City-Level Decoupling-Full Report

visions are guided by what they aspire to achieve.

This report proposes six areas of focus to guide the content and pace of urban transitions:

• Third, pointing out that visions of

• First, demonstrating how the reconfiguration of urban infrastructures can change the flow of resources through cities. This is a new field of research, requiring learning from activities that suggest new possibilities. The solution is not a single formula or model, but rather a dynamic process of negotiating purpose, experience and learning. • Second, showing that multiple visions of urban futures are formed by coalitions of interests that are context-specific. These

sustainability capture innovation in the relationships between cities, infrastructural systems and resource flows in different ways. Some may address systemic urban infrastructure transitions over long periods of time (20 years and more) while others operate over a few months or years. Innovation in relations between cities, infrastructure systems and resource flows can best be understood through projects and initiatives building up over time.

Box 1.1 Significant recent reports on cities

• UN-Habitat’s 2009 Report on Human Settlements was entitled Planning Sustainable Cities: Policy Directions . It set out a compelling series of arguments for the re- appreciation of planning for sustainability after two decades of free market thinking. • The World Bank’s 2009 Eco 2 Cities report emphasised the importance of synergies between ecological and economic interests as an important component of the World Bank’s new urban strategy. It included resource efficiency with extensive discussion of urban infrastructure systems and how these can be reconfigured. • The OECD’s 2009 report on City Competitiveness and Climate Change is generating further studies and high profile political roundtables on this issue. It promoted the idea that competitiveness involves more than offering the most attractive conditions for financial investment; it must also offer a desirable living and working environment that is managed in accordance with sustainability criteria. • The World Bank’s 2009 World Development Report made a strong case for government policies to focus on city-regions as significant scales of development action. • UNEP’s 2011 Green Economy Report ’s chapter on sustainable cities demonstrated how the diverse sectorial dimensions of the emerging green economy agenda are anchored in urban centres and linked through a variety of global resource flows. • WWF published an undated report in collaboration with the global consulting firm Booz Allen Hamilton entitled Reinventing the City: three prerequisites for greening urban infrastructures . • The European Commission’s Director-General for Research 2010 report entitled World and European Sustainable Cities: Insights from EU research discussed social inclusion, integrated planning and environmental consequences of urban sprawl. • A 2011 report entitled Are we building competitive and liveable cities? by UN-Habitat, ECLAC, UN-ESCAP and the Urban Design Lab made a bold case for investments in eco-efficient and socially inclusive infrastructures.

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