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6. Sustainability in Developing and Developed Countries by Dania González Couret1

In the late 1980s sustainable development was assumed to be an attempt “without alternative” for the survival of humankind, facing the ecological crisis. Hence, the concept had an ecological origin, but it had to be extended to other life spheres, besides the ecological one. That is why talking about “sustainability dimensions” is very common today, and it has been the main conceptual evolution during these last fifteen years. A divided world Most authors refer to ecological, economical and social dimensions of sustainability, and in this order of evolution. Other dimensions discussed by some authors are, for example, cultural or technological. Nevertheless, it is generally recognised that sustainable development should mean environmental safety, economical viability and social fairness.

But the world we live is not homogenous. On the contrary, deep differences and contradictions are its main feature, since a few countries were developed using the “charge capacity” (resources exploitation and pollution) of the rest of the world. The ways to do that has been varying accord-ing to the times: first by the colonisation process, then, after independence, exploiting the “neo-colonies” (as a result of the economical dependency), and currently, continued exploitation thanks to the neo-liberal globalisation process.

The result is a world divided into developed countries (which have developed on the basis of a non-sustainable model), and the so called “developing” countries, which are supposed to be deve-loping without controlling their own resources. They lack access to technologies for such deve-lopment and have huge external debts in a world lead by the few developed countries. Sustainability for the rich As a result of the “development” achieved, these developed countries, mainly located in Europe or North America, have less social problems than developing countries have. Population living standards are higher. Generally people have jobs and, thus, they have a stable income to feed the family. That is why basic survival needs such as food, housing, education and health care are solved for people in those countries.

Under such conditions it is possible to have others worrying about the environment: about how to live more harmoniously with nature, how to promote one’s health, whether to bike more or eat vegetarian food, use renewable energies, or perhaps abstain from polluting construction materi-als. In order to have a healthier house, better food, renewable energy, appropriate technology, or environmental-friendly transportation, you first need to have house or food or energy or techno-logy or transportation at all, and above all, to have health and to be alive.

As a consequence of this argument – despite the fact that Sustainable Development should be based on the integration of three dimensions – a lot of attention can be given to ecological prob-lems in the developed world, wile developing countries need to give priority to social and eco-nomical dimensions, in order to survive. At the same time it is true that anything that happens in any part of the earth will in some way or another affect the whole planet.

1 Dania González Couret is an Architect Professor at the Instituto Superior Politécnico José Antonio Echeverria, Havana, Cuba, and a member of the Executive Committee of ARC•PEACE.

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Interior of the ecological housing experi-ment Gårdsåkra in Eslöv, Sweden, designed by Peter Broberg and built at the beginning of the 1980s. The unit is provided with solar heating and heat pumps.

The first phase of the 7,000 apartment development area Hammarby Sjöstad in Stockholm, Sweden, built from the year 2000 until 2010. Here car pools and advanced waste separation is practiced, as well as local treatment of water and biogas production.

Failure of the modernist model The urbanisation process, which gained momentum during the 20th Century, brought about the extension of the cities beyond their traditional boundaries. Planning was mainly based on the open Modern Urban Model and the creation of “satellite” cities. This model, which attempted to solve the massive housing problem based on industrialised construction in tall buildings, also tried to develop more hygienic and healthy urban conditions by using less land.

This urban model, including “zoning” and satellite cities, were only possible thanks to the extensive use of the automobile and the highways, which created new problems. However, this unsustainable solution, inspired by the “productivity model”, was exported to the rest of the world, including developing countries.

When it came to solving the massive housing problem, the modernist model did not work. In the developed countries people rejected the open urbanism of the new peripheral areas, its mono-tony and lack of identity. So, these neighbourhoods were abandoned and occupied by the lower income sectors, mainly immigrants in Europe or the poor black people in North America.

The Modern Model also failed in the developing countries, but the reasons were different. The new neighbourhoods, developed for low-income people, were ultimately not accessible to them, but to the middle class. The lack of housing for the poorest was increasing and a new urban phe-nomenon appeared: spontaneous and illegal settlements. The informal city is unsustainable After the initial surprise, the new phenomenon was assimilated. Some professionals, such as John F. Turner, discovered its “poetry” and charm, while others used it as an example of the potentia-lities of poor people to solve their own habitat problems. Is was a god pretext for the neo-liberals to stop subsidising social housing and talk about the change in the role of the Government as a simple enabler in the social housing process. Even the name was changed: from “social housing” to “housing of social interest”. Reference was made to two basic models: “site and services” and “upgrading”.

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In unplanned areas of Kampala, Uganda infra-structural services such as piped water, rain water drainage and solid waste collection are missing. Are these settlements sustainable?

The so called “informal city”, made by people themselves, in a spontaneous way, or based on a site-and-service plan, promotes low density because of the managing process and the land tenure, that stimulate the individual, isolated, to build one story housing. In many developing countries this problem is not only characteristic of low income urban housing areas, but also of higher social classes, which develop extensive and exclusive urban areas that generates land use index and densities even lower than the poorest people do.

The main consequence of these practices is the extension of the city in an unsustainable way, killing potential land for cultivation. Such development also requires more infrastructural faci-lities, and produce longer distances and thereby long transportation demands. On the other hand, the new neighbourhoods (the poorest as well as the richest) are often characterised by tall untran-sparent walls dividing private space of the plot from the public space of the street, where some-times there is no pedestrian path, such as in most of the rich neighbourhoods, in which it is unthinkable for a human being to step out of the car and walk along the street, covered by the trees, in touch with natural non-conditioned air.

This is the “anti-city”, where walking on the streets or squares and human contact or social interaction are discouraged. This practiced measures to protect against violence generates, at the same time, more violence. What to do? While developed countries, mainly in Europe, are aware of the need to take as much advantage as possible of land by increasing densities, the poorest countries experience dilapidation of this valuable resource. Many factors contribute to this result in developing countries: the lack of urban plans for the informal city, the weak urban and housing management process, the land tenure system, the urban violence, and the lack of awareness.

It is very difficult to solve this problem, because it does not only depend on scarcity of resour-ces (which is not always is true)2, but also, and mainly, on the unequal distribution generated by

2 It is sometimes said that developing countries are richer than developed ones, because of their human and natural resources, but in order to exploit these resources, technology is necessary and this technology is controlled by the developed world.

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the social and economical system. However, some actions could be carried out by architects and planners to promote more sustainable urban solutions in the developing world.

New urban areas should be integrally planned. Mixing different income groups in a proper plan, as Geoffrey Payne suggests and promotes3, could bring about a lot of advantages, such as cross-subsidies and social interaction.

Based on an economically sustainable approach, the city should be self-financed. This means that financing of urban development and infrastructure should be found in one’s own city. Higher income people should pay for development and infrastructure for all, including the low-income population, who cannot usually do that.

Another advantage of social mixture come from the fact that low-income people may be offered jobs by the rich. Thus jobs may be found in one’s own neighbourhoods, at short, perhaps pedestrian, distance from home (which saves time, transportation and energy). At the same time, higher class people can employ people they know from their own neighbourhood. This kind of city is more similar to the traditional city than the one developed today. It is also more active during day and night. Social interaction could be useful when promoting culture and education for all.

To achieve higher densities by a more intensive land use, the managing process should change form the individual initiative to a more collective way, which promotes new building typologies based on multifamily and multi-storey solutions, instead of the isolated and individual housing prevailing today. The tenure system should be changed from individual ownership to a collective or co-operative one.

These are important principles in order to make cities in developing countries more sustain-able from the social and economical point of view, but also from the ecological one, because to make a better land use implies to save non-renewable resources, to reduce infrastructure and transportation distances.

Other recommendations, used in the developed world, are applicable also to human settle-ments in developing countries. For example, the promotion of green urban spaces, preferably combined with urban agriculture and using permaculture techniques, will produce edible landscapes. Despite the fact that food as a basic need has not been completely solved in such countries, urban agriculture should be assimilated as a new healthy practice and not only as a emergency solution to get food. It implies changes in lifestyles, which should be conscious and not just temporarily imposed by the circumstances4.

Concerning urban transportation, cleaner, healthier, less polluting, low or renewable energy solutions are more difficult to achieve in developing countries, because of technological and economical reasons. Human and animal energy, such as bikes are good accessible options, but it also means to change lifestyles (time and education) for those who have followed the Western model5.

Similar situations could be found concerning energy. Clean or renewable energies need new technologies. Despite the fact that renewable energies are democratic, equal for all6, the techno-logy to exploit these resources are controlled by powerful enterprises. Solution available for developing countries could be based on traditional or at least, improved technologies, which are small scale, less productive and generally more effort-demanding.

3 This well-known architect in low income housing issues promotes this approaches. See “UrbanProjects Manual” Liverpool University Press, 2000. 4 Urban agriculture was reborn in Cuba during the economical crisis of the 1990s. Some experiences have survived, but others disappeared as soon as the provision of food in the markets improved. 5 For those developing countries, which employ models based on the extensive use of the automobile, it is very diffi-cult to develop towards a sustainable transportation system. 6 See Turrini, Enrico: Energía y Democracia, Cubasolar, La Habana, 2000.

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Beside the need for awareness about the importance of these practices recycling also requires investment in technology and a social system organised to guarantee its maintenance. This inclu-des not only urban wastes, but also other important resources such as water, or even buildings themselves, which should be designed to be recycled at the end of their life.

In developing countries building technologies are sometimes solutions “without alternative”, instead of “alternative solutions”. The desire to use healthy, non-polluting materials, is not always possible to achieve, because there is no option. Low-energy technologies are, on the contrary, often used because of the cheap labour available, but the low energy technology used is not always clean.

Architectural and urban bioclimatic design, that does not need an additional investment, is not commonly used in developing countries. It is, however, an important way to save energy and achieve more appropriate built environment. One reason (among others) to explain this pheno-menon could be the intention to look “developed”, following the paradigms imposed by deve-loped countries. Conclusions To proceed towards a more sustainable world is an unavoidable goal in order for the planet to survive, but the way to follow is different for developing countries than for developed ones. To build a more sustainable world implies important ethic changes, which are more difficult to achieve than the technological and social ones, and are even harder in developing countries.

In order to change lifestyles in a conscious way – not temporarily imposed by the circumstan-ces – basic survival problems should be solved. Since we live in a global word where the conse-quences of punctual actions affect the whole system in one way or another, developed should help the developing countries to a more sustainable world, starting with the basic unsolved needs such as food, shelter, health and education. Only in that way, can the dream become possible to fulfil.