The European Environment Agency (EEA) has published the report 'Urban sustainability in Europe: pathways for changewhich brings together the agency's recent work on urban environmental sustainability, developed together with stakeholders in the field. The main report is published together with a urban nexus assessmentwhich completes the EEA urban reporting package.
The new assessments and the EEA's previous work emphasise that cities have a key role to play in Europe's transition to sustainability: cities must address economic, social and environmental issues in an integrated way to achieve sustainability which includes ensuring that cities are inclusive, safe and resilient.
Factors for improving the sustainability of cities
The EEA report identifies several building blocks that are key to improving the sustainability of cities, including improving the quality of the local environment, building resilience, ensuring sufficient public and natural areas, shifting to sustainable urban planning, and improving the quality of the local environment. renewable energy and improving energy and resource efficiency. In addition, cities must improve the quality of the built environment, including housing, and ensure social justice and inclusive participation in decision-making.
While all cities are complex and different from each other, the report identifies some shared key factors for improving their sustainability. Local culture, knowledge and data quality can enable or slow improvements, as can new technologies, governance and financial management.
Finally, the package presents an 'urban nexus approach', which can help identify problems or opportunities that are linked and, as such, support integrated and cost-effective actions. For example, in many cases cities can improve their climate resilience, quality of public spaces, ease of mobility and air quality with integrated and targeted actions. Cities can also test sustainability approaches and develop new ways of measuring sustainability, the report argues.
