Green structure and sustainability - developing a tool for local planning

Local authorities face a great challenge in translating officially announce d sustainability commitments into everyday management practices. With the o bjective of developing a tool for supporting such goal-to-practice translat ion processes, three primary tool criteria were formulated, and used to dev elop a guide on how to apply the tool. Subsequently, the tool was applied a nd evaluated in an interactive study involving the local authority of a Dan ish municipality. The first tool criterion concerns the organisation of the translation process. It states that in order to obtain a clear understandi ng of the unique local conditions, the tool shall be able to act as a bridg e between different disciplines, and allow for direct collaboration between experts with context-independent knowledge and local administrators with c ontext-dependent knowledge. The second criterion concerns the identificatio n of sustainable management strategies. It states that the tool shall secur e a thorough two-sided analysis of society's claims on one side, and on the other ride the ability of available resources to meet these claims in a su stainable way. The third criterion concerns the distribution of the results of the analysing phase. It states that in order to support dialogue and de cision making across professional and societal boundaries, the identified c laims and resources as well as the associated obstacles shall be presented in simple and preferably visual overviews. In testing the tool we focused o n the ability of the municipality's urban green structure (the resource) to contribute to sustainable management of organic waste, surface runoff and biodiversity (the claims). Based on the outcome of the test, and an intervi ew survey with the participating local administrators, it is concluded that the tool criteria are sound. This is despite the fact that the test of the tool was not applied in full accordance with the tool guidelines. It is an ticipated that the application of this tool can increase the speed and exte nt with which local authorities absorb and employ the concepts of sustainab le development in their everyday management and planning tasks. (C) 2000 El sevier Science B.V. Ail rights reserved.