Sustopia or Cosmopolis? A Critical Reflection on the Sustainable City

Abstract

A broader perspective on the role of cities and their relation to their inhabitants and the planet is essential to effectively answer urgent sustainability questions that emerge in and beyond cities. This essay provides a critical reflection on the notion of the sustainable city. The central question discussed is: how can the ideal of a sustainable city be best conceptualised? Through exploring historic and contemporary theories on the urban-nature-people relationship and analysing some current sustainable city projects with the help of Cultural Theory, it is argued that creating a sustainable city paradoxically means parting with Sustopia. Sustopia often turns into Dystopia when a single perspective on constructing a sustainable city becomes dominant. In order to assist the process of meaningfully conceptualising the sustainable city, the notion of Cosmopolis is re-explored. This notion of a city embraces creativity, critical practice, adaptation, and it places urban development and planning in a context of multiple spatial and temporal scales.

Policies, Politics, and Paradigms: Healthy Planning in Australian Local Government

“…The healthy planning policy setting identified by advocates sits in stark contrast to the "strong regulatory environment" introduced in Australia in response to community health issues such as smoking, road injuries, communicative disease epidemics [63], and crime [96]. Such a legislative setting has the potential to instigate "long-term cultural and attitudinal changes towards health promoting behaviours", and achieving a sustainable built environment is "impossible when simply relying on ad hoc citizen initiatives without a clear structural future vision" [97] (p. 10). The state level in Australia gains particular importance in this regard, given that state legislation and funding influence LG agendas and policies [63].…”

Show me your garden and I will tell you how sustainable you are: Dutch citizens’ perspectives on conserving biodiversity and promoting a sustainable urban living environment through domestic gardening

“…In accordance to this paradoxical role of cities, the sustainable development and design of cities are becoming a key issue for global policy and civil action for nature in the 21st Century (CBD, 2012;United Nations, 2016a,b;TEEB, 2011;ICLEI, 2012). Even though there are many possible interpretations of sustainable cities (Beumer, 2017), UN Habitat (2015) defines sustainable urban development as "the spatial manifestation of urban development processes that creates a built environment with norms, institutions and governance systems enabling individuals, households and societies to maximize their potential, optimize a vast range of services so that homes and dynamic neighbourhoods, cities and towns are planned, built, renewed and consolidated restraining adverse impacts on the environment while safeguarding the quality of life, needs and livelihood of its present and future populations ( UN Habitat, 2015). ".…”

The Three Pitfalls of Sustainable City: A Conceptual Framework for Evaluating the Theory-Practice Gap

“…But in reality two things happen: (1) Urban spaces purely normative are designed, lacking public and cultural life, as in the case of Valdespartera [14,148]; (2) the high costs of housing and services is only accessible to rich people and create a homogeneous society, as in Bo01 [106], in Hammarby [122] and in Dongtan [144] where the participation processes have not been activated [124] and farmers and other people that originally had their livelihoods at the location have been transferred [53].…”

“…[53] Planners failed to adequately consult with the community and adopt a "locally guided process", a lapse common to nascent eco-cities. [124] 6.…”

“…Table 1. Three Pitfalls: the conceptual framework and qualitative themes of analysis, compiled from: (A) [15,[18][19][20][21][22][23][24][25][26][27][28][29][30][31][32][33][34][35][36][37]; (B) [9,14,[38][39][40][41][42][43][44][45][46]; (C) [7,10,19,43,[47][48][49][50][51][52][53][54][55]. To describe in detail the three pitfalls, I also develop a conceptual framework which break it down into the three project approaches that currently prevails: (1) technocentric, (2) top-down and (3) exceptional, namely not related to the ordinary (institutional) planning.…”