Box 10P International initiatives for sustainable cities

The Sustainable Cities Project is an initiative launched by the European Commission Expert Group on the Urban Environment in 1993 as a follow-up to the 1990 Green Paper on the Urban Environment. The first outcome of this project is a report which will formulate recommendations for integrating urban environmental considerations in the European Union, and national and local policies. Three main areas of integration are considered: economy, mobility and landuse planning. The project also includes the preparation of a Best Practice Guide and the exchange of information and experience through the establishment of a Sustainable City Network.

The Sustainable Cities Programme was established by the UNCHS (United Nations Centre for Human Settlements ­ Habitat) in 1990 to provide municipal authorities and their partners in the public and private sectors with an improved environmental planning and management capacity. The Programme focuses on developing countries and brings expertise from different regions of the world to help strengthen ability to define the most critical environmental issues and to identify available instruments and mechanisms to address them.

The Ecological City Project was launched by the OECD Environment Group on Urban Affairs in 1993 to identify strategies for integrated and coordinated policies at the national level that can help cities to address environmental problems more effectively. The project focuses on urban issues such as transport and infrastructures, energy production and consumption, landuse patterns and the potential for renewal and redevelopment in suburban and inner-city districts.

The Healthy Cities Project, established by WHO in 1991, seeks to commit municipalities to a concerted programme for improving the quality of the urban environment and health in cities. A selected list of health-related environmental indicators is being collected through the Healthy Cities network. It involves more than 500 municipalities from various world regions including Europe, North America, Latin America and Africa.

The Urban Environmental Management Program is funded by the UNDP and jointly executed by UNCHS (Habitat) and the World Bank to strengthen the capacity of cities to address urban problems. The programme seeks to define urban environmental strategies for setting and implementing local action plans in selected cities.

The Local Agenda 21 Initiative is an international project by the International Council of Local Environmental Initiative (ICLEI) aimed at developing a planning framework for local sustainable development. The project is a direct follow-up of UNCED and responds to the need to assist local authorities in the implementation of local Agenda 21 as established in Chapter 28 of Agenda 21. The initiative by ICLEI in partnership with the International Union of Local Authorities (IULA) places specific attention upon the application and redesign of environmental planning mechanisms such as consultation, audits, target-setting, monitoring and feedback to identify options and assess conflicting interests and values implicit to sustainability.