Cities

another create a circular economy (McDonough and Braungart 2002). Principles of symbioses can also help minimise or recycle waste. São Paulo’s Bandeirantes landfill, for example, is sufficiently large to provide biogas that generates electricity for an entire city district (ICLEI Local Governments for Sustainability 2009a).

These opportunities have led to intensified efforts in designing cross-sectoral green city strategies when developing new districts or eco-cities. Recent examples of new green communities include the car-free neighbourhood of Vauban in Freiburg and Beddington Zero Energy Development (BedZED)6

in

London (Beatley 2004; Wheeler and Beatley 2004; C40 Cities 2010a). In the latter case, new homes achieved an 84 per cent reduction in energy consumption and footprints related to mobility decreased by 36 per cent. Recycling reduced waste by between 17 per cent and 42 per cent (Barrett et al. 2006).7

Examples of green

city districts include Amsterdam-Ijburg, Copenhagen- Orestad and Hammerby Sjostad in Stockholm while eco-cities have become fashionable in several rapidly urbanising Asian countries. In recent years, high

profile investments have been made in sustainable new towns, including Tianjin Eco-City in North China, the Songdo Eco-City in Incheon, Republic of Korea and Masdar Eco-City in Abu Dhabi, but it is early days to make a comprehensive assessment of their long- term sustainability, especially given the very high capital and development costs of these show-case projects.

6. The footprint of BedZED residents averages 4.67 global hectares (BioRegional 2009). While this is lower than the UK average of 4.89 hectares (Ewing et al. 2010) it is still more than twice the “fair share” of 2 hectares. This demonstrates the limitations of insular approaches. While BedZED enables residents to reduce their footprint on site, a lot of their ecological impact is made outside of it, in schools, at work, and on holiday. BedZED residents fly slightly more frequently than the local average, presumably due to their higher average income. These limitations, however, do not invalidate the achievements of the development, but point to the need of scaling up energy efficiency measures in wider urban settlement systems as well as the issue of energy still being comparatively cheap in high-income societies, resulting in overall unsustainable levels of energy consumption, with rebound effects partly offsetting efficiency gains due to greater overall consumption levels (Binswanger 2001) .

7. In recent years, the French government has increasingly become attached to the concept of éco-quartiers and has initiated a range of projects including Quartier ZAC de Bonne in Grenoble, Quartier Lyon Confluence and Quartier du Théâtre in Narbonne (French Government, Ministère de l'écologie, du développement durable, des transports et du logement 2010).

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