ABSTRACT
Sustainable urban development (SUD) is part of the legacy of urban ecology; the term was coined in the 1987 Brundtland Report ‘Our Common Future’ issued by the United Nations World Commission on Environment and Development. The notion proposes to integrate a social, environmental and economic development into a heuristic triangle. In the social science literature on SUD, two main currents of interpretation appear close without actually meeting. On the one hand, a school of thought developed by political scientists places SUD as ‘above all an ensemble of discursive, symbolic and organizational discourses that actors and organizations fight over and share while fighting for positions and definitions’ (Béal, Gauthier and Pinson 2011, 23). For these scholars, SUD is part and parcel of neoliberal strategies of territorial competition that are in contradiction with any kind of inter-territorial integration or cooperation. On the other hand, the other school of thought, coming mainly from geographers and sociologists, uses a genealogical approach of the institutionalisation and operationalisation of SUD to underline its integrating effects, especially in Europe (Emelianoff 2007; Hamman 2008; Souami 2009). These authors have shown that in Europe, the rise of SUD at the regional level was accelerated by multilateral agreements like the Charter of Aalborg, signed since 1994 by a rising number of pioneering local authorities. Following on from the Charter of Aalborg are such texts like the 2007 Charter of Leipzig and the recent European reference document on sustainable cities (tested starting in 2012) that have confirmed the abandon of both modernist urbanism and functionalist hygienism. This transnational movement is a driving force for a renewed urban doctrine that European cities have progressively taken up in these last twenty years. Then, European associations and intercity networks have been vectors in the politicisation of SUD at the regional level, in multiple forms, from sharing best practices, taking part in and lobbying at international conferences, and issuing joint publications. Finally, the European Union is a regional political construction that has played an important role in the Europeanisation of SUD since the Green Book was approved in 1991: rules, laws and financing linked to funding calls for
thematic projects (Concerto or Revit, for example) have led to a progressive convergence of urban trajectories.
