The future of green capitals: exploring the European green capitals’ visions and green growth
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School of Business |
Master's thesis
Authors
Date
2023
Department
Major/Subject
Mcode
Degree programme
Management and International Business (MIB)
Language
en
Pages
78+15
Series
Abstract
Contemporary cities contribute to the major social, economic and cultural developments, but are also considered as a source of environmental problems (Newman & Kenworthy, 1989; Beatley & Manning, 1997; Hildebrand, 1999; Alberti et al., 2003; Bibri & Krogstie, 2017). The expansion of urbanization will make cities face more intensified environmental, social and economic challenges. On the one hand, cities strive to be more sustainable and greener to improve citizens’ quality of life and decrease the negative environmental impacts; on another hand, cities also need to develop and grow to spur economic growth, especially green growth, in today’s context. OECD (2011, 6) defines green growth as “Fostering economic growth and development, while ensuring that natural assets continue to provide the resources and environmental services on which our well-being relies.” Regarding urban sustainable development, the city's vision is closely linked to urban sustainable development, and it will present how cities understand the concept of sustainable development and how to apply it (Istenič and Zrnić, 2022). In this thesis, the European Green Capital Award (EGCA) is used as the lens to explore and analyze six EGCA winners’ (which include Stockholm, Copenhagen, Bristol, Nijmegen, Oslo and Lahti) city visions and how they contribute to urban sustainable development? Additionally, what kind of green growth themes have been promoted by six European Green Capitals’ (EGCs’) visions and what are the green growth drivers? This study was conducted following the qualitative research approach. An intensive case study with an embedded context, which means, six EGCs are examined to yield meaningful and practical results in the context of European urban sustainable development. All the data is secondary data which is collected directly from the EGCs’ webpages, official reports, marketing materials, cities’ annual reports, policy documents and publications. Moreover, content analysis technique is the main analysis tool. Furthermore, Leximancer concept map is also applied in the data analysis process to provide a post hoc analysis to verify the main findings. Findings of this study show that sustainable city development has deeply embedded into the city's vision. All ECGs provide specific practices and solutions regarding different sustainable issues. Each ECG has its own priorities towards urban sustainable development. Green growth as the important part of economic sustainability has been elaborated as well through ECGs’ visions. Most of the green growth drivers have been defined and illustrated through city visions.Description
Thesis advisor
Saittakari, IirisKeywords
European green capitals, city vision, sustainable development, green growth