Environmental issues, urban policies

Editorial
François Valérian

 
Urban sprawl
Guillaume Sainteny

How to define urban sprawl? Can public policies deal with it? Urban sprawl results when an urban area expands faster than population growth, the latter thus separated from land use. In Europe, this trend was amplified during the 1950s to the point that, nowadays, cities are sprawling fast: 5,4% in ten years — thrice Luxembourg’s surface area. This is an important current issue because it runs counter to the key principles underlying sustainable development. These principles seek to avoid creating irreversible conditions, to see to it that the real costs are paid and to separate economic growth from natural resources, raw materials and other inputs. There are tools for reasonably controlling urban sprawl that have proven their effectiveness.

 
Cities and energy issues
Michèle Pappalardo

Two energy-hungry sectors — transportation and the building industry — produce increasing volumes of greenhouse gases. Their continued growth alters behavior patterns and leads to uses if natural resources that complicate carrying out an ambitious policy for attenuating global warming and adapting to climatic change. Tomorrow’s cities must face a twofold challenge: improve energy efficiency and shift to a scale “within reach” so as to limit trips and deter land wastage. But the efforts to reduce or prevent the negative impact of urban areas on the environment must take into account the economic and social factors that could impede them.

 
The Paris Climate Plan, the city’s responsibility
Yves Contassot

In June 2005, the Paris town council approved the principle of a Climate Plan. This unprecedented action among big French cities was intended to serve as an example in form and in content. Among its contents is a requirement for effectiveness, whereby the plan would be drafted based on precise scientific data for evaluating the actions by using indicators defined in advance. In form, there is a requirement for participatory democracy, which avoids the pitfalls of public decision-making by bringing together “climate volunteers” as representatives (of the construction industry, transportation firms, banks, neighborhood councils, non-profit organizations and public administrations) but also as citizens and parents. What is to be demonstrated is that a community can stimulate actions for transforming the situation. The unanimous vote by council members who adopted the Climate Plan on 1 October 2007 is evidence of a revolution in mentalities.

 
Controlling greenhouse gas emissions: Energy policies for buildings
Jacques Rilling

CO₂ emissions from buildings amounted to 34% of total emissions worldwide in 2002. Reducing them is, everywhere, a major issue in the coming decades even as urbanization continues. These emissions — studies agree about this for OECD lands — could sharply decrease under correct economic conditions and with the help of proven techniques available in the market. Despite tougher regulations for new buildings, emissions are still rising. Among the many obstructions to improvements are the operation of the marketplace and the behavior of individual decision-makers. For this reason, quite diversified means have to be used: information, education, tax and financial incentives, regulations, labels and a more dynamic supply thanks to companies that provide energy-related services. An inventory and proposals…

 
Quality tap water, an aspect of sustainable development in big cities
Anne Le Strat

Producing water of a good quality while preserving this resource is essential to any urban policy of sustainable development. A second objective, which could amount to more than a token success, is to boost the consumption of water drawn from the faucet. From Munich to New York - not to forget Paris with Eau de Paris as an emblem - more and more towns are refusing the tendency to underrate the quality of tap water and adopting bold policies for promoting the municipal water supply.

 
Antwerpen and Brussels: The urban environment - a drawback turned into an asset
Arnould Lefébure

Climatic change and the environment have hit the headlines. They figure among the major issues, which we must address, but they are also presented as a solution to globalization, to economic problems or even to our society’s “crisis of meaning” and of “civility”. For many cities, this is the opportunity to review prospects and buttress the political platforms of elected officials. What about the towns where climatic and environmental changes imply unattainable goals or even entail a decline? Reactions from Antwerpen, the “first French port” in terms of freight, and from Brussels, a “multiple capital”.

Big cities and water: Institutional economics
Bernard Barraqué

Rampant urbanization is multiplying the number of big cities in the Third World, where water is becoming a major issue. In developed lands, where everyone is hooked up to the water supply, other problems are menacing public services in major urban centers. They force us to depart from a supply-side rationale and switch to managing demand, or even to questioning the boundary between these two approaches. What is important is to clearly separate public services and water resources. The good old European “municipalist” experiment should be overhauled. This is the only way to move beyond the limitations of state-management that prevailed during the years of euphoria and beyond the diehard privatization of the 1990s. Besides helping municipal services to continue modernizing, this means that the water industry must move on into its third generation.

 
The Mediterranean’s future depends on cities
Silvia Laria and Henri-Luc Thibault

Half the world’s population is becoming urban. Two out of three inhabitants in lands around the Mediterranean already live in urban areas; and this figure will be three out of four by 2030. Managing accelerated urbanization on the southern and eastern shores, satisfying the needs arising out of this trend, controlling urban sprawl on the northern shore, limiting the concentration in major agglomerations, curtailing the growth of inequality, damping the exposure to environmental risks: these are the major issues raised by urban development in the Mediterranean basin during the 21st century. As experiments have shown, cities can contribute to sustainable development. The future will depend on policies applied in the field, at the level of agglomerations, in downtown areas, in neighborhoods… but also on support from regions and states and on international cooperation.

The risk of flooding
Philippe Huet

Model-makers in climatology predict increasing rainfall in the winter, a higher frequency of exceptional events and flooding in estuaries. Who is calling for this problem to be placed on the political agenda? The recent “Grenelle of the Environment”, which assembled officials and organizations for a wide-ranging discussion of environmental issues, had nothing to say about this most widespread risk in France — one with a high cost if a major urban center were affected. Despite the efforts to redraft public policies, large loopholes undermine the overall effectiveness. Opening toward Europe and beyond might be an opportunity for the country to break out of its deadlock and make a real assessment of the current situation.

 
Can a megalopolis be rebuilt after a major flood? The lessons drawn from New Orleans two years later
Nicolas-Gérard Camphuis and Bruno Ledoux

Nearly two years after the catastrophe, New Orleans is still a ghost town. Why has the world’s leading economic power had so much difficulty dealing with the situation after the flood? Katrina has exposed how vulnerable the United States is socially, economically and politically. Might one of our own metropolitan areas not have to cope with a similar event some day? Should we not be making preparations? Does a disaster not provide the opportunity to redesign prevention work by broadening our view of civil defense and urban planning? To cope with such large-scale disasters, the conditions for reconstruction have to be thought out ahead of time. A pattern of urban development, which is endured rather than controlled, could thus come under radical criticism.

Miscellany

 
The Mining Code and sustainable development, a historical perspective
Gilbert Troly

At the start of the 19th century, the French Mining Code laid down basic regulations that can be described as sustainable development, even though this phrase was not in use at the time. Evidence of this is the number of mining codes around the world that have (some recently) adopted principles from it. A concern for efficiency, good management and the general interest prevailed in drafting the Mining Code, but the level of technology and knowledge limited what could actually be implemented.

 
Regional development’s place in the water cycle?
Carine Gendrot

Water is not “territorial”. Man-made boundaries cannot contain this polymorphous, labile and vital liquid. How can a region deal with this flowing reality, which shapes it but can never be assigned to or identified with it? How to draw up a water policy that will not fall short because it overlooks how water circulates — a policy that, on the contrary, can find the grounds for its success in this circulation? The sustainability of a region’s development depends on the relation to water.

 
Putting the EU’s water directive to the test
Gabrial Bouleau

The EU directive that has established a framework for a common water policy has come as a surprise to the French owing to its requirements and scope. The requirement to set, justify and reach objectives for recycling all sorts of water weighs on the executive branch of government. The objective of recycling water seems even more demanding since no funds have been appropriated to the few parties actually involved. This directive exemplifies the originality of the model of EU integration with its obligation of performance. How does this integration shape the contents and assessment of actual policies?

 
Human development and the conservation of biodiversity
Harold Levrel, Meriem Bouamrane and Lamina Kane

Public policies must now address the issue of how to make human development sustainable. A key is the “integrated” assessments for taking into account questions related to both human development and the preservation of biodiversity, as well as interactions between the two. Their complexity calls for original, participatory methods and new tools for decision-making. A role-playing experiment conducted in Niokolo Koba Park, Senegal, illustrates a method of participatory evaluation.

 
Managing risks: Innovations in drawing up strategies — a presentation at the conference “Sustainable neighborhood, from Lisbon to Leipzig through research” in Leipzig (9 May 2007)
Yves Le Bars

Decisions, public as well as private, in risk-management hardly inspire confidence in the general public. For this reason, new procedures have been drawn up for bringing together various parties in drafting decisions — whether about radioactive wastes, pesticides used by farmers, genetically modified organisms or nanotechnology. What lessons to draw from these experiments? Do the decisions made tap the full potential of research and allow all the time need for public hearings? Emphasis has been laid on defining procedures step by step and on clarifying the roles of various, public and private, parties so that the majority of citizens accept a decision as being credible.