Contemplating ‘Quality Street’: integration of environmental quality in planning sustainable urban development

Abstract

The challenge of sustainable urban development entails integration of environmental interests in decision-making about urban plans. In practice, this is not always successful. This dissertation offers explanations and suggests some strategies for further improvement. Three different perspectives are adopted, that were derived from environmental policy integration theory. Analysis identified five explanatory factors influencing the extent to which integration of urban environmental quality into decision-making about urban plans is successful. Moreover, the more holistic view resulting from combining the three perspectives sheds a novel light on the complexity of integration. It appears that the conception of sustainable urban development as integrating economic, social and environmental interests is too simple. First, because urban environmental quality itself consists of multiple dimensions that must be integrated. Second, because these dimensions involve processes at multiple spatial and administrative scale levels. And third, because urban environmental quality dimensions, in as far as they are subjective, rest on personal preferences of the many people involved in and affected by urban development, preferences that also vary across time. We term this ‘qualitative multiplicity’. This qualitative multiplicity of sustainable urban development causes the five factors explaining why integration of environmental interests in urban planning is sometimes problematic to act in concert, making it impossible to address one of them without also influencing at least some of the other factors. In practice, this may very well occur in cases of compact inner-city redevelopment, where the competition between environmental quality and other – social and economic – interests is most severe: high-density, mixed-use, inner-city redevelopments in areas that are heavily burdened by environmental impacts. Here, rigid environmental quality standards are sometimes found to be all too restrictive. Devolution of the authority to set urban environmental quality objectives can then be a useful approach if the problematic quality aspects involve mainly local processes. If, however, higher-level spatial scales are involved, devolution expectedly leads to insufficient attention to all relevant quality aspects or to coordination problems between the local administrative level and the appropriate higher ones. It is suggested that at least three conditions must be met in order to take advantage of such an approach locally, without risking loss of urban environmental quality from a wider perspective. A first prerequisite is adequate governance capacity to initiate and manage the multi-actor participatory process with all relevant stakeholders and interests. This includes the capability to invoke windows of opportunity for integration of environmental interests by helping actors to connect and reframe policy issues. Second, local-level decision-making can do with clear guidance as to managing qualitative multiplicity. Guidelines can take the form of simple area-dependent proxies for the complex concept of urban environmental quality, in combination with procedural regulations that clearly describe municipalities’ room for manoeuvre and insure optimal participation of all relevant actors. The third condition is that a knowledge infrastructure is in place making available all relevant information for managing urban environmental quality. Finally, better understanding of the qualitative multiplicity of sustainable urban development nuances the call for flexibility in dealing with environmental quality standards.