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| Designing, Implementing, and
Measuring Sustainable Urban Development |
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Principal Investigators
MIT:
E.Ben-Joseph, R.Gakenheimer, C.Zegras
ETH: W.Schmid,
M.Keiner
Chalmers: M.Eden, A.Hagson, B.Malbert
Catholic Univ.
of Chile: C.De Mattos, S.Leon B.
Univ. Botswana: B.Cavric,
A.Mosha
Univ. Witswatersrand: K.Pile
Urbanization is one
of them most powerful phenomena influencing global sustainability
prospects today. The convergence of economic growth, population
growth and urban expansion offers both great challenges and great
potentials for realizing metropolitan sustainability. Perhaps
nowhere are these challenges and potentials of urbanization more
dominant than in the rapidly growing cities of the developing
world.
Goal/Objective
The goal of this research is
to contribute to new solutions for sustainable urban development –
with a particular focus on the developing world – through a
collaborative, multi-disciplinary, and participatory approach
combining research, urban design, and capacity building.
The
project focuses on three cities, Santiago, Johannesburg and Gaborone
and may be extended to include cities in Asia. By focusing on cities
from different regions, at different stages of development, and with
different socio-economic backgrounds the project will ultimately
enable a better understanding of the commonalities and differences
relating to sustainable urban development drivers, challenges and
potential solutions.
The project expects to operationalize
urban sustainability: to produce workable responses to the
challenges to sustainable urban development by means of enabling a
global overview of the core problems, together with the provision of
a synthesis of realizable strategies and offer both a scientific
forum and an “urban field laboratory” for joint learning. The
project will also provide a model of multi-disciplinary and
trans-disciplinary international academic collaboration geared
towards practical problem solving.
Results and
Findings
Not only are the so-called "mega-cities" facing mega
problems (like urban sprawl, problems for the environment, and
social cohesion), but smaller, primate cities like Gaborone are
too.
Researchers have analyzed the existing problems in the
case study cities and discussed with stakeholders and decisionmakers
from the administration of the cities possible approaches for
solutions. Proposals will include:
- Working out of a sustainability strategy for the
agglomerations
- Orienting policy guidelines, development plans and structure
plans at the principle of sustainability
- Monitoring the orientation towards sustainability by
indicator-based controlling
- Implementing new analytical tools (for example, GIS) and
improving the administrative procedures
- Assessing training needs for administration staff
- Revising existing administrative boundaries between cities and
surrounding settlements in order to create a platform for joint
planning and decision-making
More
Information
Website
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