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minimise or recycle waste. São Paulo’s Bandeirantes
landfill, for example, is sufficiently large to provide
biogas that generates electricity for an entire city district
(ICLEI Local Governments for Sustainability 2009a).
These opportunities have led to intensified efforts
in designing cross-sectoral green-city strategies
when developing new districts or eco cities. Recent
examples of new green communities include the
car-free neighbourhood of Vauban in Freiburg and
BedZED 6 in London (Beatley 2004, Wheeler and
Beatley 2004, C40 Cities 2010a). In the latter case, new
homes achieved an 84 per cent reduction in energy
and footprints related to mobility decreased by 36
per cent. Recycling reduced waste by between 17 per
cent and 42 per cent (Barrett et al. 2006). 7 Examples
of green-city districts include Amsterdam-Ijburg,
Copenhagen-Orestad and Hammerby Sjostad in
Stockholm while eco cities have become fashionable
in several rapidly urbanising Asian countries. In recent
years, high profile investments have been made in
sustainable ‘new towns’, including Tianjin Eco-City in
North China, the Songdo Eco-City in Incheon, South
Korea and Masdar Eco-City in Abu Dhabi, but it is early
days to make a comprehensive assessment of their
long-term sustainability, especially given the very
high capital and development costs of these showcase
projects.
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 hectars.
This demonstrates the limitations of insular approaches. While BedZED
enables residents to reduce their footprint on site, a lot of their ecological
impact is made outside of it, in schools, at work, and on holiday. BedZED
residents fly slightly more frequently than the local average, presumably
due to their higher average income. These limitations, however, do not
invalidate the achievements of the development, but point to the need of
scaling up energy efficiency measures in wider urban settlement systems as
well as the issue of energy still being comparatively cheap in high-income
societies, resulting in overall unsustainable levels of energy consumption,
with rebound effects partly offsetting efficiency gains due to greater overall
consumption levels (Binswanger 2001) .
7. In recent years, the French government has increasingly become
attached to the concept of éco-quartiers and has initiated a range of
projects including Quartier ZAC de Bonne in Grenoble, Quartier Lyon
Confluence and Quartier du Théâtre in Narbonne (French Government,
Ministère de l'écologie, du développement durable, des transports et du
logement 2010).
Cities
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