IN-PERSON: Livable Cities – New York

Abstract

Continued urbanisation, economic shifts and environmental concerns are forcing actors to reconsider their goals, strategies and practices for ensuring livable conditions in cities of the future. In urban metropolises, urban planning is at the core of solutions to emerging questions. Previous studies implied that the urban planning profession plays a key role in the implementation of a sustainable built environment. In consideration of these issues, this study empirically clarified the role played by the motivation of an individual public urban planner in creating sustainability content for statutory planning documents. The assessment was pursued on five dimensions of urban sustainability: (1) material efficiency, (2) climate resilience, (3) sustainable mobility, (4) health and safety, and (5) social sustainability. The study examined 152 detailed local statutory plans approved in the city of Vantaa in the Helsinki metropolitan area, Finland, between 2015 and 2019, and interviews were held with the planners who crafted these documents. The preliminary results obtained via quantitative multidimensional scaling and an analysis of the interviews indicated that the motivation of individual planners influenced the sustainability content of the statutory plans, especially in terms of material efficiency and social sustainability. Interestingly, the findings implied that a planner encounters little opposition from stakeholders when making decisions regarding plan content on sustainability. This study confirmed that the commitment of urban planning professionals has a significant impact on planning for livable cities of the future.