Strategic Directions in European Sustainable City Management

Introduction

Cities have been the drivers of progress and hallmarks for advancement of human condition since the beginning of history. By defining a city as a dwelling area in which significant number of people do not produce food, but acquire it from someone else (Kagan, 2007) and relating societies generating cities to the existence of civilization as opposed to pre-civilized societies where only agricultural villages existed, one can best comprehend the importance of cities in history of humanity and its development spanning the range of tools from stone to the digital ones and community relations from slavery to welfare state, but always connected to the concept of a city. The physical enlargement of cities and growing complexity of human activities related to them, both always generated by a prosperous city community, determine the need for constant change of a city concept, upgrading of its infrastructures and changing relations among citizens.

Multi-layered global transformation of urban development has economic and institutional impact on city growth. Influence interaction has an extensive significance for inner-city processes, modifying them to a degree by which uncontrolled global market forces have a considerable role in policy formulation. Contemporary transnational urban context and its features readjust economic activities by creating a new spatial order of profound challenges. They are observed via dual sustainability paradox of both global city competition and environmental sustainability pressures (Hu, 2015). Urbanization often produces a wide range of social disparities, that need a direct mechanism to absorb and redress such underlying threats. In order to overcome these issues, centralized economy concept should be successively replaced by multiple growth dimensions. This implicates that adaptation of the economic bases cannot be the only factor to effectively develop progressive institutional and strategic urban changes. Consequently, in order to accelerate rapid growth and economic viability of modern cities, decentralized planning, reduction of government intervention in internal markets and the expansion of cross-border transactions must be implemented (Lee, 2000). According to UN post-2015 development Agenda, inclusive growth consists out of three pillars: good governance and institutions, social safety nets and high, sufficient, sustained growth (UN, 2015). Numerous summative indicators in post 2015 development Agenda reflect whole sectors outcomes, disaggregated in several dimensions so they could avoid the maze of complexity. For example, social integration and relational planning pattern redevelop global city competitiveness in a long term, incorporating well-being with new performance measures. Post-national government micro regulation movements tend to foster local sustainability, as one of the core elements for new strategic framework.

Second machine age as defined in (Brynjolfsson & McAfee, 2014) highlights the importance of information and communication technologies (ICT) in general economy and defines the nature of its influence on the changing markets and across almost all industries, where influence of machine workforce in intellectual jobs is growing, creating new possibilities for human employees, but also making some of the skills and professions obsolete. This trend in conjunction with other dynamic changes in society and economy create a broad framework for city growth and development in 21st century. Dynamics of changes, imperative of economic growth and social prosperity place cities, more than ever, in focus of idea exchanges among scholars, but also politicians, entrepreneurs and general public.