Definition of sustainable development
Nowadays, creating or renovating a neigbourhood calls for new methods which will face up to the issues of the city: pollution, deterioration of the quality of life, insecurity, waste of resources and time, etc.
The HQE²R project had envisaged a new way of apprehending the city, its neighbourhood and its buildings by suggesting methods of territorial analysis and evaluation, which are tied to the objectives and rely on the principles of sustainable development.
The starting point for any approach in terms of sustainable development must be to impose the rule of action on oneself of relying on the universal principles governing sustainable development, the foremost of which are set out in the definition of sustainable development provided in 1987 by Gro Harlem BRUNTLAND:
« Development that responds to the needs of present without compromising the capacity of future generations to respond to their own needs » (“Our common future”, report of the Worls Commission on the Environment and Development (Bruntland Commission), 1987.)
This definition should remain the benchmark for thinking about sustainable development even if local objectives depend on their socio-political context and the people responsible for these policies.
Sustainable development can be defined as a political approach based on the development of solidarity in space and in time and with the objective of a triple dividend in the economic, social and environmental fields:
- Solidarity in space, in between territories, making the fight against poverty and social exclusion a priority. The development should be global and it should take into consideration excluded, particularly in developing countries but also in our own countries.
- Solidarity in time, between present and future generations: the planet with its limits, should ensure the living of future generations; oilitical or economic decisions should therefore integrate the long term.
Obviously, “development” is already at the heart of this problem. When we add the notion of “sustainability”, new dimensions appear: that of the environment and the long-term preservation of the planet’s resources and life.
The European Commission has adopted this concept in article 2 of the Maastricht Treaty. The Commission also provides a complementary definition, focussing on “a policy and a strategy (…) ensuring continuity through time of social and economic development, with respect for the environment and without compromising the natural resources that are essential for human activity”.
The urban sustainable development approach and the sustainable neighbourhood concept
The French strategy for sustainable development presented during the Johannesburg Summit in September 2002 focussed essentially on actions feasible at the international level: development aid, international solidarity, Human Rights, but also the implementation of environmental and social regulations, which should accompany the globalisation process. The city has been particularly out of the debate, although some 75% of the world population should live in cities by 2050, and that this percentage has already been reached in most European countries.
The approach putting sustainable development into pratice is relevant now to the city. We suggest the following definition of an urban sustainable development:
The urban sustainable development is a systemic approach simultaneously implementing conflicting elements in three fields (economic, social and environmental), which should also conciliate three dimensions: the long term with respect of the short term, the global in relation with the local and the participation of the population (inhabitants and users)