City-Level Decoupling-Full Report

with each city having its own unique characteristics;

degradation might well force cities to adopt food security as a key goal in the event that long-distance supply chains are disrupted. A substitution strategy would involve resuscitating local (peri-) urban food production.

• Small-scale innovations in cities have great potential, especially if they offer viable long- term solutions, and generate strategically important research and development that can be applied to many other contexts; • Cities in developing countries may have an advantage over many cities in developed economies which are now dependent on out-dated technologies. Cities in developing countries may be able to engage in large-

scale investments in alternative urban infrastructure technologies to leap frog towards more sustainable solutions rather than wasting valuable resources to implement what must later on be dismantled;

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• The infrastructures being built today will affect city-wide resource flows for decades to come, so urban planners should focus on urban resource efficiency informed by long- term sustainability perspectives and not 'business as usual'; and • Intermediaries, especially major private sector players and universities, play a critical role by helping to learn from innovations and build capacity for managing change at city-wide scales. • Following the example of Brazil and a handful of other countries, and in line with many of the global sustainable city reports cited in Box 1, national governments should adopt National Sustainable Urban Development Policy Frameworks that support the role of cities in national sustainable development strategies. The National and City-Level Policy Frameworks need to make specific reference to urban infrastructure planning that specifically aims to reduce environmental impacts, especially greenhouse gas emissions (impact decoupling), and drastically improve resource efficiency and productivity (resource decoupling). They should align Policy-relevant recommendations include:

The rising levels of investment in urban infrastructures provide a unique opportunity to prepare cities for both inclusive economic development and sustainable consumption of natural resources. Although the case studies do not specifically apply material flow analysis, they do suggest examples of a wide range of alternatives available to the mainstream resource and energy intensive approaches for the design, construction and operation of urban infrastructures. However, further research will be needed to quantify the impact of these alternative infrastructure approaches on actual material flows. Indeed, material flow analysis of cities is still in its infancy. As these studies expand, so will the capacities of the research community to use material flow analysis to set the design parameters for future infrastructure investments. The wide range of institutional learning and social change dynamic addressed here lead to the following conclusions:

• Decoupling in cities depends on a clear vision of ultimate objectives;

• The vision to guide the transition to sustainable cities must emerge from interactions among city stakeholders,

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