Rational Goals for the Urban Environment: A Swedish Example

Abstract

In Sweden, the government's aim to create sustainable urban environments is expressed through the environmental quality objective “A good built environment”. The objective embraces seven sub-goals and is designed to guide central, regional and local authorities’ planning towards urban sustainability. However, for objectives concerning the urban environment, such as the Swedish objective “A good built environment”, to form a solid basis for decision-making, two types of rationality (functionality) conditions ought to be met. First, the objectives should guide and motivate those who are responsible for their implementation. This is applicable when the goals satisfy the criteria of precision, evaluability, approachability and motivity. Second, when the goals are parts of larger goal systems, the goal systems should be coherent. Using the objective “A good built environment” as an empirical basis, this article gives a few examples of how environmental goals can fail to guide and motivate action towards improved urban sustainability.

Acknowledgements

I thank Professor Sven Ove Hansson and two anonymous referees for helpful comments and suggestions. This final version remains my own responsibility.

Notes

The goal criteria discussed in this article are similar to the widely used SMART criteria, according to which goals should be (S)pecific, (M)easurable, (A)ccepted, (R)ealistic and (T)ime-bound (e.g. Van Herten & Gunning-Schepers, 2000; Latham, 2003). The criterion of precision corresponds to the requirements that goals should be specific and time-bound. The criterion of evaluability corresponds to the requirement that goals should be measurable. The criterion of approachability corresponds to the requirement that goals should be realistic, and the criterion of motivity to the requirement that goals should be accepted. The SMART criteria do not include any explicit requirement that goals in a goal system should be coherent, although the requirement of realism is to some extent overlapping with this criterion.

See the preparatory work, Government Bill 1997/98:145, Government Bill 2000/01:65, Government Bill 2000/01:130, Government Bill 2001/02:55, Government Bill 2001/02:128, Government Bill 2002/03:117 and Government Bill 2004/05:150.

Complete formulations of the environmental objectives and sub-goals currently in force can be found at the homepage of the Swedish Environmental Protection Agency (www.naturvardsverket.se) and at the Environmental Objectives Portal (www.miljomal.nu). A brief account of the Swedish system of environmental objectives is provided in Edvardsson (2004).

A list of all the indicators currently in force can be found at www.miljomal.nu.

When a goal is a means to its own achievement the goal is auto-instrumental. As was argued by Edvardsson and Hansson (2005), auto-instrumentality is a particular form of means-ends rationality.

In the sections that follow, the word “agent” will denote both individuals and public institutions, e.g. local authorities, organizations and companies.

Similar accounts are presented in Van Meter and Van Horn (1975) and Lundquist (1987).

The requirement of precision is also much discussed in the academic literature, e.g. Odiorne (1969), Mali (1972), Carroll and Tosi (1973), Raia (1974), Quinn (1977), Locke and Latham (1990, 2002), Van Herten and Gunning-Schepers (2000), Hall and Kerr (2001), Johnston et al. (2001) and Latham (2003). It has also been argued that goals that address a wide range of actors, such as the Swedish environmental quality objectives, ought to be understandable, which is not exactly equivalent to having directional, completive or temporal precision (e.g. De Jong, 1998). An environmental goal could very well be scientifically precise and still be difficult for the public to understand.

For academic discussions of the requirement of evaluability see Footnote 8 (see also Chen, 1990; Vedung, 1997).

However, also this goal can be criticized for being insufficiently precise, since the formulation “increases continuously” lacks in completive precision.

Lag (1988:950) om kulturminnen m.m. and Förordning (1988:1229) om statliga byggnadsminnen m.m.

As was pointed out by the National Board of Housing, Building and Planning (2003b), this outlook is also manifested in the general formulation of paragraph 3:10 of the Act (1987:10) on planning and building (Plan- och bygglagen), which states that alterations in buildings shall always be carried out cautiously, so that cultural heritage values are safeguarded.

The example is taken from a lecture given by Kristina Skarvik in April 2005.

In its 2007 report, the SEOC (2007) wrote that the prospects of meeting this sub-goal are more optimistic than before but that growth in traffic still means that it is uncertain whether it can be achieved.