Barriers to Creating Sustainable Cities - as seen by FARN in Argentina

Governance of sustainable cities faces a set of barriers and obstacles. In Argentina, among other problems, the following can be mentioned: 1) Lack of a clear legal framework in the distribution and coordination of jurisdiction for the formulation and implementation of environmental legislation. The scenery of environmental policy in Argentina comprises a group of national, provincial and local bodies, whose jurisdiction is overlapped in many cases. This generates great uncertainty at the moment of formulating and implementing legislation and environmental policy. 2) Existence of inadequate coordination among different areas of the same level of government (horizontal coordination). 3) Citizens' difficulty in participating effectively in decision-making processes. 4) Citizens' difficulty in having access to public information.   Further information about barriers to sustainable cities in South America: Issues to take into account when creating sustainable development strategies at the municipal level include: The functions fulfilled by the local government in the process; The most important deficit indicators; The sectors which at different scales influence the process; The functions and modes of action that characterize the public and private sectors; The urban dynamics that affect local government management; The structural limits that have to be faced by local development in the short and medium term, including the natural and environmental limits; and. Identification of global phenomenon's affecting local development, and the strategic role that could be played by the local government in the implementation of social and economic development plans. Ciudades Medianas y Gestion Urbana en America Latina Naciones Unida Comision Economica Para America Latina y el Caribe-CEPAL. pg.20-21. "Most citizens in urban areas in Africa, Asia, and Latina America find it difficult to share the global environmental concerns of the North. Questions of survival 20 or more years into the future have little relevance to those concerned with survival today." "It may be misleading to refer to many of the most pressing environmental problems in Third World cities as "environmental" since they arise not from some particular shortage of an environmental resource but from economic or political factors which prevent poorer groups from obtaining them and from organizing to demand them." "Sustainable Cities: meeting needs, reducing resource use and recycling, re-use and reclamation." Environment and Urbanization. Volume 4 Number 2 October 1992. pg.6-7

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