SPARTACUS
Project Summary
SPARTACUS
System for Planning and Research in Towns and Cities for Urban Sustainability
Client Commission of the European Communities, Directorate General for Science, Research and Development
Duration 4/1996-3/1998
OBJECTIVE:
To develop and pilot the use of a comprehensive analytical modelling framework with a sound and theoretically consistent basis for building and evaluating long term strategies for sustainable urban development especially in Europe.
DESCRIPTION:
The study focuses on the interactions between transport, land use, economy, the environment and social factors. Existing methodology for modelling the relations between transport, land use and economy serves as the starting point. This is developed further to assess and predict the environmental and social sustainability implications of different policies to be tested during the study while also taking into account their economic effects. These policies may consist of regulatory and pricing measures and investments. The first year of the project is dedicated to the model-building and programming while the pilot tests take place during the second.
Three existing urban models, which the members of the team have previously implemented, are adopted as the foundation on which the study is based. The northern Helsinki Metropolitan Area, the major southern Italian city of Naples and the declining industrial conurbation of Bilbao in Spain’s Basque Country have been specifically selected as representing very different urban forms and environments.
An important feature of the approach is the inclusion of Client-Partners for the work. These partners, who represent local, regional or national authorities, help to shape and test the methodological framework developed in the project and advise on sustainability initiatives and practical sustainability targets in each of the pilot applications. Other projects within the EU Fourth Framework Programme also produce policy initiatives that may be tested in this project.
Environmental, social and economic sustainability indicators are developed. In the policy tests, the indicator values are compared against targets. The economic consequences of achieving the targets as well as any distributional issues that the modelling process raises are taken into account, and attention is paid to the interpretation of the results. Also, the project aims at developing the quantitative aggregation of results using a hierarchical indicator system.
The positive and negative effects of each policy tested on environmental, social, land use, transport and economic indicators are described. The reasons for inter-city differences are analysed and policy levers classified into spatially transferable and location specific. Such common policy actions that are economically, environmentally and socially sound and viable and that could be successfully used in different types of cities within the Union with similar problems, are specified on the basis of theory and the test results. Generalised recommendations on sustainable urban policies are striven for.