An integrated approach to the policies for climate change: a case of sustainable and innovative strategy

The document “Towards an integrated urban policy for the European Union” (European Commission, 2014), written by the Commission of the territorial Cohesion reports that it does not exist at European level an integrated urban strategy devoted to the future. In that document, the necessity of a White Book which contain an integrated urban policy is sustained: “to be internationally competitive, Europe needs vital and attractive cities”. The Committee observes that in some case the EU norms have produced a contrary effect. As regards, the Committee reports an example related to its formal opinion concerning the revision of the EU policy for CO2 emissions and air quality: within, it is underlined that “to achieve auspicable results from the air quality policy it needs harmonize the level of the UE requests in terms of environment and synchronize the time of their execution”. Indeed, for over twenty years European urban policies were addressed to environmental topics devoted to the reduction of C02 emissions trough different kinds of strategies. Not always these policies have been widely applied, when these were only devoted to the environmental risk. A current modality of execution of these policies is considering to add the innovation factor to the mitigation of the risks which is resulting in an increasing of attractiveness of cities (Sepe, 2009; 2014). When mitigation and innovation find a suitable balance, the result of the policy of adaptation to the environmental risk is translated not only in environmental sustainability but also in participation of population, increasing of livability level and new attractivity of places. In that way, economic and social sustainability are also respected, achieving both a resilience to the environmental crisis and a lasting success of the whole operation of transformation. (Brown, 2003; da Silva et al, 2012; Davoudi et al, 2013; Juhola, Westerhoff, 2011; Moccia, 2011; Pearson et al. 2014; Tyler, Moench, 2012) In the October 2011, the European Commission publishes the “Cities of Tomorrow. Challenges, visions, ways forward” (EU, 2011) report, introducing the integrated approach to the urban policies, whose sectoriality has caused different problems furtherly increased by the economic crisis. The threats identified within the report regard the demographic decline, the climate change, the social segregation, the difficult competitiveness caused by the economic decrease. Strong attention is given to the criticalities caused by the depletion of the natural resources and the environmental topics (Carpenter, 2006; Van den Berg et al, 2007). The “Cities of Tomorrow” report presents many principles which herald this orientation. Starting from these premises, aim of this paper is illustrating the most significant parts - mainly related to the integrated approach meant in different forms - of “Cities of Tomorrow” which remains one of the more futurist documents in that sense. Many cities are today adopting these strategies, including Copenhagen, Rotterdam, Bristol, etc.. Accordingly, in order to present a best practice, the description of both integrated urban strategies and design solutions which Rotterdam are currently carrying out, taking into account innovation and sustainability aspects, will complete the paper (AAVV, 2013; Rotterdam Climate Initiative (2013a-b).