Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
strive to reduce urban poverty and degradation through empowering the 'squatter
citizen' (Mitlin and Satterthwaite, 2004). For many people, urban areas in the
developing and developed world signify hope and possibility, making the need to
ensure these urban environments are socially and environmentally sustainable all the
more imperative. Thus, despite the many problems associated with the contemporary
urban environment - pollution, alienation, overcrowding, violence, and so on - Amin
(2006a) argues that at the centre of the good city must be 'four registers of solidarity'
which are feasible, desirable and necessary:
1
Repair
: The trans-human material culture of telecommunications, water,
transport, social ritual, software systems, and so on that prevents cities from
collapsing under the strain of horrifying events like terrorist attacks on the
underground.
2
Relatedness
: Welfare, healthcare, public service activities, ethical tolerance and
other measures like returning a city's public spaces to public use have the
capacity to deal with alienation, inequality and disaffection.
3
Rights
: Through participation, the right and entitlement of all citizens to shape
urban life and to benefit from it - civil liberty, community planning, local political
engagement, and a fair and equitable representation of all social and ethic groups.
4
Re-enchantment
: The celebration of urban life through good design, good services,
adequate housing, clean environment, public art, enjoyable leisure amenities and
meeting places, and an urban life not predominantly based on a consumerist
ethos.
Civic politics can facilitate urban living, thicken democratic processes, support
social relationships, celebrate difference and diversity, and so restore a sense of
hopefulness to cities. For Amin, a civic ethic of care based on a politics of recognition
is needed far more than any attempt to foster a community of communities or joined-
up urban governance. Herbert Girardet has been an advocate of sustainable urban
living for decades and differs a little from Amin. His work with the UN's HABITAT
Human Settlements Programme clearly outlines the key dimension of urban sustain-
ability in a series of highly detailed and substantial reports on global urbanization,
the challenges and problems relating to the growth of slums, and urban safety and
security. It also addresses the ecological loops and flows of urban consumption,
waste minimization and recycling, organic composting, resource use and budgeting,
energy conservation and efficiency, renewable energy technology, economic expansion,
green architecture and planning, durable construction, good public transport systems,
local supply of staple foodstuffs, good quality housing, and proximity of work to
home, which all help improve the quality of urban life by staying within ecological
limits. Girardet (1996) writes that contemporary cities need to conceptualize their
relationship to the rest of the world, and that for this to be realized new forms of
governance and organization will have to develop. Joined-up, or holistic, city govern-
ment, with each department working to an environmental brief, is required. Cities
need to be multi-centred and their built inheritance needs to be reused, renovated
and rearticulated. They need to become places people want to be proud of - an end
and not simply a means. Giddings
et al
.'s contribution to Jenks and Dempsey's
excellent
Future Forms and Design for Sustainable Cities
(2005) emphasizes the need
for the city economy to be inextricably linked to the livelihoods of its inhabitants,
