ABSTRACT
The first European response to the Brundtland Report was the Green Paper on the Urban Environment published by the European Commission in Brussels (CEC, 1990). The Green Paper highlights functional, social, economic and environmental problems of today’s cities and puts forward objectives towards a more sustainable urban environment. The Green Paper promotes the compact city and thus endorses the return to the ‘traditional’ dense and mixed-use European city that is seen to have urban qualities not provided by sprawling cities:
● efficiencies in terms of the distribution of human activities; optimal use of its infrastructure and viable public transport and non-car-based movement systems (Lloyd-Jones, 2004, p. 19);
nesses and services as a result of the concentration of people and activities in urban quarters;
cultural facilities (Girardet, 2001, p. 49).
