Two European Green Capitals : Nantes & Bristol

TWO EUROPEAN GREEN CAPITALS: NANTES & BRISTOL

RONAN PHILIPPOT (ERASMUS)

INTRODUCTION My essay seeks to examine two European Green Capitals; Nantes and Bristol. It’s important to know that the European Green Capital Award was set up to reward cities achieving high environmental standards and encourages them to commit to further environmental improvement and sustainable development. The prize recognises a city's environmental performance across a set of twelve indicators covering everything from transportation and energy performance to air quality. The winning city has to demonstrate a vision for the future which inspire others cities to take similar action. And it needs to be a replicable model, promoting best practice to all other European cities. The benefit for the winning city is manifold. Not only it attracts inward investment and visitors to the city, but it reinforces its reputation as a leading sustainable city in Europe. For each European Green Capitals, I will first quickly present the city and its context. Secondly, I will show the specificities of those cities. And thirdly, I will explain why they are cities in the vanguard of sustainable development.

NANTES 2013

EUROPEAN

GREEN

CAPITAL

Source 1: http://archicharrette.tumblr.com/post/84536656755

QUICK PRESENTATION OF THE CITY Nantes is the France’s sixth largest city with a metropolitan population of some 600 000 inhabitants with a predicted growth to 700 000 by 2030. It’s also France’s third city for employment. Its urban area is 534.9km² which includes 24 municipalities. 15% of residents use the transport system daily and Nantes has an ambitious

Climate Action Plan to reduce CO2 emissions by 30% per capita by 2020 in three sectors: residential, transport and tertiary (baseline 2003). Nantes was known as the ‘Venice of the West’ until the 1930s, when major works put an end to flooding and created new transport infrastructures. The city is located on the confluence of the Loire, Erdre and Sèvre rivers, 55km from the Atlantic coast, and forms the core of the urban area of Greater Nantes. The arrival of the fast ‘TGV’ train, putting Nantes just two hours from Paris, helped the city’s renaissance in the 1980s.

SPECIFICITIES OF THE CITY PUBLIC PARTICIPATION Above all, policy-making is based on citizen and stakeholder involvement. At every step of the way, the people of Nantes are consulted, in order to generate a collective spirit, and to empower them to feel they can make a difference in improving their urban environment and living standards. This applies equally to public ownership of the preparations for 2013, with local associations and enterprises taking part through calls for projects and demonstrations of good practice. This is ‘le jeu à la Nantaise’ – a term derived from the local football team, but now widely adopted to signify a collective approach embodying intelligence, simplicity, determination and savoir faire – an approach which successfully reaches its ‘goals’!

PUBLIC SERVICES In Nantes, 25% of accommodation is social housing. A high density of public services and utilities, including good-quality transport, energy and waste management, enables the population to live more sustainably, whatever their income. Services are designed to encourage social solidarity – with communal family gardens, collective composting, and community heating systems using renewable energy. Environmental protection, improving air and water quality and safeguarding green spaces, increases the enjoyment of life for all.

DYNAMIC GROWTH Nantes is a very dynamic city. The population of the metropolitan area grew by 100 000 over the last 20 years, ranking Greater Nantes as the sixth biggest French city with 600 000 residents. The same trend is forecast over the next 20 years, with up to 100 000 more people. The challenge is therefore to guarantee both the quality of life and sustainable land use. Maintaining balanced development between nature and the city means fighting urban sprawl. To this end, Greater Nantes has worked on integrated policies, and housing policy is coordinated with transport policy. An ambitious transport network already allows 15% of commuters to use public transport daily.

GREENSPACES, BIODIVERSITY AND NATURE The Loire, France’s longest river, crosses Nantes, and connects the city to the Atlantic port of Saint- Nazaire. Through the years, it has played a fundamental role in the city’s history and evolution, and in forging its character. Where once shipyards and docks dominated the waterfront, industrial change means that the people of Nantes have been able to re-appropriate the river for their own use: building new communities and protecting and restoring the special ecosystems of the Loire estuary. The estuary is a unique environment, where citizens can connect directly with their territory and see and ‘feel’ it in a new way. The waterways, wetlands, parks and agricultural land that make up Greater Nantes put green and blue spaces at the heart of the urban area.

Nantes is blessed with a variety of natural environments, such as wetlands and forests, which extend into the city itself. As Nantes transforms itself from an industrial city to an ecometropolis, its policy of uniting the town with its rivers and countryside – the blue and the green – is centred on preserving this ecological heritage. The number of green and blue spaces has grown over the last decade. There is 57m² of green space per person and everyone lives within 300m of a green area in the city. There is also 100 000 trees in the city and 60% of natural and agricultural areas.

VOYAGE À NANTES The Voyage à Nantes (Journey to Nantes) is a framework for grouping the metropolis’ tourist attractions and developing high-quality, environmentally friendly tourism and cultural services. Nantes offers plenty to see and do: Les Machines de l’île, the Castle of the Dukes of Brittany, the memorial to the abolition of slavery, the Loire estuary, a selection of restaurants to suit all tastes … The Journey to Nantes grew out of the idea that bringing these elements together and mapping a coherent 8.5km itinerary would make the city even more attractive, not only for visitors but also for residents eager to get to know their environment better.

A CITY IN THE VANGUARD OF SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT Nantes has established its green credentials over time. As industry declined towards the end of the 20th century, city decision-makers had the prescience to look towards another kind of urban model. “Because we anticipated and planned over the last 20 years, Nantes is now the kind of city that attracts people,” says former Mayor Jean-Marc Ayrault who has been French prime minister between 2012 and 2014.

GREATER NANTES’ CLIMATE ACTION PLAN Globally, 70% of greenhouse gas emissions come from urban areas. Nantes has made reducing its contribution to climate change a strategic priority. Greater Nantes’ council unanimously adopted the territorial Climate Action Plan in 2007. The objective is to go beyond the EU’s energy and climate package and the Covenant of Mayors’ targets, to cut emissions by 30% per capita by 2020 (baseline 2003) for three sectors: residential, transport and tertiary. It also comprises adaptation measures to limit the threat of damage from climate change.

TRANSPORT Transport is playing a vital role in Nantes’ commitments to lowering carbon dioxide emissions and evolving a better quality of life for its citizens. Nantes was the first French city successfully to reintroduce electric tramways. Closed in 1958, the Tramway network reopened in 1985 and today covers 42km – making it one of the longest in France– and facilitates some 65 million passenger journeys a year. However, overall, Nantes’ inhabitants make some 2 million journeys a day – 15% of them by public transport. So to encourage more of its citizens to leave the car at home, Nantes is progressively introducing new, high-quality public transport infrastructure.

BETTER BUSES Launched in 2006, the Busway is one such innovation. The Busway uses dedicated bus lanes and has right of way over normal traffic at junctions – thus it combines the speed of a dedicated tramline with the lower cost of a bus system. With 15 stations spread over 7km, the Busway carries over 25 000 passengers a day and complements the 72 standard bus routes that link the municipalities of Greater Nantes. The latest project is the Chronobus – a next-generation public transport system which builds on the Busway concept with structural alterations such as road widening and roundabouts that will guarantee rapid journey times between the city

centre and its surrounding suburbs. With four lines launched in 2012 and a further six planned, the Chronobus will carry some 100 000 passengers a day and more than double the size of Nantes’ transport network.

SUSTAINABLE MOBILITY Nantes’ objectives for a better and cleaner transport network are set out in the Urban Mobility Plan for the metropolitan region. The 2010-2015 plan, with targets for 2030, aims for a harmonious balance between the private car and other, greener means of getting around the city and region: on foot, on a bicycle, on a bus. It also incorporates into the mix solutions such as car-pooling, car-sharing through the ‘marguerite’ service, park and ride, river transport, self-service cycling and experiments with folding bikes, taking sustainable mobility as a global objective.

The plan sets out a wide-ranging strategy around four axes: to organise a city of ‘short distances’ by encouraging better spatial balance between work, home, shops and leisure; to coordinate public transport modes to link these activities more efficiently; to create high-quality public spaces that favour pedestrians and cyclists; and to encourage and guide environmentally friendly changes in the way people choose to move around the city.

AN ISLAND OF VISION FOR THE CITY Nantes is developing old industrial sites in the city centre using state-of-the-art principles for a sustainable urban ecology, which combines energy-efficient housing with green spaces and leisure facilities to accommodate its growing population. The Île de Nantes is an island in the River Loire, at the core of the city. Originally the western end was home to the port and shipyards, but these activities have moved further downriver to the mouth of the Loire, leaving behind an industrial brownfield site available for new and innovative sustainable and environmentally friendly uses.

GREEN PASSPORT To encourage eco-tourism in particular, Nantes is a partner in the ‘Green Passport’, a tool for promoting hotels, inns, campsites and restaurants that pursue sustainable practices. The authorities are working with the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) as well as the region/department of Loire-Atlantic and local bodies, including the Chamber of Commerce and Industry and other stakeholders. The partners sign a charter committing themselves to the principles of sustainable tourism.

BRISTOL 2015

EUROPEAN GREEN

CAPITAL

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QUICK PRESENTATION OF THE CITY Bristol is located in South West England and has a population of 441,300 (2011). It is England’s sixth and the United Kingdom’s eighth most populous city. As well as being an efficient city with a growing green economy, Bristol is the UK’s greenest city, easily accessible with very good air quality. It has doubled the number of cyclists in recent years and is committed to doubling this number again by 2020. "I've always seen Bristol as the best opportunity this country has to produce an exemplar medium-sized city," said George Ferguson, the mayor of Bristol.

SPECIFICITIES OF THE CITY CULTURE AND CREATIVE INDUSTRIES Bristol is long known as a hub for creative industries, social entrepreneurs and ethical organisations. One of Ferguson’s first acts as mayor was to create Make Sundays Special, when the city centre is turned into a trafficfree zone for street performers, comedy shows, puppet shows and circus acts. As 2015 draws closer, residents can expect Bristol's home grown arts industry to play a role in helping Bristol communicate green issues. One project will involve Shaun the Sheep, a favourite creation of Bristol based Aardman Animations, the team behind Wallace and Grommit.

TRANSPORT On public transport Bristol has some catching up to do but on cycling Bristol is the Bradley Wiggins of UK municipalities, rapidly catching up with the pioneers of northern Europe on walking and cycling, leading the UK peloton to a wholesale and dramatic change over the next 10 years. Congestion and journey times are down in central Bristol but there is yet more to be done to enable the “critical mass” of Bristol people to feel happy and able to leave the car at home. Already the city has the highest number of cyclists of all England's major cities – more than Birmingham and Manchester combined. The city doubled the number between 2001 and 2011 to 16,000, and the mayor intends to repeat the trick, doubling it again by 2020.

GREEN URBAN AREAS, NATURE AND BIODIVERSITY Bristol’s Climate Planning work has been mainstreamed into planning policy. Bristol’s Core Strategy is one of the greenest in the UK. Policy has and continues to be implemented through Development Management and the Parks and Green Spaces Strategy. Widespread citizen involvement has ranged from Parks Groups to informing the Local Plan. The city has now a greener urban environment and new developments that provide a high quality of life. However the pressure of meeting people’s housing needs will be challenging particularly as the cost of developing brownfield land increases. Bristol’s green infrastructure network has embedded wildlife corridors right at the heart of planning, policy and local decision making. Despite a rise in Bristol’s population by 10% in the last 10 years the city has maintained the amount and proportion of protected wildlife space and achieved a small increase. The Bristol Natural History Consortium’s partnership work has created an explosion of events and communications about wildlife that have made Bristol the leading UK city to replicate with its “Bioblitz” model of events now in 37 other local authority areas. Furthermore, Bristol plans to invest over £40m in public green space improvements by 2028 and to plant 10,000 trees across the city by 2015.

Source 3: http://bristolgreencapital.org/wpcontent/themes/bgcthemeV2/report-cards/green-urbanareas.pdf

Source 4: http://bristolgreencapital.org/wpcontent/themes/bgcthemeV2/report-cards/naturebiodiversity.pdf

A CITY IN THE VANGUARD OF SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT TRANSPORT PLAN The European Green Capital Award comes with no cash payout, and yet there is a commitment to invest £420m for transport schemes by 2015 includes targets to increase cycling by 76% by 2016, bus use by 11% by 2016 and rail use by 41% by 2019. The city plans to continue investment in Public transport, Greater Bristol Metro Rail Project, Rapid Transit Major schemes and completing the Greater Bristol Bus Network and to integrated a smartcard ticketing.

ECO-INNOVATION AND SUSTAINABLE EMPLOYMENT The technical judges praised our partnership working with universities, businesses and communities and singled out the city council’s Sustainable Procurement Strategy - a green procurement role model for other councils seeking to integrate EU legislation into their activities to save costs and carbon. The Local Enterprise Partnership (LEP), which is the overall economic development body for the area, has established a strategic framework of job creation and inward investment that focuses on the low carbon economy and sustainable growth, including a 80ha Local Enterprise Zone in the heart of Bristol that is being designed as a carbon neutral business district. In turn, it is hoped that 17,000 new jobs will be generated in the new Bristol Quarter Enterprise Zone across low carbon, creative and digital industries by 2030.

ENERGY PERFORMANCE In the last 10 years Bristol City’s population has grown by 10%, the value of its economy has grown by 40%. However a twin track approach on energy use by Bristol City Council and grassroots and community action has led to CO2 emissions cut 28% in Municipal Buildings; Citizens’ homes becoming over 25% more efficient and a 15-fold increase in local renewable generation. Bristol was also the one of the first in the UK to make a major investment in wind power – two turbines in the Avonmouth Port area will from next month start generating electricity – enough, eventually, to power about 2,500 households. Some projects are planned to achieve more change. BCC is creating a municipal energy services company to deliver an investment programme of energy efficiency and renewable energy by 2020. With £2.2m assistance from the European Investment Bank’s European Local Energy Assistance programme, funded via DG Energy this will develop, secure investment and procure an initial £140 programme by 2015, extending to £300m by 2020. There is also a £50 million investment in municipal buildings and operations including £14m of biomass, wind and solar; £10m energy efficiency in public buildings; and five small district networks using council buildings as anchors. Moreover, Bristol will invest £400m for transport schemes by 2015 and up to £200M by 2020 for domestic energy use and integrated renewables including advice, £52m of external wall insulation to 46 apartment blocksa and up to £10m for new boiler systems and solar thermal for council housing, and a smart metering pilot projects in municipal housing.

THE WORLD ENVIRONMENT FORUM To cap off its year as European Green Capital, the George Ferguson wants Bristol to play host to the first ever World Environment Forum, cast in a similar mold to the economic summit in Davos, but with the health of the planet on the agenda of visiting mayors, political leaders and businesses. "It is really, really important that what we do is transferable, and that we harness this opportunity to create an on-going step change for the city" he continues. "Am I looking to inspire other cities? The whole point is to inspire other cities. I want people to be looking at Bristol to see how we grew into a city that is worthy of the title, and to share the benefits."

CONCLUSION To conclude, Nantes gained its highest mark for its local contribution to combating climate change. The city also secured good scores on the nature and biodiversity, air quality, noise pollution and waste production and management criteria. The European Green Capital Award judges praised its “pioneering transport achievements” over the last 10 years, including the new tram system, quality bus schemes, bike rental and carsharing facilities. In 2009, Nantes beat 57 other cities to secure the Civitas ‘City of the Year’ award in recognition of its transport policies. For its part, Bristol impressed the Jury with its investment plans for transport and energy. The city has committed a budget of €500m for transport improvements by 2015 and up to €300m for energy efficiency and renewable energy by 2020 (this includes a confirmed €100m ELENA investment in renewable energy). Carbon emissions have consistently reduced in Bristol since 2005, despite a growing economy. Bristol has the ambition of becoming a European hub for low-carbon industry with a target of 17,000 new jobs in creative, digital and low carbon sectors by 2030. Bristol demonstrated 4.7% growth in the green economy in 2012. Bristol was also chosen partly because of its injection of a "sense of fun" into environmental causes, as well as its record as a green economy innovator.

REFERENCES Nantes Métropole (2013). Nantes, Capital Verte in Le Journal de la Communauté Urbaine de Nantes n°43. Nantes Métropole (2013). Nantes, Capital Verte de l’Europe 2013. www.nantesgreencapital.fr. Nantes Métropole (2012). Nantes European Green Capital 2013. Publications Office of the European Union. Report Cards on Bristolgreencapital.org Will Henley (2013). Bristol revels in role as a green European capital. The Guardian.