Land Use Management at the Metropolitan Level: Key for Sustainable Cities

Cities' key role to fight global warmingSustainable development cannot be addressed by the sole use of clean or green technologies. Cities have a great impact on global warming, natural resources management and the consumption of land. Most European cities are facing urban sprawl as well as economical and technical difficulties to recycle brownfields. They are searching for alternative means to reduce car-use dependency and to promote a fair access to affordable housing, employment areas and leisure activities for their inhabitants. Therefore it cities themselves need to imagine and implement new actions and policies to develop sustainable settlements and sustainable ways of living. 

Sustainable development is linked to successful land use management

According to the "Leipzig Charter on Sustainable European Cities", adopted in May 2007 by the European Ministers of Urban Development, the new approaches of sustainable development should be built on "implementation-oriented planning tools", and should lead to a strong mobilization and coordination of public (multi-level) and private actors involved in urban development. Planning documents should define "consistent development objectives for the urban area and develop a vision for the city". It should also coordinate the different neighbourhoods, sectoral and technical plans and policies, the use of the public and private funds and be implemented at local and regional level, by involving all the relevant stakeholders. But moreover, the way a vision for the future of a city can turn into reality depends on the spatial arrangement of well located and affordable land, land for public areas, amenities, infrastructures, activities or houses, and therefore depends on land use management. 

Sustainable land use management should be developed at the metropolitan level to be successful

As a network of private and public sector decision makers, LUMASEC has developed strategies for sustainable land use management for European cities. These strategies are presented in the final output of the project: a handbook, which gives practical information on different land use management systems in Europe and provides tools to establish sustainable land use management.

This Handbook provides elements for a better analysis of local situations and the development of different proposals for the elaboration and implementation of land use policies by cities. It sets out the land-use management trends in Europe, followed by a review of specific topics: The need for integrated actions, spatial patterns, governance and capacity issues. It then presents the challenges of an integrated approach to land use management and the Local Action Plans developed in by the five participating cities.

Experiences of cities participating in the project have demonstrated that a successful sustainable land use management has to consider the metropolitan area as a whole, to avoid disparity between the core city/cities and the surrounding communities and loss of competitiveness of the metro area.  To overcome the different governance approaches, involvement of public administration of different communities as well as different stakeholders like e.g. the private sector is crucial and an important layer of intervention of sustainable land use management.


Read More:

• Download LUMASEC - Final Report Book (1.11 MB) - URBACT Website
• Local Action Plans: Baia Mare, Bristol, Bytom, Kavala, Saint Etienne  - URBACT Website
• Interviews with city partners: Baia Mare, Bytom, Bristol, Kavala, Saint Etienne - URBACT Website