Environment and urban sustainability
The European Academy of the Urban Environment EA.UE in 2007

Europe has long ago grown and developed far beyond a mere Common Market and the single European market. Political integration is progressing - sometimes rapidly, sometimes more slowly. For European citizens this can be experienced in particular in towns and cities.

Towns and cities form the basis of European society, they are vital centres of knowledge and culture; they have available tremendous economic and social resources. Further integration in Europe will be expressed in concrete terms in urban areas, the dynamism and pace of Europe in these locations will prove itself; however, here too, the difficulties can be experienced.

European local government bodies are confronted by tremendous challenges which can only be faced within a European context:

Conditions and quality of life for the average citizen need to be further improved and organised in a more healthy way. Of course, this includes technical elements as well, nevertheless at local authority level, more sustainable, integrated and participatory management approaches and decision-making processes are by far more significant.

Demography and composition of the population in several European countries will change rapidly. Decline in population in central parts of towns and cities due to a falling birth rate and urban sprawl is already as this is being written a widespread phenomenon, and one which will impinge still more significantly in the next few years. Concurrently, the proportion of inhabitants with an immigrant background is increasing. Cities are thus facing massive tasks with regard to integration. This process will also intensify in the next few years.

It is a requirement of the EU environmental noise directive (END), which came into force in 2002 and was transposed into German legislation at the end of 2005, that major cities and agglomerations commence action planning for noise abatement with considerable public participation in 2008. However, so far, local authorities in Germany have little experience in this field.

Thus, these three trends and tasks confronting municipalities formed the programmatic points of main emphasis for the European Academy of the Urban Environment in the year 2007.

Sustainable development is a cross-sectoral task for local authorities in Europe which can only be brought about in an intensive dialogue with citizens. In order to achieve this, it is vital/crucial to bring about cooperation and integration of the wide variety of local authority fields of action and tasks.

Ever since the Rio Declaration of 1992, calls for vertical and horizontal integration and for greater public participation in order to deal with tasks relating to for the future have been formulated in various policy announcements and documents. Currently this direction is being re-visited, for example, in the context of the EU Thematic Strategy on the Urban Environment TSUE, and also in the EU 7th Framework Programme. In the meantime it has become a political commonplace, without which hardly any announcement on sustainable development is complete.

However, it is far from being implemented in practice. Here we have health policy makers complaining about noise and air pollution, spatial planners are concerned about urban sprawl, politicians about inner cities being deserted. At the same time, roads are being built and widened, new housing estates are set up on the far outskirts of towns or cities, and trading or commercial sites are given planning permission on greenfield sites.

A project was organised within the scope of THE PEP (Transport, Health, Environment – Pan-European Programme), a UN ECE / WHO Europe programme - and funded by the Federal Environmental Agency. It aimed to identify institutional key conditions making horizontal and vertical integration of these fields of environment, health and transport possible at both local and higher level authorities. This objective was based on realisation that due to increase in physical size of towns and cities and to urban sprawl (occurring at very uneven rates regionally and chronologically), changes in settlement structures in Europe will result in changes in traffic and transport situations and intensify health pressures and environmental pollution. These negative impacts may, as has been shown in a variety of case studies, at least be mitigated by means of integrated, participatory planning and problem solving approaches.

The results of an investigation and of an international conference were submitted to the Federal Environmental Agency in the form of a condensed study and have been incorporated into the UNECE / WHO Europe programme; as a follow-up project by the end of 2007 a brochure in English for municipal decision makers is due to appear in print for the whole of Europe.

Despite differing evaluations depending on the respective study, there are considerable adverse health and economic effects as a result of noise. Noise is perceived by the general public as one of the most important aspects of environmental pollution, and in surveys on everyday environmental problems is nearly always at the top of the list. At the same time these studies and surveys also point out that in the public perception they are frequently left on their own with 'their' noise problems.

Although questions of noise protection and noise mitigation have figured more prominently in awareness (and behaviour) in politicians and public authorities in the last few years, nevertheless noise abatement remains to a large extent a 'sectoral' task on the basis of legislative regulations which are spread evenly throughout the law and regulation patterns of Federal and regional competences in Germany. In the foreseeable future it seems that the Federal Law on control of pollution (BImmSch) as revised to take into account the EU Environmental Noise Directive END will - due in part to time limits and processes involved - not change this situation very much.

On the other hand, END has played its part in positioning noise abatement more prominently in policy discussion (not least in larger conurbations), to bring the topic more effectively into public debate and public information as a task for public authorities and other administrative bodies and, furthermore, to perceive noise abatement more and more as a cross-sectoral subject. In particular, this is a crucial task confronting the local authority in towns and cities.

Combating noise pollution thus remains a primary environmental policy task, but in addition is also a task for society as a whole. In this respect, major importance is to be attached to the public participation which is required in END, and to exchange of views between all the players, in order to bring about a low-noise, more healthy working and living environment, and to lobby for noise abatement.

"Silent City", a project which is in receipt of funding from the Federal Environmental Agency (UBA) and which will be concluded in 2008, commenced activities at the end of 2006. As part of this project, a workshop was held for local level practitioners in June 2007, and during the summer, a survey was initiated, the results of which have been evaluated .....

In November there was a second workshop, which was organised and held in conjunction with the North Rhine-Westphalian Regional Ministry for Environment.

The objective of the "Silent City" project is to evaluate municipal approaches towards noise abatement and public participation, to test a variety of methods and instruments in selected towns and cities and also to produce information material and recommendations for use by political and administrative decision makers.

In the coming decades the population of Europe will decline considerably. Some countries - primarily Germany and Bulgaria - will in the next four decades lose up to 30 per cent of their population; the proportion of elderly inhabitants will then amount to more than one-third of the total population, children and young people in some countries will constitute only a small minority of less than 15 per cent.

However, demographic change will not occur everywhere to the same degree. Western and northern Europe will be barely affected - or (comparatively speaking) only to a small extent - but central and southern Europe will therefore be more seriously affected. In addition to economic disparities, which in the views of several economic experts will increase, there will be greater demographic differences. Unless countermeasures are taken, these two developments will be mutually reinforcing. How then will Europe be able to compete in the commercial field with the USA, where in a few decades the population will be on average 10 years younger and, furthermore, will outstrip the 'old' continent in terms of population numbers?

In a number of member states these developments may well increase the gap between rich and poor, and the risk of falling below the poverty threshold will increase for wider sections or groups in these societies, thus ultimately endangering the legitimacy of Europe and its institutions. Even now, the proportion of sections of society near the poverty line is in some countries as high as one-third of the population; by means of social transfer payments this figure can only be reduced to 25 per cent. In other member states - such as Germany - the gap between lower and upper income groups has widened considerably in the last few years.

Not only does demographic change have an impact on economic development – and, incidentally, on national budgets too - it will also make provision of public services and utilities in particular at local level considerably more expensive, or reduce standards. The fact that many schools in Brandenburg or Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania have been closed because inhabitants have moved away, for example, or even the fact of increases in water and sewage charges, due to noticeably higher demand for cleaning and flushing water, highlight aspects which may await some cities and towns. Will inhabitants be prepared to play their part in this?

One instrument which might mitigate the numerical decline and increase in proportions of elderly people in the population is that of labour migration. Not only is this point made in the Commission green paper "Confronting demographic change: a new solidarity between the generations" (2005), ministers responsible for home affairs of a number of larger EU member states also referred to the idea in their meeting at Stratford-upon-Avon, UK, at the end of October 2006. Whether the idea of 'circular migration', i.e. immigration (to Europe) which is limited to a specific number of years, will meet with any degree of success, may nevertheless - in view of German experience over the 'green card' - give reason to doubt. At any rate, immigration is no longer a political 'non-word', and the most recent Commission Communication (10/2006) on demographic change calls on Europe to "use the opportunities offered by immigration". But - as developments in particular in Germany, France, the Netherlands and the United Kingdom have shown - this idea must be put over to the general public.

In this respect, towns and cities - 'target areas' for immigration - are facing considerable tasks with regard to integration. Due to differing social value concepts, relationships and differences in family structures, there will be changes in the demands made of local level provision of services and support. This will have impacts on social and physical infrastructure aspects, such as schools, kindergartens, parks and green spaces, the housing market or transport systems, and so on.

The impacts of population decline and greying, the effects of shrinking cities may be imagined in a number of federal states in the eastern part of Germany. Schools are closing, railway routes discontinued, towns or cities becoming deserted... The possible consequences of demographic change have long been topics in spatial planning, in traffic and transport planning so far however they have not played any part. Demographers, physical and traffic planners and the transport industry need to work together more than they have done to date, so that using appropriate methods it may be possible to outline a vision with careful and subtle spatial and chronological differentiation showing foreseeable developments and to derive concrete planning from this basis. Bearing in mind the long-term impact of physical – and thus also precisely traffic-based – infrastructures, it is therefore absolutely imperative that a 'paradigm shift' should take place.

A project organised in cooperation with the TU Berlin and financed through the Regional Berlin Ministry of Urban Development as part of the EU Town-Twinning programme, addressed the question of how local authority budgets and private citizens' prosperity levels will alter as a result of demographic change, and what influence this will have on urban mobility and on traffic planning. Two international conferences which were targeted to twinned cities of Berlin and of Berlin districts, a questionnaire process, the evaluation of the responses and a culminating publication contributed towards identifying initial answers to these questions and making local level decision makers aware of the problem.

By means of this project, which was initiated in 2006 and was concluded in 2007, activities begun in the previous year were continued, which were designed to examine the influence of demographic change on European municipalities, specifically with respect to urban mobility – in particular in view of the Commission's green paper on this topic which has just been issued.