Ensuring quality of life in Europe's cities and towns - New Bridges

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Quality of life in European cities and towns Tables 1.2 Major EU policy areas related to the urban level (cont.) Policy areas Regional policy/ cohesion Transport and energy Enterprise Environment Employment and social affairs Potential impacts on the urban situation Improving quality of life Stronger, attractive and competitive cities; Renewal of cities; Polycentric territorial development. Better accessibility of cities by road, rail, air, ship. Setting the framework for better urban transport. Promotion of sustainable energy systems and equipment and their market penetration. Support eco‐innovation in cities. Improvement of energy efficiency. Reduce climate change impacts and background pollution levels, ensuring a healthy environment at all. Setting a framework to support sustainable urban development e.g. sustainable consumption pattern, right prices etc. Reduce the economic, social and territorial disparities and strengthen the economic and social cohesion. Support the free movement of workers. Possible unintended side effects Can promote unsustainable Western-European life styles all over Europe. Higher transport demand, higher energy and material use, urban sprawl. Competition between cities, regions. Can encourage longer commuting distances and urban sprawl leading to even more transport. Unbalanced implementation of TEN can increase the share of road transport in relation to other modes. Can lead to development of new residential areas and infrastructures around the new industrial clusters. Can hinder some specific unsustainable economic development or consumer behaviour. Likely effects on e.g. the environment depend on the way how growth and employment promoted. Urban contribution to the European situation Cities are motor of European development. Organising an efficient and environmentally friendly urban transport. Increasing energy efficiency in housing and urban transport. Cities are motor of European development and the place where most business takes place. Support with their own environmental performance a high environmental quality across Europe. Provide the majority of jobs and other socioeconomic services. Note: Budget numbers from the Official Journal of the European Union L 71, Volume 51, 14 March 2008. Source: European Commission, http://ec.europa.eu, 2008. Health and consumer protection Setting the framework for high level of protection of consumers' health, safety and economic interests as well as of public health. Can hinder the production and distribution of some (dangerous) products and services. Contribute by their own measures to high levels of public health. Agriculture and rural development Ensure different services of rural areas for cities: food supply, water availability, nature, recreation etc. Rural development, low prices for agricultural land, better accessibility can stimulate longer commuting and urban sprawl redefining the interaction with the cities. Provide socioeconomic and cultural services for the rural areas. Market of agricultural products. Research Support cities by providing necessary knowledge. Provide the practical case for research. Ensuring quality of life in Europe's cities and towns 25
Quality of life and drivers of change 2 Quality of life and drivers of change Frequently, processes and policies outside the direct control of cities and towns drive and determine their quality of life. Individual municipalities may feel at the mercy of such processes, but given the fact that in Europe urban areas contain nearly 75 % of the population, it is clear that they collectively posses the mandate to progress beyond mere reactions to the initiation of actions to positively manage change. Chapter 2 of this report aims to illuminate global and European drivers in relation to quality of life and the roles of cities and towns, regions, states and the EU, and considers: • demographic development; • changing consumption patterns; • urbanisation. This section further highlights related environmental challenges critical to quality of life and urban areas, including: • air pollution; • noise; • climate change. Chapter 2 also demonstrates the interlinkages with European policy as exemplified by European cohesion policy. This selection of drivers, challenges and policies is clearly far from complete. Cities face many challenges. The selected examples aim to explore the effects of the processes listed above on quality of life, and in particular, on the quality of place, with a healthy environment as one of the prime requirements. The key drivers of change demonstrate the extremely complex and multiple interlinkages between all levels of governance in Europe. Each section provides a description of the driver or challenge related to the urban situation and its interlinkage with European, national and regional levels, identifies gaps and barriers for more efficient policy‐making and describes options for action. 2.1 Demographic changes In 2008 the International Herald Tribune included the following quote from a speech by Miklos Soltesz, member of the Hungarian Parliament, on 9 September 2008 'The demographic situation in Hungary borders on the catastrophic, threatening our economic sustainability'. According to Eurostat, Hungary's population is expected to decrease by 13 % by 2060. East German cities and towns have already experienced similar or even greater population losses, changing life in these areas dramatically. Trends like these, in tandem with general ageing of the population, decreasing household size and migration, are similar across many parts of Europe, influencing the material conditions and quality of life in cities and towns as well as people's needs and expectations. However, this section demonstrates that at each policy level, from local to European, it is possible to influence these demographic trends or their impacts and take action quickly. Nature of changes By 2065 almost one third of the EU's population will be older than 65, according to a forecast published by Eurostat (2008a). The combination of trends in fertility, life expectancy and migration will leave the total population size roughly unchanged by 2050, but will transform Europe's population structure. The number of young people in the EU will continue to decline; the population of working age will peak in 2010 but subsequently decline until 2050. Within this overall European picture of general trends there is, of course, significant variation at the regional level (see also Berlin-Institut, 2008). The proportion of Europeans living in urban areas is set to increase from the current Figure of around 75 % to around 80 % in 2020 (EEA, 2006a; UN, 2008). In the short term, most of the increase will be due to rural to urban migration, but increasingly urban areas will experience immigration also triggered by the effects of climate change (EC, 2008a). However, cities and towns all 26 Ensuring quality of life in Europe's cities and towns
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References References Agència d'En
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References Rosamund, B., 2004. 'The
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