How Does the New Urban Agenda Align with Comprehensive Planning in U.S. Cities? A Case Study of Asheville, North Carolina

Matthew Cohen,Geoffrey Habron

doi:10.3390/su10124590

Abstract

Despite growing interests in sustainable urban development, planning lacks unifying themes or directives for achieving sustainability in cities. While professional rating systems provide some guidance, they can be context-specific by country and may at best target weak sustainability as their intended outcome. The United Nations’ New Urban Agenda attempts to offer a singular vision for urban sustainability, and its language appears flexible enough to apply across contexts. In this research, we explore the extent that emergent themes from the New Urban Agenda can guide urban planning for sustainability, specifically in the United States (U.S.). We develop inductive codes from the New Urban Agenda and compare these emergent themes to the content of Asheville, North Carolina’s (U.S.) comprehensive plan, Living Asheville as well as to the STAR Community rating system (Sustainability Tools for Assessing and Rating Communities). We ask how well the New Urban Agenda can align with conventional U.S. planning processes and whether it offers value beyond the contributions of industry-standard practices like STAR Communities. We find that the New Urban Agenda voices common urban sustainability goals while making some new contributions, particularly in areas such as equity and governance. We conclude that in contexts like the U.S., the New Urban Agenda might be best carried out by integrating it into already existing frameworks like STAR, which have already been widely implemented. These conclusions are based on a reading of one case study city, and future research should analyze and compare themes of the New Urban Agenda and STAR and analyze case studies of multiple certified cities.

Highlights

A rapidly urbanizing global population necessitates sustainable urban development
Given the broad framings of urban sustainability planning and assessment, we explore and assess the contribution made by the New Urban Agenda to determine whether it offers a comprehensive view of requisite sustainability outcomes for urban planning processes in the United States (U.S.) context
Research Question 1: What Are the Main Sustainability Themes within the New Urban Agenda

Summary

Introduction

A rapidly urbanizing global population necessitates sustainable urban development. The world population reached 55% urban in 2018, and it is expected to be 68% by 2050 [1]. Cities occupy 3% of land, but urban populations consume 60% to 80% of the world’s energy, accounting for 75% of global carbon emissions [2]. Despite these concentrated levels of consumption, access to resources and wellbeing is not distributed, and cities are home to glaring economic disparities [3,4]. As such, “planning for the future of our cities can no longer ignore growing social, economic and environmental issues. These are all exacerbated by wealth and income inequalities. The task of reframing governance across bureaucracy, business and civil society must recognize the uneven resources across the city, and reconcile the interests around the table” [5]

Results

Discussion

Conclusion