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The vision for sustainable urban design
Sustainable urban design is a process whereby all the actors involved (national, regional and local authorities, citizens, community based organisations, NGOs, academics and enterprises) work together to integrate functional, environmental and quality considerations to design and plan a built environment that:
- Treats land as a precious resource that must be used in the most efficient way possible, reusing land and empty property within the urban area in preference to seeking new land outside and avoiding urban sprawl (compact cities and at the regional level, concentrated decentralisation);
- Considers the relationship between cities and their hinterlands and wider regions
Ensures that new developments are located strategically, accessible by public transport, and respecting the natural environment (biodiversity, health, environmental risk);
- Has sufficient density and intensity of activity and use so that services such as public transport are viable and efficient whist respecting a high quality living environment (privacy, personal space, and minimising adverse effects such as noise);
- Promotes a mixed land use to make best use of benefits of proximity in order to minimise the need to travel between home, shops and employment;
All Member States will be encouraged to:
- Ensure that their land use planning systems achieve sustainable urban settlement patterns and take into account environmental risks, and to undertake a review to assist this;
- Develop incentive to encourage the reuse of brownfield land over the use of Greenfield land, create national databases of brownfield land and set challenging targets for its reuse, and provide support for the reuse of empty properties in urban area;
- Set minimum residential land use densities to encourage higher density use and limit urban sprawl;
- Evaluate the consequences of climate change for their cities so that inappropriate developments are not begun and adaptations to the new climatic conditions can be incorporated into the land use planning process;
- Adopt national and/or regional urban environment strategies;
- Nominate National and/or regional Focal Points for the Urban Environment;
- Consider raising awareness exercises for regional and local administrations on urban environmental issues;
- Engage public participation in decision making through plans to be drawn up by municipalities.
The Commission will:
- prepare guidelines on "high density, mixed use" spatial planning and will propose definition of brownfield and Greenfield land. The Commission will explore the possibility of developing other guidelines on specific urban design issues;
- explore opportunities for training, exchange of experience and further research on sustainable urban design. |
