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Sustainable cities
Three words are breaking the schemes of the traditional architecture of cities and their planning, not by introducing us to new concepts, but by trying to combine them in a reasoned, coherent and beneficial way. We are talking about urban planning, sustainability and energy efficiency that, when combined, can bring benefits and create thesustainable city or breaking the economic balance of any administrative entity if its execution and application is poorly reasoned.
At the time, we already discussed the advantages and disadvantages of Smart Cities, pointing out a new concept that resonated after its implementation, the appearance of first and second class cities initially promoted according to the economic state of the coffers of each city.
I was wondering if there was no initiative that tried to minimize these consequences when I came across an interesting project in Brazil, it is called the “Sustainable Cities Program”.
To get an overview, there is a roadmap for sustainable cities that interweaves different points until 2022 and 2050. We believe that it is of interest to show the scheme:
Which are the goals of sustainable cities
The first thing is to emphasize that individualism as a city is not viable, it is necessary to promote global guidelines that frame the territory and that will benefit the sustainable city. Raise awareness, mobilize and offer tools for cities to develop economically, socially and environmentally together, recalling the article on sustainable development projects and their models.
The general objective of these initiatives is to articulate, from co-responsibility, the efforts of local initiatives in pursuit of just city building, democratic and sustainable.
- First step:
It is recognized that the initiative has no political color, the purpose is a common welfare and the importance of active citizenship in promoting and achieving true transformations, recognizing that these transformations require, in turn, the transformation and involvement of the State and their political will.
- Second step:
Involve the agents involved. The Sustainable Cities Program has drawn up a proposal called "Letter of commitment" to which more than 320 Brazilian municipalities have adhered, of which 20 are part of "provincial capitals" as well as various important political parties have signed such a commitment. .
On the other hand, the citizen has to be involved, in this case a mobilization and campaign "Eu Voto Sustentável" (I Voto Sustentable) began. There is no ballot box where to vote, there is no political party, it is about involving society, seeing that citizens join the objective through the different media (including social networks, websites …).
Schematically we can see the following graph to better understand the phases and characteristics of sustainable cities of a city:
If we want to follow a step-by-step methodology from the IDB (International Development Bank) they provide us with some guide documents from HERE. Now we have the perfect combination to present common guidelines to follow.
Sustainable cities program guidelines:
The guidelines that must be followed are embodied in an agreement in several key points:
A) Sustainable cities program that offers:
I-Tools
- Sustainable Cities Platform, an agenda for the sustainability of cities that addresses the different areas of public management, in 12 thematic axes, and incorporates the social, environmental, economic, political and cultural dimensions in an integrated way.
- General indicators associated with the axes of the platform.
- Basic indicators that will be part of the commitments of the candidates and mayors.
- Exemplary cases and national and international references of excellence for the integrated improvement of city indicators.
II- Mobilization
- Campaign for candidates to adopt the platform and make commitments to the Program.
- Campaign for voters to value the candidates committed to the Sustainable Cities Program.
III- Commitments
Candidates for mayor can confirm their commitment to sustainable development by signing the Letter of Commitment (www.lacionessustentaveis.org.br/carta). With this, the elected signatories must be willing to promote the Sustainable Cities Platform in their cities and to account for the actions carried out and the progress achieved through reports that reveal the evolution of the basic indicators related to each axis.
IV - Benefits for Participating Cities
Participating cities will gain visibility in publicity notes and in the media, will have access to strategic information and will exchange experiences with other cities, as well as being part of an unprecedented movement in Brazil that represents another step in the process of building fairer cities. , democratic and sustainable.
B) Axes or key points to influence in sustainable cities:
All the present sections are described by means of two points; General description and specifies where all the guidelines to be followed are included.
To access all the information presented, I leave you the document that highlights the aforementioned bases of the sustainable cities program … HERE.
I wanted to clarify some point of this article, the initiative was inspired by the commitments of Aalborg (Denmark - 1994), a political pact with sustainable development, which has already been signed by more than 650 municipalities, mainly European. In Spain it had its initial repercussion, I say initially since the political will ended up obscuring and forgetting an initiative that could have had an impact and benefit us all, if it is true that in the North of Spain the initiative was taken more seriously.
Another curious fact is that the Report on the "Sustainable Cities Program" refers to Vitoria-Gasteiz, Spain, chosen as a European Green City in 2012 as a point of reference so that "at home" we already have a place to look and learn. In short, how nice it would be if we came together for such a noble goal. It is important to collect information on environmentally responsible cities and from the article on environmental and innovative projects we have indicated the future of ecology.
What do you think about it?… Would it be viable in Spain?
