More than half of today’s global population currently resides in urban areas and this figure is growing. This means that any credible call for sustainable development on a global level must involve urban areas – a fact that finds expression in the concept of sustainable cities. Governing urban areas in a sustainable manner is, however, fraught with contradictions and dilemmas. The keys to understanding these difficulties, we argue, are to be found in the interpretation of good governance and sustainability and in their inherent contradictions. For the last two decades, the Urban Governance agenda has been based on ideas of democratic, decentralized, localized community and participatory approaches, most of which emanate from a development discourse and from experiences in rural and/or semi-rural areas. Sustainability is, ultimately, a global term – especially in the era of global climate change – and it may extend beyond the scope of urban government. Hence, urban areas – and in particular the emerging mega-cities that seem to be becoming an increasingly dominant sign of contemporary urban political economy – do not easily harmonize with either of these processes.
On the contrary, these areas are designed to be the nexuses of various kinds of flow – rural-urban; domestic-global – and they seem ill-suited to territorial decentralization and/or participatory local democracy. Moreover, major cities, which harbour vast numbers of high-consuming inhabitants in a limited space, are typically the sites of unsustainable processes that exact a price from surrounding areas (ultimately the globe). So, major cities are often not amenable to established governance practices and they often fail to follow basic principles of sustainability. This paper aims to scrutinize the dilemmas involved in governing sustainable cities, and it offers a suggestion for how the challenge might be addressed. In addition to presenting a review of the literature, we will briefly explore some experiences gained from a number of pilot cases of sustainable cities and use these to illustrate the kind of dilemmas involved and to suggest possible solutions.
Finally, we present a discussion about what may be the most appropriate future agendas for research and development agencies alike. One of the questions that is often raised is whether participatory governance is likely to benefit or jeopardize democracy. The failure of representative democracy to govern complex cities and to solve current problems is frequently pointed out. The idea of grassroots democracy and participatory democracy may simply represent the interests of groups with good resources and organizational strengths and may be pushed through at the expense of the common good. From this perspective, participatory governance implies a risk of pseudo-democratic elites with special interests gaining dominance (Raymond 2002:183). Also the increasing complexity of knowledge-based society is used as an argument that elected elites are and should be responsible for representing the public good and they should not be led by the uninformed masses.
On the other hand, successful city management must be concerned with democratic renewal as well as with management innovation and ideally participation transforms citizens who have hitherto pursued selfish interests into responsible citizens who are focused on the public good . Many local authorities in a number of countries have also introduced various forms of area based decision making to increase the participation in planning and budgeting processes. Ward committees in South Africa are one example. The Local Agenda 21 programme was set up on the basis of participatory procedures. Local processes have no decision making authority, but can offer advice to the representative bodies with whom responsibility for making fiscal decisions rest. Within such processes, a high value is placed on incorporating marginalized groups such as youth and women.
When urban governance is successful in mobilizing the necessary support and getting local decision-making structures in place, outcomes - in urban areas – may still fail to yield higher technical standards of governance due to the urban areas’ increasingly complex and interconnected nature. Moreover, even if we accept urban as a partial success (for now) in terms of participation, there is no evidence that sustainable development practices are being pursued or that such policies as are being pursued actually foster sustainable development on a global scale. Instead, we need a locally grounded process that operates not on the basis of voluntary engagement or temporary enthusiasm but within a clear framework that is set at the national level, anchored in the legal system and developed in policy. Such a framework should in turn be in concert with international imperatives and should be outlined in research and at major conferences and UN conventions.
Hence, we need to look for the quality of the local processes, and in this, three links require further attention: i) deepened local government-to-people relations in order to ground any process and establish local advocates; ii) better local government-central government relations so that the local can operate freely, but still within the limitations determined by the central state; and, iii) central government should develop a proactive stance towards global sustainability through engagement in international negotiations and standard setting. Neither the local nor the centre can solve these sorts of problems without the support of the other. Hence, the interaction between the local and the centre is crucial and it is imperative that views are shared about who should do what and with which methods.
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