Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
human-generated hazards is a sustainability goal, as are supporting native biodiver-
sity and achieving the ecosystem services that eminate from green spaces in the urban
matrix. Reduced contribution to global warming can be achieved through enhanced
carbon sequestration.
Sustainability by definition also must deal with social processes. Too often in the
past, urban interventions have focused on the physical form of the city, assuming
that social benefits will follow. Contemporary focus on sustainability recognizes
that social capital, community cohesion, and social equity are issues that must be
addressed in and of themselves for generating and maintaining liveable cities.
Equity is a major component of the social realm, as discussed above, and is reflected
in exposure to environmental hazards, access to environmental benefits, and inclu-
sion in the process of making environmentally relevant decisions.
The economic aspect of sustainability is well known, and because of the
traditional predominance of attention in urban studies to issues of jobs, finance,
the real estate industry, and the relationships of business and political processes, it
is not necessesary to review it further in this article. Clearly, however, economic
resources and sustainability of economic capacity contribute to well-being in urban
systems.
One of the potentially most powerful aspects of the sustainable city ideal is how
management and policy are conducted in this new kind of city. As mentioned before,
the sanitary city is managed by discrete departments or authorities, often having little
cross-communication. For example, the concern with street cleaning are isolated in
the transportation department, whereas street sweeping in fact affects stormwater
quality. Another cross-cutting issue is how the presence of vegetation can influence
aggression, which joins the concerns of a parks department with those of public
safety. These simple examples suggest that sustainability can be enhanced by
integrated management in urban systems. Indeed, cross-cutting management and
policy are hallmarks of the emerging sustainable city. This suggests that
sustainability can be usefully considered a central function of city administration
and not an isolated pursuit to be marginalized in a special office isolated from the
traditional activities of municipal government. Indeed, there are growing numbers of
examples of cross-sectoral management as part of sustainability strategies. For
example, in the city of Baltimore, neighborhood tree planting and gardening, removal
of unneeded pavement in school yards, altered street cleaning schedules, community
environmental activities, and installation of fine-scale best management practices
such as rain gardens specifically designed to be both attractive and to
allow infiltration of stormwater into the soil, engage multiple city departments in
specific neighborhoods to achieve social, environmental, and economic revitaliza-
tion. Ecological research can help inform and evaluate sustainability plans, which are
often mostly metaphorical or assessed only by indices of human outcomes.
Communication between researchers and decision-makers is a key ingredient in
the success of the sustainable city. Growing experience shows that communication
is enhanced when approached as a two-way dialog, rather than a one-way flow of
information from science to policy. Indeed, such a dialog can help shape scientific
research and identify practical management projects that provide data about the
