EUKN - Urban Matrix - PEGASUS: Planning, Environment, Governance and Sustainability

PEGASUS: Planning, Environment, Governance and Sustainability

Introduction

The main objective of the PEGASUS project is to assess the potential applicability of the Dutch “Spatial Development and Environment” (ROM) approach to other urban areas across Europe.

Proposition

Through PEGASUS, the project partners wish to address the following challenges facing Europe at the urban level:

In order to ensure the sustainable development of our cities at the urban level, we must promote the use of integrated and holistic approaches to policy making and implementation. The challenge is to develop an approach that will deliver the key pillars of sustainability, economic development, social inclusion and environmental protection, and that will create instruments and management systems through which the integrated objective of sustainability can be achieved in practice.
To be achieved, sustainable development requires a paradigm shift in the way that governance is carried out and in the way that decisions are taken and made. In short, we need to take a strategic and longer-term view of the way we plan and develop our urban areas so as to identify problems in advance and use our scarce resources more effectively

Description

The main objective of the PEGASUS project is to assess the potential applicability of the Dutch “Spatial Development and Environment” (ROM) approach to other urban areas across Europe. ROM has been developed and tested in several pilot projects across The Netherlands in the last few years. All of those concerned with urban policies and new methods of urban governance - the project partners in PEGASUS - make use in their territories of the experiences gained from the Dutch ROM-Rijnmond project.

In this way, the project also promotes a new and innovative approach to urban and regional planning, governance and decision-making. Rather than following the traditional path of identifying a problem, environmental or other, and developing the means to address this particular problem, the partners in PEGASUS take a different route. In PEGASUS, the partners aim to assess the potential in their urban areas to take a completely new and different, area-based approach. This will begin with the development of an overall strategy, followed by the establishment of a series of objectives and targets, a set of indicators and, finally, measures, or projects, which contribute to these objectives and targets. Furthermore, the partners assess the best ways of ensuring the involvement of all relevant actors (from the local to the national level) throughout the process.

EU involvement

5th Framework Programme: Key Action City of Tomorrow and Cultural Heritage

Conclusions

The project has created a series of debates on:

The challenge of linking economic, social and environmental policy objectives and the need to ensure a proper balance between all of these policy areas.
The challenges of ensuring efficient and successful cooperation between different actors within the government chain from local to national and between government and third parties including the voluntary and business sectors and other local and regional actors. This debate will certainly contribute to the ongoing European discussion on better governance and a network Europe.
The relation between the administrative city and the surrounding metropolitan area, sometimes also referred to as the “Functional Urban Region” or Wider Territorial Unit (Urban Audit – European Commission DG REGIO). The debate will address and begin to bring forward solutions to the existing discrepancies between policy challenges and the level at which they are best addressed, as well as government competencies and the limitations which they face.
The existing discrepancy between “solution oriented research” and the need for more strategic, longer term research aimed at identifying trends and connected challenges before they emerge and at developing strategies and approaches to avoid challenges becoming problems.

Contact info

Eurocities
Square de Meeûs 1
B-1000 Brussels
Belgium
http://www.eurocities.org/
Jordi Gomez (Policy Officer – Research and Governance), tel. +32 2 552 0880

Publication date

01/06/2002

Project finished

31/05/2004

Researcher

Eurocities

Cities

Brussels, Belgium

Links

Project Website

Document type

research

Themes

Urban Policy > Urban environment

Keywords

Environmental sustainability

Institutional characteristics Non-Governmental OrganisationContinent
eukn.dossier.detail.extravalidation.content.continent.Europe.Eastern, eukn.dossier.detail.extravalidation.content.continent.Europe.WesternCentral
Policy context
Not specified
Most relevant to
Medium sized western city