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Urban sustainability in theinformation age1

Manuel Castells

What is sustainability? A city orecosystem, or complex structureof any kind, is sustainable if its

conditions of production do not destroyover time the conditions of its reproduc-tion. It’s a simple, almost purely logicalformula, but it has all kinds of implications.In more practical terms, a sustainable cityis one in which the conditions under whichI live make it possible that my children andthe children of my children will live underthe same conditions. It’s a very personalmatter. It’s not an abstract utopian ideol-ogy. It’s maybe difficult to reach but themeaning is extremely precise and it goes tothe heart of our own blood and flesh.

Sustainability, therefore, to some extentin broader sociological and political terms,can be defined as intergenerational sol-idarity. In more analytical terms, in TheInformation Age I have tried to put forwardthe notion that sustainability implies thefight for control over space and the fightfor control over time.

Over space, how what I have called thespace of places, that is a space of experienceand a space where people organize their lives,may retain its autonomy and its meaningindependently from the evolution anddynamics of the space of flows where mostdominant functions and power are orga-nized. So it is a defence of the place versus theflows, not necessarily to eliminate the spaceof flows or to eliminate its function but toavoid it taking over the meaning, the func-tion, the autonomy, ultimately the politicalcapacity of decision making in the space ofplaces.

It is also a struggle over the meaning oftime. I have characterized a new category oftime, a new construction of time in theinformation age, in terms of the dominantfunctions as the effort to create what I calltimeless time, that is the annihilation of time,like reducing the turnover of capital world-wide to the minimum possible. Thereforetime can eliminate time. Or, in a differentsense, you don’t necessarily have to eliminatetime but you may desequence time. Thismeans that there’s no tradition, there’s noth-ing, there’s simply moments and a hugepiecemeal patchwork of different sensations,feelings, images like in most of the video clipsthat populate our imagination.

In contradiction to timeless time, I haveproposed that the environmental movementis organized on the notion of what Lash andUrry (1994) conceptualized as glacial time.Glacial time is the slow motion of time inwhich nature and the planet and the specieslive. Glacial time means that I measure mytime, not only in my life span, but in terms ofwhat my species and nature evolve towardsand that is very slow motion time, slow fromour point of view of course, of little ants inone particular moment of the planet’s life.This cosmological consciousness is not toodifferent from the religious experience. It’s aconnection. It is the materiality of spiritualitywhich is looking at what is going on overtime and not just in terms of my own interestbut in terms of the children of my childrenand solidarity with nature at large.

So glacial time is the idea that we, to someextent, as a collectivity, may be eternal. Thisis in opposition to the idea that we are

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nothing, that we are an explosion in aninstant in which everything, all our savingsmay disappear or appear, that our collage ofimages has to be consumed immediatelybecause it’s going to disappear in two min-utes. Enjoy, enjoy, enjoy because it’s gone.This cultural battle, which is a fundamentalcultural battle, undermines the notion ofsustainability.

The implications of this view, however,would be that sustainability is somewhatstatic, or conservative in terms of the con-cept. Conservative is not necessarily bad. Theproblem in conservative parties is that theywant to conserve the bad things and not thegood things, but to conserve in general is notsuch a bad thing. But this may not be aproblem necessarily for the natural environ-ment but for cities. It’s not necessarily asatisfactory concept because we don’t wantto conserve some of the things that happen incities, so therefore we would need a conceptof dynamic sustainability which is bothconservation and improvement leading to anenhanced quality of life including socialjustice (so that what is sought as sustainableis not only given by the expansion of humanneeds and aspirations). I would propose thevery simple, very obvious idea that theconcept of sustainability for cities should benot simply the conservation or the preserva-tion of the conditions of the reproduction ofwhat it is, but an expanded reproduction, ifyou wish, that addresses the issues of the newaspirations and corrections of illnesses ofcities as they are today. Otherwise we wouldbe absolutely static. So it’s obvious, but Iwant to emphasize it because otherwise thehomology between environmental sustain-ability and cities’ sustainability would betricky.

How does sustainability manifest itselftoday in cities and in the information age? Iwould try to emphasize some aspects forthree different dimensions, economic, socialand ecological. Economic sustainability forcities in the information age means the abilityto generate wealth and resources and, for themoment, as the planet is now entirely capital-

ist and will be so for the foreseeable future, italso means the ability to create wealth byincreasing productivity and increasing com-petitiveness of the city in a market environ-ment. The economic sustainability of citiesdepends fundamentally on two character-istics, on two features. One, connectivity,that is being in the networks and everythingthat means in terms not only of infra-structure but ability to link up etc. etc. And,second, to have a stock, and a renewal of thatstock, of human resources capable of creatingadded value in the information economy.

In social terms, I think the critical issue forthe sustainable city in the expanded versionthat I propose has several subdimensions thatI will simply enumerate. One is the ability toacknowledge plural identities which willincreasingly characterize our cities andbridge them over. Acknowledge and createbridges. If you simply acknowledge but letthem separate we go into the tribal communesystem that I’m very concerned about. Butyou cannot bridge them if you deny them. Soit is the two things together —acknowledgeand bridge.

Second, avoiding social exclusion. Activepolicies to avoid social exclusion, becausesocial exclusion is not a necessity in theinformation economy and in the new net-work in society, but it is embedded in thelogic of the system. The system is highlydynamic and highly selective, links up, con-nects to a network what is valuable and thisdisconnects from the network what is notvaluable. This requires correction. So thesystem can be very dynamic and very pro-ductive and very creative if it is, at the sametime, constantly corrected to reconnect onother grounds, on other criteria what hasbeen expelled from the dynamic elements ofthe system. To be not necessarily assisted butreorganized, let’s say, humanly recycled, ifyou want. I propose the notion of humanrecycling.

The third element is the ability to make co-operation and competition compatiblewithin society. That is the idea that we are ina competitive society, and that is not neces-

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sarily bad, but the task is to bridge these twoelements which are at the source of adynamic notion of urban progress.

Fourth, a deliberate policy of social mobi-lization against structural violence. Our cit-ies, all cities, are generating violence at thispoint, even when crime goes down. I’m notonly talking about crime, I’m talking aboutviolence, I’m talking about interpersonalaggressiveness, I’m talking about a sub-stantial proportion of people quite ready toblow up things because they cannot take itany longer. Of course, a city which is notable to tame violence is not sustainable.Retrenchment in protected, secluded com-munities, in walled communities, as it ishappening in many countries in differentforms, ends urban life. In the USA, it hasalways the advantage, particularly in Cal-ifornia, which is a libertarian society with norules, and therefore no one is ashamed ofanything (which is exactly the contrary ofpuritan England), and people say: ‘Okay, wedon’t like poor, we don’t like blacks, wedon’t like Hispanics, so we retrench’, and thepeople who say so, then they buy, they investtheir savings in retrenching themselves inwalled communities with machine guns andelectrified gates. That’s the fastest growingsegment of Californian real estate today. Butmy argument is that many other cities in theworld are doing the same thing in a lessopenly cynical way. So that’s one way to fightagainst violence, look at the implications:neo-tribalism, starting from the top.

The fifth dimension of social sustainabilityis sustainable governments. What happenswhen governments are unable to do some-thing in an age in which identities are pluraland flows of information and power areglobal and certainly are not controlled by thegovernment, what happens then? When thecurrent situation in which local and regionalgovernments are kept powerless by centralgovernments, and at the same time centralgovernments are powerless themselves, it’snot sustainable. On the one hand it’s paraly-sis; on the other hand it’s powerlessness. Soclearly sustainability here is major effort of

decentralization of power and resources, notbecause this is going to make local andregional governments more powerful, but it’sgoing to produce two things: greateraccountability and possible control of whathappens; and, second, much greater flex-ibility in the process of endless negotiation,adaptation and restructuring in the relation-ship between government, economy andsociety.

Ecological sustainability, that is the thirddimension, meaning the fight against theapparently irreversible deterioration of theenvironment and of the quality of life. Thisincludes the idea of nature in the city—whatdoes it mean? It includes also the idea offighting against the end of meaning of thelocalized space, the meaninglessness of space,which is a major challenge. These endless,endless suburbs, absolutely undifferentiated,which unfortunately is not any more just anAmerican feature, areas of the central citywhich all look alike, such as the massgeneration of post-modern buildings. All thisis in fact the faking of everything—andtherefore the losing of singularity, of identity,meaninglessness in spatial forms andprocesses.

I think the main issue in ecological terms,including in ecological terms not just nature,not just quality of life in general, but againmeaning, the meaning of a space in relation tothe emergence of a form that I have called,with many other people, mega cities, that isan idea which is not simply a matter of scale.It is an idea of an agglomeration of activitiesand population which doesn’t have begin-ning or end, which doesn’t have internalstructures, a juxtaposition of a number ofurban nuclei which are destructured from theinside, that are unstructured in their relation-ships. In addition, this collapse of the publicsector in many societies leads to the increas-ing of the piece-meal nature of this urbanconstellation, because there is no co-ordina-tion, no authority, no public responsibility.

Size by itself is not the matter. You canhave 10 million people together and yet nocity. Or we have to redefine what we used to

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understand by city, not the medieval citynotion of Max Weber. Santa Monica insouthern California is a city today. Butaround Santa Monica and beyond, in the SanFernando Valley, in San Bernardino County,this is not a city. No one knows where he orshe lives, no one knows what’s going on, noone knows where one place ends and anotherstarts, it’s a wide constellation of people andactivities scattered around the space andmaking individual exchanges from here tothere. Cities are not so sure to survive, so themain problem for urban sustainability is thesustainability of the notion of city in itself.

So, in a nutshell, it’s possible to attackthese negative processes, so we reinforce thesocial trends and economic trends that arepushing for sustainability. Strategic and flex-ible planning. Old-fashioned city andregional planning, although more flexible andstrategic and less master-planned. It’s still notonly a necessity but an absolute necessity. Sothe idea that planning has gone with theSoviet Union is simply not understandingwhat the Soviet Union was about: it wasabout planning and something else.

Second, environmental sustainabilityincludes a systematic ecological filtering ofall economic strategies. By ecological filter-ing, I mean that no one makes an investmentwithout some serious cost–benefit analysis.Environmental sustainability means that thisvariable is part of the business plan ofanything and of any economic strategy(which is not exactly what in ‘the business’ iscalled environmental impact assessment).

Third, the idea of monumentality, mon-umentality in cities, but not as the centralmonuments of the eternal values, but as themeaningful signs of people’s life, and in thissense the Barcelona planning practice is trulyinnovative because everyone can make a nicemonument here and there, but what Barce-lona has been doing is systematically goinginto the peripheral neighbourhoods in thepoorest sections of the city and creatingsquares and little statues and little aestheticgames. I generally hate most of them, and sodo most of the neighbours, but that’s not the

issue. We are very culturally conservative,but the idea is that you bring art, design,squares, parks to what Barcelona calls thenew peripheral centrality. Peripheral central-ity, that is the centrality of each peripheryuntil the point that you regroup the mean-ingful structure of the city.

Renewed citizen participation: here the netand telematic instruments could really help,not substitute for, but help considerably thedevelopment of grass roots democracy andinteractive democracy in real time.

In an issue of City, there is a wonderfularticle by Graham and Aurigi (1997) on thesetelematic networks and citizen participationalso, etc. etc., with two cases, Iperbole inBologna, and the Digital city in Amsterdam,and I knew about the digital city, but hisarticle got me even more interested. Recentlythey invited me to Amsterdam to discussnetworks. I spent the day with the peoplewho are doing digital cities and it’s really awonderful programme in terms of the rela-tionship to the citizens, how they connect,how they organize themselves, how it inter-acts, the digital city and the real city, in a verymeaningful way with all kinds of politicalpay-offs.

The one thing I didn’t know and got mereally enthusiastic was about the cultural andhistorical meaning of the digital city project.I spent several hours with the two womenwho are the leaders of the project, in chargeof the project, and we had dinner in thebuilding where their headquarters organiza-tion is, which is the old building in Amster-dam called the Waag, which was, in the 16thcentury, the building that closed the entranceto the canals that go into Amsterdam. In thatbuilding, and it’s symbolic, was where theforbidden experiments on anatomy lessonson dead bodies were being done. There is oneroom in that building, on the top of thebuilding, where Rembrandt’s painting TheAnatomy Lesson was painted. That preciseroom is now the headquarters of the digitalcity. These women were at the same timeamong the leaders of the 1970s squatters’movement in Amsterdam, the New Market

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struggles. They were telling me, you know,it’s a continuity. Rembrandt, the squattersmovement, the digital city, it’s a continuity. Ithink it’s a great example of how grass rootspolitics with citizen participation can interactin the information age.

Local governments, I think, are criticalelements in re-establishing the legitimacy andefficiency of the democratic state. We shouldnot give up on the idea of a democratic statebecause that’s all we have. But it has to beshifted, not that the nation state is going todisappear, not that the European Union’sgoing to disappear, but there has to be ashifting of the emphasis increasingly towardslocal government.

And then, finally, the criterion to know ifwe are constructing sustainable cities is whathappens to children. For me, the greatesttragedy of the current information age is that,when you look at the data, as I unfortunatelyhad to go through them, what happens tochildren in the world in general, not only inpoor countries, but also in advanced coun-tries, and in terms of the actual conditions ofliving, is terrifying. All these potentials ofcreativity, all the world possibilities created,have to be contrasted with what is happeningto the life of children, and you see exactlywhat we are doing. Because that’s how we areconstructing the information age, throughour children. So the idea of a city that is safefor children, fun for children, open to chil-dren, is where you could build most legiti-

macy, and at the same time the most vitalityof life, because then we start thinking con-cretely about what makes a city safe, fun,interesting and dynamic for the children.

So, what is a sustainable city? A sustain-able city is a city which will allow Molly,who is seven, to grow up happy.2

Notes

1 This is a transcript of a lecture at the ‘Sustainabilityand the Information City’ conference at UniversityCollege, London (see report following).

2 Molly was the only child at the conference. Thetheme of children in cities is taken up in the lastparagraph of the following report. It is also theconcern of a chapter in Vol. 2 of The InformationAge.

References

Graham, S. and Aurigi, A. (1997) ‘An urbanisingcyberspace? The nature and potential of the virtualcities movement’, City 7, pp. 18–38.

Lash, S. and Urry, J. (1994) Economics of Signs andSpace. London: Sage.

Manuel Castells is Professor of Sociology atthe University of California, Berkeley. Asecond edition of Vols I and III of TheInformation Age is to be published by Black-well in June 2000.