Challenging Policy Barriers in Sustainable Urban Design
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Bulletin of Geography. Socio–economic Series / No. 40 (2018): 41–56 BULLETIN OF GEOGRAPHY. SOCIO–ECONOMIC SERIES DE journal homepages: http://www.bulletinofgeography.umk.pl/ http://wydawnictwoumk.pl/czasopisma/index.php/BGSS/index http://www.degruyter.com/view/j/bog ISSN 1732–4254 quarterly G Challenging policy barriers in sustainable urban design Janis BirkelandCDMR University of Melbourne, Faculty of Architecture, Building and Planning, VIC 3010, Melbourne, Australia; e-mail: janis.lynn. [email protected] How to cite: Birkeland, J. (2018). Challenging policy barriers in sustainable development. Bulletin of Geography. Socio-economic Series, 40(40), 41–56. DOI: http://doi.org/10.2478/bog-2018-0013 Abstract. In built environment design, codes set minimum health and safety re- Article details: quirements, policies set aspirational targets, and incentives such as green build- Received: 30 November 2017 ing rating schemes set design standards. These approaches have failed to provide Revised: 03 March 2018 universal wellbeing and environmental justice (i.e. intra-generational equity), or Accepted: 15 March 2018 increases in the natural life-support system that exceed depletion rates (i.e. in- ter-generational equity). Governments that do not ensure all citizens can obtain basic needs, life quality and resource security fail to meet their basic responsibil- ities. Two recent documents, one representing sustainable urban policy and prin- ciples, the other representing urban biodiversity standards, are examined against the Positive Development Test (whether the development increases the public es- Key words: tate, ecological base and future public options). The discussion suggests that con- urban design, temporary policies and incentive schemes, as presently conceived, cannot provide positive development, green building rating tools, the basic physical preconditions for sustainability, let alone address socio-econom- net-positive design, ic inequities. An alternative design-based approach is presented to address the is- urban biodiversity, sues the paper identified. New Urban Agenda. © 2018 Nicolaus Copernicus University. All rights reserved. Contents: 1. Introduction . 42 1.1. Background........................................................................ 42 1.2. Criteria for review .................................................................. 44 2. Conceptual issues raised by Habitat III.................................................... 44 2.1. Policy issues . 45 2.2. Design issues ...................................................................... 46 3. Institutional issues raised by Habitat III ................................................... 48 3.1. Management issues ................................................................. 48 3.2. Accountability and standards ........................................................ 49 3.3. Summary comments ................................................................ 51 © 2018 Nicolaus Copernicus University. All rights reserved. © 2018 De Gruyter Open (on-line). 42 Janis Birkeland / Bulletin of Geography. Socio-economic Series / 40 (2018): 41–56 4. Green building rating and marketing tools ................................................ 51 4.1. The Green Star biodiversity credit scheme............................................. 52 4.2. BCS (biodiversity credit scheme) proposed actions and outcomes........................ 52 5. Conclusion............................................................................. 54 Note..................................................................................... 55 References ............................................................................... 55 1. Introduction ditions for both the ‘ecological base’ or means of survival (ecological carrying capacity, biodiversity, 1.1. Background ecosystem services, etc.) and ‘public estate’ or uni- versal access to the means of survival (essential ser- Cities are far from sustainable in their present form. vices, social support systems, environmental justice, They are a source of resource depletion, contam- etc.). If redesigned on net-positive design principles, ination and waste, and a sink that drains regions cities could generate sustainability. of energy, materials, water and biodiversity. Often Although variously defined, sustainability essen- cities intensify floods, heatwaves, earthquakes and tially means inter- and intra-generational equity. hurricanes, segregate races and classes, limit social Cities fail to provide intra-generational equity when mobility, and block escape routes in civil or envi- they limit the life potential of the socio-economi- ronmental crises. Since the built environment is im- cally deprived and transfer wealth from the poor- plicated in most sustainability issues, it is therefore er to the richer. They lack inter-generational equity, central to solutions. Yet sustainable planning and because they reduce future options for survival and design have largely only aimed to mitigate its own wellbeing and are not easily adapted to changing adverse impacts through efficiency gains. Mean- conditions and climates. Given the losses of biodi- while, on average, 58% of the Earth’s wildlife, 3.8 versity and cultures, and disparities of wealth and billion years in the making, has been lost since 1970 inequities caused by cities, they must be retrofit- (WWF, 2016). Much of this owes to the habitat de- ted to create the physical preconditions for sus- struction, climate change and pollution caused by tainability and increase universal life quality. Yet, resource extraction, the construction and operation current urban policies, strategies and standards do of cities. To be sustainable, then, cities must reverse not yet contemplate net-positive outcomes. While this trajectory and give back more than they take. some now claim their buildings produce net ben- In a context of escalating environmental exploita- efits, this only means that, after construction, they tion and degradation, cities must be transformed to export renewable energy or recycled water across increase future public options and natural and social property lines. This neither compensates for the ad- support systems. Positive Development (PD) states verse ecological impacts due to resource extraction, that the positive ecological footprint of nature must construction and operation processes, nor increases exceed the negative ecological footprint of humans ecosystems and biodiversity in whole-system terms. (Birkeland, 2008). PD posits that cities can create Two divergent orientations in sustainability are their own ecosystem services, restock their biore- ‘green growth’ and ‘degrowth’. Green growth calls gions, and over-compensate for the impacts of con- for innovation, efficiency, and ‘closing loops’ or -re struction. Net-positive design is possible, because cycling at all stages of production and consump- cities can be retrofitted for net social and ecological tion. Theoretically, this might approach zero waste, gains over their lifecycle at no extra cost (Birkeland, carbon, energy while improving environmental con- 2004). However, this requires that urban design not ditions, but it only reduces relative material flows. just integrate nature, but create new spaces and con- PD adds the other side of the equation: increasing nature in excess of human consumption. Degrowth Janis Birkeland / Bulletin of Geography. Socio-economic Series / 40 (2018): 41–56 43 calls for a reduction in production and consump- harm’—instead of ‘do net good’. Consequently, ur- tion, through activism and democratic choice, ban design guidelines and assessment tools do not leading to values, behavior and eventually systems facilitate, let alone measure, net-positive outcomes. change (Demaria, Kothari, 2017). While challenging Although design was traditionally about value add- cultural and ideological bases is essential, PD adds ing, design tools draw narrow system boundaries another dimension: designing out the anti-sustaina- in time and space, such as ‘from time of purchase’ bility biases that are hardwired into the physical and or ‘within property lines’. Such boundaries limit the institutional architecture. Sustainability requires not duty of care and discount adverse bio-accumulative only disruptive innovations and radical worldviews, impacts. Therefore, PD provides informal and tech- but the reformation of design and decision-making nical tools for net-positive design and assessment, frameworks on ethics-based and eco-positive prin- using stationary temporal and spatial baselines, as ciples. Decision-making systems can make better follows: choices, but only design can create more and bet- • Ecological baseline: Building assessment and ter choices. rating tools set standards that are relative to current The retrofit of cities on net-positive principles practices, not sustainability. They do not envisage is unquestionably necessary, but some would ar- buildings that increase the natural environment in gue that better living environments cannot change a global sense. Some progressive sustainable design behavior, values, or personal and political power tools aim for onsite or offsite landscape regeneration relationships. Nevertheless, a different kind of liv- that improves upon pre-construction environments ing environment could reduce the causes of con- but does not increase the natural environment. This flict, discontent and poor health such as inequality, cannot offset the damage in building production, let and