenntarthatóságot utólagosan biztosítani). A fenntartható közlekedési rendszer bels feltételeit kielégít m ködésmód kialakítása megújuló közlekedési szakértelmet igényel. Ebben az állításban hangsúlyozott nyomaték van a szakértelem mindkét jelz jén. Egyfel l közlekedési szakértelemre van szükség, tehát els sorban nem környezetvédelmi, – limitekkel, kibocsátásokkal kalkuláló – megfontolásokra (mint a küls feltételek esetében) hanem a közlekedés, mint rendszer m ködéséhez való hozzáértésre. Másfel l a megújuló közlekedési szakértelem követelménye arra vonatkozik, hogy nem kizárólag a hagyományos, mérnöki értelemben vett technológiai és gazdasági ismeretekr l van szó, hanem a területi, társadalmi, környezeti ismeretekkel harmonizáló átfogó megközelítésr l. A FENNTARTHATÓ KÖZLEKEDÉS FELÉ

A fenntarthatatlan közlekedés öner sít

folyamatai

Önmagában az a tény, hogy a közlekedési rendszernek (mint más ágazati rendszereknek is) rendelkezniük kell öner sít , saját fennmaradásukat stabilizáló mechanizmusokkal, nem újdonság, a ma létez rendszereknek is vannak öner sít


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folyamatai. A nagy különbség az, hogy a jelenlegi rendszereket nem a küls fenntarthatósági korlátok vezérlik, ezáltal ezek a mechanizmusok éppen a jelenlegi nem-fenntartható folyamatok védelmét, stabilizálódását segítik el . Ebb l következ en a fenntartható közlekedési rendszer kialakítását érint feladat kett s: egyfel l elemezni kell a jelenlegi folyamatokat, és megbontani a mai fenntarthatatlan m ködést stabilizáló visszacsatolásokat; (néha intézményi vagy tudati rögzültségeket) – másfel l pedig ki kell építeni azokat a rendszerm ködéseket, melyek képesek a fenntartható m ködést stabilizálni. A meglév rendszerm ködés kötöttségeinek külön specialitása a közlekedés esetében a kiépült infrastruktúra létesítmények hosszú élettartama, és az a tény, hogy az élettartamot is meghaladóan hosszú id szakra terjed ki az a strukturális meghatározottság, amit a létesítmények létrehoznak. Arról van szó, hogy amikor egy száz éve épült városi közm hálózat, vagy országos úthálózat egyes elemei fizikailag lecserél dnek, akkor is a korábban kialakított struktúrán belül kell az új elemeket m ködtetni, azaz a fokozatos toldozás következtében az új építkezések mindig tovább er sítik a korábban kialakított struktúrákat. A társadalomtudományokban pálya-függésnek (vagy út-függésnek, angolul path-dependency) nevezik ezt a kényszerhelyzetet, amikor is a rövid távú döntésekben mindig racionálisabbnak t nik belül maradni a kialakult helyzeten, mint elkezdeni azt alapjaiban megváltoztatni. – A ritka kivételeket azok a helyzetek jelentik, amikor egy teljesen új hálózati réteg kiépítésével áldozatok nélkül nyílik alkalom új struktúra létrehozására. Ezért is különleges felel sség napjainkban a gyorsforgalmi úthálózat létrehozása, ahol lehet ség lett volna arra, hogy az új hálózat ne a száz évvel korábban kialakult f hálózat struktúráját örökítse tovább. A folyamatos döntések azonban rendre arról tanúskodnak, hogy a hazai szakmai gondolkodásban mindeddig nem sikerült meghaladni a pálya-függés korábbi beidegzéseit. A közlekedés esetében egy másik, ugyancsak az infrastruktúra sajátosságaira visszavezethet , a fenntarthatóság ellenében m köd mechanizmus a nagyrendszerek bonyolultsága mögé bújó döntéshozatali rejt zködés. A vasút példája a többi alágazatban is mintául szolgált a központi tervezés, az üzemi/technikai szempontok prioritása és a „természetes monopólium” érinthetetlenségének a kialakítására és meg rzésére (Mom 2001). A mérnöki tradíció mindenhol nyitott maradt a „még gyorsabb, még er sebb, még speciálisabb” közlekedési megoldások keresése és megvalósítása irányában, (TVG, autóút, tankhajó stb.), ugyanakkor nagyon nehéz annak a beláttatása, hogy gyökeresen más megoldásokat kell keresni, mert a jelzett irányban diadalmasan fejl d technológiai újdonságok ellenére egyre jobban ellehetetlenül a közlekedés. A „gyökeresen más megoldás” megvilágítására érdemes áttekinteni a közlekedés korábbi alakulásának a f korszakait.

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A közlekedés jellemz

korszakai

A közlekedés fejl dését eddig az jellemezte, hogy egy-egy újabb technológia id r l id re újabb domináns közlekedési módot alakított ki. (Oka 1995) A pre-indusztriális korszakot a csatornák kiépülése jellemezte. A szárazföldi áruszállításnak a folyami vízi közlekedés (parti vontatás) volt a leghatékonyabb módja, a csatornák ezt a lehet séget terjesztették ki olyan térségekre, ahol nem voltak folyók. Az iparosítás id szaka a vasút diadalmenetét hozta magával, a csatornáknál olcsóbb sínpárok néhány évtized alatt behálózták az országok területét (3. ábra)

Forrás: Frisnyák Sándor: Magyarország történeti földrajza. Tankönyvkiadó, Budapest 1992.

3. ábra. A vasúthálózat negyven év alatt behálózta az országot A modernizáció korszakát a gépkocsi dominanciája fémjelezte. Az egyes közlekedési módok dominancia-váltását érzékelteti Naki enovi (1988) az Egyesült Államokban megépített közlekedési infrastruktúra (csatornák, vasutak, burkolt utak) hosszának alakulásán keresztül (4. ábra).

Forrás: Naki enovi , Nebojša (1988) Dinamics of change and long waves


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4. ábra. A közlekedési infrastruktúra hossza, USA 1800-1980 Még szemléletesebb az ábrázolás, ha azt t ntetjük föl, hogy az egyes közlekedési infrastruktúra módok hossza milyen részarányt képvisel adott id szakban az összes megépült közlekedési hálózaton belül. (5. ábra)

Forrás: Naki enovi , Nebojša (1988) Dinamics of change and long waves

5. ábra. Az egyes közlekedési módok dominanciája, USA 1800-2050 Amint az az 5. ábrán látható, Naki enovi itt egy el rebecslést is megkockáztat, így szerinte 2030 körül a légiforgalom veszi át a domináns közlekedési mód szerepét. A repülés kétségtelenül kielégíti az eddigi technológiai trendeket, lévén a korábbiaknál még er sebb, még gyorsabb és még s r bb energiát felhasználó közlekedési mód. De vajon valóban egy új domináns közlekedési módot kell-e keresnünk, amikor a jöv közlekedésére gondolunk? Mi következik a modernizáció korszaka után? Ha azt, hogy pontosan mi következik, nem is tudhatjuk, de a korszak nevét igen: a modernizáció után kétségtelenül a poszt-modern id szak következik. Néhány jellemz je is kirajzolódni látszik ennek a korszaknak, és ezek közé tartozik az „everything goes” azaz a „mindennek tere van” megközelítés. (Gondoljunk a világzenére: Bachot és a patagón népzenét ugyanúgy fel lehet használni egy mai zenem ben.) A közlekedésre lefordítva ez azt jelenti, hogy nem új domináns közlekedési módot kell keresnünk, hanem éppen olyan id szak várható, amelyikben nincs domináns közlekedési alágazat. Ez a korszak az együttm ködések, a stratégiai szövetségek, az integrációk ideje: amit a közlekedésen belül a különböz közlekedési módok együttm ködése (azaz az intermodalitás), és a távolsági és helyi közlekedés együttm ködése, a térségi közlekedési szövetségek megjelenése és meger södése kell jellemezzen. Másfel l az együttm ködéseknek ki kell terjedniük a közlekedés jobb beágyazódásának az el segítésére: így a szakpolitikák integrációjára (közlekedés és várospolitika, közlekedés és területi politika integrációja stb.) a döntési folyamatok jobb társadalmi

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beágyazására, a felhasználói szempontok jobb érvényre jutására, a különböz értékelések jobb belefoglalására a fejlesztésekbe stb. * Szigorúan véve itt kellene megállni; ennyi az, amit a fenntarthatóság általános elveinek végiggondolása, a közlekedés nagy korszakainak áttekintése és a kulturális paradigmaváltás figyelembevétele nyomán a fenntartható közlekedés jöv beli irányairól össze lehet foglalni. E f irányok megvitatása képezheti az els feladatot, majd az alaptendenciák elfogadása után lehetne továbblépni és közlekedésen belüli célokra és feladatokra bontani tovább az egyel re elég általános elveket. A fenntartható közlekedési stratégia kialakításában mégis kénytelenek voltunk továbbmenni, elfogadottnak tekintve a fenti alapokat. A továbblépésben segítségünkre volt a fenntartható közlekedés kérdéskörével foglalkozó nemzetközi irodalomnak az áttekintése. Itt mell zzük az irodalom és a nemzetközi tapasztalatok ismertetését, hanem röviden azokra a közlekedéspolitikai szint stratégiai fókuszterületekre utalunk, amelyek az áttekintés tanulságai nyomán kibontakozni látszanak. STRATÉGIAI IRÁNYELVEK A KÖZLEKEDÉSPOLITIKA KIALAKÍTÁSÁHOZ

A fenntartható közlekedés stratégia záró fejezetei egyfel l olyan közlekedési fókuszokat jelöltek meg, amelyek alkalmasak arra, hogy a közlekedéspolitika tartalmi célkit zéseiként jelenjenek meg, másfel l olyan integrációs formákat nevesítettek, amelyek a célok eléréséhez szükséges intézményrendszer kialakítását befolyásolják és el segítik a végrehajtás hatékony mechanizmusainak a kiépülését. Stratégiai fókuszok kijelölése a közlekedésben Kiindulva a fenntarthatóság alapelveib l, a fenntartható közlekedésre vonatkozó szakirodalmi áttekintésb l, a tanulságokat a hazai városi és a helyközi közlekedés programjaival és tapasztalataival ütköztetve az alábbi f stratégiai meggondolásokat emeltük ki. A fenntarthatóság szigorú érvényesítéséhez a nemzetközi stratégiák között leginkább ígéretesnek talált EST (2000) forgatókönyv hazai végigszámolására lenne szükség: a 2030-ra érvényes országos kibocsátási limiteket átvéve, a mai értékekkel összevetve, majd az adott limitértékek eléréséhez alternatív stratégiákat munkálva ki. Ennek számszer kidolgozására nem volt módunk, így egy ennél puhább stratégia különböz kulcstényez ket emelhetett ki a kívánatos irányú változások beindítására.


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A stratégia párhuzamosan javasolja alkalmazni az alább ismertetett (a)–(h) keresleti meggondolásból ered elemeket. Megjegyzend , hogy számos áttekintett példával ellentétben a magunk részér l a technológiát nem tekintjük külön stratégiai kategóriának, valamennyi alább felsorolt stratégiai elem igényli a korszer technológia által biztosított lehet ségeknek az adott cél szolgálatában történ felhasználását. (a) A közlekedés mennyiségének visszafogására irányuló lépések Az elmúlt évtizedekben számos tevékenység egyoldalú racionalizálása hárította át a terheket a közlekedésre: közigazgatás, oktatás, szolgáltatások, egészségügy, kereskedelem. A közlekedés tényleges ráfordításaival való kalkuláció esetén az ilyen irányú elmozdulások egy része irracionálisnak bizonyul. A megoldások több szempont alapján történ mérlegelését el segíti a terület- és településpolitikával való szoros integráció, nevezetesen a településen belül vegyesfunkciójú szomszédsági egységek kialakítása, ezáltal a célpontok egy része közelségének biztosítása. Ez nem csak várostervezési kérdés, együtt kell járnia ugyanebbe az irányba ösztönz tarifális eszközök bevezetésével, a közlekedési költségek megfizettetésével is. Ide sorolható a kommunikáció révén kiváltható közlekedés, így az e-közigazgatás, a távmunka (bár ebben a vonatkozásban nem várunk csodákat, mert a megtakarított id ben a helyükbe lépnek más elfoglaltságok, amik ugyancsak közlekedéssel járhatnak). (b) A motorizált közlekedés csökkentésére irányuló lépések Az el bbi pont alesete, hiszen a városon belüli közelség is tulajdonképpen ide sorolható, gyalogos távolságon belülre kerül célpontjaival (napi bevásárlás, szórakozás, sport helyi lehet ségei). Technikai, ha úgy tetszik infrastrukturális hátteréhez tartozik a gyalogosbarát közterületek kialakítása, csillapított forgalmú övezetekkel, amelyek egyben kerékpáros közlekedésre is alkalmasak, forgalomtechnikai kialakításuk pedig az átmen forgalom számára nemkívánatossá teszi e zónákat. Egyes javaslatok a parkoló kocsikat távolabb helyeznék a lakásoktól (mint a legközelebbi közforgalmú közlekedési megálló), ezzel csökkentve az önkéntelen kihívást a mindennapi gépkocsihasználatra. Az átfogó alapelv: míg a több útfelület több autós forgalmat generál, addig a több barátságos közterület el hívja a gyalogosokat. (c) A közlekedés térbeli megosztásának változtatása Nem lehet minden célpontot gyalogos távolságon belülre hozni, de ezen túlmen en is fontos szerepe van a közelségnek. Városban a kerületen belüli, illetve a kistérségen belüli funkcionális diverzitás el segíti, hogy s r helyi kapcsolatrendszerek alakuljanak ki, viszonylag csökkenjen a nagyobb távolságot igényl utazások illetve szállítások mennyisége. A helyi kapcsolatok mennyisége

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arányában megn a helyi közlekedési kapcsolatok fontossága és csökken a távolságiaké. Ennek megfelel en a többréteg közlekedési hálózat egészében is a helyi utakat ellátó elemek fontossága megn . Mindez szoros kapcsolatban van a fenntarthatóság nem-közlekedési szempontjaival, a mainál nagyobb mértékben közeli alapanyagokra, helyi termelésre támaszkodó fogyasztási mintákkal. A közlekedés és a területpolitika összefüggésében kell megemlíteni a hálózatok mintázatának a felel sségét a tér kiegyenlített kiszolgálásában: mind a centralizált, hierarchikus hálózatok, mind pedig a távolsági elemeik fontosságát a többi elem rovására kiemel hálózatok (nagysebesség vasút, interregionális folyosók arányos helyi szint hálózatok nélkül) térben koncentrálják a tevékenységeket és hozzájárulnak más, közvetlenül nem érintett térségek leépüléséhez. Az alulról építkez , rácsos szerkezet és többréteg integrált hálózatok képesek a térbeli kiegyenlítés feladatának megfelelni. (d) A közlekedés id beli lefolyásának változtatása A gépkocsival megtett távolság arányában történ fizetés alapelvét (mivel a mai információtechnológia mellett semmiféle problémát nem jelent) tovább lehet fejleszteni, és differenciálni lehet a tarifát térben és id ben. Ezzel a csúcsforgalmi mozgások egy része más id szakot választ, más része más eszközt. Ide sorolhatók olyan már m köd hatósági eszközök is, mint a kamionforgalom id szakos tilalma, vagy az egy-egy napra érvényes forgalomkorlátozások. (e) A közlekedés összetételére való hatás Ezt célozzák a környezetkímél közlekedési lehet ségek irányába történ befolyásolás különböz lehet ségei. A kiindulás az externális költségek érvényre juttatása a tarifákban. A cél a teherforgalomban a légi- és közúti forgalom helyett a vasúti és vízi közlekedés irányába történ ösztönzés. Ennek mindenképpen kívánatos módja volna az, ha a közúti kamionok megengedett terhelése lecsökkenne olyan mértékre, hogy a szállítás tényleges infrastruktúra rongáló hatását még meg tudja fizetni a szállíttató. (ld., m ködés és infrastruktúra közötti visszacsatolás). Másfel l a vasút oldaláról eddig nagyon kevés történt a korszer technológia szervezésben történ alkalmazására, illetve a pontosság, biztonság, megbízhatóság növelésére. E három tényez és a közlekedési alágazatok közös rendszerben kezelése vezethet oda, hogy a fuvarszervez k számára piaci alapon is megmutatkozzon a környezetkímél közlekedési módok el nye. A kérdéskör másik csomagja a személyközlekedés, A közforgalmú közlekedés kapcsán mindenképpen említést kell tenni az el nyben részesítés (jogi, infrastrukturális, szervezési stb.) kérdéseir l, kiemelve a felszíni védett pályás gyorsvillamos és gyorsbusz növekv karrierjét, metrót helyettesíteni képes kapacitását. A hosszú viszonylatok kialakítása, a megállóhelyek rendezése, egyszer és kis távolságon elérhet átszállási lehet ség kialakítása, a különböz technikai


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eszközök közös rendszerbe szervezése (közlekedési szövetség), a kulturált, nem szükségképpen olcsó, de min ségi szolgáltatást nyújtó rendszer az, amely képes lehet a ma autójukat használókat átvonzani a közösségi közlekedés területére. Fontos tényez a közforgalmú közlekedéssel elfogadható id beli s r séggel lefedett térségek kiterjesztése mind városokban, mind kistérségekben, amire megint egy technológiai lehet ség, az igény szerint hívható kisbusz nyújt lehet séget. Mindezek az eszközök, de még a taxi is részévé tehet a térségi közlekedési szövetségeknek. (f) A közlekedés szennyezés kibocsátása / forrásfelhasználása Látszólag a környezetigénybevétel (energiahasználat) és a kibocsátások csökkentésére irányuló közvetlen beavatkozások hozhatók leginkább egyenes összefüggésbe a küls környezeti korlátok betartásának a kötelezettségével. A tapasztalatok szerint azonban a forgalom növekedése mindeddig a legtöbb összetev re vonatkozóan meghaladta a m szaki és gazdasági intézkedésekkel elért fajlagos javítások hatását, ezért az összes üzemanyagfelhasználás, illetve kibocsátás egyel re globálisan n . Mindez azonban egyáltalán nem teszi feleslegessé az erre vonatkozó er feszítéseket, csak azt jelzi, hogy önmagában a közvetlen környezetvédelmi beavatkozások nem elegend ek a fenntartható közlekedés elérésére, azaz indokolt, hogy ezzel egyidej leg a többi itt tárgyalt lépés is napirenden maradjon. Ugyancsak problémát jelent, hogy a területfoglalást legtöbbször nem tekintik (a leveg szennyezés, a globális klíma kérdések, a zajkibocsátás, talaj- és vízszennyezés él világ veszélyeztetése mellett) ide tartozónak, márpedig ilyen értelmezésben akár egy (elméletileg nem lehetséges) 0kibocsátású, 0-fogyasztású, 0-költség járm esetén is fennmaradna, s t elviselhetetlenné válna a helyfoglalás problémája. Egyébként maga a helyfoglalás több réteg zavarás: els szinten ide tartozik az utak/vágánymezk és csatlakozó létesítményeik, illetve a jármv ek által elfoglalt terület. Második szinten ez kiegészül a létesítmények által zárványokká tett, elszennyezett, más használatra alkalmatlanná tett területekkel. A harmadik szinten jelentkezik a közlekedés hatásaként bekövetkez átrendezd és a területek értékében, amely utóbbit a másik oldalról, a területfelhasználás tervezése kapcsán már említettünk: (kiüríti-e a közlekedéshálózat a mögöttes teret és koncentrálja-e a tevékenységeket, vagy képes hozzájárulni a tér egészének a kiegyensúlyozott fenntartásához.).

A többi környezeti forrásra és hatásra vonatkozó irodalom igen kiterjedt, és egy jelent s része tartozik a közlekedés kínálati oldalán érzékelt problémákat szemléletváltás elkerülésével megoldani kívánó, ezáltal a jelenlegi struktúrák meger sítését szolgáló csoportba. Ezek a megközelítések nem felelnek meg a fenntarthatóság hosszú távú szempontjainak, ugyanakkor ez nem ok arra, hogy az err l az oldalról felbukkanó technikai újdonságokat (üzemanyag, katalizátor, helyi passzív védelem különböz formái) elvessük vagy ne alkalmazzuk. Amit világosan

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kell látni, az az, hogy a kínálati szempontú beavatkozások nem megoldják az alapvet problémákat, hanem elodázzák, illetve térben máshova helyezik át azokat. (g) A közlekedés társadalmi beágyazódását segít

lépések

A keresleti oldali szempontok felé fordulás természetesen nem csak azt jelenti, hogy a közlekedési szolgáltatást igénybevev k érdekében kell a kérdéseket átgondolni, hanem azt is, hogy velük együtt kell megtalálni a megoldásokat. A folyamatot nehezíti, hogy a kínálat-orientált szemléletet jellemz hibás és önmagukat er sít körfolyamatok nem csak a döntéshozatali és üzemeltet i struktúrákba épültek be, hanem azok részét képezik a kialakult társadalmi elvárások is. (mikor oldják már meg, hogy rendesen tudjak az autóval közlekedni, mindenhol parkolni stb.) A legnehezebb kérdések közé tartozik annak a társadalmi tudatosítása, hogy a fenntartható városi közlekedésnek mi magunk is ellene dolgozunk a cselekedeteinkkel. Ugyanakkor azt is világosan kell látni, hogy a mai helyzetben, amikor gyorsabban és sok esetben olcsóbban lehet autóval közlekedni, mint közforgalmú közlekedéssel, logikusan döntenek azok, akik még mindig az autót választják. Nem ezt a logikát kell megkérd jelezni, és nem lemondásra kell sarkalni a lakosságot, hanem tudatos résztvev jévé tenni annak a folyamatnak, amelyben kialakítható, hogy egybeessenek az egyéni választások és a közleked k közös érdeke. (h) A meglév

létesítmények megbecsülése, kis kiegészítések, felújítások

Az er forrásokkal való takarékosság része az is, hogy használjuk és kihasználjuk, továbbá megfelel állapotban fenntartsuk a meglév létesítményeket. Nem szabad elfelejteni, hogy a közlekedés m ködése dönt en korábban megépített létesítmények és eszközök használatán alapszik, és az új fejlesztések mindössze néhány százalékban hatnak a körülményekre. A fejlesztések iránti eufóriának van egy közvetlen kiszorító hatása (nem jutnak pénzbeli források a meglév létesítmények állagmegóvására, felújítására) és gyakran ez kiegészül egy közvetlen romboló törekvéssel (az új létesítmények szükségességét kevésbé lehet igazolni, ha a meglév rendszerben meg lehet oldani a problémákat) Ide sorolható korábbról a fv árosban a metró vonalak átadásakor a felszíni tömegközlekedési hálózat szétverése a hetvenes évek elején, az akkori szemlélettel valamennyire összhangban (hosszú vonalak megszüntetése, kényszer kapcsolatok és többlet átszállások a metró feltöltésére, a felszabaduló felszíni sávok megnyitása gépkocsiforgalom számára stb.) Ennél élb b probléma, hogy ma is számos ésszer és a fenntartható közlekedés felé irányuló lépés hasonló okokból van altatva (pl. 1-es villamos meghosszabbítása Budára, budai rakparti villamos meghosszabbítása Lágymányos Egyetemvárosig ) nevezetesen demonstrálandó bizonyos tervezett nagyberuházások alternatíva nélküliségét. Országos összefüggésben ide sorolható olyan elkerül utak megnem-építése, amelyek a helyi körülményeket régóta jelent sen javíthatták volna, de csökkentették volna egy-egy (egyébként a fenntartható közlekedés


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szempontjából az adott helyen éppen nem támogatható) autópálya megépítésének a kilátását (Pilisvörösvár, Balaton déli parti települések)

A különböz juttatásában

integrációk szerepe a keresleti oldali meggondolások érvényre

A ma dönt en a közlekedés kínálati oldalát érvényesít szempontokat (a m ködtet vállalatok gazdasági szabályozása, saját m szaki szempontjai, technológiai törekvések, az adottnak tekintett igények kielégítése, a minderre felépül intézményrendszer, a m szaki rendszereik miatt elkülönült alágazatok) integrálni kell, és ezen belül alá kell rendelni a keresleti oldal szempontjait érvényre juttatni képes intézményrendszernek, szabályozásnak, megfontolásoknak. A váltás véghezviteléhez egyrészt meg kell szakítani azokat a visszacsatolási köröket, amelyek fenntartják az elkerülend folyamatokat, másrészt létre kell hozni olyan visszacsatolásokat, amelyek képesek fenntartani a kívánatosnak ítélt folyamatokat. Az egyoldalú kínálati oldali szempontból történ beavatkozások helyett a keresleti oldal szempontjaiba integrált döntéshozatal el segítésére különböz integrációk szükségessége emelhet ki, amelyek minden esetben új visszacsatolási köröket hoznak létre a jelenlegi együttm ködési és visszajelzési deficitek pótlására. Ilyen integrációs igények jelentkeznek (1) a közlekedés szakpolitikai–tervezési szintjén, (2) térségi szintjén, (3) a m ködés alágazati/technológiai szintjén, (4) a finanszírozás szintjén, (5) a döntéshozatal társadalmi kapcsolatai szintjén, és (6) az értékelés-visszajelzés szintjén. (Az egyes alpontok végén zárójelben jelezzük a közlekedési-infra-strukturális problémakörön túlmutató, általánosabb megfogalmazás lehet ségét.) (1) integrált területi politika (várospolitika) és közlekedéspolitika szükségessége. Ez az integráció érvényre juttatja a célpontok világának a szempontjait. (lakóhely, termelés, kapcsolatigény, életstílus, rekreáció, intézmények), és ezen keresztül világossá teszi, hogy a közlekedésnek e komplex életvilág prioritásaihoz kell illeszkednie. A váltáshoz át kell értékelni a mai közlekedési terveket, amelyek között mind országos szinten, mind települési szinten számos olyan van, amely hagyományos közlekedési prioritásokhoz tapad. – Utaltunk rá, hogy ennek a területpolitikának része kell legyen a közlekedés költségeinek megfizettetése is, azaz az egymásra utaltság mindkét oldalról fennáll. (Az itt leírt szempont a közlekedésre való koncentrálásnál általánosabban is megfogalmazható, mint az ágazatközi és diszciplinaközi integráció szükségessége, az egyes szakpolitikák szektoriális elkülönülésének oldása.) (2) a helyi, (mikroszint ) és a távolsági (makroszint ) kialakítás integrációja. Ez az integráció világossá teszi, hogy egy konzisztens térbeli struktúrát kell

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kiszolgálni, ahol nem engedhet meg a folytonosság megsz nése, a helyi struktúrák mell zése. Közlekedésre vonatkoztatva ki kell emelni egyfel l a településhatár relativizálódását és a város és városkörnyék egy rendszerben történ kezelésének a szükségességét, másfel l azt a tényt, hogy a nagy tengelyek, folyosók a térségek szempontjából csak akkor jelentenek kapcsolatokat, ha biztosítva van a közvetít kapcsolat a két szint között. Ennek hiányában az eredetileg kifejezetten nem közvetlen kiszolgálásra szolgáló folyosók mellé kezdenek települni a termel egységek, funkcionálisan elkülönülve a mögöttes tért l, hozzájárulva azok kiürüléséhez, funkcióvesztéséhez, másfel l létrehozva ugyancsak monofunkcioná-lis sávos ipari-szolgáltatási sávokat. Az integrációnak azt kell biztosítania, hogy ne a gyorsközlekedési sávok rendezzék maguk köré a számukra kívánatos funkciókat, hanem a tér összessége legyen kiszolgálva közlekedéssel, ahol a távolsági elemek feladata a komplex térségek összekapcsolása. (Természetesen a térbeli integráció hiánya nem sz kíthet le közlekedéshálózati kérdésekre, a jelenség összefügg azzal az általánosabb kooperációs deficittel, ami a szomszédos vagy agglomerációs területek irányában és a határon átnyúló együttm ködésben igényel javulást.) (3) az egyes közlekedési módok integrációjának szükségessége (intermodalitás, közlekedési szövetség) Ez az integráció egyértelm en el kíván távolodni a m szaki rendszerek sajátosságai alapján kialakult alágazatok (és az alágazati szempontok dominanciáját érvényre juttató vállalatok) érdekeltségét l, ami különböz kínálati kategóriákat értékel fel; – helyette az integráció a keresleti oldal által igényelt szolgáltatások komplex kielégítését szorgalmazza. Személyközlekedésben a hazai példa (BKSZ) jól mutatja, hogy az üzemeltet vállalati érdekek dominanciája már a szövetség létrehozását is hosszú id re lehetetlenné képes tenni. Ugyanakkor fel kell hívni a figyelmet arra, hogy az intermodalitás önmagában csak lehet ség, de nem biztosíték a kínálati szemponttól való elszakadásra. Áruszállításban az intermodalitás képviseletében megjelen logisztikai központok továbbra is hardvert, technikai szempontokat és dönt en közlekedési kínálati szempontú érdekeket képviselnek, hiszen els sorban a közlekedési létesítményekre települve azok nyúlványát, a speciális funkciókat jelenítik meg, és csak kevésbé a mögöttes térség és az ott él k érdekeit (bár a támogatások igénylésekor ez a hivatkozási alap). A közlekedési szövetségek esetében is van olyan törekvés, amelyik a szövetségen a közlekedési vállalatok megállapodását szeretné érteni – ezzel szemben lényeges, hogy rajtuk kívül a megrendel k (állam, önkormányzatok) és az utasok (vállalatok, utasszervezetek) képvisel i hasonló rangú részvev i legyenek a közlekedési szövetség irányító testületének. Id vel a jól kialakított közlekedési szövetség testülete nem csak a közületi személyszállítás, hanem az adott térség más közlekedési kérdéseinek is az irányítójává válhat, tulajdonképpen a térség ’közlekedéspolitikájának’ a megalkotójává.


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(4) az infrastruktúra finanszírozás és a m ködés megfizettetésének (pricing) összekapcsolása (a keresleti szempontok hassanak vissza az infrastrukturális beruházások alakítására). Nem csak a közlekedés kínálati érdekei, hanem a közlekedés-építés kínálati érdekei is hajlamosak „elszállni”, elrugaszkodni a tényleges igényekt l. Amikor egy nagysebesség vasút, autópálya, metró, repül teret kiszolgáló gyorsvasút, stb. nagyberuházás szóbajön, az építésben érdekeltek mindig a közpénzekkel rendelkez kormányokat, önkormányzatokat igyekszenek meggy zni a létesítmény fontosságáról, jelent s arányban sikerrel. A beruházások tényleges szükségességét a tényleges kereslet méri, de ha az ezzel kapcsolatos kockázatokat sikerül a megrendel re hárítani, akkor a beruházónak semmiféle mérlegelési érdeke nem marad: a megépítésért fog harcolni, és ennek érdekében mindenféle ellen rizhetetlen, de politikailag kedvez , rajta számon nem kérhet szempontot fel fog hozni: munkaalkalom teremtése, gazdasági prosperitás, térségi fellendülés. Az elszabadult infrastruktúrák szárnyalása nem csak hazai jelenség, a TEN EU prioritási projektjeibe bejuttatott tervezetek ugyanígy m ködnek, a nagyszámú nemzetközi címke (TINA, TEN, páneurópai folyosó, AGR AGTR TEM) néha nem is jó másra, mint a nemzeti kormányokkal elfogadtatni az adott infrastruktúra fontosságát. Régióközi folyosók nagytérségi összehangolására természetesen szükség van, de f leg azért, hogy ha majd épülnek az adott folyosó szakaszok, akkor megfelel helyen épüljenek. Ha a kiépítés elszakad a helyi prioritások logikájától, akkor valójában annál sürg sebb helyi létesítmények helyett épül a nemzetközi elem. (Itt is megfogalmazható a közlekedési fejezeten túlmutató, általánosabb összefüggésként az öncélúvá váló projektek problémája, ahol az integrált megoldást a projektek kimenetelének visszacsatolása jelentheti az eredeti célokhoz.) (5) A döntéshozatali folyamatok társadalmi integrációja, civilek és lakosok részvétele. A közlekedés keresleti oldalán megjelen tényleges szempontok nem juthatnak valódi képviselethez addig, amíg az érdemi döntések kialakításában alágazati-nagyvállalati érdekek dominálnak. A (3) alpont kapcsán utaltunk rá, hogy az intermodalitás, a közlekedési szövetségek kialakítása elakad, vagy torz irányt vesz, ha nem érvényesül kell súllyal a döntésekben az átrendez dés valódi célját jelent felhasználói szempontok képviselete. Ugyanez igaz nem csupán a helyi-térségi, de az országos és európai lépték közlekedéspolitikai döntésekre is. (Illetve értelemszer en más területek döntéshozatalában való társadalmi részvételére is.) (6) Az értékelés integrációja a tervezési és fejlesztési tevékenységbe, a megvalósulás figyelemmel kisérésére vonatkozó visszacsatolások intézményesülése. Ezzel kapcsolatos fontos intézményi változás, aminek a létrehozását sürg snek tartjuk, a fenntarthatósági vizsgálatok (sustainability assessment) bevezetése. Ez a vizsgálati módszer a stratégiai környezeti vizsgálatok módszeréb l kezd önállósulni, annak a felismerésnek a nyomán, miszerint a különböz

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ágazatpolitikák értékelése esetében olyan összetett kérdésekr l van szó, ahol nem célszer kategorikusan elhatárolni egymástól a környezeti, a szociális és a gazdasági szempontok teljesülésének a vizsgálatát, hanem azok kölcsönhatását is figyelembe kell venni. E szempontok összefüggésének a boncolgatásához pontosan ugyanazokat a lehetséges megközelítéseket kell végiggondolnunk, mint a fenntarthatóság kapcsán; nevezetesen, hogy egymás mellé, vagy rendszerben egymásba ágyazottan képzeljük-e el a környezeti, a szociális és a gazdasági dimenziókat stb. – azaz tulajdonképpen fenntarthatósági értékelésr l van szó. (Itt az egész kérdéskör túlmutat a közlekedési ágazati megközelítésen) * Az alábbi egyszer táblázatban összefoglaltuk, hogy a fejezet (a) – (h) stratégiai fókuszok elérésében a megjelölt (1) – (6) integrációk er sítésére vonatkozó programok megítélésünk szerint milyen mértékben képesek segítséget nyújtani. (++ er s pozitív kapcsolat, + pozitív kapcsolat). (1) Integráció szakpolitikai Stratégia (a) mennyiségi visszafogás ++ (b) motorizált közl. csökk. ++ (c) térbeli változtatás + (d) id beli változtatás (e) összetétel (modal split) + (f) kibocsátás-forrásfelh. (g) társadalmi beágyazódás (h) meglév létesítm. + fennt.

(2) területi

(3) modális

(4) finanszírozási

(5) társadalmi

+ + ++

+ + +

+ +

++

++ ++ ++ ++ ++

+ + + + +

++

++ +

+

(6) értékelési

+ + + + + +

HOGYAN TOVÁBB?

Els ként javasolt lépés a fenntarthatósági céloknak, következtetéseknek az általános szinten történ megvitatása, pontosítása. A pontosított célok alapján áttekintend k és megsz rend k a jelenlegi közlekedéspolitika (Magyar Közlekedéspolitika 2004) meglehet sen eklektikus célkit zései (Az eklektikus jelz itt annak a diplomatikus kifejezése, hogy az érvényben lév közlekedéspolitika célrendszere önmagában is inkonzisztens. (Szlávik-Kósi 2004) A fenntartható közlekedés stratégiai fókuszai egy konzisztens keretet kell biztosítsanak a közlekedéspolitika szakmai célkit zéseinek a meghatározásához. E keretek között minél el bb el kellene kezdeni a (fenntartható) közlekedéspolitika kidolgozását.


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HIVATKOZÁSOK

Bruntland jelentés (1987) Our Common Future UN World Commission on Environment and Development. Oxford / New York: Daly, Herman E (1991) Steady State Economics. Island Press, Washington DC.. EST (2000) Environmentally Sustainable Transport. Synthesis Report of the OECD Project presented on occasion of the international EST Conference Vienna 4-6 Octobre 2000. 50 p. OECD Paris. Fleischer Tamás (2004) Kistérségi fejld és, közlekedés, Közlekedéstudományi Szemle, 54. évf. 7. sz. pp. 242-252. http://www.kte.mtesz.hu/061kozl_szemle/binx/07_2004.pdf

fenntarthatóság.

Magyar Közlekedéspolitika (2004) Magyar Közlekedéspolitika 2003–2015. Magyar Köztársaság. Elfogadva a Magyar Országgyl és 19/2004. (III. 26.) OGY határozatával. Mom, Gijs (2001) Networks, Systems and the European Automobile. A Plea for a Mobility History Programme. Review essay for the first AMES Workshop, Scenario 1: European Infrasystem Torino, 2-4 November 2001. Nakien ovi , Nebojša (1988) Dinamics of change and long waves. International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis IIASA WP-88-074 June 1988 Laxenburg. Oka, Namiki (1995) The New Shape of Stations. Japan Railway & Transport Review December 1995 pp. 2-5. Pearce, D V – Warford J J (1993) World Without End: Economics, Environment and Sustainable Development. IBRD Washington DC. Szlávik János – Kósi Kálmán (témafelels ök).(2004) Környezetvédelmi hatásvizsgálati módszertan és alkalmazás a közlekedéspolitikai intézkedési tervhez. XI-I/767/2003 sz. tanulmány. BMGE Környezetgazdaságtan Tanszék.

Budapest, 2005. szeptember 29. – szerkesztett szöveg 2005. október 29.

Sustainable transport logics and the disconnection with action: a case study from England PLEASE DO NOT QUOTE WITHOUT PERMISSION

Angela Hull, Director Centre for Environment and Planning, Faculty of the Built Environment University of the West of England, Bristol Coldharbour Lane, Freenchay BRISTOL BS16 1QY. Email: [email protected] Fax: +44 (0)117 32 83899 Tel: +44 (0)117 32 83202

Sustainable transport logics and the disconnection with action: a case study from England Abstract There has been a rhetorical shift in paradigm from predict and provide for road transport to one which addresses sustainable mobilities. This paper explores the implementation mechanisms which could bring about the EU transport ministers’ definition of a sustainable transport system predicated on the reduction of CO2.emissions and non-renewable resource use and which produces more socially equitable outcomes. The paper first outlines the English policy context in terms of responsibilities, powers and resources available to local transport planners, and then identifies the tools of government that can be more efficiently applied to effect a more sustainable transport system which specifically reduces CO2 emissions. A snapshot of transport decision making in five local transport authorities in England is presented, using a case study methodology, which explores the joint working practices of practitioners in five public policy sectors, which impact on transport delivery. The case study highlights the norms and values of the local public administrators who affect local transport mobility and how they in turn are hindered both by the rigidity of central government direction and an insufficiency of implementation tools.

Introduction and problematic

We have been discussing a new paradigm for managing societal mobility needs in the UK since the early 1990s. Research in the 1990s (Goodwin et al, 1991; Vigar et al, 2000) perceived a “new realism” in transport planning whereby demand management of road transport should replace the traditional engineering approach of ‘predict and

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provide’. A government advisory committee, at this time, also criticized the technical assumptions underpinning the appraisal methodology used by central government for trunk road assessment (SACTRA, 1994).

The national strategic documents that followed in the late 1990s called for a “new deal for transport [which would] be better for everyone” (DETR, 1998a); highlighted the “opportunities for change [to achieve] sustainable development” (DETR, 1998b); and called for measures to “deliver[ing] a fundamental change” (DTLG, 2001). The transport policy delivery plans, however, during this period continued to provide substantial investment in inter-urban road construction on the grounds of travel timesavings to businesses and individuals (DETR, 2000). European transport policy for a long time was focused on the optimization of trans-European transport systems through enhanced interoperability and interconnectivity (Mulley and Nelson, 1999). The stated objective of the recent white paper (EU, 2001) is, now also, to decouple growth in road transport from economic growth without restricting mobility, by making more efficient use of the transport system. Some academics have searched for a paradigm shift in these new discourses (Goodwin et al, 1991; Vigar, 2002; Bayliss, 1998) others have been more circumspect (Depuy, 1999; Naess et al, 2001; Stead, 2003; Hull, 2005). Without doubt, new approaches have been translated into transport planning practice with different emphases in different localities across Europe, but it is questionable whether a paradigm shift towards demand management has occurred.

This article attempts to explain the delivery inertia of the new paradigm by taking a detailed case study of five local transport authorities in England. The empirical work was undertaken in 2005-06 and sought to understand the values, concerns, working

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practices and interaction of transport planners, land use planners, public health and environmental health practitioners, and corporate policy personnel around the implementation of sustainable transport policies in their local authorities. The strategic policy direction to implement demand management is in place in England and the package of policy tools to address the environmental and social impacts of mobility are well-known and have been rehearsed in pilot projects. Thus, a focus on the internal decision making processes in local transport authorities and their external relationships with key stakeholders may throw some light on what appears to be a sluggish approach from local regulators to addressing sustainable mobility. This article, therefore takes an institutional focus through examining the rules, powers, competencies and the tools available to public administrators and elected politicians to influence the decisions of private individuals, and public and private organizations. As far as we are aware, this is the first study of this kind in the UK, which examines the interaction between central and local government across five policy sectors on the topic of transport’s contribution to a reduction in CO2 emissions.

The article starts with the new vision for sustainable transport to which EU transport ministers’ signed up to in 2001; comparing this with current concepts of economic sustainability dominant in transport planning. We then examine in some detail the structures for the delivery of transport policy in England in order to understand the leverage that local public administrators have to bring about behavioural change in transport use. The next section presents the detailed case study of interactive local transport decision making between five policy sector implementers. The article concludes with a discussion of the research findings to elaborate a heuristic

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framework, which can be used to understand the trigger points for radical change in any state administrative system.

Defining Sustainable Transport

In 2000 the European Commission’s joint expert group on transport and environment defined a sustainable transport system as a system that:



allows the basic access needs and development of individuals, companies and societies to be met safely and in a manner consistent with human and ecosystem health, and promotes equity within and between generations;



is affordable, operates efficiently, offers choice of transport mode, and supports a vibrant economy, and regional development;



limits emissions and waste within the planet’s ability to absorb them, uses renewable resources at or below their rates of generation, and, uses nonrenewable resources at or below the rates of development of renewable substitutes and minimizes the use of land and the generation of noise (ECMT, 2001).

This definition acknowledges the need for access and economic development, but places these goals on an equal footing with the promotion of public health and social equity, and the limitation of emissions and use of non-renewable resources. The implementation (and monitoring) of the EC expert group’s vision of sustainable transport is dependent on a clear understanding of the impact of our current mobility choices, but crucially also on the collection of a range of data on:

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1. what the daily mobility and access needs are of different social groups; 2. to what extent the infrastructure for different transport modes allows these needs to be met equitably across different social groups and in a way that promotes public health and protects environmental resources; and 3. to what extent the use of government subsidies, regulations, actions and support are effectively achieving sustainable transport as defined.

This sustainable mobility paradigm, of which the EU definition is just one attempt to operationalise the concept, responds to concerns about environmental and social sustainability, arguing for mass transit as a public good to ensure efficient use of resources to access jobs, services and other facilities. It raises deep political and economic questions concerning the establishment of an equal playing field for different transport mobilities, which penalizes non-renewable resource use (environmental, social, etc) through economic or legal instruments.

Aggregate trends in travel show that car use in England is increasing for social, shopping and recreational purposes. The costs of car ownership and usage have reduced dramatically in comparison to the costs of train and bus travel, altering the conditions for competition between the car and these forms of travel (Jonsson and Johansson, 2006). The negative impacts of our dependency on the car are well known and are becoming quantified. These include firstly, the environmental degradation and the physical severance of communities caused by the extensive infrastructure required for car use (Appleyard, 1991; Adams, 1998; Fotel, 2006). Secondly, the health and biodiversity effects of air and noise pollution and the consumption of scarce fossil fuels. Thirdly, the accessibility and flexibility provided by the car have led to the

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dispersal of employment and increasing commuter sheds, particularly around major cities. And finally, the social inequities caused by the speed of cars (insecurity, casualties, deaths), which fall on specific social groups (pedestrians, cyclists, the poor, elderly, children) who use slower modes of travel (Downs, 1999; Graham and Glaister, 2003).

State structures for managing spatial mobilities – an English case study

The prevailing view is that cars are indispensable for the fast lane lifestyles we live and to access the dispersed configuration of facilities, employment and residences in postmodern environments. This dependency, Depuy (1999) argues has been created by the continual strengthening and upgrading of the network and the marketing of car brands which create a “ virtuous magic circle” of positive network, club and fleet effects that locks car owners into car use so that: “to belong to the system has become essential, and to a large extent it is the fact that many others are in the system that motivates us to enter it (or remain in it), to use a car, and thus to become dependent on it.” (ibid: p.12)

It also seems to lock public administrations into catering for public expectations of car penetration and speed of access, as well as the perceived link between new road infrastructure and improved economic performance (CPRE, 2002).

The question is how can the tools of government be more efficiently applied to effect a more sustainable city transport system which reduces CO2 emissions and the uptake of non-renewable resources and produces more socially equitable outcomes. In-depth

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research was carried out in five local transport authorities in England to gain an insight into how central government policies are interpreted and implemented and the potential synergies between different policy sectors at the local level. The research design draws on theories of structure and agency from political economy (Ostrom, 1986; 1990; Scharpf, 1997; Flyvberg, 1998; Hull, 2006), which conceptualise an association between the contextual conditions, the change mechanisms and the eventual outcomes. Societal values and norms are key to understanding the willingness of governments to intervene in market allocation of resources (Sager and Ravlum, 2004). In the UK, the market mechanism is seen as the most effective mechanism for distributing resources efficiently with the government playing a supportive role. Government relationships are based on authority and status and coordination is dependent on supervision and administrative order. Democratic involvement is organized through a system of representative democracy giving power to representatives elected by the people. This contrasts with the pluralist democracy in the United States with constitutional legal rights for citizens to monitor the implementation of government decisions.

The tools, powers and resources available to local transport authorities (LTAs) in England are delegated from central government. The Department for Transport (DfT), acting on behalf of central government has four main levers in the governmental toolbox as Table 1 shows.

INSERT TABLE 1 ABOUT HERE

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Within the DfT, the Highways Authority and Network Rail, and Transport for London are separate departments, which have substantial resource management powers to maintain and enhance the infrastructure they are responsible for. LTAs try to influence the spending decisions of these national executive agencies, and collaborate with them to access public and private sector funding. LTAs usually correspond with the local authorities of local government, but they may partner adjoining LTAs, to develop a joint Local Transport Plan (LTP) every five years. Their mission is to deliver central government priorities (targets) on: •

reducing urban congestion,

•

boosting public transport use,

•

cutting road accident casualties and

•

improving air quality

The system of resourcing LTAs from centrally collected taxes is based on a system of annual negotiation with the DfT over the capital funding for specific schemes identified in their LTP, and increasingly against the performance on meeting the four national priorities above. This includes revenue funding to maintain the road transport system (safety, bridges, lights, etc), but not the revenue for operating and maintaining alternative modes (bus, cycle, etc). The ‘hands-on’, tight control of ‘scarce’ public resources by the Treasury, released on the basis of competitive bids for capital schemes and short-term performance achievement, raise issues about LTA’s focus on long -term planning for more sustainable mobility. LTAs also have access to capital and revenue funds from developers through negotiations related to the traffic requirements specific to development proposals. Significantly LTAs have discretionary powers to raise (their own) revenue from workplace car parking charges

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and road tolls, but only Transport for London, and the City of Durham have used them.

LTAs have specific mandatory legal responsibilities which include the preparation of the LTP, to set road traffic reduction targets and carry out studies of road traffic accidents, and discretionary powers to improve traffic circulation and to charge for workplace car parking and road use. Local authorities, generally, only have administrative powers specifically delegated to them by central government and live under constant pressure of reorganization (and abolition). They have few direct development powers, and where they do these relate to the maintenance of existing infrastructure. The largest compartment of the toolbox is the Information and Policy compartment. The LTP and the sister document, the Local Development Framework, are influential through their support to specific projects which, in themselves, can have direct influence on the behaviour of individuals and organizations. They also indirectly influence the investment decisions of organizations through their persuasive force and the local consensus these documents have gained through public consultation and administrative tribunals.

The hierarchical system of government and governance also affects the autonomy and competence of local government. Since 2000 a new tier of regional administration (expanded Government Office in the Region, Regional Development Agency, Regional Assembly) have been established to co-ordinate investment decisions on major infrastructure through the regional strategic framework provided by the Regional Economic Strategy and the Regional Spatial Strategy. Ostensibly these intermediary agencies have a role in public policy integration and supporting different

9

types of interaction, but could also be seen as complicating the relationship between central and local government. They are non-elected bodies, which are increasingly being given a role in the prioritization of regional funding for housing and transport.

Local delivery of sustainable transport solutions

Several studies have undertaken recent detailed examinations of local authority delivery of transport policy in the UK, most notably: Docherty (2000); Pemberton (2000); Vigar et al (2000); Evans and Hutchins (2002); Steer Davies Gleave (2002); Hull and Tricker (2005); and DfT (2006). These studies have mainly used documentary review to understand the central–local government policy framework focusing on the allocation of responsibility, powers, and resources to implement agreed policies. The latter two studies are notable for employing, in addition, questionnaire surveys, focus groups and interviews.

Hull and Tricker (2005) found that the dynamic interaction between institutional rules (how to access and use resources), the organizational codes of conduct (ways of working) for interaction between the key transport stakeholders were factors that have explanatory potential. Their in-depth study of 16 LTAs in 2004 sought to understand the: 

stages in transport policy design and implementation



horizontal and vertical organizational coordination issues



use of policy tools for option generation, option appraisal, scenario modeling,



sources of funding



engagement with stakeholders

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The transport consultancy Atkins undertook concurrent research to examine the achievements of all 82 LTAs in delivering the 4 national priorities through their LTP (DfT, 2006). Both these pieces of research have identified similar concerns held by transport planners (and politicians in the Atkins study) concerning the barriers to the effective delivery of sustainable transport outcomes (Hull and Tricker, 2006). The fiscal and the performance management policies of central government are arguably the most important influences on local level decisions and policy implementation. These two studies throw some light on why policy change is slow, and progress patchy both spatially and temporally.

The studies found that LTAs are generally supportive of the LTP process. The preparation and delivery of LTP2 (2006-2011) has helped to strengthen their relationship with the DfT, but that the resource requirements (staff time and skills) and major corporate, technical and logistical challenges affect their ability to deliver. The majority of LTAs feel they lack some of the wider instruments (e.g. legal, economic, political, technical) to coordinate the efforts of other stakeholders (transport operators, business interests) who play a key role in the delivery process. The ranking of their performance against agreed targets (national and local priorities) and the links between this and the release of central government funds is clear and transparent. This performance management system, however, is attuned to the 4 national transport priorities rather than local priorities and solutions. The financial incentives for LTAs to promote more sustainable modes were considered to be weak, and sometimes perverse. A majority of LTAs felt strongly that they were hindered by what they perceived to be contradictions within policy objectives at a national level

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and a general ‘short-termism’ in political decision-making at both national and local levels. Government subsidies and prescriptive rules still support improvements to road (and airport) infrastructure to the detriment of other means of transport.

Several respondents reported that transport had a low corporate political profile and that LTP policy is likely to be tempered by the priorities of other service areas (especially education, social services and housing) which influence the Comprehensive Performance Assessment scoring for local authorities. The transport priorities of local politicians are often narrower (eg road safety, highway condition) than the broader agenda contained in the LTP. LTAs repeatedly mentioned the constraining effects of their inability to access revenue funding to support the operational delivery of enhanced bus schemes, walking and cycling strategies. The absence of a Passenger Transport Authority, to co-ordinate the delivery of services sub-regionally across local authorities, was mentioned as a barrier to the promotion of effective public transport services. Other specific barriers mentioned were the lack of management mechanisms for policy integration, insufficient staff time resources and technical skills, and professional and/or departmental cultures.

Many LTAs in the Hull and Tricker study find it difficult to engage with the train operating companies and Network Rail about new ideas and approaches. LTAs also find gaining the commitment of local public transport operators to invest in new bus routes and enhanced services as a challenge. They are aware that to reduce the increase in car-based travel bus-based solutions and demand-restraint policies will need to be implemented in tandem. They also felt restricted in the development of sustainable strategies in terms of information, measurement and assessment. LTAs

12

raised two related monitoring issues. Firstly, they considered that local baseline monitoring data is lacking but imperative, not least because of its potential to influence other policy agendas and provide a common focus for the achievement of corporate targets, but also in communicating objectives and outcomes to elected members, officers and external stakeholders. Secondly, they reported that there is fundamental misalignment between the indicators and reporting regimes embedded in analytical decision support tools and government monitoring of the impacts of transport interventions. Where LTAs used analytical tools and transport models these were often insufficient or inappropriate to the geographic setting they were working with.

One concludes from this research that the message and requirement to implement sustainable surface transport solutions needs to be explicitly shared with all the transport delivery agencies and not just LTAs. The insufficiency of mechanisms to monitor and enforce central government sustainable development objectives across government departments and executive agencies creates inconsistencies and conflicting messages being passed down from central government to local service providers. On their own, it is questionable whether the powers and tools available to LTAs have sufficient teeth to be effective in terms of demand management outcomes and in delivering sustainable alternatives to the private car. Despite the procedural barriers associated with working across departments identified in organizational behaviour research, and the confusion of responsibilities this can bring, joint working maybe provide the trigger for effective action.

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The empirical research for this chapter therefore examines how different professionals (transport planners, environmental health and public health personnel, land use planners, and corporate strategy personnel) work together in the institutional setting of a local authority to design and secure more sustainable transport outcomes. The main aim of the research has been to understand how new ideas on sustainable transport have entered the reasoning of LTAs and the constellations of professionals and changed the way they cooperate with each other.

Communication between professions One can hypothesize that breaking the circle of dependency on the car will require the coordinated use of a wider range of public sector interventions to reduce CO2 and other negative impacts of car use, and to encourage the use of alternative modes. Research in the 1990s by Stewart et al (1999) and Goss (2001) identified the difficulties of implementing solutions to social problems, which transcend the boundaries of service sectors. These included the cultural barriers and ways of working, but also institutional barriers such as the timing of plan production and the lack of synchronisation of formal deliverables. The values of the range of professionals working on transport policy formulation and delivery therefore are crucial to understanding the implementation inertia on sustainable transport solutions in the UK. The empirical work, therefore sought to understand the subjective preferences of local authority officers in five related public policy sectors who deal with transport issues at some point in their work. We undertook a total of 31 in-depth interviews with transport planners, land use planners, environmental health officers, public health officers and corporate strategy personnel in 5 English LTAs. The interviews sought to identify the motives (or drivers) for these senior managers or

14

their departments to come together to implement more sustainable transport solutions, and the barriers constraining interaction. Additionally, they were asked to consider the role that ‘their’ sector might have in implementing demand management measures and ‘low CO2’ transport solutions.

Triggers for cooperation One of the key positive drivers for change was perceived to be from transparent and shared organizational goals and organizational commitments to sustainable solutions. Where there are clear political priorities and strategies identified in the Community Strategy, or other local authority corporate document, officers find that joint working on a scheme can be integrated more successfully. But this is rarely the practice. At the moment service sector coordination is very much dependent on the intersectoral and interpersonal skills of the individual practitioners involved. Integration across sectors at the senior management level could also be a key trigger for change. The political management structures within local authorities were thought to be important, but few of the senior officers interviewed could see how transport might fit into broader policy objectives. There was a strong feeling expressed by some of the related professionals that transport planners needed training in inter-personal skills and public consultation before interaction between the professions could happen more readily. Transport planners, themselves, perceived the need for training to understand how traffic calming, congestion charging, Low Emission Zones and other ‘soft’ measures can help support sustainable solutions.

A number of external drivers were put forward. The main external trigger was thought to be government legislative requirements on services and processes. Suggestions

15

included a specific requirement to address mobility issues in central government departmental policies, a requirement to deliver sustainable development through the land use planning decision-making process, and guidance from central government on how to implement a more corporate approach to local transport issues. The implementation of European and national environmental processes (Strategic Environmental Assessment, Environmental Impact Assessment, environmental directives for air quality, noise, etc) could be strengthened in the UK. Health Impact Assessment, for example, is not a statutory requirement at the moment. Within the current structures of administrative responsibility, the public ownership of bus franchises is the one single action which could enhance sustainable accessibility within urban areas. Bus patronage is decreasing, with few exceptions, at the moment and LTAs have no control over service frequencies, fares or the quality of the service. Achieving the four DFT national targets for transport are all heavily dependent on affordable and efficient public transport.

Sector-specific contribution The interviews revealed the different concerns of the public policy sectors regarding how they approach transport priorities in their work. Transport planners were preoccupied with gaining funding for the schemes identified in their LTP. Many felt that DfT/ national priorities were distorting the preparation of the LTP since they were preparing schemes, which they know will win money even though their implementation may not be sustainable locally. Though they thought that capital funding is difficult to secure, it is even harder to creatively find the revenue funding to run and maintain more sustainable modes of travel.

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Public health practitioners contribute to the delivery of primary care in the community direct to patients. They manage patient care centers and work with the primary care trusts, which run hospitals and general practitioner services. They are assessed against the performance management targets set by regional Strategic Health Authorities. They take a lead role in health promotion locally. Their particular concerns were public transport to new hospitals and the treatment of cycling and walking in LTPs. On the former issue, they find it difficult to work with public transport professionals since public transport coverage and operators vary between the districts within their administrative boundary.

Land use planning is now delivered more at the district scale, a territorial sale which is smaller than the scale addressed by most LTPs. Land use planners, therefore, find it difficult to relate to transport strategies as they are developing at the regional and subregional levels (joint LTP). The Local Development Framework (LDF) has a different delivery timescale to the Regional Spatial Strategy (RSS) and the LTP. LDFs are the spatial representation of the RSS at the local level, but land use planners found that it was difficult to get the environment front-loaded in their plans and as a result major schemes were pushed through the appraisal process with political momentum before anyone has the chance to see whether it’s the most sustainable option. They particularly saw bus schemes and car parking standards and charges as the most appropriate solutions and, therefore, found it difficult to understand how the road schemes favored by transport planners actually related to the sustainable objectives of the LTP. Transport schemes often seem to have a long gestation period and are worked up and designed ready for implementation and available government funding,

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even when land use planners and other professions did not see them as appropriate policy solutions.

Environmental health professionals saw their contribution to local transport initiatives as the setting and regulating of environmental standards, commenting on the location of new facilities, and collaborating on the production of air quality and noise management plans. Conducting Strategic Environmental Assessments (SEA) is the development in their expanding role within local authorities. However, they felt that climate change policies and sustainability do not have much force within local authorities unless the departmental heads and top politicians were advocating such action. Few of the environmental health officers interviewed could give examples of where they had changed local decisions. There was a general view that local authority performance management systems are inadequate for picking up the environmental impacts of proposals and service sector plans.

Officers working in corporate strategy departments tend to have a wider focus on strategic issues working closely with sub-regional and regional bodies. The role of transport in city competitiveness and transport connectivity between cities is a key issue being discussed in these arenas. Corporate policy officers support the production of the local authority Corporate Plan, and the Community Strategy with external local stakeholders. Community strategies, although they develop a broad consensus across local stakeholders, have little authority over the transport policy-making process since they contribute no independent funding. They felt that it was necessary to adapt their thinking and approach when working with transport planners. They specifically mentioned the lack of data to show how transport impacts upon other service sectors.

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Discussion of research findings

The research sought to understand the tools (decision support, implementation) available to LTAs and central government to bring about a step-change in sustainable transport outcomes. Secondly to understand the processes of communication between the different departments in a local authority which implement government policies and which collectively influence the delivery of transport at the local level. The findings enable us to put more flesh on the existing generic lists of barriers to policy implementation.

The research has identified the contradictions and tensions within the fragmented institutional structure of government, both between the vertical tiers of governance and horizontally within each tier. This can lead to overlapping responsibilities, dysfunctionality and excessive complication. The Highways Agency, Network Rail and the Regional Development Agencies are making major investment decisions on transport at the regional level. Radical approaches to the design of sustainable transport systems at the local or city level are thus undermined by the singular focus of these nationally-funded agencies with their committed funding for road building or inter-urban rail networks. Their authority to set the terms of engagement and with whom, their committed funding for a single transport mode give them the authority to effectively achieve their outcomes. City-level integration of transport modes (walking, cycling, bus, rail, car, air) is undermined by disintegrated implementation, insufficient funds and a variety of champions with limited competence and persuasive power. The strategic sustainability issues on spatial ordering and accessibility to

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facilities and jobs in a city-region and the infrastructure funding to support this fall through the ”cracks”.

Within the English context, transport policy at the local level competes with other service sector policies and, as this research has shown, often conflicts. Sector-specific performance management creates competing agendas and the protection of empires in local authorities between the different teams. Visions of what a sustainable transport system should be varies from sector to sector and, depending on levels of cooperation and communication, and is ‘translated’ into transport planning practice in different ways in different localities. The practice of providing for the car is still strong in local transport planning despite the rhetoric of plan, monitor and manage, and the requirements for SEA. The rules to access scheme funding distract from the generation of strong, integrated strategies for encouraging alternative modes and promotes schemes that narrowly fit government criteria. Few local practitioners can understand the local structures sufficiently to find out how to work across them. Because of the different administrative boundaries and timeframes, the strategy and the spending decisions of a range of service sectors (transport, health, environment, planning, education, social services, regeneration, etc) are disconnected.

Despite the rhetoric, the attention of government and private sector actors to secure effective and efficient sustainable mass surface transit has not been mobilized effectively to create a low cost interconnected transport system serving locations where people wish to go in city-regions. In this respect, the logics of sustainable transport are disconnected from the generative action. One can observe policy inconsistencies within EU and national transport policies. On the one hand the

20

strategies persuade actors to reduce CO2 emissions and other pollutants from road traffic and, on the other hand, to invest in road infrastructure which is safe, efficient and high quality. It seems that elements of the latter, such as completing the strategic road corridors, which tie in closely to economic competitiveness policies, are the policies most forcefully being implemented. This geometry of mobility resulting from this option choice is then accepted as the vision around which other societal requirements such as CO2 reduction solutions must fit in (“smooth out congestion hotspots”). In this way, the selection of strategic options at national and transnational levels shapes attention away from the spatial distribution of accessibility and the way mobility influences place-based living conditions (Fotel, 2006). UK transport policy specifically embraces ideas on reducing greenhouse gases and the growth in motorized transport, whilst at the same time supporting the expansion of air travel and airport investment (Köhler, 2005). This confusion in intent carries all the way down to (LTAs) implementing government policy.

INSERT TABLE 2 ABOUT HERE

Reducing the bonus effect of the car

The clear transferable conclusion from this research is that the paradigm of sustainability needs to be shared (implemented and enforced) by all public sector actors if a step-change in the delivery of sustainable transport outcomes is to be achieved. Once this paradigm is clearly defined and accepted, institutional rules can be devised that make car use less attractive and alternatives more attractive. Legal and fiscal instruments and public provision can be used to implement the sustainable

21

transport paradigm, but if the chief mechanism is to rely on encouragement, substantial resources, tools and authority need to be invested in the delivery agencies. Table 2 presents the transferable lessons on achieving sustainable mobility drawing on Depuy (1999), Steg and Tertoolen (1999). For the UK context, the key recommendations concern changes to the institutional rules as follows:



The government should introduce legal requirements for all publicly-financed organizations to implement sustainable development and equality of opportunity in all their decisions.



Central government departments should agree the key principles, indicators, data collection, and appraisal and monitoring requirements for sustainable accessibility.



Central government should invest heavily in ‘sustainable’ solutions that achieve environmental, social and economic objectives.



The detailed strategies for delivering legal requirements on sustainable development and implementing regional plans should be devolved to wellfunded and autonomous local authorities jointly working on city region strategies.



The government should introduce fiscal policies, which internalize the negative environmental and social costs of resource consumption and provide incentives for sustainable mobility choices.



The government should introduce third party rights to monitor land use and development decisions by public sector bodies.

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References Adams, J. (1998) ‘The social implications of hypermobility in Project on environmentally sustainable transport. The economic and social implications of sustainable transportation’, OECD, Paris. http://www.olis.oecd.org/olis/1999doc.nst/LinkTo/env-epoc-ppc-t(99)3-final-rect Appleyard, D. (1991) Liveable streets, University of California, Berkeley, CA. Bayliss, D. (1998) ‘Integrated Transport and the Development Process’. Journal of Planning Law. pp. 38-51. Council for the Protection of Rural England (2002) Regional Transport Strategies: A Campaign Briefing, CPRE, London. Department for Transport (2006) Long Term Process and Impact Evaluation of the Local Transport Plan Policy. Interim Report. July 2005. Prepared by Atkins in association with Price Waterhouse Coopers and Warwick Business School. Department of the Environment, Transport, and the Regions (1998a). A New Deal for Transport: Better for Everyone. The Government's White Paper on the Future of Transport.. The Stationery Office, London. http://www.dft.gov.uk/itwp/ Department of the Environment, Transport and the Regions (1998b) Sustainable Development: Opportunities for Change, DETR, London. Department of Transport, Local Government and the Regions (2001) Delivering a Fundamental Change, The Stationery Office, London, http://www.planning.odpm.gov.uk/consult/greenpap/ Depuy, G. (1999) ‘From the “magic circle” to “automobile dependence”: measurements and political implications’, Transport Policy 6, pp 1-17. Docherty, I. (2000) Making Tracks: The politics of local transport, Ashgate, UK

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Downs, A. (1999) ‘Some Realities about Sprawl and Urban Decline’, Housing Policy Debate 10 Issue 4, Fannie Mae Foundation.paper presented at the FannieMae Foundation conference on Fair Growth: Connecting Sprawl, Smart Growth, and Social Equity, November 1st 2000, Georgia World Congress Center, Atlanta European Commission (2001) European Transport Policy for 2020: Time to Decide, COM (2001) 0370 , Office for Official Publications of the European Communities, Luxembourg. European Conference of Ministers of Transport (2001) Implementing Sustainable Urban Transport Policies, ECMT/OECD, Paris. Evans, S.R., and Hutchins, M. (2002) ‘The Development of Strategic Transport Assets in Greater Manchester and Merseyside: Does Local Governance Matter?’ Regional Studies, 36 (4) , pp 429-438. Flyvberg, B. (1998) Rationality and Power. Democracy in Practice, University of Chicago Press, Chicago. Fotel, T. (2006) ‘Space, power, and mobility: car traffic as a controversial issue in neighbourhood regeneration’, Environment and Planning A,, 38, pp 733-748. Goodwin P., Hallett S., Kenny F., and Stokes G. (1991) ‘Transport: The New Realism’ Report to the Rees Jeffreys Fund, University of Oxford Transport Studies Unit, Oxford. Goss, S. (2001) Making Local Governance Work: Networks, Relationships and the Management of Change, Palgrave, Basingstoke. Graham D J., and Glaister S. (2003) ‘Spatial Variation in Road Pedestrian Casualties: The Role of Urban Scale, Density and Land-use Mix’, Urban Studie,s 40, pp 15911607.

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Hull, A.D. (2006) Altering the Power Geometry: Facilitating Structures for Collective Action, Urban Studies, forthcoming. Hull A.D. (2005) ‘Integrated Transport Planning in the UK: From concept to reality’, Journal of Transport Geography, 13, pp 238-258. Hull, A.D., and Tricker, R. (2006)’ Implementing Sustainable Development. The views of transport planners’, Local Government Studies. Forthcoming,. Hull, A.D., and Tricker, R, (2005) ‘Sustainable urban environments: Assessing the barriers to sustainable transport, Engineering Sustainability’, 158, pp 171-180. Jonsson, D.K., and Johansson, J. (2006) ‘Indirect Effects to include in Strategic Environmental Assessments of Transport Infrastructure Investments’, Transport Review, 26 (2), 151-166. Köhler, J. (2005) ‘Transport and the Environment: Policy and Economic Consideration’, Paper for the Foresight Intelligent Infrastructure Systems Project, website? Mulley, C., and Nelson, J.D. (1999)’ Interoperability and transport policy: the impediments to interoperability in the organisation of trans-European transport systems’, Journal of Transport Geography, 7, pp 93-104. Naess, P., Sandberg, S.L., and Mogridge, M.J.H. (2001) ‘Wider Roads, More Cars’, Natural Resources Forum, 25 (2), pp147-155. Ostrom, E. (1986) ‘A Method of Institutional Analysis’, in Kaufmann, F.X., Majone, G., and Ostorm, V. (eds) Guidance, Control, and Evaluation in the Public Sector, Walter de Gruyter, Berlin and New York:. Ostrom, E. (1990) Governing the Commons. The evolution of institutions for collective action, Cambridge University Press, Massachusetts.

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Pemberton, S. (2000) ‘Institutional governance, scale and transport policy – lessons from Tyne and Wear’, Journal of Transport Geography, 8, pp 295-308. Sager, T., and Ravlum, I. (2004) ‘Inter-agency Transport Planning: Co-ordination and Governance Structures’, Planning Theory & Practice, 5, (2), pp 171-195. Scharpf, F.W. (1997) Games Real Actors Play. Actor-centred Institutionalism in Policy Research, Westview Press, Boulder, Colerado. Standing Advisory Committee in Trunk Road Assessment (1994) Trunk Roads and the Generation of Traffic, HMSO, London. Stead, D. (2003) ‘Transport and land-use planning policy: really joined up?’ ISSJ, 176 Unesco, Blackwell Publishing Ltd., pp 333-347. Steer Davies Gleave (2002) Review of Local Strategies and Road Traffic Reduction Act Reports, Scottish Executive: Edinburgh. Steg, L., and Tertoolen, G. (1999) ‘Sustainable Transport Policy: The Contribution from Behavioural Scientists’, Public money and Management, Jan-March 1999, pp6369. Stewart, M., Goss, S., Gillanders, G., Clarke, R., Rowe, J., and Shaftoe, H. (1999) ‘Cross-cutting Issues Affecting Local Government’, report to the DETR by University of West of England, and The Office for Public Management. Vigar, G. (2002) The Politics of Mobility. Transport, the environment and public policy, Spon Press, London. Vigar G, Healey P, Hull A D, Davoudi S. (2000) Planning, Governance and Spatial Strategy in Britain, An Institutionalist Analysis, Macmillan, London.

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Resources

Legal/ Regulatory Powers

Land and infrastructure ownership Finance / public subsidy: Annual Transport Settlement Specific allocations: eg Challenge funds for improving bus services Hypothecated receipts from road tolling and workplace parking charges Knowledge/ Skills

EU Directives: eg Habitats; Strategic Environmental Assessment Dedicated national regulatory agencies: eg Office of the Rail Regulator Mandatory requirements for LTAs to prepare specific plans; to set road traffic reduction targets and carry out studies of road traffic accidents Discretionary responsibilities

Direct Development/ Management Powers

Information and Guidance

National executive agencies: eg Highways Agency; Network Rail. Local Transport Authorities undertake maintenance of bridges, street lamps, etc

Government transport and planning policy statements Regional Spatial Strategies Local Transport Plan Local Development Framework Air Quality Management Plan

Table 1: Policy Tools for Local Transport Planning in England

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Taxation policies: (i) Introduce tolls on motorways and trunk roads (ii) Favour 2-and 3 wheeled vehicles and electric and non-electric minicars. (iii) Subsidise bicycle use for work errands and subsidise the adaptation of infrastructure for electric cars Regulate access and speed: (iv) Establish a new roadspace hierarchy where pedestrians and cyclists have precedence in residential areas over buses and cars. (v) Restrict speeds in residential areas to 20mph (vi) Favour car access in city centres, which generate fewer external effects eg short-term rental and car-sharing, limit car parking for vehicles that pollute. (vii) increase the connectivity of the road network through slower and more direct roads. Reduce speeds through technical apparatus and use road tolling to deter heavy traffic. (viii) Control the capillary spread of the road network – limit ad hoc expansion whenever a new housing estate is proposed. (ix) Low emission zones Motivational strategies: (x) Legally regulate and enforce new measures on access and parking to ensure compliance. (xi) Market and explain reasons for change so public become more supportive of alternative, sustainable modes. (xii) Educate and communicate to raise awareness of social and environmental impacts of current unsustainable practices Table 2. Reducing the bonus effect of car use: Changing the Rules

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Henning Nuissl Land use and urban sprawl – implications for sustainability and policy measures Conceptualising urban sprawl The environmental, economic and social problems related to land use, i.e. the change of land uses, are largely being discussed under the heading of urban sprawl. Insofar, it makes sense to draw on the debate on urban sprawl so as to derive the issues of, i.e. the implications for sustainability that are associated with the way we use our land resources in general, and with specific land use patterns in particular. In general, urban sprawl denotes a pattern of urban expansion that is characterised by specific, mostly somewhat negative features. “The term is used variously to mean the gluttonous use of land, uninterrupted monotonous development, leapfrog discontinuous development and inefficient use of land”(R. Peiser, 2001, Decomposing Urban Sprawl). However, there is no general agreement on a precise definition of urban sprawl. Rather, „urban Sprawl is like pornography; it is hard to define but you know it when you see it“ (R. Cervero, 2000, Shapeless, Spread Out, Skipped Over and Scattershot – Sprawl Sweeps the Globe). Along with Nancy Chin (2002, Unearthing the roots of Urban Sprawl), we may distinguish four basic approaches to the problem of defning urban sprawl. Definitions of urrban sprawl refer either to:  Urban form (then urban sprawl can be opposed to the leitmotif of the compact city – “Sprawl vs. ‘the compact ciy‘“)  Land use (i.e. „Sprawl vs. ‚the mixed city‘“)  Density (i.e. „Sprawl vs. ‚the densly built [& compact] city‘“)  Impacts [of Urban Sprawl] (i.e. „Sprawl vs. ‚the sustainable city‘) Note that the latter approach to define a phenomenon (sprawl) by its impacts leads to a kind of tautology when it comes to the question of consequences of the respective phenomenon (i.e. sustainability issues and impacts). Insofar it seems hardly viable for the purpose of ForeScene. For each of these approaches we find various attempts to specify methods, indicators, measurements to study urban sprawl. For instance, with respect to a sprawl-definition based on urban form we find the classical – “phenomenological” – characterisation of Ribbon Development, Strip development and Leapfrogging Development. However, it is a major problem with most definitions on sprawl that they are rather static as they characterise the state of urban development at a particular point in time as urban sprawl. But urban sprawl could (and should) first of all be seen as a dynamic process rather than a particular state or configuration of urban areas. Insofar it seems useful to look for measurements and indicators of sprawl that allow for this dynamic nature of sprawl. With respect to an urban-form based understanding of urban sprawl, the “sprawl index” by Lavalle et al. (2002) gives an example for such measurement; it measures the process of dispersion by determining the distance of new developments to a given urban core (average distance of urban areas to the urban core at a particular point in time t2 as compared to average distance at t1). Likewise, with regard to a definition of urban sprawl based on density, the change of the density gradient in an urban region can be used as a measurement for sprawl (C. Couch et al. 2005 Decline and Sprawl in European Planning Studies) – with the decline in (the) density (gradient) indicating urban sprawl. Finally, with regard to a land use based notion of sprawl, we can calculate the overall amount of non-urban land that is being converted into urban land within a given period of time, i.e. the process of land consumption, so as to evaluate urban sprawl.

However, overall the phenomenon of urban sprawl is fairly complex and can hardly be reduced to one of its definitory elements. Rather, urban sprawl is a continuous process of transformation of urban landscapes that goes along with a reduction in density, continuity, concentration and proximity of land uses and an increase in monofunctional uses and traffic; the empirical reality of urban sprawl is thus characterised by the concurrence and interdependence of multiple processes. The problem of defining and conceptualising urban sprawl was also being addressed in a couple of projects in the EU’s 5th Frameworkprogramme for Research. These projects generated different (proto-) typologies of urban sprawl. Only one of these typologies (SCATTER) however was uni-dimensional: SCATTER (Sprawling Cities and Transport – From Evaluation to Recommendations) – Classification of case studies of sprawling urban regions according to urban morphology:  “Strip Development”  “Leapfrog Development”  “Scattered Development”  “Polynucleated Development” SELMA (Spatial Deconcentration of Economic Land Use and Quality of Life in European Metropolitan Areas) – Classification of case studies of sprawling urban regions mainly according to land use patterns and morphology:  Size (“Dimension”) of suburban development  Degree of dispersion of suburban development  Predominating land use type of suburban development (Residential vs. industrial vs. commercial and retail sprawl) URBS PANDENS (Urban Sprawl: European Patterns, Environmental Degradation and Sustainable Development) – Classification of case studies of sprawling urban regions according to the causes of sprawl:  “Infrastructure driven sprawl” (e.g. Athens, Ljubljana)  “Sprawl as an ‘expression’ of quality of life” (summerhouse sprawl) (e.g. Stockholm, Vienna)  “Sprawl and decline” (e.g. Liverpool, Leipzig)  “Sprawl in the context of societal (i.e. postsocialist) transformation” (e.g. Warsaw, Leipzig) The impacts of urban sprawl There is a plethora of academic literature on the impacts of urban sprawl that gathers a lot of empirical evidence for most problems that are typically associated with urban sprawl. However, it is not always easy to prove – and often subject of intense debates – that certain phenomena can be assigned to urban sprawl and as a rule the respective efforts would provoke questions and doubts as to their scientific soundness. It is of course not possible here to discuss the methodological – and sometimes also theoretical – problems of detecting and verifying the various impacts of urban sprawl. Thus, it must suffice to just name the most relevant aspects and areas that have been discussed as consequences of urban sprawl. In general, these aspects and areas can be subsumed to three – well known – dimensions. So we can distinguish:  Environmental consequences,  Social Consequences and  Economic Consequences of sprawl. However, with respect to the subject of sprawl it seems sensible to introduce a fourth, more concrete, dimension which does not follow the same logic (and concerns aspects

of all three dimension): the consequences of sprawl for traffic and transport. The latter should be mentioned separately (e.g. O. Gillham, 2002, The limitless city) because many impacts that are assigned to urban sprawl are in fact a result of an increase in traffic that is assumed to be a consequence of urban sprawl. The main environmental consequences of urban sprawl are:  Disturbance in water balance mainly due to sealing of surfaces  Increase in flood risk due to increased surface run-off but also due to the development of flood prone areas  Fragmentation of habitats / Loss of biodiversity, in particular due to linear structures (roads, highways)  Degradation of soils  Increase in emissions (heating) because small, detached houses are the principle building type in sprawled areas  Local climate changes (heat islands, streams of air) due to an increased sealing rate and the destruction of green areas. Social consequences of sprawl may involve:  Social segregation due to the social homogeneity of suburban residential areas  Concentration of poverty in the inner city because the better off leave this area  Decline of town centres  Uneven distribution of burden (e.g. isolation of “houswifes”; decline in service provision and infrastructures for the population remaining in the inner city  Formation of suburban milieux which many scholars deem less cohesive than traditional urban milieux, and deprived of a sense of community  Societal retreat and lack of interest in public affairs of the – isolated – suburban population. Economic consequences of sprawl can be found on both the macro and the micro level. Macro-economic consequences are:  Infrastructure costs in the wake of land development  Inefficient distribution of infrastructure as the existing infrastructure is becoming underused with great proportions of the population (in particular families with children) leaving the inner city (requiring the building of new schools on the urban fringe while the existing schools in the inner city lack pupils)  Loss of fertile soils which are being used (and mostly sealed) for urban purposes The micro-economic consequences of sprawl concern particular agents, such as communes or households:  Rising tax revenues (and additional expenses for infrastructure) in ‘sprawling’ communes  Fiscal constraints due to a declining tax base in the core cities  Increase in individual travel needs (‘commuting costs’) for those who moved into suburbia Note that urban sprawl also means that households and enterprises have more space available! With regard to traffic and transport urban sprawl is first of all the reason of two phenomena: Firstly, it leads to an in increasing demand for traffic as distances between the places people frequent in their everyday activity patterns (home, job, retail, recreation) increase. Secondly, it requires the private automobile as the predominating means of transportation because these places are hardly accessible with other means of transportation. These two direct

consequences then have several impacts which thus – as secondary consequences – can be related to urban sprawl, too:  General increase in car traffic  Traffic jams  Increase in energy consumption for transportation  More infrastructure investments  Increase in air pollution  Decline of public space  Health problems due to both a lack of exercise and traffic related air pollution Overall – although it is not always clear whether, i.e. to what extent, the potential impacts of urban sprawl occur (inevitably) in actual situations of urban sprawl, and despite the fact that there still is considerable argument about the assignment of these impacts to urban sprawl and/or the actual evaluation of these impacts (not least in terms of sustainability) – we may conclude that there are various – largely negative – effects and consequences of urban sprawl that appear to be significant in terms of sustainability. Insofar, with respect to land use and urban sprawl it is at least on an abstract level, fairly obvious how sustainability goals and targets should look like. Generally speaking, a land use policy that is geared towards the idea of sustainability should strive for a reduction of the potential impacts of sprawl named above. However, two challenges remain: Firstly, it would be helpful to somehow get an idea about the gravity of each of these impacts, i.e. to rank these effects in terms of relevance with respect to sustainability. Secondly – and even more difficult – it would be highly appreciable to precisely define the features of urban sprawl that are particular effective in generating negative effects (is it the decline in density, the overall conversion of land, the lack of mixed uses etc.?) What issues related to urban sprawl should be considered in a sustainability scenario? In order to get an idea about the importance of each of the – potential – impacts of urban sprawl one could ask relevant stakeholders (from local governments, planning authorities etc.) who are concerned with issues of urban sprawl and land use change for their assessment. In the EU-project URBS PANDENS we undertook this attempt and asked 30 stakeholders (expert professional planners and academics from the seven case study areas) who were invited to the first Urbs-Pandens-stakeholder-workshop to make a ranking of the consequences of sprawl in terms of their importance. Each individual stakeholder was limited to voting for a maximum of only 4 possible issues. Whilst the exercise might be criticised on a number of grounds (the definitions of some issues was somewhat ambiguous; the stakeholders were not randomly selected nor evenly representative of the case study areas, potential benefits of sprawl were not equally taken into account), the results are nevertheless interesting. In general, most of the negative consequences of sprawl which are discussed in the literature were also seen as a severe problem by the practitioners. The following were the sprawl-impacts that were most often deemed particularly relevant by the URBS-PANDENS stakeholders:  Disturbance in water balance  Social segregation  Uneven distribution of burden  Rising tax revenues (and additional expenses) in ‘sprawling’ communes  Fiscal constraints in the core cities  General increase in car traffic  Traffic jams  Increase in energy consumption

 Increase in air pollution Apart from other things, the URBS-PANDENS stakeholders obviously stress the relevance of issues related to traffic and transportation with regard to urban sprawl. However, the selected issues might be somewhat idiosyncratic. Also, we do not really know why the stakeholders think they are relevant. Thus, in order to more systematically assess those impacts of urban sprawl that are most relevant from the point of view of sustainability – and that therefore should be addressed by a land use policy that is geared towards the normative idea of sustainability – it seems to be necessary to first of all define the criteria (of sustainability) along which the assessment procedure is to be undertaken. Here, I would suggest to apply the Helmholtz-concept of sustainability to the phenomenon of urban sprawl (see the paper of J. Kopfmüller which I send together with this text). When it comes to the question which primary features of sprawl are most problematic from a sustainability point of view (because they are particularly important as to the negative effects of sprawl) we lack – as far as I can see – still ‘hard’ knowledge. For instance, it is not possible to say that in a sustainability scenario it is more important to avoid a decline in density than to build more mixed use areas. It seems that the elements of urban sprawl are equally important and that, as far as urban sprawl is concerned, in a sustainability scenario we should strive for a reduction of urban sprawl with regard to all dimensions/parameters along which urban sprawl has been conceptualized, described and measured empirically. From my personal point of view, however, I would like to particularly emphasise the issue of land consumption (land use change) – the rate of conversion of non-urban into urban land. But this is more for pragmatic than scientific reasons: Germany provides a good example here, with the ambitious goal being announced by the federal government in its strategy for sustainable development to reduce the current rate of land consumption from around 100 ha a day to only 30 ha a day in 2020. Whilst from a scientific point of view this goal can be criticised on various grounds (too unspecific; impacts of sprawl cannot really be rooted back to the overall/aggregated level of land consumption etc.), it is easy to grasp and allows for the logics of the political process. This goal is ‘uni-dimensional’, it focuses on only one “variable” (land consumption) that could be measured with moderate efforts (as most developed countries have got some kind of land use statistics) and could be communicated easily. Therefore I would claim that the rate of “land consumption” could be a key scenario element from the point of view of urban sprawl. There is another reason that makes land consumption even more important in the European context. While urban sprawl is usually criticised mainly for its effects on the environment (and on transport) under the condition of stagnation or even decline (which characterises ever bigger parts of Europe) the economic effects of urban sprawl become increasingly important. And many of these effects can – better than is the case with other impacts of sprawl – be rooted back directly to the level of land consumption: It basically requires a certain economic effort to sustain a certain amount of developed land (maintenance of infrastructures). Therefore, if the population (and also the economy) no longer grows the per capita cost for sustaining the existing urban area will rise; developing new land aggravates the situation and this can lead to a situation in which a society’s/economy’s resources will barely no longer suffice to maintain all the urban land that has been developed. This in turn will lead to deterioration of infrastructure, services and quality of the environment in certain areas/regions with negative effects for the affected population. In areas that are shrinking heavily, such as parts of Eastern Germany, we are already very close to this situation – not least because of the urban sprawl of the recent past which has lead to spatial patterns that turned out to be unfeasible. It is a major task to prevent a similar development in other regions that may still

experience some kind of – economic- growth today, fuelling the demand for greenfield development (i.e. land consumption) which will turn out to be superfluous in the near future. Policy instruments (in order to achieve more sustainable land use patterns) The discourse on urban planning in general, urban sprawl in particular, has yielded a wide variety of suggestion how to intervene into the process of urban sprawl. These instruments (including ‘ideas for future instruments’) can be organised in at least two ways: Firstly, we can define the underlying strategies that should be pursued by means of these instruments. Six important strategies are:  Restricting the development of land  Raising the awareness of politicians for the negative effects of sprawl  Improving the quality of the inner city environment  Meeting the demand for housing in the inner city  Mitigating the competition between municipalities / Restraining the desire of local authorities to grow  Abolish economic incentives for suburban development As long as these strategies are not concerned with a general feature of sprawl (which is only the case with the first of these strategies: “restricting the development of land”) they address particular causes (i.e. driving forces) of urban sprawl, which they try to mitigate. Secondly, we can distinguish at least three modes of intervention:  Regulation/Ban  Persuasion/management  Modification of incentives Whilst the first two modes of intervention (policy implementation) belong to the genuine tool box of spatial planning the latter belongs to realm of economics and calls for an integration of traditional land use policy with tax policies, i.e. taxation law in general. The following table relates the most prominent policy instruments discussed with respect to urban sprawl to both the strategy they are designed to pursue and the mode of intervention they could be assigned to (denoted by the colours – red: regulative instruments; blue: persuasive instruments; green: economic instruments aimed at a modification of incentive structures). Even though the modes of intervention are ideal-types, meaning that instruments can belong to more than one mode (e.g. they can be both regulatory and persuasive) most instruments can clearly be related to one of the modes. Strategy

Instruments for implementing strategy (1)

Restricting the development of land

Raising the awareness

Legal plans providing for a "non sprawled" land use pattern: - local level - regional level - supra -regional level (federal states etc.)

(ad 1) Defining green belts, urban growth boundaries etc. (2)

Imposing strict regulations on suburban large scale retail

(3)

Land use monitoring (including a monitoring of consequences of land use change and sprawl)

Strategy Improving the quality of the inner city environment

Instruments for implementing strategy (ad 1) Development plans ‘organising’ the improvement of inner city areas (4)

Urban regeneration programmes

(5)

‘Brownfield management’

(ad 5) Promoting housing in the inner city / marketing of brownfields for low density housing development

Meeting the demand for housing in the inner city (re urbanisation strategies) Strategy

Mitigation of competition between municipalities / Restraining the desire of local authorities to grow

Strategy

(6)

Programmes to increase homeownership in inner city tenements (e.g. self help programmes; cooperatives)

(ad 1) Planning of ‘Low density infills ’ and (owner -occupied) detached houses in the inner city (7) Ensuring reasonable rents/land prices in the inner city Instruments for implementing strategy

(8)

Integration of municipalities in (i.e. Transfer of compet ences of municipalities to) larger administrative units

(9)

Establishment of development agencies, round tables etc. (implementing a “co -operative planning culture”)

(10) (Strengthening of Regional) Development Planning (11) Providing the legal means for joint (supra -local) land use planning; e.g. joint comprehensive land use plans; joint industrial estates (12) Making municipalities independent from their local tax base (Tax reform) (13) Reforming the law concerning the redistribution of tax income between municipalities according to criteria of sustainability (Tax reform) (14) Introduction of a system of tradable permits to issue

Instruments for plans implementing development (emission ofstrategy pollutants)

(15) Reduction of investments in suburban infrastructure (concurrent improvement of inner city infrastructure) (16) Abolition of federal programme to support new owner-occupied property

Abolish incentives for suburban developments

(17) Cutting back of subsidies for land consuming investments – i.e. linking (amount of) subsidies to the economic use of land (18) Taxation of property according to land use (sealing) instead of estimated return (Tax reform) (19) Introduction of a tax on land use change (Tax reform) (20) Increase of tax on land acquisition in case of greenfields , reduction on brownfields (Tax reform)

However, comprehensive as the table may look like we could of course conceive of additional instruments on urban sprawl. But what is even more important: The suitability of instruments will very much depend on the – legal and administrative – context in which they are to be applied. For instance, instruments that aim at a mitigation of competition between

municipalities are only appropriate in countries where municipalities have considerable power and pursue individual interests thereby fuelling urban sprawl. Another example is the many instruments related to taxation. Their application requires a political context in which it is acceptable that taxation is used as a means to achieve certain policy goals beyond the mere coverage of (external) costs incurred by the state, i.e. by society. Insofar, the application of instruments needs to be geared to the respective political and administrative context as well as to the actual state and drivers of urban development and urban sprawl. Some final remarks on the difficulty to give a general recommendation as to policy instruments on urban sprawl:  It is hardly possible to give a general recommendation how to manage urban sprawl.  Strategies and instruments have to be chosen according to both - the specificities of national legal frameworks as well as - the local problems and conditions of urban development.  Strategies to curb sprawl should endeavour to address those actors who are susceptible to the 'appeal' of urban areas (Reurbanisation strategies).  But: If Urban Sprawl is supported by fiscal and legal incentives as well as by infrastructure investments the chances for intervention at the local or regional level are fairly limited.

Built Environment and Biodiversity: Implications for Sustainability G. Vida Institute of Ecology and Botany, Hungarian Academy of Sciences, Vácrátót

Nowadays the term sustainability is widely accepted as the social norm for human development (Keiner 2006). We usually refer to the definition of the Bruntland Report (1987): „Sustainable development is development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.” Although this definition leaves much room for interpretation (see Bartlett 2006), it is generally believed to be the kind of the way to live in harmony with the environment. In ecological terms the harmony is expressed by the ecological footprint of people relative to the biological capacity of a given area (Wackernagel 2006). Unfortunately, human demand on nature is increasingly exceeds the global biocapacity. The present overshoot is already more then 30% (WWF Living Planet Report 2006). Consequently, a realistic sustainability requires substancial decrease of our ecological footprint. In order to achieve sustainability we may study the natural ecosystems, where sustainable development has been the norm for more than three billion years, and compare them with the man-made ones, such as the agro- and urban ecosystems. We soon realize that ecosystem organizations in the built environment are getting increasingly different. They do not close the material cycles and low biodiversity are responsible for inefficient energy utilization and the lack of resilience or stability. The basic characteristics of a natural ecosystem are illustrated in Fig.1. The four boxes represent the main types of biological trophic levels. The plants (primary producers) convert a fraction of the sun´s radiation energy into chemical energy of the plant body which is used by the herbivores and the decomposers. Carnivores (and parasites) prevent the herbivores to overuse the plant resources. The photosynthetic CO2 consumption and O2 release are compensated by the process of respiration (O2 consumption and CO2 release). Water and minerals taken up by the plants are recycled through the hydrological cycle and the decomposer animals, fungi and bacteria. Each trophic box is made up of hundreds or even thousands of different species collectively forming an almost untraceable complex food web. This structure provides efficient alternative energy flows through the system. Species level diversity (Fig. 2 and 3) is therefore the assurance of sustainable ecosystem functioning in case of perturbations (Fig.4). The evolution and adaptation of complex ecosystems have been achieved by the presence of genetic diversity (Fig.5) within each contributing populations. Since the number of genes in each induvidual´s genom is usually around 103-104, each individual is genetically unique in a sexually reproducing population. Genetic diversity of a population can be measured by the frequency of heterozygosity (differing gene forms in a gene locus) or by the average heterozygosity of all gene loci of a typical individual in the population.

Genetic diversity cannot be maintained at higher (adaptable) levels in small populations. In the formation of a new generation, sampling error inevitably results in losses of gene forms (Fig. 6). The loss can be compensated by immigration (if possible) and mutation. The latter is usually a very rare event (10-4 - 10-9 per gene per generation), consequently an equilibrium genetic diversity very much depends on the size of the population. Temporarily reduced (bottle neck) populations therefore loose much genetic diversity and often go extinct before they could regain their diversity by mutation. The artificial ecosystems of our built environment and the natural ones can be contrasted by comparing a natural forest with a corn field (Fig.7). The ecosystem attribute differences are greatest in biodiversity. This is why agro-ecosystems require substantial extra energy and material input (ploughing, fertilizing, irrigating, weeding, protecting, etc.), while a natural forest is selfsustaining. What is more, the natural ecosystems are the surviving products of trillions of former experiments in their long history, presently forming coevolved and coadapted communities. It follows therefore, that in order to increase sustainability in our built environment - we have to create and maintain greater biodiversity within our agro- and urban ecosystems and - the surrounding (and enclave) natural and seminatural ecosystems have to be preserved as sources of ecosystem services (listed in Fig. 4) for they are indispensible in maintainance of the man-made ecosystems. None of these tasks can easily be realized, but both are prerequisites for long term sustainability. It is very important to keep in mind, that most man made ecosystems, particularly the urban ones, cannot exist alone. They only survive as parasites of the neighbouring and even remote natural systems (Odum l997, Folke et al. l997). This is clearly visible in Fig.8 (ecological footprints of major cities in the Baltic Sea drainage area) and Fig. 9 which shows that in some parts of the world people use many thousands times more bioproducts (in units of carbon) than the locally possible amount. In a world where half of the population lives in urban environment this fact needs to be remembered. In spite of the celebrated Rio Declaration to stop the global loss of biodiversity the decline of nature goes on at an even accelerated rate. This ecological unsustainability is accompanied by increasing social tension rooted in income unequality (Fig. 10 and 11). The two processes interact in a synergistic way. Efficient actions to support sustainable development strategies cannot be organized separately. For the very same reason the biologist Paul and Anne Ehrlich(2004) prioritize joint studies on human behaviour in connection with long term environmental matters. Economic growth should be a means to an end, and not an end itself (Fig. 12). A real paradigm change in our thinking(Fig. 13) is timely and probably of utmost importance if sustainibility is taken seriously. Whether we can do it or not depends on humankinds long term understanding.

References Bartlett, A.A.(2006): Reflections on Sustainability, Population Growth, and th Environment – 2006. In: M.Keiner (ed.), The Future of Sustainaility, 17-37. Springer Verlag

Bruntland, G.H.(1987): Our Common Future. World Comission on Environment and Development, Oxford University Press, Oxford, New York Folke, C., A.Jansson, J.Larsson, R.Costanza(1997): Ecosystem appropriation by cities. Ambio 26: 167-172 Imhoff, M.L., L.Bounoua, T.Ricketts, C.Loucks, R.Harriss and W.L.Lawrence(2004): Global patterns in human consumption of net primary production. Nature, 429. 870873 Keiner, M.(2006): Rethinking Sustainability – Editor´s Introduction. In: M.Keiner(ed.), The Future of Sustainability, 1-15. Springer Verlag Odum, E.P.(1997): Ecology: A Bridge Between Science and Society. Sinauer Ass., Sunderland Vida, G.(1994): Global issues of genetic diversity. In: V.Loeschke, J.Tomiuk and S.K.Jain(eds.), Conservation Genetics, 9-22. Birkhauser Verlag, Basel, Boston, Berlin Vida, G.(1996): General considerations on the biodiversity of urban and periurban environments. In: F.di Castry and T.Younes(eds), Biodiversity, Science, and Development: Towards a new partnership. 581-583. CAB International Wackernagel, M. Ecological Footprint Accounting – Comparing Earth´s Biological Capacity with an Economy Resource Demand. In: M.Keiner(ed.), The Future of Sustainability, 193-209. Springer Verlag Weizsäcker, E.U.von(2006): “Factor Four” and Sustainable Development in the Age of Globalization. In: M.Keiner(ed.) The Future of Sustainability, 179-192. Springer Verlag

LAND USE BUDAPEST, OCTOBER 2006 PART 2: INPUT PAPERS OF THE EXPERTS D.2.2.3

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