Almost Invisible: Glimpsing the City and its Residents in the Urban Sustainability Discourse

Abstract

‘Urban sustainability’ currently receives widespread and generally enthusiastic endorsement, yet concerns are emerging that recent expressions of the concept may actually be working against the city and its residents. Based on research in Christchurch, New Zealand (one of the most urbanised countries in the world), it is argued that the assimilation of social, economic and bio-physical environmental elements that gave the idea much of its original legitimacy has been reduced to a minimalist set of material and discursive ‘eco-friendly’ denominators. As a result, only occasional glimpses of the city and its human inhabitants are caught in attempts to operationalise sustainability in urban areas. The effect is that cities, in New Zealand at least, are less liveable and less likeable than they should be. It is suggested that there is a real need to re-urbanise and rehumanise the urban sustainability agenda as a means of realising its integrative and transformative potential.

Controversial Issues Relevant to Sustainable Urbanism: A Review of Global Urban Tendencies

“…Authorities often enact decisions without residents' input, and thus the policy often cannot be carried out. In Mexico, for instance, the authorities imposed an embargo on private automobile use one business day per week, but the residents circumvented this decision by buying and utilizing other kinds of motor vehicles (Vallance et al, 2012). Eventually the policy failed because it was assigned without governance.…”

Is this none of the contractor’s business? Social sustainability challenges informed by literary accounts

“…Colantonio and Dixon, 2010;Vallance et al, 2010Vallance et al, , 2012Boström, 2012;Bridge et al, 2012). This creates a frame of social sustainability features that we use to analyse the content of three books about the inhabitants' experienced life in their suburbs, their cities, and the characteristics they attributed to the different spaces.…”

Tales of the Suburbs?—The Social Sustainability Agenda in Sweden through Literary Accounts

“…To answer these problems, urban planning tends to focus on economic, environmental, and architectural solutions, to the detriment of social concerns [6,7]. Renewal projects should include social sustainability goals, such as reducing disparity and segregation between rich and poor areas, or increasing community cohesion.…”

“…Contrary to what happened in renovation projects, the production of this information is not guided or framed by urban planners', architects', or researchers' interests. Beyond the opinion of inhabitants on their living spaces and possible improvements, the stories reveal and account for the role played by these areas in the inhabitants' lives [7]. They provide qualitative insights on everyday life in these areas, glimpses of understanding the particular social order among youngsters, information concerning access to spaces and context that is otherwise difficult to obtain [13,21,22].…”