Background: Urban development is confronted with heterogeneous and often conflicting needs. Concerns of urban environmental protection and precautions are strongly interconnected with urban development and have to be considered in planning and decision making processes in manifold ways. However, they are just one concern out of many and have to be balanced with other challenges of urban development, not least with social concerns. The latter reflects for instance the needs for affordable housing and security of energy and water supply. On the one hand, social and environmental needs can have synergies and the concept of environmental justice is an upcoming but central interface. On the other hand, conflicting goals of an environmentally friendly and at the same time socially sensitive urban development can be detected, as for example in the field of energy poverty (greener but more expensive renewable energy puts some households at poverty risk). Moreover, complexity is added as also in different cities different societal groups will not have the same interests and, hence, social contexts differ nationally and across Europe.
Goal: Better understand potential synergies and trade-offs of environmental and social concerns in urban development. Identify and more clearly describe conflicting goals and measures with sufficient indicators and find solutions to reduce and dissolve them.
Rationale from the themes: Demand: Urban environmental protection and at the same time social cohesion in the urban society put high demands on a sustainable urban development. Solutions have to be defined to react e.g. on climate change mitigation and adaption requirements, pressure on the quality of the urban environment, demographic change, migration and needs for affordable and adequate living spaces at the same time. While even more people are moving to urban areas, especially in metropolitan regions with consequences for real estate markets and a high pressure on land demand, other regions sorrow by shrinking population density, which also has implications on the environmental and social dimension of urban planning. Questions arise on which services are needed and to which extent in order to provide urban citizens with a good quality of life. In particular, trade-offs and synergies with environmental goods and services must be understood.
Natural Capital: In the light of rapid urbanization processes the urban environment is under high pressure to preserve healthy living conditions for all citizens and protect the functioning urban ecosystem and biodiversity. The urban hinterland is closely connected to the urban ecosystem, its quality and limits as supplier e.g. for energy, water, food, area for recreation as well as sink for disposal. Limits and pathways for an environmentally friendly urban development offering healthy living conditions in relation of cities have to be better understood. Questions arise on the limits of natural capital to enable urban ecosystem services demanded by modern cities and on how to protect them effectively. In particular, trade-offs and synergies of environmental goods and services with human health must be understood.
Land Management: To balance the needs for an environmentally friendly and socially sensitive urban development, solutions have to be defined in daily practice of urban planning on the regional, urban to neigbourhood development level. In order to trade off the satisfaction of urban demands with recognition of the limits of natural capital, appropriate information and tools are needed that are practicable and comprehensive at the same time. Moreover, management is related to questions such as: Which line of arguments do we need to strengthen the consideration of environmental and/or social concerns in planning decisions? What are the instruments to realize urban renewal in a way that addresses social and environmental concerns similarly regarding healthy living conditions, access to affordable infrastructure services, environmental justice and adequate living space for all? Effective urban land management needs to find a way to engage with all societal groups, sharpening their awareness for the environmental impacts of urban development and use efficient economic, regulatory and legal incentives to steer sustainable behavior.
Net Impact: The realization of a socially and environmentally friendly urban development is crucial and its success or failure can have impacts on other regions nationally and internationally, which are often not fully considered in land management on a daily bases given constraints of limited resources (data, time) for decision making. If, for example, socially deprived groups cannot afford life in cities, they have to move to sub-urban areas, with negative impacts on land-take, mobility needs and an adequate social mix of society. Especially in a global context and in fast and unplanned growing urban areas, unhealthy living conditions due to a poor standard of environmental protection can endanger social cohesion. People who can afford it will move while the poor have to arrange with difficult living conditions. Often such direct or indirect impacts on local, regional or global level are unknown and information on them as such as well as methods and data to assess and monitor the impacts are needed in order to inform decision making.
So what? Urban development is stressed by environmental and social framing conditions. Solutions to bridge the goals of urban environmental protection and social concerns of urban development are crucial to realize sustainable cities. Knowledge on environmental issues in urban planning as well as on social concerns is partly available but has to be better integrated and new questions arise at the interface of both dimension, especially addressing implementation and daily practice of urban planning.
Links to other fields: Research in this field is linked to understanding trade-offs and synergies in the different dimensions of sustainable development more generally. Insights might also be relevant for other (than urban) areas of natural resources protection.