SOCIETÀ ITALIANA DI DIRITTO ED ECONOMIA
Dominique MIGNOT (Université Gustave Eiffel)
Abstract
The notion of "sustainable development" is already old (Brundtland Report, 1987, Our common future) and developed rapidly in the form of a diagram that situates sustainable development at the crossroads of three spheres representing environment, economy and society. In 1994, with the Aalborg Charter, the concept was extended to the city, with European cities agreeing to make the necessary changes to become "sustainable cities".
In the transport sector, the European Green Deal (2019) aims to suppress net greenhouse gas emissions by 2050 and to decouple economic growth from the use of resources. As transport accounts for a quarter of Europe’s GHG emissions, a 90% reduction in transport emissions is required by 2050 to achieve carbon neutrality. But this reduction will only be possible if all modes of transport make significant contributions.
From the 2000s onwards, environmental issues became increasingly prominent in public debate, and have recently been given even greater impetus by the growing awareness of climate issues (see the work of the IPCC). However, the implementation of sustainable cities and/or sustainable mobility remains an urgent priority.
To accelerate the ecological transition and better meet the challenges of climate change, France has launched a national strategy for technological and industrial research and development. This is a strong incentive policy designed to mobilize scientific and professional communities around the specific challenges of sustainable cities. Within this framework and to meet these objectives, a “Priority Research Programme and Equipment“ (PRPE) have been proposed, organized around a national call for projects and three targeted projects.
A priority aim of this PRPE is to produce significant public research work so that the national scientific community, in full collaboration with economic stakeholders and local authorities, can be involved in advances clearly addressing mobility issues. The research activities therefore aim to overcome scientific barriers in the following fields:
• Understanding of uses, downstream-oriented research (consisting of using action as a starting point to produce knowledge)
• Capture, store and appropriate processing of data
• Systemic and multiscalar approach
• Scientific plurality of approaches
• Methodology to support decision-making
The PRPE has been entrusted to Université Gustave Eiffel and CNRS, and focuses on sustainable cities and innovative buildings (SCIB). This project is a 8-years program and has a budget of 40 million euros.
SCIB programme aims to promote and accelerate the development and application of practical solutions to implement Sustainable Cities and Innovative Buildings (SCIB). For that, the programme aims to stimulate scientific and technical research, while mobilising and bringing together scientific communities and professionals and researchers working with regional stakeholders whose activities are part of the SCIB strategy, while raising questions pertinent to research and identifying the obstacles they face in their everyday actions. SCIB faces 6 challenges: Climate change and the protection of Biodiversity ; Resilient cities ; Low-carbon, energy-efficient cities and buildings: towards sustainable manufacturing ; and productivity in cities ; Fair and inclusive cities ; Sustainable cities, health and well-being ; Emerging Challenges.. Each targeted project will support work in order to propose data, tools and methods usable by regional stakeholders for an acceleration strategy on sustainable cities and innovative buildings. They are designed as discussion platforms between the social/economic sphere and the research community, providing the essential capital bond to enable research corresponding to the actual needs of the regions. The three targeted projects are:
- “Sustainable Cities and Innovative Buildings Information System” (SCIBIS), capitalising on the results of projects and the data, models and experiments carried out in France and abroad.
- “Sustainable cities and innovative buildings models”, to provide models and develop integrated, multi-scale approaches to urban modelling;
- “Public action scenario evaluation methods”, to provide tools and methods to assess the impact of public action scenarios to support regional and local public authorities.
The aim of the research work is to broaden our understanding, based on multidisciplinary approaches, and open the door to new applications in territories in order to overcome environmental, economic and social challenges, while establishing a common fundamental and multidisciplinary knowledge base. It is undoubtedly at the level of cities or large urbanized areas, that there is room for maneuver to achieve more sustainable mobility and cities.
We believe that this new approach is potentially fruitful and will enable us to find innovative solutions to climate, environmental and social crises.
References
Aalborg Charter, 1994, Charter of European Cities & Towns Towards Sustainability, European Conference on Sustainable Cities & Towns in Aalborg, Denmark on 27 May 1994.
Gro Harlem Brundtland, 2020, Report of the World Commission on Environment and Development: Our Common Future.
Eoropean Commmission, Green Deal, Call for projects for 100 climate neutral cities by 2030, https://research-and-innovation.ec.europa.eu/funding/funding-opportunities/funding-programmes-and-open-calls/horizon-europe/eu-missions-horizon-europe/climate-neutral-and-smart-cities_en
Cynthia Rosenzweig, William D. Solecki, Patricia Romero-Lankao, Shagun Mehrotra, Shobhakar Dhakal, Somayya Ali Ibrahim, 2018, Climate Change and Cities: Second Assessment Report of the Urban Climate Change Research Network, published by . Cambridge University Press. 811 pages. 2018.
Will Steffen, Wendy Broadgate, Lisa Deutsch, Owen Gaffney and Cornelia Ludwig, 2015, “The trajectory of the Anthropocene: The Great Acceleration