EUKN - Urban Matrix - PASTILLE - Promoting Action for Sustainability Through Indicators at the Local Level in Europe

PASTILLE - Promoting Action for Sustainability Through Indicators at the Local Level in Europe

Introduction

How can sustainability indicators be used to “make a difference” in decision-making? The project addresses this question by focusing on the use of local sustainability indicators to achieve sustainable city planning and resource management.

Proposition

Municipalities across Europe have begun to adopt local sustainability indicators as a tool in urban planning. Yet there has been little research so far into the impact that indicators are making on actual decision-making at a local level. The PASTILLE project aims to contribute to the debate by focusing on the current use of local sustainability indicators as a tool to achieve sustainable city planning and resource management.

Description

The PASTILLE research project was undertaken by a consortium drawn from four European countries; Austria, France, Switzerland, and the United Kingdom. Each country team is a partnership between a municipality and one or more research competences. The key aims of the project are:

to define the range of roles that local sustainability indicators can play and the variation in processes of indicator development
to examine how sustainability indicators are developed and used in each of the four cities involved, relating this to the individual contextual factors
to identify the role of sustainability indicators in specific case studies in each city and to assess their impact and effectiveness
to disseminate the results of the project in order to assist with future urban planning and with the setting of more relevant strategic European policies

Background information

Just as Sustainability Indicators are now widely adopted within policy practice at all levels, they are the subject of a considerable literature. The majority of this literature is concerned with the best way to design indicators and it reveals a high degree of consensus. This is interesting in itself, as it suggests a desire to find common ground on Sustainability Indicators among commentators. It is not, necessarily, indicative of genuine knowledge about Sustainability Indicators and how they work.

A common finding of the literature is that Sustainability Indicators can play a number of different roles, which can be summarised under three broad headings:

Objective setting

Helping to set sustainable development policy goals

Technical and managerial

Monitoring progress towards sustainable development policy goals
Assessing performance of units
Informing planning and decision-making within governmental or other units

Public communication and participation

Raising awareness, educating and communicating with public or selected groups
Encouraging public participation and motivating civic action

Methodology

The main data collection and analysis methods used were:

interviews with key policy actors, usually semi-structured in form
self-reflection by key policy actors involved in the consortium (including, in some cases, policy diaries)
document analysis, including non-public documents and historic as well as contemporary documentation
non-participant and, in some cases, participant observation at meetings
workshops and designated meetings between the researchers and policy actors.

EU involvement

The PASTILLE project was funded by the European Commission under its 5th Framework Research Programme.

Contact info

London School of Economics and Political Science
Houghton Street
WC2A 2AE London
United Kingdom
www.lse.ac.uk/Depts/geography
Yvonne Rydin (Research Coordinator), tel. +44 207 955 7605

Publication date

01/03/2000

Project finished

31/08/2002

Researcher

Yvonne Rydin, London School of Economics and Political Science

Cities

London, United Kingdom

Brochure English

Final Report English

Practitioners Guide English

Testing Tool English

Document type

research

Themes

Urban Policy > Urban environment

Keywords

Environmental sustainability

Institutional characteristics Academic/ResearchContinent
eukn.dossier.detail.extravalidation.content.continent.Europe.WesternCentral
Policy context
EU policy objective
Administrative context
Academic institution
Most relevant to
Medium sized western city