Five of Europe's Most Interesting Urbanism Trends

Cities around the continent are taking steps to reimagine transportation, housing, and energy use with intriguing projects that could provide useful lessons for American cities.

2 minute read

June 25, 2021, 6:00 AM PDT

By Diana Ionescu @aworkoffiction


Germany

A.Savin / Wikimedia Commons

In a guest essay in Volts, Michael Eliason highlights five "intriguing and powerful" European urbanism trends that hold useful lessons for the Biden administration. These include:

  • Brownfield redevelopment: Cities all over Europe are turning brownfields into dense, livable, eco-friendly neighborhoods that take advantage of existing land and discourage sprawl. "Citizen participation is also a major component of these projects. Unlike in the US, this participation isn’t a wasteful exercise whereby local homeowners get to block new homes and preserve the status quo. Rather, these processes allow residents to have a say in what their new district can look like, where things should be located, and what kinds of open space or car-free areas it will have."
  • Diversity in housing options: Unlike the largely single-family zoning found in many U.S. cities, "cities like Berlin, Vienna, and Freiburg have proactive land policies for non-market housing like social housing, cooperatives, and baugruppen. They award sites to projects incorporating sustainability, affordability, or other innovations." Meanwhile, social housing plays a major role in Europe; a quarter of Dutch housing is social housing, and Paris is aiming for 30% social housing by 2030.
  • Rapid transformation: City leaders are working to expedite projects and take "rapid, productive steps" to implement plans that seek to transform cities, improve livability, and reduce environmental impacts. In a reversal of U.S. NIMBYism, some cities are embracing change as a positive constant. "Rotterdam is never finished," goes a slogan in the Dutch city. "Quality of life is always improving."
  • Productive cities: The concept promotes a sort of radical mixed-use that brings production into the heart of the city. Production, Eliason writes, "can include urban agriculture, energy production, food production/processes, recycling centers, or any of the small-scale production processes that constitute industry 4.0." As Eliason asserts, "[p]roductive cities mark a return to the way cities developed centuries ago, but with significantly less pollution and safety hazard."
  • Circular economy: The European parliament's Circular Economy Action Plan lays out concrete steps "to reduce waste, empower consumers, change food systems, and make sustainable products the norm."

Wednesday, June 16, 2021 in Volts

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