Towards a green economy

Citiesanother create a circular economy (McDonough andBraungart 2002). Principles of symbioses can also helpminimise or recycle waste. São Paulo’s Bandeiranteslandfill, for example, is sufficiently large to providebiogas that generates electricity for an entire city district(ICLEI Local Governments for Sustainability 2009a).These opportunities have led to intensified effortsin designing cross-sectoral green city strategieswhen developing new districts or eco-cities. Recentexamples of new green communities include thecar-free neighbourhood of Vauban in Freiburg andBeddington Zero Energy Development (BedZED) 6 inLondon (Beatley 2004; Wheeler and Beatley 2004; C40Cities 2010a). In the latter case, new homes achievedan 84 per cent reduction in energy consumption andfootprints related to mobility decreased by 36 per cent.Recycling reduced waste by between 17 per cent and42 per cent (Barrett et al. 2006). 7 Examples of greencity districts include Amsterdam-Ijburg, Copenhagen-Orestad and Hammerby Sjostad in Stockholm whileeco-cities have become fashionable in several rapidlyurbanising Asian countries. In recent years, highprofile investments have been made in sustainablenew towns, including Tianjin Eco-City in North China,the Songdo Eco-City in Incheon, Republic of Koreaand Masdar Eco-City in Abu Dhabi, but it is early daysto make a comprehensive assessment of their longtermsustainability, especially given the very highcapital and development costs of these show-caseprojects.6. The footprint of BedZED residents averages 4.67 global hectares(BioRegional 2009). While this is lower than the UK average of 4.89 hectares(Ewing et al. 2010) it is still more than twice the “fair share” of 2 hectares.This demonstrates the limitations of insular approaches. While BedZEDenables residents to reduce their footprint on site, a lot of their ecologicalimpact is made outside of it, in schools, at work, and on holiday. BedZEDresidents fly slightly more frequently than the local average, presumablydue to their higher average income. These limitations, however, do notinvalidate the achievements of the development, but point to the need ofscaling up energy efficiency measures in wider urban settlement systems aswell as the issue of energy still being comparatively cheap in high-incomesocieties, resulting in overall unsustainable levels of energy consumption,with rebound effects partly offsetting efficiency gains due to greater overallconsumption levels (Binswanger 2001) .7. In recent years, the French government has increasingly becomeattached to the concept of éco-quartiers and has initiated a range ofprojects including Quartier ZAC de Bonne in Grenoble, Quartier LyonConfluence and Quartier du Théâtre in Narbonne (French Government,Ministère de l'écologie, du développement durable, des transports et dulogement 2010).465