City-Level Decoupling-Full Report

City-Level Decoupling: Urban resource flows and the governance of infrastructure transitions

A broader form of response will often have a local or public authority as an important intermediary organisation that not only provides funding but also builds broader networks. For example, the Vauban eco-city development was initiated by the city of Freiberg, Germany, when it bought a former army barracks in 1993 to address a housing shortage. Rather than being driven primarily by a profit motive, the city leaders were motivated by the need to provide housing with a range of accompanying energy, green space and design standards. They built a three-way relationship between public authorities, experts working to provide a set of plans for the development, and public groups or representatives. Utilities that invested in network provision and in public aspects of the infrastructure were supported by local and regional funding. Integrated eco-urbanism initiatives present new visions of a changed relationship between infrastructure networks, geographic locations and resource flows. These are often intended to be low-carbon, zero-, post- or beyond carbon, and to create greater self-sufficiency, security of resource flows, and economic activity. These concepts are usually the subject of master plans or vision documents with time horizons of a decade or longer. Integrated eco-urbanism is frequently characterised as experimental, as in the case of Bangalore, India, Treasure Island, USA, and Masdar, Abu Dhabi. The bringing together of different goals with plans, technologies, schemes, regulations and buildings is often presented as being a form of laboratory or incubation that supports the development, up-scaling and replicability of developments. Emblematic projects are a feature of integrated eco-urbanism and are usually seen as attempts to experiment with new technologies, forms of regulation and standards. The Solar Settlement of 50 houses in Vauban for example, demonstrated 'plus energy' houses based on high energy efficiency and the use of large photovoltaic panels that generate more electricity than the residents 6.3.3. Responses and outcomes

Yet many of these initiatives have been a long time in the making, with, for example, Auroville planned as a settlement of 50,000 people in 1968 and the Vauban quarter of Freiburg planned in 1993. The consistent vision is that integrated eco-urbanism is long-term in orientation. Many of these initiatives, while planned at a particular time and aiming for completion by a particular year (Vauban’s goal for completion by 2006) continue to evolve over time. Given the long timescales of these developments, they often get overtaken by wider economic pressures (financial crises and new standards) which may delay them, leading to their being overtaken by even newer innovations. Decoupling is a continuing and evolving process. The development of visions for integrated eco-urbanism frequently involves commercial architects, international supranational bodies such as the UN and the EU, national officials and programmes, regional and local authorities, residents, and local groups. The configuration of these interests – or indeed the involvement of all of them – varies with the initiative. Each set of interests comes with its own expectations of what are the main objectives of an initiative, and the dominant interests often change over the long process of development Narrowly constituted involvement usually sees private interests, developers or commercial architects, adopt a view of integrated eco- urbanism with them as a commercial interest, linking various technological possibilities and the construction of the built environment. The scale of development, which is bigger than individual houses but smaller than a city, means that private interests seek to develop methodologies for bringing different elements, (technologies, buildings, regulations, materials and their costs, benchmarking, maintenance, green consumers), together to test, adapt and re-test in pursuit of market opportunities. This can also result in the development of enclaves that are separate from existing urban and community systems, as in Masdar, Abu Dhabi. 6.3.2. How intermediaries are involved

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