Institutions for more sustainable cities: eco-efficiency and equity improvements for better environmental management

Along with the rapid urbanization of growing populations and the affluence of consumer society, the goal of sustainable development becomes a core challenge of managing highly urbanized cities. The N-shaped EKC implies that Korean cities have recently failed to prevent the occurrence of the second turning point where increasing generation of waste began to accompany rising income. The cross-sectional comparison of household income shows that well-off households generate more waste compared to those with fewer resources. The construction projects of large-scale facilities are not designed to the appropriate scale of industrial ecosystems for small players. Market failures put constraints on the function of the markets for recyclables and recycled products. The adversarial politics of authoritarian technocrats in favor of capital creates a structural barrier to democratic deliberation for sustainable development. An efficiency-oriented, single-medium approach manages the risks of waste by diverting it, and also aggravates a steady increase in waste generation. The success of sustainable cities depends on a shift in both prevailing paradigms and institutional arrangements. Focusing on the criticality of inducive and deliberative institutions, this research recommends the institutions conducive to eco-efficiency and equity improvements for the better environmental management of sustainable cities. As a lowest effective unit for addressing the sustainability issues, cities need to redefine the appropriate scale for resource-circulating symbiosis, and to dispose of waste close to its source according to the proximity principle. The responsibilities of stakeholders must be proportionate to the waste generation for which they are accountable. For the purpose of affecting the scattered choices that are individually small but cumulatively very large, user involvement can be improved by fine-tuning the policy mix according to the characteristics of corresponding target stakeholders. Procedural participation cannot always work as an easy panacea for equity problems in environmental decision-making, and must move further forward to deliberative democracy. The complementarity based on the subsidiarity principle can guide partnerships among different levels of government, the private sector, civil society and other stakeholders. The upper-level governments need to foster local pilot initiatives by subsidizing and nurturing their transboundary benefits. Finally, as cities are required to fulfill their overall authority and responsibility to their full potential, decentralized governance in its early stage should be oriented toward a substantial process of transferring powers and resources, as well as responsibilities and functions, to local tiers of government and enhancing intermunicipal cooperation.Ph.D.Includes bibliographical referencesIncludes vitaby Seong-Jai Ki