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SUMMARY OF THE KEY ISSUES IN GOVERNANCE In order to assess and manage air quality in a city effectively, many aspects come into play. Of these, governance issues may be the most elusive ones. Responsibilities are often distributed over many actors, and even when solutions are technically feasible, it is not at all trivial to achieve that the proper decisions are taken and implemented. Governance issues are dealt with under the following subheadings: • Geographical Integration The outward expansion of urban growth across the administrative borders began in the 1960’s in most European cities. Sub urbanisation has strengthened the functional relations between central cities and their suburban hinterlands. However the administrative borders and/or arrangements often do not ease the co-operation, but in the contrary slow it down or encourage competition and the realisation of unsustainable development trends. Cities are often perceived as areas that are tightly defined by their administrative boundaries, rather than being identified as part of a wider city-region with multidimensional links with their hinterland and particularly with the surrounding rural areas. This perception is reflected in the way cities are managed. Potential reciprocal benefits do not always materialize due to political and administrative obstacles and the fragmentation of competencies. Governments are more and more concerned to provide clean air for all and the improvement of air quality clearly is a cooperative process, requiring concerted action of all stakeholders. A wide range of techniques can be used to facilitate public participation throughout the decision-making or development planning process. As a means to involve the citizens and other stakeholders in air quality management, some countries have established coordination points such as regional and/or local air pollution control districts. Resources for air quality management One of the main factors that controls the ability of a municipal authority to implement successful measures aimed at improving air quality for their citizens is the amount of resources available to do it. Although not all measures need be heavily resourced financially to be effective the political will for dealing with Air Quality can itself be treated as a resource. Air quality management covers a very broad range of activities which can be seen as covering a number of different types of action: personnel dependent to equipment dependent; analysis and assessment to implementation of measures; ‘soft’ measures to ‘hard’ measures. There is, therefore, a very wide range of resources which are desirable for Air Quality Management and they will vary depending on what aspects are being carried out. The key resource which is essential for any successful Air Quality Management programme can be considered to be knowledge. Ultimately the level of available financial resources for Air Quality Management within a municipality is reliant on the support for it. Financial resources are probably the hardest to acquire due to the inevitable competition for them. Collaboration between city departments As sustainable development is about simultaneous pursuit of economic competitiveness, social cohesion and environmental sustainability, it can only be achieved through an integrated approach to policy development in a way that different policy sectors are harmonised and follow a common goal. A typical problem caused by the lack of collaboration between cities concerns land use, mobility and air quality planning. In order to reach significant improvements in terms of spatial quality, freedom to move and air quality, deep-seated co-operation among the departments/persons in charge of the different sectors is required. Tools for air quality management An important problem is the lack of harmonized data, tools and practices in order to guide urban planning teams, politicians and managers to the desired direction. Urban planning is managed by experts, usually assigned by politicians, who apply individual practices according to their experience and the local circumstances. Lack of reliable and detailed enough data is a major problem touching the problem analysis, planning and monitoring phases. The use of many new tools such as models and various evaluation techniques requires high-quality data on inter-linked urban phenomena and flow of interactions. The lack of comparable data also makes benchmarking and the use of other comparative methods and tools very difficult. Collaboration between regions and cities As a result of internal markets and increasing globalisation single government levels are the increasingly unable to deal with planning issues on their own. Increasingly interdependencies among all levels of government and targeted actions at different levels require overall aims, orientation and commitment. In addition to defining the objectives, the difficulty remains how to translate them into policies and practice, especially at regional and local levels, taking into account diverse local conditions. Multi-partite contracts could be a potential instrument to improve the co-ordination. But it has to be borne in mind that the tri-partite contracts proposed in the White Paper on European Governance link the EU with the national and the regional or urban level, although in the sustainable urban management context it seems rather essential to strengthen the co-ordination between towns and regions. Many planning-related practices are considered as obstacles in the way of more sustainable urban development: traditional values still rule among a large majority of planners and decision-makers; lack of objective or consensual environmental criteria; the inflexible structure of plans makes it difficult to up-date them in a flexible way when need arises and uncertainties over the costs and risks associated with the innovation that often accompanies sustainability.
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