Global and European responses to urban challenges
To address the challenges cities face, several reference frameworks and strategies with ambitious targets have been adopted at global and European level. UN Habitat and UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) are among these reference initiatives, committed by many countries and by the European Commission (EC).
UN Sustainable Development Goals
On 1 January 2016, the world officially started the implementation of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development—the transformative plan of action based on 17 SDGs —to address urgent global challenges over the next 15 years. This agenda builds on the success of the Millennium Development Goals and wants to ensure sustainable social and economic progress worldwide. It seeks to integrate and balance the three dimensions of sustainable development economic, social and environmental—in a comprehensive global vision. The SDGs with their 17 goals and 169 targets address critical issues the world faces today, such eradicating extreme poverty, tackling global inequality and climate change, promoting sustainable urbanization and industrial development, protecting natural ecosystems, and fostering the growth of peaceful and inclusive communities and governing institutions. To support the implementation of the SDGs, a set of 231 indicators has been developed to measure progress on goals and targets, within and across countries. While SDG 11 explicitly addresses sustainable cities and communities, cities’ strategies often also address many other SDGs, thus contributing significantly to meeting a wide range of the SDGs. The 17 SDGs are:
The UN Sustainable Development Goals are a call for action by all countries to promote prosperity while protecting the planet. They acknowledge that ending poverty must go hand-in-hand with strategies that build economic growth and address a range of social needs including education, health, social protection, and create job opportunities, while tackling climate change and environmental protection.
For cities and communities – Goal 11 – the objective is to make cities inclusive, safe, resilient and sustainable. To meet the targets, there is a need to take an active interest in the governance and management of the city, to identify what works and what doesn’t, and to develop a vision for its buildings, streets, and neighbourhoods, and act on that vision. Developments in jobs, healthcare, safety and security, mobility, air quality, quality of life, shared public spaces, quality of life are all interrelated, and concerns about them motivate city administrations to meet SDG11. In that sense, an efficient holistic management approach for creating a vision for implementing and improving action plans, with relevant KPI’s is an efficient manner to meet the objectives and improve the global quality of life.
This endeavour is supported by UN-Habitat, the United Nations programme working on a better urban future. As its mission is to promote socially and environmentally sustainable human settlements development and providing adequate shelter for all, UN Habitat supports the development of holistic and global approaches towards urbanization, which pave the way to meeting UN SDGs. To support the practical implementation of the SDGs by providing a concrete methodology, the International Standardization Organisations develop standards as practical tools for meeting them, among them ISO TC 268 (sustainable cities and communities) with its 371xx series of standards.
EU policies related to smart cities and low energy districts
In the EU, smart city policies are anchored in several directives and agreements. At first the Strategic Energy Technology (SET) plan (EC, 2017). At second, in the goals for energy savings, clean energy production, low emission mobility and logistics, and climate change mitigation for 2020, 2030 and 2050 (EC, 2010a, 2012, 2016a and 2016b). The ambition to realise a low carbon economy in Europe, has been translated in Europe wide objectives of a reduction of GHG emission from 20% to 80-95%, an increase in the share of renewable energy sources in energy consumption from 20% to 80-95%, and an increase in energy savings of 20% to 80-95%, between 2020 and 2050 as compared to 1990..This requires that both building stock and physical infrastructures are deeply renovated, transformed, used and operated in a fundamentally different way. Advanced, interoperable ICT solutions combined with the wealth of urban data offer new possibilities to (re)design and operate cities in a smart and sustainable way, thus linking smart city policies to the Digital Agenda for Europe (EC, 2010b).
Experiences from successful earlier programmes, such as CONCERTO and CIVITAS, have been very important for further articulation of EU smart city policies. CONCERTO has proved in 53 pilots that a district- based approach to deep refurbishment and clean energy can deliver more than 50% reduction in energy consumption and GHG emission with a viable business case (EC, 2014). CIVITAS has amply demonstrated the feasibility of sustainable transport solutions. Subsequently, more integrated, cross-domain smart city projects have been part of the Framework Programme (FP) 9 and Horizon2020 SCC-01. The first generations of these lighthouse projects as Triangulum, SmarterTogether and REMOURBAN, have now successfully implemented plans integrating smart transport, smart buildings and smart infrastructures, usually in a specific district. Beside the aforementioned CONCERTO, CIVITAS, FP9 and Horizon 2020 projects and programmes, a host of other excellent projects, programmes, initiatives and networks have contributed to low energy districts and smart cities in the EU, for example C40, Eurocities, ICLEI, Covenant of Mayors for Climate and Energy, 100 Resilient Cities, and EIP-SCC. A learning environment has been created, where knowledge, best practices, and lessons learnt are shared and jointly brought to the next level.
In addition, the Urban Agenda for the EU was launched in May 2016 with the Pact of Amsterdam. It represents a new multi-level working method promoting cooperation between Member States, cities, the European Commission and other stakeholders, in order to stimulate growth, liveability and innovation in the cities of Europe and to identify and successfully tackle social challenges. The Urban Agenda focuses more specifically on three pillars of EU policy-making and implementation: better regulation, better funding, and better knowledge.
As stated in the Pact of Amsterdam. the Urban Agenda for the EU has four main objectives:
- It aims to realise the full potential and contribution of urban areas towards achieving the objectives of the Union and related national priorities in full respect of subsidiarity and proportionality principles and competences;
- It strives to establish a more effective integrated and coordinated approach to EU policies and legislation with a potential impact on urban areas and to contribute to territorial cohesion by reducing the socioeconomic gaps observed in urban areas and regions;
- It will not create new EU funding sources, unnecessary administrative burden, nor affect the current distribution of legal competences and existing working and decision-making structures and will not transfer competences to the EU level (in accordance with Articles 4 and 5 of the Treaty on European Union);
- It strives to involve urban authorities in the design of policies, to mobilise urban authorities for the implementation of EU policies, and to strengthen the urban dimension in these policies. By identifying and striving to overcome unnecessary obstacles in EU policy, the Urban Agenda for the EU aims to enable urban authorities to work in a more systematic and coherent way towards achieving overarching goals. Moreover, it will help make EU policy more urban-friendly, effective and efficient.
At present 14 partnerships are active: from climate adaptation, sustainable land use, energy transition and air quality to urban mobility. Several cities developing smart city processes and projects are also involved in the realisation of the Urban Agenda.
March 2019 the inter-institutional trialogue has adopted both proposals for a Regulation of the European Parliament and of the Council of Europe, establishing “Horizon Europe - Partial General Approach” and the proposal for a Decision of the Council on establishing the specific programme implementing “Horizon Europe – the Framework programme for Research and Innovation”. In this context, one of the five missions will focus on “Climate Neutral and Smart Cities” and be based on a bottom-up approach involving all types of stakeholders.