Urban sustainability and societal self-organisation - new planning challenges, 2005

The project has focused on aspects of sustainable urban development that mainly forces other than public policy: civil society or the market.

The project's purpose is threefold:
(1) theory development, by assessing whether unintended environmental benefits of social self-organization is understandable within a common theoretical framework
(2) empirical testing, by testing the assumption that sustainable urban development mostly has other social forces than direct public management
(3) analysis of action alternatives, by studying the conditions for a better enhancement of environmental trends in urban policies and planning.

With regard to sustainable urban development policies, we face a paradoxical situation: Central environmental policy goals are not implemented and general trends which can not be seen as a direct result of public environmental policy an environmentally friendly focus, for example in terms of space utilization. The actors that produce these changes, have doubtly an intended environmental benefit as inducement; environmental gains are probably most unintentionally - for them. The question is how urban policies and planning relate to this type of development, in other words, how it may be made to safeguard or enhance the unintended environmental benefits. Our initial assumption was that the driving forces will mainly be in the general social and market conditions in terms of densification - in the people's housing desires, lifestyle and life stage choices on the one hand and in the market arealøkonomisering on the other.
The next empirical phase was to identify how public policies in cities encounter this kind of development by plans and actions. Although urban planning and policy mostly appear to be reactive, it is also an enhanced understanding of the the driving forces and the responsibility for urban development lies both with the people in the market and in politics and government.