Are larger cities more sustainable? Lessons from integrated ... - Telos

Environmental Development ∎ (∎∎∎∎) ∎∎∎–∎∎∎

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Are larger cities more sustainable? Lessons from integrated sustainability monitoring in 403 Dutch municipalities Kees Zoeteman n, Hans Mommaas, John Dagevos Telos, Tilburg Sustainability Centre, Tilburg University, The Netherlands

a r t i c l e i n f o

abstract

Article history: Received 17 April 2015 Received in revised form 4 August 2015 Accepted 6 August 2015

The challenges faced by municipalities in terms of integrated sustainability have until recently been difficult to study due to a lack of comparable data. This study discusses methods for conducting integrated sustainability assessments. One such method used by Telos, Tilburg University, has been further developed and used to benchmark local and regional sustainability development. In 2014, data for all 403 municipalities in the Netherlands on 90 indicators were retrieved, covering both economic, socio-cultural and environmental dimensions. The lessons learned are discussed, including the introduction of city typologies and the impact of the population size of municipalities on sustainability scores. & 2015 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Keywords: Integrated sustainability monitoring City typology and size Social, ecological and economic capital Urban development City–region interactions Netherlands

1. Introduction International agreements in the field of environmental protection and sustainable development have sought to encourage nation states to monitor the implementation of such agreements and related protocols. Examples include the Conventions on Climate Change, on Biodiversity, on Transboundary Movements of Hazardous Wastes and their Disposal. Agenda 21, agreed at the first Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro in 1992, and the UN Millennium Development Goals for 2015 and their ambitious post-2015 agenda also focus on sustainable development practices and innovations. Moreover, the sustainability of cities is one of the 17 new goals of the post-2015 agenda: ‘Make cities and human settlements inclusive, safe, resilient and sustainable’ (UN, 2015). Although these commitments are made by national governments, their implementation is primarily left to local government and private organizations (Zoeteman, 2013). As a result, many ‘Local Agenda 21’ initiatives have been developed by citizen groups, businesses and municipalities since the Rio Summit of 1992. The more recent Kyoto protocol, an extension of the Climate Change Convention, has also led to a greater emphasis on local action aimed at realizing energy savings and the transition from fossil fuels to sustainable energy sources. The result has been that many initiatives at the municipal level have focused on energy issues that use the social approaches promoted by the sustainable development movement, such as openness to stakeholder initiatives, transparent policymaking and a facilitating government. Consequently, sustainability programs are often energy transition programs and still lack the broader context of environmental, social and economic dimensions. The enthusiasm for promoting policies that address climate change has, however, created a momentum in many regions of the world that favors a process of broadening municipal climate action plans into integrated sustainability programs. How can such integrated sustainability approaches be n

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http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.envdev.2015.08.003 2211-4645/& 2015 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Please cite this article as: Zoeteman, K., et al., Are larger cities more sustainable? Lessons from integrated sustainability monitoring in 403 Dutch municipalities. Environmental Development (2015), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.envdev.2015.08.003i

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K. Zoeteman et al. / Environmental Development ∎ (∎∎∎∎) ∎∎∎–∎∎∎

designed and operationalized? And what new lessons can be learned from integrated monitoring approaches? This paper will discuss these questions and present an example of how local participation processes are applied to arrive at authoritative sustainability monitoring. The latter results in outcomes that are respected by authorities and all stakeholders as the state of the art in sustainability monitoring, that is used for setting policy priorities and monitoring their implementation. Furthermore, it will provide a continuous strive to improve in a cost effective way the database that is essential for monitoring integrated sustainability. Against this background, this paper describes the method developed by Telos, Tilburg University, for integrated sustainability monitoring in municipalities. Subsequently the use of the method will be illustrated for the 403 municipalities of the Netherlands and the results will be briefly analyzed. The paper concludes with a discussion of the general lessons to be learned from this approach, as well as the trends and correlations detected between sustainability themes and indicators.

2. Interactive sustainability assessment of municipalities Organizing a sustainability agenda in a municipality requires at the start an interactive approach that involves not only public authorities but also citizens and business stakeholders. This is important to obtain broader support and increase momentum. It also promotes a community learning effect. The questions to be addressed in such a planning and implementation cycle are, for example, the themes that are to be incorporated in the framework of sustainable development, the long-term goals to be achieved, action plans and monitoring of results. Many approaches of this kind have been shared on the internet. An example is the promotion of a Sustainability Assessment Tool by the Northern Ireland Local Government Sustainable Development Forum (Sustainable NI, 2015). At the EU level, a toolkit for integrated sustainability monitoring has been developed and promoted using a Reference Framework for European Sustainable Cities (RFSC). This webtool was created after the Leipzig Charter of May 2007 by, amongst others, the EU Member States and the European Commission (EC) (RFSC, 2015). The RFSC is a good current example of a comprehensive sustainability monitoring method. It covers the three pillars of sustainability, including economic, social and environmental aspects. In addition to these three pillars, the RFSC also introduces a fourth pillar which covers aspects of governance relating to municipal ambitions and associated policy actions. The RFSC is a voluntary self-assessment instrument that supports interactive municipal sustainability programs. It does not provide a consistent database covering the range of participating municipalities. Nor does it provide personal guidance to the stakeholders in municipalities to help them engage with discussions on sustainability improvement. Many examples could be added, as shown in an inventory of methodologies for the issue of climate protection which already exceeds 1000 cases (Toolbox Climate Protection, 2015). ICLEI (2015) has also summarized approaches by which municipalities can optimize their ‘sustainability cycles’. Although the initiative for consultations should be taken by municipal councils, practice shows that councils often only learn the importance of cross-sector cooperation and consultation during the process. An external trigger or catalyst is therefore often needed to begin such interactive exercises. This may take the form of pressure from the public or the business community, the vision of elected politicians or a national priority program that encourages municipalities to take new initiatives. City benchmarking can also provide a stimulus in this respect. In the Netherlands interactive sustainability assessment was used in the period 2000–2005 to design an integrative framework which not only meets scientific requirements but also resonates with the needs of municipal and provincial authorities. The assessment tool which resulted from these exercises is presented in Section 4. The concept of sustainability monitoring and the structures for data collection were first developed at the international and national levels. There was a gradual recognition that data systems should also take account of the municipal level, although socio-economic processes are not restricted to the borders of the municipality and often have a regional character. A major reason for a municipal focus is that political responsibilities are concentrated at the municipal level. Municipal sustainability monitoring requires a broad and standardized database. International organizations (in the fields of statistics and administration) are in the process of developing such a broad set of standardized sustainability data for cities. The following section summarizes initiatives for collecting the required data.

3. Overcoming municipal data scarcity and incompatibility 3.1. A shift from national to local sustainability monitoring The UN Commission on Sustainable Development (CSD, 2011) produced several versions of a set of indicators and accompanying methodologies for use at the national level to measure sustainable development. The first set in 1996 included 134 indicators arranged according to the chapters of Agenda 21 but these were reduced in 2006–2007 to 50 core indicators. These activities have resulted in elaborate overviews of the environmental, economic and social performance of states and their international institutions. However, the actual implementation of sustainability goals occurs by means of concrete projects at the local level of the city or municipality. These may be carried out by businesses, local governments and citizens, financed by banks and other Please cite this article as: Zoeteman, K., et al., Are larger cities more sustainable? Lessons from integrated sustainability monitoring in 403 Dutch municipalities. Environmental Development (2015), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.envdev.2015.08.003i


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private equity parties. Cities themselves have also launched sustainability initiatives such as those demonstrated by the World Mayors Council on Climate Change (WMCCC, 2014) and ICLEI, Local Governments for Sustainability (ICLEI, 2015). As a result of these developments, there is a growing need for well-organized urban sustainability monitoring. 3.2. Current efforts to monitor city sustainability Many efforts are underway to collect standardized data on municipal sustainability which can be used for sustainability ranking of municipalities. Several examples are given below. One socio-economic monitoring instrument that has been used for some time at the European urban level is the Urban Audit, carried out by EUROSTAT for DG Regional and Urban Policy of the European Commission (EC) with the help of the national statistics organizations (EUROSTAT, 2015a). An initial pilot scheme for the Urban Audit began in 1999. The Urban Audit assesses socio-economic urban conditions in a range of cities in the EU, collecting data for this purpose every two to three years to help ‘improve the attractiveness of regions and cities as one of the priorities targeted by the renewed Lisbon Strategy and the EU's strategic guidelines for cohesion policy for 2007–2013’. The first round of data collection took place in 2003/2004, followed by similar rounds every 2–3 years. The results are published in EUROSTAT's Regional Yearbooks (EUROSTAT, 2015b). Together with the cities' own websites, the data collected through the Urban Audit are currently the main sources of publicly available data on the sustainability of EU cities. In addition, the website of the Covenant of Mayors on Climate Change (WMCCC, 2014) provides systematic data on the greenhouse gas emissions of thousands of cities around the world and the commitments they have made to reducing these emissions. In the future, the International Standardization Organization will also play an important role in standardizing city monitoring (ISO, 2015). Furthermore, a Global City Indicators Program has been initiated by the World Bank encompassing monitoring, reporting, verifying, and amending indicators for city services and quality of life. It is a dynamic web-based resource that, since 2007, has allowed participating cities across the world to standardize the collection of their indicators and to analyze and share results and best practices relating to service delivery and quality of life. This program is run by the Global City Indicators Facility based at the University of Toronto, which manages the development of indicators and helps cities to join the program (GCIF, 2015). The WHO Regional Office for Europe has set up a WHO European Healthy Cities Network since 1998 and published in 2015 City fact sheets for 100 European cities covering 12 health related indicators (WHO, 2015). However, new attempts are underway based on schemes such as ISO 37120 and its successors, which define and establish methodologies for a set of indicators to steer and measure the performance of city services and quality of life (ISO, 2015). An example of private environmental sustainability reporting was published in 2009 by the Economist Intelligence Unit, sponsored by Siemens (Watson et al., 2009). This European Green City Index for 30 leading European cities is based on an assessment of 30 environmental indicators and provides a tool with which to enhance the understanding and decisionmaking abilities of those interested in environmental performance. Arcadis (2015) has also published a sustainability index for 50 global cities using 20 indicators. Many other monitoring initiatives exist, but these are chiefly limited to a certain theme such as climate change or to a geographical area. An example is the German Climate Cities Benchmark (Climate Alliance, 2015), which collects and displays data on 17 indicators for 1700 cities, regions and organizations in Europe, which are required to become paying members of the initiative. Another example is the European Energy Award organization, in which 1200 cities in Germany, France, Italy, s Switzerland, Austria and Luxembourg participate. Cities can obtain a ‘European Energy Award Gold’ certificate from a certifying authority (European Energy Award, 2015). The World Bank has also developed a tool (TRACE) with which it can rapidly assess the energy status of a city (ESMAP, 2015). This energy benchmarking is based on 28 key performance indicators collected from 64 cities. While this summary is brief and far from exhaustive, it nonetheless illustrates the present-day complexity in obtaining reliable and comparable data on cities and municipalities over a broad range of sustainability issues. Main causes of difficulties are often that nationally coordinated data are collected on a regional instead of a municipal scale and that data collected by the municipalities themselves are not comparable among each other. However, the situation is changing and is expected to improve considerably by 2020.

4. The approach taken by the Netherlands' national monitor for municipal sustainability At the request of the Dutch Ministry for Infrastructure and Environment, a national monitor for the sustainability of all municipalities in the country was developed (Zoeteman et al., 2014). For this purpose a research instrument was used, called the ‘Sustainability Balance’ that largely resembles the RFSC tool described above, but which has been developed step by step independently at Telos, Tilburg University, since 2000 (Zoeteman and Mommaas, 2012; Zoeteman, 2012; Hermans et al., 2011; Dagevos and Van Lamoen, 2009, Knippenberg et al., 2007). A cause for its development was the political ambition of regional and local authorities in the Dutch North Brabant province in those years to monitor if the region was developing in a sustainable way and was meeting its own sustainability goals. Since 2000 some 30 specific sustainability balance reports have been made for local authorities in the Netherlands. Please cite this article as: Zoeteman, K., et al., Are larger cities more sustainable? Lessons from integrated sustainability monitoring in 403 Dutch municipalities. Environmental Development (2015), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.envdev.2015.08.003i

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4.1. The key elements of the telos sustainability balance instrument The sustainability balance instrument uses three pillars of sustainability (the ecological, socio-cultural and economic domains) and their constituting subsystems. Sustainable development is conceived as a development process that aims to foster balanced growth in the resilience and quality of nature (‘ecological capital’), in the physical and spiritual wellbeing of people (‘socio-cultural capital’) and healthy economic development (‘economic capital’). Following the Brundtland Commission, sustainable development implies that three general requirements need to be met:

There must be simultaneous improvement in the three forms of capital: economic, ecological and socio-cultural. The improvement of one type of capital must not occur at the expense of one or both of the other types.

It must be possible to sustain development for future generations: problems must not be passed on to the future. It must also be possible to sustain development at the global level. In other words, there must be no passing on of problems to other geographical areas. Our development must not occur at the expense of those in other regions or other countries. To determine whether a region or municipality is developing in a sustainable way, monitoring is needed. However, this is not an easy task. What should be monitored and against which reference framework? Sustainable development not only includes development of the three distinguished capitals (ecological, sociocultural, economic), but also refers to dimensions of time (now and later) and space (here and there). Sustainable development has therefore as well a strategic as a normative dimension. It is no coincidence that the first rule of the Bellagio guidelines for the assessment of sustainable development states that: ‘Assessment of progress towards sustainable development should be guided by a clear vision of sustainable development and goals that define that vision’ (Hardi and Zdan, 1997). In order to be able to monitor the development of each of the capitals and their relative positions, these are broken down into subsystems called ‘stocks’, using soft systems modeling (Checkland and Scholes, 1990). These stocks are important for the state and development of each capital and the system as a whole (see Fig. 1). The sustainability balance instrument discerns stocks such as soil, water and air for the ecological capital; social cohesion, health and education for the social–cultural capital; and labor, infrastructure & mobility and knowledge for the economic capital. To develop sustainably, the stocks need to develop in a certain direction towards a theoretically maximum goal. In this context a number of long term goals, called requirements, are formulated by the researchers in co-operation with local stakeholders for each of the stocks. These requirements are an important reference point of the sustainability balance instrument as they are representing the long term sustainability vision of the region or municipality and are ideally the result of the interactive process to develop a common vision engaging different stakeholders, as discussed in Section 2. On the other hand, in most cases it is not very difficult to reach consensus on long term requirements. Examples of such requirements are for the soil stock in the ecological capital: the soil and the groundwater are clean; for the safety stock of the social–cultural capital: one of the requirements is that everybody living in the municipality should feel safe, and another is that the chance to become a victim of violence, crime, accidents or disasters should be negligible; and for the stock labor in the economic capital: the labor market should be in balance (qualitatively and quantitatively) and work should be healthy (long-term illness and disability should be avoided). The degree to which the sustainability requirements are being met is measured using indicators. The development of the indicator values over time gives an insight into the direction of the development. For indicators sustainability norms are specified. The selection of indicators and their norms is often more sensitive to authorities than the definition of the long term requirements discussed before. In case Telos makes a sustainability balance for a specific municipality, local stakeholders are also involved in the selection of indicators and norms. For the national monitor discussed in this paper the researchers have selected the indicators and their norms, based on the literature and past experience, which were subsequently applied to all municipalities. Table 1 summarizes the terms used and their definitions. How norms are used to calculate sustainability scores, expressed as % of sustainability goal achievement, from actual measured data of indicators is discussed in Section 4.2.

Fig. 1. The relationship between capitals, stocks and indicators.



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Table 1 Terms used to describe the sustainability of municipalities.Table 1 Term

Description

Capital Stock Requirement Indicator Norm

The three essential subsystems of the total social system: the ecological, socio-cultural and economic aspects. The essential subsystem which together with other stocks determine the quality and quantity of a capital. Long-term goal(s) that specify the sustainability challenge for a stock. Measurable characteristic that can be used to operationalize the requirement. Sustainability standard by means of which the scores from indicators can be quantitatively assessed and expressed as % of long term goal achievement.

Municipalities will be more sustainable when the total sustainability score is higher and the deviations of the individual capital scores from the total score are lower. Sometimes municipalities show one capital with a high score (e.g. an economic capital score of 60% achievement of the sustainability goal) while the other two are scoring much lower (e.g. 35% and 40%). Time series analysis will eventually show if the higher scoring capital is developing at the expense of the other two capitals. A relatively low scoring capital will trigger attention of authorities to analyze the causes and consider remedial policy actions. 4.2. The design of the national monitor The Dutch national monitor for municipal sustainability has been developed as a benchmark tool comparing the performances of all 403 municipalities. In this monitor the three capitals are composed of 19 stocks in total. For each of the stocks requirements have been defined. This has been done by the Telos team based on local, regional, national and European policy documents and the actual performance of major cities in the Netherlands. Subsequently for each stock, related to the requirements, indicators were selected. In total 90 indicators were included in the national monitor (Zoeteman et al., 2014). Table 2 gives an overview of the stocks that have been distinguished and their indicators. Table 2 Capitals, stocks and indicators used to assess municipal sustainability.Table 2 Capitals and stocks Ecological capital Soil and groundwater Air Noise/odors/external safety Surface water Nature and landscape Energy and climate Waste and raw materials

Social–cultural capital Social cohesion Participation Arts and cultural heritage Health Safety Living environment Education

Economic capital Labor Spatial establishment Conditions for businesses Economic structure Infrastructure and mobility Knowledge

Indicators

Soil clean-up, quantity of manure applied Emission of CO2, emission of NOx, emission of PM10, emission of VOS, concentration NOx, concentration PM10, concentration VOS Noise annoyance, odor annoyance, risk of a disaster Ecological quality, chemical quality Satisfaction with green areas in city, share of forest and natural area, distance of public green spots, share of inland recreational water, biodiversity District heating, wind energy, solar energy, average natural gas consumption, average electricity consumption, energy label of houses Household waste, organic waste, paper and cardboard waste, packaging glass, plastic

Poor households, social inclusiveness, volunteers Turnout in municipal elections, turnout in national elections, long-term unemployment, long-term social assistance, informal care Performing arts, national monuments, museums Insufficient exercise, risky behavior, number of gp practices, quality of hospitals, distance to hospital, life expectancy, assessment of own health, chronically sick people Violent crimes, crimes against property, youth crime, vandalism, road safety, feeling of insecurity Housing deficit, distance to supermarket, satisfaction with living environment, satisfaction with shops, real estate value, house-moving balance, population development Youth unemployment, number of elementary schools, number of secondary schools, early school leavers, real-time to diploma, graduation rate, education level of population

Employment function, human resources exploitation, unemployment, hazing and ageing, incapacity for work Stock of business parks, net/gross ratio of business parks, share of out-of-date business parks, stock of office space, vacant office space Share of starters, bankruptcies, disposable income, gross regional product per capita, share of nationally promoted (top) sectors Access to public transport, access to main roads Proportion of highly educated people, capacity for scientific education/higher vocational education, high-tech and medium-tech employment, creative industry share



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Indicators are defined in such a way that meaningful data can be obtained. For example the indicator ‘poor households’ is defined as the percentage households with an income below 105% of the social minimum income compared to the total number of households. Or ‘windpower’ is defined as the total production capacity of electricity by windmills in the municipality. And ‘house-moving balance’ is the balance of people settling and leaving the municipality per 1000 inhabitants (5-year average). The number of indicators used in the monitor was limited by the availability of data and by the fact that adding more indicators to a certain stock adds less and less to the outcome. Therefore a maximum number of 5–8 indicators per stock was maintained. Most data were obtained from Statistics Netherlands (2014), but also from Health Services of Municipalities, the National Soil Sanitation Survey, the Biodiversity Network and the National Climate Monitor. Some 20 data sources were used. Finding useful indicators depends on the availability of data for all municipalities involved, their comparability in space and time, the measurement frequency of the indicators, etc. Difficulties arise e.g. when data are only available for the larger municipalities, are no longer collected because of budget restrictions and changed priorities, or when data are only made public in aggregated form which makes it difficult to reconstruct the situation of individual or small municipalities. Data collection also involves, more often than in the past, additional costs. Finally it often takes a lot of exploration to find the existing data sources because of their scattered origin and the absence of a national focal point where these municipal data sources are registered, notwithstanding the existence of the national Statistics Netherlands organization. Subsequently, a scale has been constructed for each indicator, using a set of specific norms per indicator that are measuring progress toward attaining sustainability expressed as a percentage of the operational sustainability goal of that indicator (varying from 0%, the lowest and socially unacceptable score, to 100%, the highest and socially long term achievable score). These norms are directly related to the long-term requirements defined for each stock. These requirements are set, as mentioned above, for the case of the national monitor by the Telos research team, and are fixed for a number of years for the Dutch context. An example of such an indicator for the labor stock concerns the level of unemployment on the labor market. As sustainability goal for the labor stock a requirement is formulated that the labor market should be in balance (quantitatively and qualitatively). The level of unemployment indicates if the labor market is quantitatively in balance or not. An unemployment level below 1.5% is considered as socially optimal (gives an indicator score between 75% and 100%), between 1% and 5% as socially acceptable (gives an indicator score between 50% and 75%), between 5% and 7% as socially alarming (gives an indicator score between 25% and 50%) and above 7% as socially unacceptable (gives an indicator score between 0% and 25%). An unemployment percentage of 4.2% means a socially acceptable result, leading to an indicator score of 55%. Applying this assessment method, each actual indicator score is expressed as a percentage of the sustainability goal achieved. A total score for each stock is determined by adding the weighted scores from the indicators involved. An example of how the weighting of indicators within a stock takes place is given in Table 3. For all indicators fact sheets are available at the Telos website (www.telos.nl) showing the definition, the norms, the weighing, the year of measurement, the sustainability score, etc. A more extended description of the method used can be found in Zoeteman et al. (2015). The results of the stocks are then added with equal weight to calculate the capital score. Finally the three capitals are weighted equally to calculate the overall sustainability score for a municipality, expressed as the average percentage of the overall sustainability goal achievements. The unique aspects of the study presented are the involvement of a large number of municipalities (403) and indicators (90), the wide range of municipality sizes (in particular the inclusion of smaller municipalities), and the use of a common set of sustainability requirements and norms to benchmark these municipalities.

5. Main results from the sustainability monitoring of 403 municipalities National policies, at least in the Netherlands, aim to promote and invest in regional economic growth, urban compactness and administrative efficiency by merging smaller cities and municipalities into larger (‘metropolitan’) urban entities. Although the Netherlands is relatively densely populated, with 406 inhabitants per km2 (2014), it has no cities of over one million inhabitants. Most of its municipalities have a population of between 25,000 and 50,000 (Zoeteman et al., 2014). An important aim of the study was to see how city size would impact municipal sustainability and if the present Table 3 Example of weighting indicators in calculating a stock score when requirements are of equal importance (weighting in %). Table 3 Measurement terms Stock 1

Weighting in % Requirement 1 Requirement 2

Indicator Indicator Indicator Indicator Indicator

1 2 3 4 5

25.00 25.00 16.67 16.67 16.67 100.00



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government policy to merge smaller municipalities to attain sizes of at least 100,000 inhabitants is also in line with sustainability goals. Of course, it should be remembered that circumstances in the Netherlands differ from those in other countries, including those located within the EU. This will be further discussed in the final section. Fig. 2 gives an overall impression of the distribution of total sustainability scores for all Dutch municipalities. This figure shows that the municipalities with highest total sustainability scores, 56% and above, are found in the central section of the country, in particular along the North Sea coast and in the center. The lowest total scores, 44% and below, are found in municipalities in the northeast of the country and around the city of Rotterdam. A closer look at the three constituting capitals, which are also shown in Fig. 2, reveals a classic polarity between economic development and environmental quality. High economic capital scores often go in tandem with low ecological capital scores and vise versa. Even in a highly developed society such as the Netherlands, the negative effects of economic growth on social and environment conditions, which were postulated to occur only in developing countries as a transitionary development stage by Kuznets (1955), seem to persist. Kuznets predicted that income inequality would first rise but later fade away as a result of increasing development. Later studies predicted a similar effect for air pollution by sulfur dioxide

Total sco ore

Social-cu ultural capitall

Ecollogical capitaal

Econ nomic capitall

Fig. 2. National overview of municipal scores (scale from 0–100% sustainable) for total sustainability and the ecological, socio-cultural and economic sustainability capitals.



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emissions (Grossman and Krueger,1995). More recently the reality of the environmental Kuznets curve has been questioned (Stern, 2004) and the outcome of the national monitor study, in which environmental stocks are combined in the ecological capital which can be compared with the economic capital scores, adds to these doubts. In Sections 6.1 and 7.1 the issue will be discussed further. The picture for socio-cultural capital is different from the other two types of capital. It is often assumed that, in the long run, economic development will result in improved social conditions. However, these results for the Netherlands do not show a correlation between municipalities which perform well on economic capital and those which perform well on sociocultural capital. In the following sections, this issue will be discussed in greater detail. The results also show that the larger Dutch cities, with 200,000 inhabitants or more (Amsterdam, Rotterdam, Utrecht, The Hague, Eindhoven and Tilburg), have relatively low total sustainability scores of approx. 45%. Furthermore, municipalities which score the highest on overall sustainability (colored blue in Fig. 2: Naarden, MiddenDelfland and Houten) are all situated in the vicinity of one of the larger Dutch cities (Amsterdam, Rotterdam and Utrecht, respectively). This would suggest that they are well-placed to both exploit the advantages of proximity to a large city while avoiding the disadvantages of actually being a large city. The lowest-scoring municipalities (shown in brown and red: Spijkenisse, Pekela and Hellevoetsluis) are also situated near the larger cities. However, they all house members of the poorly educated, unskilled workforce for the neighboring city, who enjoy fewer economic and social opportunities. These municipalities are therefore faced with higher social costs. Industrialized areas, including the ports of Rotterdam, Amsterdam and Moerdijk, score low on ecological capital. The highest economic capital scores are to be found in larger cities such as Amsterdam, Eindhoven, Groningen, Rotterdam and Utrecht.

6. Key factors determining municipal sustainability scores The studies presented here can be used to compile a list of the best and worst-performing municipalities in terms of their overall sustainability score. However, it was clear from the beginning that such lists add little to the debate, since each municipality has its own historical background, geographical characteristics and other particular assets. What is of greater interest is how each city performs in terms of its unique challenges. For instance, it is clear that, due to path dependency, large municipalities face quite different developmental conditions and sustainability challenges to small municipalities. The same is true of industrial and agricultural municipalities. Simply ranking their overall sustainability scores is therefore neither relevant nor adequate. In this section, we explore several factors that would appear to be important in giving a more contextualized background to the specific sustainability figuration of municipalities, including their size and typology (e.g. in terms of regional position and economic structure). 6.1. Impact of municipality size As stated previously and shown in Fig. 3, Dutch municipalities are relatively small. Under these circumstances, size is a potentially interesting factor in understanding sustainability scores (see Fig. 4). In the Netherlands, total sustainability scores tend to diminish as the size of the municipality increases. A more detailed analysis reveals that this is the outcome of different dynamics in the three types of capital scores. Less populous

Fig. 3. Size distribution of Dutch municipalities.



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Fig. 4. Impact of municipality size on total sustainability score.

municipalities (i.e. those with less than 50,000 inhabitants) score relatively highly on ecological and social–cultural capital but lower on economic capital. It is clear from the data shown that, in the Dutch case, favorable economic conditions correlate with cities of 100,000 inhabitants or more. However, from an overall sustainability point of view, based on the existing distribution of municipality characteristics, and due to the specific intra-municipal balance of related economic, social and ecological conditions, a size of 50,000 inhabitants also has its merits. 6.2. Impact of city typology Apart from municipality size, the study also examined differences in the geographical and territorial characteristics, historical background and socio-economic profiles of municipalities. For several decades, city typologies have been studied as a key factor in understanding the differences between municipal developmental opportunities and challenges (see e.g. Knox, 2014; Van Winden et al., 2007; Reese, 2006; Taylor and Hoyler, 2000; Atchley, 1967). After studying the results presented in Fig. 1, ten ‘types’ of municipalities were discerned and further analyzed, using one objective independent criterion for each type (see Table 4). These ten types of municipality were: agricultural, center, green, growth, historic, new town, old industrial, shrinking, sleep and work. The criteria used were not based on a fixed theoretical rationale, but were selected more inductively as a starting point for the further study of possible key differences between municipalities with a view to better understanding their sustainability challenges and the related position within their regional environment. The ‘center’ municipality type, for example, was defined as a municipality that has a dominant position within its wider region. This was statistically operationalized in terms of containing more than 25% of the population of the ‘COROP region’. The COROP region is a socioeconomic regional unit, used in the Netherlands to study regional economic processes. The Netherlands is divided into 40 of these COROP regions in total. The criteria were also chosen in order to ensure that not practically all municipalities would qualify for a type. On the other hand, wherever possible it was aimed at to ensure that all municipalities would qualify for at least one of the ten criteria. In the end, 85% of municipalities met one or more of the ten criteria. Municipalities can qualify for more than one type. Table 4 City types and their characteristics.Table 4. Type

Criterion

Number of municipalities out of 403

Agricultural Center Green Growth Historic New town Old industrial Shrinking Exurb Work

480% land surface is agro 425% inhabitants of COROP region 430% is forest or nature 410% growth projected in 2040 412% of homes built before 1905 465% of homes built after 1970 430% of labor in 1930 in industry/mining Fewer inhabitants projected in 2040 Employment function o 70% Employment function 4115%

95 35 51 56 53 58 47 66 95 65



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As shown in Table 5, and as expected, ‘green’ municipalities scored the highest on total sustainability. The best scores on economic capital were found in ‘work’ and ‘center’ municipalities. The highest scores for ecological capital were for ‘green’ and ‘shrinking’ municipalities. Scores for socio-cultural capital were highest in ‘green’ and ‘agricultural’ municipalities. Ecological and socio-cultural capital both scored lowest in ‘center’ municipalities. Economic capital scored lowest in ‘shrinking’ and ‘agricultural’ municipalities. The lowest overall scores were found in ‘center’, ‘old industrial’ and ‘shrinking’ municipalities. ‘Center’ cities showed a combination of extremes in their capital scores, but these ‘center’ cities are often more attractive than ‘old industrial’ cities because they provide better opportunities for social improvement for immigrant groups and low income groups. In a sense, ‘center’ type municipalities accumulate economic opportunities as well as ecological and social problems. Based on the statistical analysis shown in Table 5, it can be concluded that on the basis of this study and the used indicators ‘growth’, ‘historic’ and ‘sleep’ municipalities show no significant differences from the average scores for total sustainability or any of the capital scores. Discerning these municipality types may therefore be less relevant in future sustainability studies. 6.3. Other factors related to municipal sustainability scores It was found that the total sustainability score of a municipality could be predicted using city typology up to about 46% (see Table 5) and when a combination of other independent characteristics were added, up to about 60%. Important independent prognostic factors, in addition to municipality type, included size, average income of residents, voting profiles in national elections, relative size of the social housing sector, and geographical location (which is probably related to the role of the regional economy for the municipality). For instance, municipalities with low socio-cultural capital scores had a higher incidence of voters for far-right political parties. Municipalities with a relatively high proportion of voters for traditional Christian parties (known in the Netherlands as the ‘Bible belt municipalities’) showed relatively high socio-cultural capital scores due to, for instance, better scores on the social cohesion and participation stocks (Zoeteman et al., 2014, p. 95). The study also yielded a large number of significant correlations among the 19 stocks as well as among the 90 individual indicators. Since many such correlations within the economic or social capitals are fairly evident, they are not discussed here. Instead, some of the correlations are presented that were found between stocks and between indicators of different capitals which specifically show the value of the integrated multi-criteria concept of sustainability. As shown in Table 6, the sustainability score for air quality is positively correlated with safety and negatively correlated with the score for spatial conditions for businesses. The latter correlation is probably due to the link between a higher density of industrial business parks and air pollution. The positive correlation with safety may be caused by the fact that the higher-income households live in prosperous housing environments with better safety scores. High sustainability scores for energy and climate coincide with low sustainability scores for social participation and safety. Other correlations were found showing that larger industrialized municipalities (with lower scores on participation and safety) seem to be the most open to implementing new energy-saving and sustainable energy technologies. What is also striking is the link between higher levels of social cohesion and higher waste recovery. Furthermore, and less surprisingly, the scores for social participation and education are positively correlated with the scores for labor and economic structure. As presented in Table 7, correlations between the 90 indicators show that most (75%) of the frequently correlating indicators belong to the field of socio-cultural capital. Among the indicators for economic capital, some – such as unemployment and disposable income – were frequently correlated with other indicators, but less strongly. This may indicate that impulses to improve municipal welfare may be less directly influenced by investment in the economy than is often assumed. Table 5 Statistical analysis of the differences between types of Dutch municipalities and the overall scores for sustainability and the three types of capital.Table 5 Type

Deviation from average sustainability score of the 403 municipalities (% scale) Total score

Agricultural Center Green Growth Historic New town Old industrial Shrinking Exurb Work R2 n

n

0.88 2.67nn 2.03nn 0.65 0.34 0.01 1.52nn 1.48nn 0.43 0.12 0.459

Ecological capital nn

2.04 4.41nn 4.16nn 0.19 0.15 1.35n 1.58nn 1.64nn 0.04 1.50n 0.250

Socio-cultural capital

Economic capital

1.18 6.63nn 2.82n 1.07 0.28 0.92 3.15nn 4.01nn 0.52 1.99n 0.348

1.76nn 3.02nn 0.88 0.69 1.47 0.45 0.18 2.06nn 0.80 3.86nn 0.638

p o 0.05; p o 0.01

nn


Air

Air Energy and climate Waste and raw materials Social cohesion Participation Health Safety Residential area Education Labor Spatial conditions for businesses Economic structure

Energy and climate

Waste and raw materials

Social cohesion

Participation Health Safety Residential area Education Labor Spatial conditions for businesses

0.4

1 0.7

1

0.5

0.7

0.6

Economic structure

1 0.6 1 1 0.4

1 0.6

0.4

0.5 0.5

0.5 0.4

1 0.4 0.4

1 0.5

1 0.5

1 1

0.5

1

K. Zoeteman et al. / Environmental Development ∎ (∎∎∎∎) ∎∎∎–∎∎∎ 11


Table 6 Correlation coefficients between best correlating ( 40.4 or o 0.4) stocks.Table 6

12

Emission CO2 Gas consumption Electricity conhouseholds sumption households Emission CO2 Gas consumption households Electricity consumption households Poor households Turnout in national elections Long-term social assistance G.P. practices Vandalism Violent crimes Crimes against property Elementary school capacity Secondary school capacity

Poor households

Turnout in national elections

Long-term social assistance

G.P. practices Vandalism Violent crimes

Crimes against property

Elementary Secondary school capacity school capacity

1 1 0.6

1

0.7

0.4

1 0.6

1

0.4

0.4

0.7

0.9

0.6

1

0.4

0.6 0.5 0.5 0.5

0.5 0.6 0.6 0.6

0.4 0.6 0.7 0.7

0.5 0.6 0.6

0.6 0.7 0.7 0.8

1 0.5 0.5 0.7

1 0.9 0.8

1 0.9

1

0.6

0.5

0.5

0.9

0.5

0.5

0.6

1

0.5

0.6

0.6

0.8

0.5

0.5

0.6

0.8

1



Table 7 Correlation coefficients between best correlating ( 40.4 or o 0.4) indicators.Table 7


13

Crimes against property, vandalism, lower-income households, long-term social assistance and voter turnout at national elections form a strongly inter-correlated cluster of indicators for socio-cultural capital. In addition, higher sustainability scores for these indicators correlate with lower sustainability scores on household electricity consumption, meaning that, as one might expect, more prosperous families consume more electricity and to a lesser degree more gas. In addition, municipalities with higher CO2 emissions correlate positively with those that have a higher proportion of lower-income households. Both these indicators also correlate with the size of the municipality and the amount of industry. The correlations found are, of course, not proof of a direct causal relationship between the indicators concerned, but may indicate other underlying causal factors, as a further analysis of the data may reveal.

7. Discussion and conclusions This national study of the sustainability of 403 Dutch municipalities showed a significant impact for selected indicators, composing stocks, capitals and total sustainability scores, of size, spatial-economic typology and additional factors such as average income and geographical position. What is the role of these and related factors and what are the possible implications for policy makers? 7.1. Impact of population and surrounding region The study found lower sustainability scores for municipalities with a larger number of inhabitants. In particular, cities with more than 200,000 inhabitants had lower scores on ecological and socio-cultural capital and, based on the indicators used, only small improvements in economic capital. This result shows that, within the spatial distribution of social, economic and ecological municipal conditions in the Netherlands, larger cities with better economic performance do not automatically have a higher level of urban sustainability and welfare for their residents. One possible conclusion is that increased size and economic growth are not in themselves enough to improve the sustainability performances of municipalities. An alternative conclusion is that policies aimed at increasing municipality size should take into account specific circumstances that may favor consolidation to a population size of below 100,000 inhabitants. However, such conclusions may be too simplistic as they do not take into account the regional interaction between clusters of smaller and larger towns and the way in which this interaction, due to the uneven distribution of population groups and their mobility, produces inter-municipal social, economic and ecological trade-offs. Larger municipalities attract marginalized groups who are on the lookout for better economic opportunities, precisely because they offer these opportunities. Hence, the larger city is also a focal point for social problems, especially when the amount of economic opportunities is decreasing, as in the case of formerly industrial, shrinking cities. On the other hand, due to better mobility opportunities, members of the better educated middle class are more able to have the best of both worlds: working in the city and living in a small-scale, socially compact and ‘green’ settlement in an economically less advanced rural area. The fact that, overall, the population of larger cities ‘pays’ for its closeness to economic opportunities and services in the form of inferior environmental and social conditions is in itself not a ‘bad’ thing, however. At the regional level there is an interconnection between the higher density of cities, their economic advancement and their role as social ‘elevator’ on the one hand, and the social and environmental superiority and relative economic inferiority of the countryside on the other. The better economic performance of more populous municipalities in the Netherlands is not negatively associated with the performance of the stocks of other capitals in every aspect. Large municipalities such as Amsterdam, Rotterdam and Tilburg score the highest on issues relating to energy and climate as a result of their rapid transition to new energy sources such as district heating, solar panels and wind power. This is probably the result of being more open to technological innovations and having better conditions for investment in this area. These considerations suggest that it is important to study the sustainability level of municipalities from a regional citycountryside perspective, and to take into account how, within the regional configuration and distribution of sustainability characteristics, many kinds of trade-offs exist between municipalities, spaces and localities. The next challenge is to explore how this regional trade-off actually works and subsequently to develop regional inter-municipal policies which can strengthen the various qualities of the different municipalities in relation to one another in such a way that the overall regional level of sustainability is maximized. This is not a matter of every municipality aiming to become the same, but of every municipality developing an awareness of its specific role in maximizing the overall regional capacity for development from a triple P perspective. Of course, these findings on some of the effects of municipality size may be specific to the Netherlands. A later study at the EU level may reveal additional factors associated with city size, particularly for cities with more than one million inhabitants such as Barcelona, Brussels, Hamburg, London, Paris, Rome and Vienna. 7.2. The need for additional socio-cultural policies Besides the need to maximize the overall regional capacity for development from a triple P perspective, there is also a need to improve sustainability within city neighborhoods with a concentration of problems related to low-income households, vandalism, criminality and poor educational status. This study indicates that stimulating growth of the Please cite this article as: Zoeteman, K., et al., Are larger cities more sustainable? Lessons from integrated sustainability monitoring in 403 Dutch municipalities. Environmental Development (2015), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.envdev.2015.08.003i

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economic capital is in itself not enough to reduce the problems that become visible in the two other capitals. Also others have pointed at the need to combine policies to stimulate economic growth with adequate socio-cultural and environmental policies (see e.g. Musterd and Ostendorf, 2013). The UNDP also stated in its Human Development Report (2013): ‘… economic growth alone does not automatically translate into human development progress. Pro-poor policies and significant investments in people's capabilities—through a focus on education, nutrition and health, and employment skills—can expand access to decent work and provide for sustained progress’. Part of the challenge faced by larger cities concerns issues related to their attraction to social groups such as labor migrants, refugees, students and the elderly. However, these groups are too wide-ranging and complex to discuss in the context of this sustainability study. Government policies for urban sustainability should include the integrated sustainability challenges of economic development programs. 7.3. Impact of typology and benchmarking of municipalities This study has introduced the concept of city typology based on obvious differences in historical, economic and social backgrounds that were expected to have consequences for municipal sustainability performance. The results of the study confirm that such typologies exist, although some of the ten types that are discerned were less influential than others. The type with the greatest positive influence was ‘green’, while the negative influence was strongest for municipalities identified as ‘center’, ‘old industrial’ and ‘shrinking’. The least influential types appeared to be ‘new town’, ‘sleep’ and ‘growth’. ‘Center’, ‘old industrial’ and ‘shrinking’ municipalities have a special need to develop socio-cultural policy programs in conjunction with their economic ambitions. Environmental performance will also benefit from such programs. In cases where a municipality belongs to one or more municipality types, this will help clarify its strategic challenges and indicate relevant benchmark municipalities. A benchmark of Dutch municipalities, based on the results of this typological study, was carried out in the summer 2014 to create a framework for the issuing of a sustainability bond by the BNG Bank (2014). This bank was founded to accommodate the demand for loans among Dutch municipalities. The sustainability bond framework consisted of a selection of the 15 best-in-class municipalities in 8 classes of municipalities. The 8 classes were the 7 statistically most relevant types of municipalities, as discussed above, with an additional class for the group of large cities with 100,000 inhabitants or more. The sustainability bond worth €500 million was issued in October 2014 and was used to provide loans to 96 selected municipalities. A performance report on the sustainable development of these municipalities will be issued annually over a five-year period. This is one of the ways in which municipal sustainability typology can be used for policy making and sustainability-based investment. 7.4. Lessons learned Although the selection of indicators has been to some degree arbitrarily as the researchers had to use for their framework what was made available by other institutions, it is not likely that the outcome of the national monitor would be fundamentally different in case ideal indicators could have been used. In practice the selection of indicators was a result of earlier choices by others because they represent aspects of sustainability that strongly matter to society and warrant financial support to measure and report them. These choices may change in time but basic elements will always remain part of this framework. These include environmental pressure and state indicators, social quality of society expressed in lack of poverty, improved health, education, etc., and economic vitality expressed in labor potential, competitiveness, connectivity, etc. The methodology used has proved suitable as a concrete means of operationalizing the concept of sustainable development for municipalities and regions, although it was originally developed for assessing nation states. The results of monitoring exercises such as those presented in this study have a direct implication for individual municipalities, but also in a more general sense for higher levels of government and governance. At the municipal level, policy makers are striving for a simple way of demonstrating their goals and achievements. The difficulty in promoting the use of the European RFSC, for instance, relates to the complexities of the procedures involved. The same can be said of the method discussed in this paper. However, through systematic aggregation and measuring the achievement of stock requirements and indicator norms by providing the municipality with the data instead of asking them to fill in another questionnaire, the issue of complexity can be overcome. Limiting measurements to a small number of indicators will not address the demand for simplicity. A major reason is that outlying results for a municipality in a monitoring and benchmarking exercise immediately raise questions about the validity of the method, the quality of the data and the completeness of the assessment. The method presented here allows for the inclusion of any sustainability aspect, provided data are available, without complicating the simplicity of the end results. After the further clarification of controversial or unexpected findings, the results of benchmarking hold the most interesting lessons for municipal authorities. An objective assessment of the strong and weak points of the municipality subsequently helps to focus the attention and the will of the key players in reframing the results of the monitor into policy challenges and plans. Obtaining such a commitment to an integrated sustainability policy is the result needed to bring about real change. At the national or international level, monitoring exercises such as those presented in this paper can help identify the need for additional policy action which would otherwise remain undiscovered. For example, the inter-relationships between Please cite this article as: Zoeteman, K., et al., Are larger cities more sustainable? Lessons from integrated sustainability monitoring in 403 Dutch municipalities. Environmental Development (2015), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.envdev.2015.08.003i


15

stocks and between indicators in different capitals can help overcome ‘silo practices’ in the collection and distribution of data as well as in policy making and implementation. An major insight arising from this study is the importance of the performance of social capital for the performance of the two other forms of capital. The impact of the size of the municipality has also been shown to be less straightforwardly favorable for larger cities than is often assumed. Another advantage of the method presented is that it provides a common framework within which to assess the urgent issues in highly diverse policy areas and it introduces a common language with which to discuss urgent issues in city councils and national government. At the same time, this may give rise to opposition among those who are used to being eligible for major economic or social investment projects in the city, for example, if these are not compatible with sustainable development. Integrated sustainability assessment tools will increasingly fuel these kinds of debates among policy makers and reinforce the path from integrated sustainability monitoring towards integrated policies and project designs that enhance the overall quality of life in cities, towns and smaller municipalities.

Acknowledgment The authors wish to thank the Sustainability Directorate of the Ministry for Infrastructure and Environment, The Hague, the Netherlands, and Triodos Bank Foundation, Zeist, the Netherlands, for supporting this study, and Joost Slabbekoorn, Ruben Smeets and Corné Wentink for their assistance in data collection and analysis.

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