Partner und Internationale Organisationen
(Englisch)
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AT, BE, CH, CZ, DE, DK, EE, EL, ES, FI, FR, HU, IE, IL, IT, LT, LU, LV, MK, NL, NO, PL, PT, RS, TR, UK
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Abstract
(Englisch)
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Sustainability assessment (SA) in urban areas requires the quantitative measurement of economic, ecological and social parameters. A major lack of such available measurement tools is that the resulting list of rather independent parameters cannot reflect their interaction in a systems understanding. A joint‚currency’ is missing that is capable of reducing the complexity of SA and that allows for better stakeholder communication. Another quantitative approach is to measure a composite indicator such as the ecological footprint, resulting in one single parameter of global hectares (Gha). Gha have meanwhile become an internationally used and thus comparable single unit in sustainability assessment, measuring the bigger picture of ecological sustainability in a more interrelated and coarse way. The footprint may have advantages in accessability and applicability, as well as in reducing complexity of SA, but may loose on accuracy because of many implied simplifications. However, both types of quantitative approaches do not integrate the individual and collective ‘understandings’ of urban sustainability – which needs to be seen as mandatory in an integrative assessment tool, because the population of a town is most affected for example by externalities, and needs to participate and to support policy changes for more sustainable development – behavioral changes being part of it. The combination of a quantitative with a qualitative participatory feedback loop is needed in order to enable integrative SA. In this research both quantitative approaches are applied in the Alpine town of Chur, capital of the Eastern Swiss canton of Grisons, in a status quo and two development scenarios that demand considerable stakeholder engagement. Both approaches are compared given their technical applicability and feasibility, their accuracy and their capability to translate results into policy strategies in an underlying reflexive process. As part of this comparison, both quantitative results are visualized and discussed in stakeholder workshops in the pilot town, to test individual and collective understandings of the different approaches. The results are merged to construct individual and collective ‘mental models’ of what sustainability means to people and how they believe it can be achieved. From this qualitative feedback process policy recommendations for the pilot town on the basis of the initially measured quantitative data are derived. Furthermore, the reflective comparison of both quantitative models with the participatory qualitative models is analyzed in a metamodelling process in order to develop a ‘common sustainability currency’ and general recommendations for the integrative assessment of sustainability in larger urban areas.
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