Chamber of Local Authorities

AUTUMN SESSION

CPL(14)7

22 October 2007

STANDING COMMITTEE

INSTITUTIONAL COMMITTEE

European Urban Charter II

Manifesto for a new urbanity

Rapporteur :    Carlos Alberto PINTO

                        (Portugal, EPP/CD)

Working document[1]

CONTENTS

1. Preamble......................................................................................................................... 3

2. Introduction...................................................................................................................... 5

........ 2.1. Aims of the European Urban Charter II................................................................... 5

........ 2.2. Need for a new urban contract............................................................................... 5

........ 2.3. Creation of an urban matrix for action.................................................................... 6

........ 2.4. Reference texts.................................................................................................... 6

3. European urban values..................................................................................................... 7

........ 3.1. Democracy........................................................................................................... 7

........ 3.2. Sustainability and efficiency.................................................................................. 7

........ 3.3. Openness............................................................................................................. 7

4. Objectives and policy measures........................................................................................ 8

........ 4.1. Urban governance................................................................................................. 8

........ 4.2. The planned city................................................................................................... 9

........ 4.3. Voluntary urban mobility...................................................................................... 11

1.             PREAMBULE

The European Urban Charter was adopted in 1992 by the Congress of Local and Regional Authorities of the Council of Europe. This initiative offered, in many ways, a pioneering approach and has been followed by numerous other texts on the city.

Since then, a series of events have brought far-reaching changes to our economies, our societies and, above all, our cultures (in the sense of civilisation).

Foremost among these is the eastward expansion of the European Union, which, although this does not coincide with the Council of Europe area, is nevertheless the major geopolitical impact, justifying in itself a revision of the Charter. Above and beyond its varied history and identities, this new geographical bloc presents common features, combining severe urban decline with rapidly growing economies. Generally speaking, the political climate is more one of excessive liberalism than a social market economy, and this context raises the issue of urban public services. The conditions for achieving reconstruction together with controlled, rational and sustainable growth are an issue requiring particular attention.

Secondly, faced with globalisation, urban Europe has asserted itself as a focal point in the process of adapting Europe to the resulting new economic and social conditions. Our towns and cities have had no choice but to enter the post-industrial age and have accepted the consequences: erosion of the working classes, crisis in deprived neighbourhoods and suburbs, large-scale closure of industrial sites and development of a  technology for transforming industrial wasteland. In this respect, most of them are still at the half-way stage: looking backwards can reassure them as to their capacity for action, while looking forward shows the scale of the tasks ahead. 

Faced with competition in increasing both their financial and their human capital, towns and cities have become aware of their existence as an “entity” and a “collective player” and have asserted themselves as centres of initiative and creativity in various fields, including science and technology.

A further consequence of globalisation is the amplification and, above all, the diversification of immigration flows, which poses a long-term challenge to the capacity of our towns and cities for social, economic and, even more so, cultural integration. Who can claim to have an ideal model where integration is concerned? However, the reality and hope of population growth for European towns and cities depends on these migration flows. Such growth would be beneficial, but must be controlled.

Towns and cities are the places where social changes and new lifestyles are expressed or confirmed: the most significant are the ageing of the population, disparities in income and social conditions, and individualisation in the structure of households, in housing, in behaviour and in the building of social ties. In their search for new collective social networks, town and city dwellers have tended to turn to the voluntary sector in place of the trade union system. The new social flexibility in all senses of the term, family instability, unstable employment, residential mobility etc, has far-reaching consequences in the management of urban policies (particularly social and housing policies).

After a period of strong growth, everyday mobility in terms of journeys made has stabilised since the start of the new century, and automobile use has also reached a ceiling: this phenomenon is the yardstick by which we can measure our ability to restructure our urban spaces along the lines of less spread-out, sustainable towns and cities.

A challenge specific to European towns and cities has thus come strongly to the fore, and they have made it a cardinal value: why preserve, or revive, the idea of “agora”, the sense of togetherness in public space, and how?

European towns and cities have not escaped the trivialisation of culture brought particularly by the media. But in their diversity, their roots in the heritage and the search for a new and living culture, something for which towns and cities are chiefly responsible, they represent a bulwark against the erosion of identities: it is a great challenge to pursue such an ambition, so that each town and city retains its distinctive spirit and the name of each town or city evokes a unique response.

Towns and cities are in the front line as regards responding to the real challenges of sustainable development and, first and foremost, that of scarce resources: air, water and energy. Through their collective arrangements, their public services for producing and managing these resources and the structure of the urban fabric, towns and cities hold the key to technical, ecological and financial optimisation of the conservation of these scarce public assets.

In the face of the new challenges which Europe has faced since the 1992 European Urban Charter, the relevance of the concept of an urban Europe has been confirmed. Individually or in networks, towns and cities, as collective political players, have been the driving forces of change, and have shouldered this responsibility resolutely and often effectively.

This new Urban Charter thus stands as an invitation to build, in a spirit of shared values and experience, a new urban project for the towns and cities of Europe for the future, enabling each to be fully itself and all to join together in promoting a blueprint for European society, an inseparable mixture of humanist values, individual liberty, economic prosperity, social solidarity, respect for the planet and living culture.

2.         INTRODUCTION

2.1.       The aim of the European Urban Charter II is to lay down a set of shared principles enabling local and regional authorities and central governments to respond to the contemporary challenges of  urban societies.

It follows in the line of major texts approved by the member States and is founded on a number of common aspirations. These must be reiterated here:

→ European towns and cities are an economic, social and cultural asset of European citizens politically organised for the achievement of common aims. As a driving force for much-needed economic prosperity and a centre for forces of innovation and social integration, this asset must be enhanced and handed down to future generations.

→ Need for strong European cities and regions. Faced with the globalisation of the market economy, European cities and regions stand out as the key players in a political and social reorganisation that will make them more resilient to the forces of international competition.

→ Indivisibility of economic prosperity and compliance with environmental imperatives. The interdependence of these two elements is an absolute precondition for the sustainability of European cities and regions and their populations, whose heritage they are.

→ Indivisibility of economic prosperity and social equilibrium. The interdependence of these two factors is an absolute precondition for the sustainability of an open and fair European democratic society.

→ Need to promote governance of European cities and urban regions. An organised institutional partnership between all those involved in territorial development on the political (elected representatives and citizens), administrative and technical levels is the precondition for lasting economic growth that creates jobs, social progress and harmony between European societies and their environment.

2.2.       The European Urban Charter II proposes a strategic urban contract with the aim of developing and defending the identity of European towns and cities.

Towns and cities are both political and spatial units. They are a combination of material and non-material elements. While space is political, ideological and strategic because it is a social product, it is living together that creates social bonds, the material conditions that shape collective ways of life.

The lasting construction of a European urban society depends on the joint formulation of a political project affirming pluralistic and democratic towns and cities (towns and cities for each and everyone) and of a project for spatial organisation fostering the creation of a living environment embodying the urban values shared throughout the European continent.

In this context, the urban values identified as underlying the European urban identity are:

→ Democracy: towns and cities are places for freedom, shared knowledge and collective responsibility

→ Sustainability and efficiency: towns and cities are places for collective intelligence and innovation

→ Openness: towns and cities are places for exchange and solidarity

2.3.       The European Urban Charter II lays down strategic guidelines for European urban policies that are effective and fair both in their design and their implementation. These guidelines, which are divided into three priority fields of action, constitute an urban matrix founded on prior experience and current knowledge of the conditions governing a sustainable urban environment that is attractive and rewarding for the economies which operate there and the societies which live there.

These three fields of action permit practical implementation of each of the three urban values set out above:

→ Urban governance

→ Urban planning

→ Voluntary urban mobility

2.4.       The European Urban Charter II follows in the line of the following reference texts:

Congress of Local and Regional Authorities of the Council of Europe

-          European Charter of Local Self-Government (1985)

-          European Urban Charter (1992)

-          The European Convention on the Participation of Foreigners in Public Life at Local Level (1992)

-     Revised European Charter on the Participation of Young People in Local and Regional Life (2003)

-     Revised European Urban Charter (adopted by the Congress in May 2004, updated version 2005, Rapporteur Mr Pinto)

-          Recommendation 188 (2006) on good governance in European metropolitan areas

Committee of Ministers

-       Rec(2001)19 on the participation of citizens in local public life

-       The Valencia Declaration on "Good local and regional governance – The European Challenge" (Valencia, 16 October 2007)

European Union

-          Leipzig Charter on Sustainable European Cities (May 2007)

-          Territorial Agenda of the European Union (May 2007)

UN-Habitat

-       UN-Habitat Report of the 21th Governing Council (Naïrobi, April 2007)

Others

-          Charter of European Cities and Towns towards Sustainability (the Aalborg Charter,
May 1994) and the Aalborg Commitments (2004)

3.       URBAN VALUES

3.1.       Democracy: towns and cities are places for freedom, shared knowledge and collective responsibility which must be built by the following means:

→ Combating the main cause of exclusion and discrimination, which is unequal access to education in the broad sense. Firm action should be taken against this and should be viewed as a priority of both governments and local authorities.

→ Applying major public service principlesis a priority for democratic towns and cities, the main ones being continuity, equal access, universal coverage, adaptability and safety.

→ Participation: A WIMBY approach (welcome in my backyard) should be developed by making deliberate and exacting efforts to genuinely involve residents, on a statutory basis, in schemes for changing their living environment, and by more fully integrating citizens into executive bodies (monitoring committees, appeal boards, mediators). Towns and cities are not a matter for experts or demiurges.

3.2.       Sustainability and efficiency: towns and cities are places for collective intelligence and innovation which must be built by the following means:

→ The right to, and support for, local experimentation in the political, technical and social fields, which is essential for access to innovation and to development for all cities and urban regions, while respecting their potential and their identity.

→ The development of information and communication technologies (ICTs). Although technology is no substitute for social policy options, there should be a strong political will in favour of such development in order to promote access to technology for all citizens, while taking care not to create new inequalities.

→ ongoing optimisation of urban structures and systems, in particular key public assets, utilities, public spaces, green spaces and networks; it is essential that the public funding allocated to them should not be sacrificed.

3.3.       Openness: towns and cities are places for exchange and solidarity which must be built by the following means:

→ Evolution of our societies on the basis of exchange. Towns and cities should be planned according to four development objectives: socio‑economic development, fairness within generations, conservation of non‑renewable resources and solidarity between generations.

→ Social cohesion. This is the prerequisite for and the aim of urban policies. European towns and cities are places where people of many different ethnic and cultural origins and many different generations live and work. A tolerant and accepting approach to differences (non‑discrimination or even positive discrimination), efforts to promote co-operation between the different social groups and diversity as a factor for solidarity and progress should be officially advocated and supported. This is a key aim which should be shared.

→ Combating the stigmatisation of places or social groups. This makes it harder for the people concerned to feel that they belong to the urban community in which they live. Responses to everyone’s needs should be thought out and provided, irrespective of place. In European towns and cities there can be no low‑status urban areas, any more than there can be low‑status social groups or citizens.

4.         OBJECTIVES AND POLICY MEASURES

A city geared to sustainable urban growth is one that offers its present and future inhabitants a living and governance environment that is at once stable (basic rules of organisation), secure, flexible (system open to frequent adjustment) and economically efficient while respecting ecological imperatives. We live in states governed by the rule of law. It is the aim and responsibility of the European Urban Charter II to propose an urban policy blueprint that makes it possible to build an urban general interest capable of ensuring ongoing aggregation of different special-interest areas and processes, combining changing resources and players into a collective project and promoting flexibility of the living environment without watering down its historical significance.

The proposals set out below, forming an urban matrix for the sustainable development of our European urban society, must be implemented bearing in mind the complete interdependence of three forms of public action: planning, management and administration. Planning is forward-looking and has a unifying role in the development of a collective project, it makes it possible to initiate change rather than having it imposed; management is essential for regulation to be aimed at and based on equity; administration guarantees preservation of the rule of law.

4.1.    Urban governance

The development of a stable activity framework and a capacity for collective action, both underpinned by a territorial cohesion policy, makes it possible to pursue an integrated urban development policy. The leaders of the European Union regard this as the precondition for effective defence of towns and cities as a common asset of European citizens. In May 2007 the EU’s Territorial Agenda recommended creating the political conditions for a strategic integrated territorial approach to ensure that regional, national and local concerns closely intertwine with EU policies.

The concept of urban governance reflects this ambition.

Local political leadership capacity should therefore be thoroughly legitimate (since it is difficult to impose decisions on the basis of hierarchical authority in a pluralist context) and competent (with expertise and fiscal and statutory resources) because policy‑making is highly complex (with numerous decision-making levels, for instance) and because there are so many powerful individual demands.

In their initiating, regulatory and coordinating capacity, urban local authorities can take many different forms to fulfil their tasks. However, a number of principles for action are now considered conducive to meeting the twofold challenge of a local focus and a local/global relationship based on criteria of sustainable development and integrated urban development.

It follows that:

4.1.1.       Public action to achieve the objective of local government performance should be guided by an effort to combine three values in the manner best suited to the town or city concerned: freedom (local authorities’ room for manoeuvre in relation to central government), participation (citizens’ impact on local affairs) and efficiency (local government's institutional output).

4.1.2.       To allow achievement of their democratic objective and of local government performance, European cities and regions must strive for a good match between the organisational size of local government institutions and the urban areas they are to develop, manage and administer.

4.1.3.       The subsidiarity principle should also guide local government organisation in cities. This principle applies both to large supra‑municipal urban areas, where governance must be based on an authority elected by universal suffrage, and to infra-municipal areas (neighbourhoods, districts, boroughs), which must have elected assemblies, a budget and local powers.

4.1.4.       However some issues confronting urban society are not simply a matter for local management (urban sprawl, transport and information systems, the right to housing, protection of the environment, etc.). They require that the system for collective local action (towns and cities as collective players) should be combined with national and possibly even supranational (European) regulation.

4.1.5.       As regards the tax base for towns’ and cities’ budgetary resources, the European Charter of Local Self-Government recommends placing the accent on the portion of those resources deriving from a national redistribution system, which is fairer and involves more sharing. But the Charter also recommends allowing towns and cities to have full control over their expenditure, in compliance with national legislation.

4.1.6.       Setting up elected councils at the different levels of urban decision-making does not obviate the need to offer citizen-residents information, public debates and, where necessary, involvement in town planning. Strict organisational arrangements, budgets, powers and techniques should be brought into play for this crucial aspect of the exercise of modern local democracy.

4.1.7.       Non-national minorities must be granted the right to vote and stand in local elections; among other criteria, these rights are at the very least a logical consequence of the obligation to pay local taxes.

4.1.8.       In particular, drawing on the wealth of successful experiments carried out in Europe, assessment of local government policies and measures will have to be promoted in towns and cities where they are inadequate or rejected. The practice of public hearings is bound to make our local urban democracies fairer and more efficient.

4.2.    The planned city

Devising strategic regional and town planning approaches is the only effective response to energy‑related and environmental challenges and also provides the basis for a European urban identity. Town‑planning projects involve the most crucial and costly strategic social choices and demand long‑term commitment. That is why the Charter strongly recommends promoting multidimensional approaches such as master plans to attain a safe, open, modern city, economising space and distances.

Such planning must be carried out at the institutional level and on the geographical scale of towns, cities and urban regions so as to take into consideration the different types of economic, social and cultural interests which shape their individual identities and determine their resources.

It follows that:

4.2.1.       Regional and town planning must be geared to reinforcing towns' and cities' membership of the European network they must necessarily form so as to develop the Europe of towns and cities as a sustainable, strong concept based on solidarity.

4.2.2.       The planning approach must have as its objective the eradication of disparities between towns and cities of the same country and/or the same region. Similarly, tackling, and preventing the emergence of, social and spatial divides within towns and cities, and also between urban and rural and/or agricultural areas, is a planning priority.

4.2.3.       Protecting the population against the risk of natural and societal disastersmust be a key element of urban planning policy and give rise to tangible, binding measures.

4.2.4.       Access to public services for the inhabitants of towns, cities and urban regions, whether non-material (health care, education, culture, etc.) or material (drinking water, energy, transport, ICTs, etc.) must be guaranteed. These services' sustainability depends on a constant effort to maintain them.

4.2.5.       The implementation of regional policies to master the spatial forms of urban growth (expansion and/or concentration) is a primary requirement for a lasting balance in the relations between towns and cities and their environment. This quest for harmony must be guided by a constant concern to balance reduction of the ecological footprint of human activities against support for their growth and development.

4.2.6.       Pursuing a proactive policy of public control of land use is essential if Europe's cities and urban regions are to achieve their economic and social sustainability objective.

4.2.7.       Sustained, strong investment in the initial and further training of local government managers is a prerequisite for instilling a capacity for expertise, diagnosis and assessment, which is essential to the development of collective interests. It makes it possible to adjust public action to changing realities in the field, to develop dynamic, balanced partnerships with the private sector and thereby to attain the legitimacy essential to performance of the public sector's role.

Each city or urban region's own town planning project sets priorities according to the resources available for conducting and adjusting it. In this context, town‑planning projects chiefly perform the social function of organising, in spatial terms, the material and non-material components of the city and present and future requirements of permanence (sustainability of the town or city as an area where people live together) and flexibility (change, transformation, adjustment).

Architectural projects make the necessary, innovative adjustments between general and specific factors in their very varied contemporary forms (modernity).

It follows that:

4.2.8.    A key priority of town planning projects must be the effective, efficient, forward-looking management of material conditions conducive to voluntary mobility, in terms of modes of transport, accessibility of services and public facilities, places of work, culture and consumption and residential mobility. (This matter is discussed in detail in section 4.3 in view of its present and future importance and implications for European towns and cities).

4.2.9.    With the constant aim of enhancing local government performance and the town or city's attractiveness, these projects' priorities must focus on two key functions of the town or city:

a) upgrading housing in terms of its location, design and quality of construction, promoting conditions conducive to residential mobility and refurbishing rundown neighbourhoods – all crucial factors for making the town or city more attractive (an economic objective) and improving equity (a social justice objective).

b) locating economic activity areas(places of work and commercial centres) so as to guarantee equitable access and, in accordance with the rules of the free city, regulate the dynamic forces of competition so as to foster diversity of supply in each neighbourhood.

Strict rules must govern the choice of these sites.

4.2.10.  Public town planning policy must consider the architectural and environmental heritage as a modern asset rather than a mere legacy of the past. To pave the way for the future, we should not cheat on our times (Charles Baudelaire).

4.2.11.  Building up a network of varied public spaces which may be either in or around the town or city, natural or built, landscaped or architect-designed, open or closed, central or neighbourhood-based, must be perceived as the strategic framework for spatial planning at all levels and as a genuine public service.

4.2.12.  These urban themes, whether addressed through urban expansion or through renewal of the existing urban fabric, will have to comprise energy and greenhouse gas emission savings and foster the development of new renewable energy sources and the promotion of greater energy efficiency, especially in the building industry. Projects carried out in this spirit can be considered to be of high social and environmental quality.

4.3.    Voluntary urban mobility

Urban mobility is a key issue for contemporary European society, which regards access to voluntary mobility as a major concept for regulating rights and duties. It is a constraint because it has become a necessity.

Physical and residential mobility is recognised as a means of countering economic and social exclusion from town or city, an essential factor for exchanges and collective and individual development and a prerequisite for sustainability through the adjustment to change it permits.

It is an essential requirement for implementing the urban contract for European towns and cities.

It follows that:

4.3.1.    The aim of voluntary rather than forced mobility for firms and households is meaningful only if there is a collective optimum. This lies in balanced decisions seeking to distribute a wide range of satisfactions to the different categories of residents, rather than in an abstract view of the public interest. Regulating mobility is therefore ineffective if it is not based on governance methods, that is to say negotiation with all the partners concerned (states, firms and users) with a view to achieving this objective.

4.3.2.    Urban mobility is a holistic phenomenon that cannot be dealt with solely at the local level but necessitates the implementation of sophisticated technological tools (the cyber-infrastructure concept).

4.3.3.    It is absolutely essential for urban governance to devise means of combined implementation of transport systems, housing projects and urban development schemes (involving expansion and/or denser occupation of existing areas) through careful, comprehensive planning.

4.3.4.    Towns and cities must promote a policy of progressive residential mobility that respects both the right to housing and the right to the city for all, through the application of appropriate land-use policies, the will to diversify the types of housing offered to inhabitants with differing needs and constant concern to guarantee high architectural and building standards.

4.3.5.    In Europe the Rhineland urban model (a compact, green city) is today replacing the American model of all-pervading car use. Diversification and complementarity of modes of transport must be the goal with priority given to public transport (underground railways, tram-trains, trams, buses) combined with alternative, non-polluting means of travel (walking, cycling). The system's performance depends on the quality of inter-modal links.

4.3.6.    Developing this more compact city with a local focus must be part of the master plan. It is a matter of reinventing modern neighbourhoods with a comparatively broad range of services and multimodal transport provision, with the accent on alternative modes and on public transport for longer distances.

4.3.7.    Two basic conditions must be respected if efficient mobility systems (transport and residential) are to contribute to the sustainable growth of European towns and cities and their inhabitants are to benefit from the economic and social advantages of voluntary mobility:

a) mastering goods transport flows(goods deliveries) through very close adjustment to the diversity of both flows and urban areas;

b) paying close attention to outlying urban areas when implementing the Rhineland urban mobility model so that a development gap does not emerge between the town or city centre, which is radically reorganised in positive ways (more peaceable urban life, upgrading, reclaiming of public areas, revival of heritage, new green areas, less pollution, good mobility), and peripheral areas.