Published: 20 Sep 2008
- Urban areas are spreading, minimising
the time and distances between and in-and-out
of cities. The International Planning Congress
in Dalian, China, addressed this ‘urban
sprawl’ and sought ways to achieve sustainable
urbanisation. The European Environment Agency
contributed to this debate by urging policy
makers to tackle underpinning consumption
patterns.
Urban sprawl is not
driven principally by population growth
but by changing lifestyles and consumption
patterns as well as lenient, service-driven
planning policies. “We need action to address
the three urban-related consumption areas
that have been identified as having the
highest environmental impacts during their
lifecycle: housing, food and drink, and
private transport which, together, are responsible
for about 65% of material use and 70% of
global warming potential,” said Ronan Uhel,
Head of the EEA Spatial Analysis group.
Structural policies
play a key role in either promoting or preventing
urban sprawl. In the European Union, significant
budget transfers from the Cohesion Fund
and the Structural Funds to member states
provide powerful drivers of macroeconomic
change to support European integration.
But the Agency’s analysis shows that they
have also had inadvertent socio-economic
effects that have promoted the development
of urban sprawl.
“Alongside reshaping
urban planning policies, a green tax reform
is necessary, one that gradually shifts
taxes away from labour and investments and
towards taxes on pollution and the inefficient
use of land, materials and energy,” added
Mr Uhel.
Quick facts on urban
sprawl in Europe
Today 72% of Europeans
live in urban areas. By 2020, this figure
will increase to around 80 %, and in several
countries it will be 90 % or more. Today
more than a quarter of the European Union’s
territory is negatively impacted by urban
land uptake, due in particular to urban
sprawl, which is affecting towns and cities
of all sizes across Europe. In the past
10 years alone, the equivalent of five times
the size of Greater London has been given
up to further sprawl of European cities.
Highly urbanised, Europe
consumes much more than its biological resources
can produce. Therefore it relies not only
on its own resources but to a large extent
on the resources from other parts of the
world. For example, the Council of Greater
London has calculated the land and ecological
footprint of their city to be equivalent
to 293 times its area.
