SUSTAINABILITY ASSESSMENT AND THE MANAGEMENT OF URBAN.
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SUSTAINABILITY ASSESSMENT AND THE MANAGEMENT OF URBAN.
INTRODUCTION
This book is the product of a research project supported by the Fund for Scientific Research—Flanders (Belgium) that investigates strategic environmental assessment as a tool for developing cities more sustainably.
This study is being conducted by the Environmental Impact Assessment Centre, which is part of the Human Ecology Department at the Vrije Universiteit Brussel. In 1975, the VUB established a Master of Human Ecology education program.
Human ecology is an interdisciplinary study of the link between humans and their environment, distinguishing it from traditional animal, plant, and microbial ecology.
By early in the next decade, the bulk of humanity will be living in cities. For the first time in our species’ two-million-year history, the immediate human surroundings will be considered the “built environment.”
According to certain common wisdom, accelerating urbanisation is just another sign that the human economy is “decoupling” from the environment, and that humanity is eventually abandoning nature and the rural countryside.
This is a perception error. Even as we urbanise, humans continue to rely on the environment, and cities are key drivers of global ecological change. Additionally, the sustainability of our cities is…
The concept of sustainable urban development is straightforward, appealing, and an important component of global sustainability. On a technical level, we already have many of the components required to build communities that are far more sustainable than the ones we currently live.
We can even find working instances of urban activities that are more sustainable than traditional ones. However, the incentive structure of rules, prices, and taxes does not promote the adoption of these best practices. We need to implement rules, such as a carbon price, to produce…
The follow-up to Chapter 28 of Agenda 21, the “action plan” adopted at the 1992 Rio Earth Summit, has provided a significant incentive for the pursuit of sustainable development at the local and regional levels of governance. “Local Agenda 21” (LA21) has become an international emblem for innovative projects to promote sustainable local and regional communities.
Local Agenda 21 is one of the Earth Summit’s key success stories, receiving significant backing from the United Nations Commission on Sustainable Development (UNCSD), the International Council for Local Environmental Initiatives (ICLEI), and the European Commission. This chapter’s purpose is…
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