MIDTERM NOTES COMPILED

September 9, 2014
What is a sustainable city (continuation)
III.
A key dimension of competition between cities and regions
o preserve nature and biodiversity
o enhance existing natural resources through planning
o recreate nature in the city
o technical innovations
o green growth to develop new markets (green economy)
MALM (Sweden)
Medium-sized city
An industrial and a port city
o shipyards: 1/3 of jobs disappear during the 80s
o social and health issues
o 40% migrants (Yugoslavia, Iran, Iraq, etc.) linked to the
welcoming immigrant policy of Sweden towards warstricken nations
1994, newly elected mayor Ilmar Reepalu
o Can't rebuild the shipyards, but can develop citizen
empowerment, public services and enterprises, youth
o Focus on education, connectivity, & sustainability
Infrastructure-led development
o Airport, Oresund bridge directly linked itself to
Copenhagen airport, using its geographical position as an
asset
o European integration and cohesion funds access to direct
public funding from EU institutions to develop innovations,
projects for the city which they couldn't get from the state
Partnership with University (20,000 students in 1998)
strengthened technical capacity
The development of the city's waterfront (175 hectares)
grounded on strong linkages between different state and private
actors
o housing exhibition 2001
o new generation of urban planners and architects through
university partnerships
o small parcels (pieces of land) and private real estate
developers rented out by the city for very low prices in
order to simply attract developers and competitive projects
because ain't no one be developing on that shit
o experiment new technologies (energy, waste)

o Flagship: Calatrava tower to put Malmo "back on the

map"
"Sweden's most climate-friendly city"
o From experimentation-led policies towards a stable growth
model how do you expand to the rest of the city (pretty
unsuccessful today); to attract the private sector
Small area, pioneers, 1,000 inhabitants, expensive
(2x the national prices)
Public investments by state, city, public housing
companies
o Sustainable urban development as a major driver for urban
transformations
Large variety of public policies: education (had most
to do with developing new projects), transport,
waste, energy
Flagghusen Bo02, 2006 => 30,000 inhabitants by
2015, 70% social housing
Fullriggaren (Bo03) in partnership with Lund & Malm
Universities & Skane Energy Agency to develop a
market for energy innovations
Cynical question of the day: Where/what are the
returns? Meh no one really knows. However, the
development of new technologies was made possible
because the city made experimentations flourish.
They actually sell worldwide.
Challenges
o Remaining area of 312 hectares how do you involve the
private sector in developing this? Public funding probably
isn't that accessible for developing brown fields these dark
days.
o Renovate existing house estates?
example: Augustenbourg
3,000 inhabitants, very diverse, 70%
unemployed, regular flooding
Project: botanical roof gardens, natural open
storm water management => expensive
It's easy to develop an area with no one living in it,
but rehabilitation? Renovation of ugly, existing places
with inhabitants? Reemalu was stumped.
A new perspective on urban policies and governance (read ppt)

Case Study: Chinese Cities

The Hukou System

A registration status: "rural" or "urban" as special administrative

unites
Why: to prevent rapid urbanization and guarantee access to a
massive pool of low-cost rural labor forces
Segregation between rural and urban societies
Strong control over change of status (rural to urban)
Illegal residents or "floating population" with no access to urban
social services (i.e. health, education, housing for 150M people in
2009)
Negatives: Prevented strong domestic consumption market in
China so reliance on exports, illegal migrant population is
growing, spread of liberalist political ideas

Big Disasters

Tsunami, earthquakes, hurricanes, floods, wildfires, etc.

An event outside human control
A disaster is the set of failures that overwhelms the ability of a
community to respond without external help when three
continuums intersect at a point in space and time:
1. People
2. Community (i.e. habitats, livelihoods)
3. Complex events (e.g. earthquakes, tsunamis)
Elements of Risk
Hazards sometimes due to the concentration of different
activities (i.e. economic); an example is Lyon, which has a lot
of chemical industrial plants while having flood risk
Exposure
Vulnerability has to do with people and their
capabilities/means to prepare and/or cope with disaster; also
has to do with wealth of the people and the community
Location area and geographical position
Specific concern for major urban areas
Demographics
Concentration of risks: industrial plants, dense population,
economic and financial headquarters, illegal settlements
Risk mitigation is more complicated in urban areas
enhance existing dikes, crowd management, and mass
evacuation, epidemics etc.
Example: Fos-sur-Mer

 Factors known to increase urban risk from natural disasters (notable

ones)
exponential growth in population
high density urban development
a low GDP and a deep poverty cycle
lack of enforcement of a modern building code and modern
infrastructure standards
lack of modern emergency management
IMPLEMENTATION IS KEY
prone to natural disasters (landslides, tsunamis, etc.)

Class 7 October 14, 2014

Building green growth coalitions: The Governance Model

Government
o Organizations involved in the allocation, decision,
constraint, administration
o The process: decision making and management, etc.
Power as a relation
o Until the 1980s, state organizations in a multi-level
perspective
Capacity to take decisions dictating the hierarchy of
priorities, especially in cases with conflicting
interests
Capacity to implement
Capacity to justify, legitimate decisions through
norms to get citizen aquiescence to foster
discourse to get citizen participation and support
Beyond political regulation?
o Legitimacy and authority of the government can be
contested by non-state actors
e.g. protests
o Increased blurring of frontiers between public, civil society
and private actors; growing interdependence between
levels
o The end of the monopoly of the State in steering society
The autonomy of some actors, subsystems within
society
The rise of policy networks in order to coordinate
public and private actors
o On one side, the State can be perceived as weaker. On
another, it can be considered stronger/going the right

direction because it is able to involve citizens and

stakeholders.
Class 8 October 28, 2014
Class 9 November 4, 2014
Expos: From Climate Change Mitigation to Adaptation Policies: The
Critical Role of Cities

The appearance of new local governance

o ICLEI and the new role of cities in climate mitigation and
adaptation
Cities are the main actors for carrying out policies
Both in making and dealing
Focus on local power, so international governance
program is put in place
o Tools and objectives: CCP programme general framework
5 milestones for climate mitigation
5 milestones for climate adaptation
CCP Programme in Practice
o How to measure the impact of the programme
Relative carbon footprint (city to national)
Mitigation is the more radical of the two, because it addresses
and targets the amelioration of climate chage crisis directly (e.g.
reducing GHG emissions, stopping the use of plastics)
Who's paying for what? Households, firms, state?
Set of solutions and policies that international organizations
propose, while local cities still have to make the choice

Lecture The Diffusion and Transfer of Models: The Role of

International Organizations

Mitigation policies: Reduction of GHG, geo-engineering

(engineering of the earth)
Circulation of ideas, practices and solutions at the global level
o How are these ideas and solutions transferred? (e.g.
straightforward copying, emulation, hybridization,
inspiration, etc.)
o Role of ideas and beliefs in shaping policy change and to
the circulation of specific policy tools and solutionS
o What exactly is being transferred? Inspiration? Import of
policies? Or choosing own path to mitigation? Or a mix
between the two?
Diffusion and transfer: the process by which knowledge about
policies, administrative arrangements, institutions and ideas in

one political system is used in the development of these same

things in another political system.
Agents of transfer:
o "Methodological nationalism" = states, public agencies
Also, ability to identify what a city/country wants to
be known for, good at, etc.
o Non-state actors = international organizations, local
authorities, NGOs, research institutes, private firms, etc.
Learning as an accelerating factor
Blah blah
What is being transferred?
o A basic set of norms and beliefs
o Information- & communication-based tools
To gather data, increase public's awareness, mobilize
different target groups
o Standards, best practices
e.g. ISO standards, "acting in the shadow of
hierarchy"
o Management tools
In order to mobilize actors, networks, etc.
How does policy transfer operate?
o Coercion vs Conditionality ('Hard law')
o Create and share common knowledge ('Soft law')
The World Bank and the environment
o One of the IOs active in environmental protection (i.e.
UNEP)
o Urban areas as main targets
o Four issues: water supply, urban transport, solid waste
management, SOMETHING
o HOW? Soft modes of government, based on voluntary, nonsanctions forms of public action
Conditionality: financial support through loans, funds,
and climate finance options platform
Technical support
Networking between a large variety of actors,
including cities and firms