https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6778-8857
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ABSTRACT
This paper proposes a case-based degrowth critique of sustainable urban development strategies. Copenhagen, European Green Capital in 2014, is considered a role model of planning for sustainability. Does this hold in a degrowth perspective? Sustainable development assumes that environmental impacts can decline while the economy grows. Degrowth maintains that such a process of absolute decoupling is infeasible. Analyzing Copenhagen’s planning documents in this perspective, I find three factors that make the city’s sustainability strategy ineffective for ecological sustainability. First, Copenhagen’s strategy for climate neutrality is based on externalization: only emissions produced locally are counted. Meanwhile, emissions produced outside of the city for products and services consumed locally remain high. Secondly, policies focus on the efficiency of activities rather than their overall impact: efficiency gains are considered reductions of impact, but really mean slower growth of impact. Finally, sustainability measures are proposed as a ‘green fix’, to increase competitiveness and promote economic growth, leading to increased consumption and impact. Analyzing the critical case of Copenhagen in a degrowth perspective, sheds doubts on sustainable urban development, but does not imply the rejection of all its typical planning measures. This induces reflections on how these results can contribute to a degrowth-oriented urban planning.
Acknowledgements
I would like to thank Jin Xue, Wojciech Keblowski, Jere Kuzmanic, Marco Santangelo, Carlo Salone, Umberto Janin Rivolin and Silvio Cristiano for their helpful comments on earlier drafts and two anonymous reviewers for their suggestions.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).
Notes
1 I consider sustainable development and green growth as synonyms, see section 2.
2 https://international.kk.dk/artikel/copenhagen-welcomes-un-sdgs (Last access: April 2020).
3 Other criticisms are also important, but these arguments appear to be particularly useful to deconstruct the case of Copenhagen which centrally claims to be successful in ecological terms.
4 The goal of growth appears eleven times, in particular in the form of ‘sustained, inclusive and sustainable economic growth’.
5 For 2007 (Harris et al. Citation2020) and 2008 (Pangerl Citation2014) to the municipal boundaries, for 2010 to the capital region (Ivanova et al. Citation2017), for 2015 (Moran et al. Citation2018) to an area defined by a statistical gridded model. Implications may be for example that using data for the capital region referring to the municipality, emissions due to car usage are overestimated.
6 https://www.atmosfair.de/en/green_travel/annual_climate_budget/ (Last access: April 2019).
7 https://www.statbank.dk/statbank5a/Graphics/mapanalyser.asp?maintable=BOL106&lang=1 (Last access: April 2020).
8 https://www.eea.europa.eu/data-and-maps/daviz/specific-co2-emissions-per-passenger-3#tab-chart_1 (Last access: July, 2019).
9 e.g. to Singapore: https://www.opengovasia.com/opengov-speaks-to-soren-kvist-copenhagen-solutions-lab-city-of-copenhagen/ (Last access: april 2020).
10 The same is argued for liveability. You could speak of ‘liveability fix’.