Website use for Sustainability: Notes for Discussion with website managers in Changsha, China, October 2010 Ton Dietz Professor, Human Geography Universities of Amsterdam and Leiden, The Netherlands

Purposes of a Website of a Region in a foreign language

• • • • Inform foreign visitors/tourists Inform business people (investors, traders) Enable local people to contact foreigners (enable contacts, friendship) Showcase the special characteristics of the region: in Hunan/Changsaa: search for sustainability/sustainable city

Sustainable Cities: THE Challenge of the 21st Century

• A combination of challenges: – How to reduce the use of energy, mainly in buildings and transport?

– How to make cities climate neutral?

– How to re-use urban waste?

– How to keep water and air clean and healthy?

– How to make cities green and biodiverse, and how to connect this to human well-being?

– How to diminish the city’s negative footprint on area and people elsewhere?

Sustainable city movement

• • • • Global attempt to make cities more sustainable, even if national governments are not ‘green’ (or even anti-green). Alliances between local municipal governments + local universities and think tanks + civil society + local business organisations Important role for education: lecturers and teachers + teacher trainers Develop a ‘rainbow approach

Red Sustainability in Cities

• • • • Develop smart transport systems energy-poor mobility, virtual traveling, tele work, mobility-poor communication, smart linkages home-work-shop-leisure ‘compact city’, public transport, bicycles, ‘ smart’ spatial organization, ‘ smart’ parking arrangements avoid noise pollution, and create silent spots in the cities

Orange Sustainability in Cities

- zero-energy buildings - cities as energy producers - ‘smart’ architectural design - Low-carbon architectural design - climate-proof buildings - Disaster-proof buildings - Integrate buildings and water

Yellow Sustainability in Cities

• • • • • • • • low-carbon city climate neutrality use of wasted heat and cold GHG mitigation, adaptation, compensation urban vulnerability and resilience (climate-shock proof) energy security smart grids alternative energy

Green Sustainability in Cities

• Green Urban landscape planning with attention for parks, public and private gardens, green buffer zones, greening the streets and rooftops, urban eco-diversity, re creation of urban nature, greening waste dumps, cleaning chemically polluted areas, urban agriculture, leisure agriculture. Monitor ‘’ healthy urban nature’ (Lifewatch project; see cordis.europa.eu).

Blue Sustainability in Cities

• Clean surface and ground water, clean water transport, innovative water management (‘ smart water’), good water storage facilities and calamity provisions for droughts and floods, flood-alert planning, aquatic biodiversity, urban fisheries for leisure and for food security/quality. Attention for the water footprint (see virtualwater.eu

).

Indigo Sustainability in Cities

• • • • • • Solid waste management separating ‘ grey’ and ‘ black’ water (urban sewage management) waste limitation re-use of waste (e.g., waste as bio-energy) emission-free cars clean air; avoid air pollution from industries, heating/cooling systems, and transport

Violet Sustainability in Cities

• Reducing resource use, resource efficiency, value-chain management, conscious consumers and traders, sustainable and fair companies (socially and environmentally responsible business), slow food movement, meat and fish-poor diets, organic lifestyles, environmentally caring lifestyles, lower ecological footprint elsewhere, consumers as producers (‘prosumers’).

The use of (website) information to support the movement for sustainable cities • • • • • Report all local initiatives, and highlight the alliances and innovations Show successes and failures (you can also learn from failures: be transparent) Link with good examples from elsewhere and support learning by comparison Stimulate local businesses and government agencies to show their attempts to become more sustainable Stimulate students and teachers/lecturers to share their studies on sustainability.

Sustainable Universities

• Support universities to get a ‘green portal’ on their websites: about the role of a university in sustainability: – Role in teaching/curriculum development – – Research activities Outreach activities (alliances with others) – Sustainable management of the university as an organisation.

– E.g. www.uva.nl

(duurzaamheid)

Find a balance

• • • Avoid being only alarmist (only showing disasters and suffering) But make use of images and information that can shock people – And make them prepared to change their way of thinking – And their way of acting/way of life And also show that there are (many) alternatives to non-green or anti-green lifestyles