Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
frequently operate on a range of political and ethical levels. What city government
wants to preside over a dirty city? Who wants to live there and what business will
want to invest there? In 2007, the charity Forum for the Future produced a league
table or index of twenty sustainable cities in the UK, applying a range of specific
measures and official data sets offering both specific environmental, quality of life
and 'future proofing' (assessing the way in which cities are preparing for future
social and environmental impacts) indices and one aggregate ranking. The results
were enlightening. The greenest city in the index was the former textile town of
Bradford in West Yorkshire, which, thanks to a long process of industrial and
commercial decline, has seen the environmental quality of its degraded land and
rivers slowly improve. However, due to a range of social problems and lack of
economic opportunities, Bradford figures less well in terms of quality of life, safety
and security. The overall leader in Forum for the Future's index is the affluent town
of Brighton and Hove on England's south coast, just an hour on the train from
central London. Affluent cities, particularly service cities, are able to devote significant
resources to sustainability issues and usually do not have to deal with the lingering
effects of deindustrialization. They sometimes have a sizeable and growing green
vote. Interestingly, the report, 'The sustainable cities index', questions the efficacy
of a major element in British urban regeneration strategy, namely, the emphasis on
iconic architecture and grand projects evident in Glasgow, Manchester, Liverpool
and Birmingham, whose grand designs seem relatively incapable of significantly
improving the local environment or people's quality of life 'and may distract from
a broader set of criteria of what makes a successful, sustainable and liveable city'
(Forum for the Future, 2007: 13). The report concluded that the English cities that
performed best were those, like Leeds, Bristol and Plymouth, which have not pursued
the iconic 'trophy-collecting' regeneration pathway but engaged in a range of varied,
smaller-scale projects and initiatives.
The Natural Step Framework - socio-ecological indicators
The Natural Step (TNS) Framework is a methodology that has been developed to
enable organizations and communities to plan their activities in a more sustainable
fashion (The Natural Step, 2000). The TNS Framework outlines a set of system
conditions, developed over time by an international network of scientists that must
apply if a sustainable society is to be achieved. TNS focuses on the initial causes
of problems, rather than the environmental effects. It supports proactive rather
than reactive environmental planning, with investments and measures selected specific-
ally to foster a sustainable trajectory offering long-term flexibility and short-term
profitability. The TNS process lends itself to both graphic and numeric formulations
(see
Figure 9.3
).
TNS System Conditions are summarized as follows: in a sustainable society, nature
is
not
subject to systematically increasing:
•
concentrations of substances extracted from the Earth's crust;
•
concentrations of substances produced by society; or
•
deradation by physical means;
-
and in that society:
•
human needs are met worldwide.
