Cultural sustainability and sustainable communities initiative in developing countries evident from vietnam and indonesia

Lindeman Cultural Sustainability and Sustainable Communities Initiative in 349 Developing Countries Evidence from Vietnam and Indonesia Kien To... Cultural Sustainability and Sustaina

Gordon L Nelson Oliver Parodi (eds.)

Sustainable Development –

The Cultural Perspective

Concepts – Aspects – Examples

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Content

Preface 9

Gerhard Banse, Gordon L Nelson, Oliver Parodi

Introduction: “Culture” as a Challenge to Sustainability Research 15

Verena Holz, Barbara Muraca

Address of Welcome 27

Ulla Burchardt, MdB

Culture and Culturality 31

Approaching a Multi-faceted Concept

Robert Hauser, Gerhard Banse

1 MEANINGS OF SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT

What is Green? 53

Gordon L Nelson

Culture, Ethics and Sustainable Development 67

Medardo Tapia Uribe

Key Issues of Integrative Technology Assessment 77

Andreas Metzner-Szigeth

Sustainability Ideas in Indian Culture 109

Little Traditions and Post-modern Adaptations

Appukuttan N Damodaran

Cultural Sustainability 117

Anthropological Perspectives

Gabriele Tautscher

Considerations Regarding Cultural Differences when Operationalising 125

Sustainability on a Regional Level

Ildiko Tulbure

The Integrative Sustainability Concept of the Helmholtz Association 137

The “Risk Habitat Megacity” Project as a Case of Application

János Szlávik, Miklós Füle

Water Issues and Sustainability 177

A Cultural Aspect

Virender K Sharma

Strong Sustainability across Culture(s) 187

Barbara Muraca, Lieske Voget-Kleschin

3 SUSTAINABILITY – POLITICAL AND EDUCATIONAL IMPLICATIONS

Sustainable Culture 205

A Contrast to an Efficiency Society?!

Renate Hübner

“Personal Sustainability” – Including Body and Soul 223

The Karlsruhe School of Sustainability

Oliver Parodi

Integrating Art and Education for Sustainable Development 239

A Transdisciplinary Working Process in the Context of Culture and

Sustainability

Verena Holz

Standing on Mount Lu 251

How Economics Has Come to Dominate Our View of Culture and

Sustainability – and Why It Shouldn’t

Silja Graupe

Sustainable Development 279

An Issue of the Office of Technology Assessment at the German Bundestag

Armin Grunwald

4 CASE-STUDIES: SUSTAINABILITY – IS IT WORTH IT?

Scientific Utilization of Energy and Sustainable Economy 293

Development in China

Ge Yang

Risks of Unsustainable Technologies 309

János Szlávik, Miklós Füle

Tsunami in India’s Shorelands 321

Policy Implications of Learning Sustainability from the Victims

Appukuttan N Damodaran

Sustainability of Marine Fisheries 327

Marine Reserves, Habitat Restoration, Aquaculture and Stock

Enhancement in Florida

Jonathan M Shenker

Climate Change in Several Central and South American Ecosystems 339

Challenges and Needs for Effective Management

Eduard Müller, Kenyon C Lindeman

Cultural Sustainability and Sustainable Communities Initiative in 349

Developing Countries

Evidence from Vietnam and Indonesia

Kien To

Perspectives of Cultural Interplays in Sustainability Research 377

Caroline Y Robertson-von Trotha, Oliver Parodi, Robert Hauser

Cultural Sustainability and Sustainable Communities Initiative in Developing Countries

Evidence from Vietnam and Indonesia*

Kien To

1 Introduction

1.1 Cultural Sustainability and Sustainable Community

The term sustainable development (SD) was used by the Brundtland sion which coined what has become the most often quoted definition of SD as development that “meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs” (WCED 1987, p 16) In

Commis-2005, the United Nations World Summit confirmed its view on the key pillars of

SD by reaffirming to “promote the integration of the three components of tainable development – economic development, social development and environ-mental protection – as interdependent and mutually reinforcing pillars” (UN

sus-2005, pp 11f.) This conventional concept of sustainable development has commonly been illustrated by using three overlapping ellipses like in Figure 1 However, there has been an emerging opinion that culture is integral to sustainability, particularly with respect to community development In other words, culture can be framed as the fourth key pillar of sustainability, and cul-tural sustainability should be considered As early as 1995, UNESCO published the book “The Cultural Dimension of Development Towards a Practical Ap-proach”, in which it is stated that culture is gradually emerging out of the realm

of social sustainability and being recognized as having a separate, distinct, and integral role in sustainable development” (UNESCO 1995, p 22) Jonathan Hawkes states that culture and cultural heritage must be recognized as parallel to the respect for environment, social inclusiveness, and economic equity (Hawkes

2001, p vii) The United Nations also emphasizes on the essence of cultural versity to SD:

* This research was conducted when the author was affiliated as a Postdoctoral Researcher (a Fellow of Japan Society for the Promotion of Science) at the Department of Archi- tecture and Urban Design, Faculty of Human-Environment Studies, Kyushu University, Fukuoka, Japan

“Peace, security, stability and respect for human rights and fundamental doms, including the right to development, as well as respect for cultural diversity, are essential for achieving sustainable development and ensuring that sustainable development benefits all.” (UN 2002, p 9)

free-Figure 1: The Conventional Three-pillar Scheme of SD

Figure 2 presents a graphical model of the new and complete four-pillar scheme of SD as a four-set Venn diagram, along with a description of each re-gime of intersection

The new scheme retains the three intersections of social, economic, and

en-vironmental sustainability, described as being equitable, bearable and viable

respectively Newly emerged intersections are:

– Zone 7 (Socio-Cultural): Should be compatible, as there have been many

bad cases around the world where exotic culture conflicted with the local society

– Zone 9 (Culturo-Economic): Should be compromisable, as economic

devel-opment is often more prioritized than cultural develdevel-opment and tion, and it also often spoils local traditional cultural values (see the paradox

preserva-in Figure 9)

– Zone 10 (Culturo-Environmental): Should be durable, as the two elements

nurture each other along with the evolution of the society

– Zone 11 to 14 (intersections of three out of four dimensions): Should be

harmonizable, as these dimensions often conflict with one another and any

extreme development of one dimension without balancing with the other

two can cause an unbalanced state for all

– Zone 15 (The ultimate intersection of all the four dimensions): Should be

sustainable to achieve sustainability (see more in the case study section)

Figure 2: The New and Complete Four Pillar Scheme of SD Illustrated by

Four-Set Venn Diagram

Author’s archive

With regard to the cultural pillar specifically, cultural sustainability can be

de-fined as “the ability to retain cultural identity and to allow change to be guided

in ways that are consistent with the cultural values of a people” (SDRI 1998,

p 1) Cultural sustainability relates to a number of elements such as tangible

ele-ments (heritages, public places, public art, etc.) and intangible eleele-ments (local

lifestyle, indigenous living culture, traditional identity, etc.) The case study

sections will present more about these two elements

Sustainable community (SC) is a component of sustainable habitat and SD

in general SC relates closely to cultural sustainability, because communities

cradle, nurture, inhabit and retain cultures Like SD, the need to incorporate

culture (the fourth pillar) and creativity in SC planning to build sustainable cities

and communities should be recognized One of the important matters of SC is to

retain a vital community life Regarding this issue, Michael Brills interestingly

discusses about the problems of mistaking community life (within a

neighbor-hood) for public life (in a public space like a square or a mall), which he

be-lieves are “fundamentally different” (Brills 2001, p 48) He argues that “many

people see social relationships as either Private or Public They don’t distinguish

an important third form, Community life”, and then clarifies that “Public life is

sociability with a diversity of strangers; Community life is sociability with ple you know somewhat” Finally, Brills emphasizes:

peo-“Some of our nostalgia and mourning is not for public life at all, not for the world

of strangers; it is for something quite different, real and precious: local hood life, community, a world of neighbors and friends, the parochial realm.” (Brills 2001, p 53)

neighbor-In the case study part, we will see that the citizens at the case sites still retain tight social connection and vital community life, and they value them

Nowadays, “for the first time in history, more than half the world’s tion lives in urban areas Over 90% of urbanization is taking place in the devel-oping world” (World Bank 2011a) Therefore, the way our urban communities (particularly those in developing countries) currently develop will largely de-termine our success or failure in achieving SC as well as SD goals in the future

popula-1.2 Community Participation and SC with Focus on Developing Countries

Looking back on the history of community participation,

“although the idea of participation in building and planning can be traced to literate societies, community participation is of more recent origin It is com-monly associated with the idea of involving local people in social development The most important influences derive from the third world community develop-ment movement of the 1950s and 1960s, Western social work, and community radicalism.” (Midgley 1986, p 1)

pre-“In 1994, a new planning paradigm was declared by the United Nations Centre for Human Settlements in Nairobi, Kenya, stating that new development planning should consider community participation, involvement of all interest groups, horizontal and vertical coordination, sustainability, financial feasibility, and inter-action of physical and economic planning The declaration concluded that com-munity becomes the main agent of development because it is the community, which is directly impacted upon by development planning The new terminology

of anti-centralistic planning such as bottom-up planning, participatory planning, grass roots planning, public involvement, collaborative planning, etc., show that new development planning paradigms should open more space for the public to participate in decision making processes that affected their own lives and future.” (Widianingsih 2006, pp 72f.)

Community participation can be enabled through promoting decentralization G Shabbir Cheema and Dennis A Rondinelli propose 14 specific benefits that may accrue from decentralization (Cheema/Rondinelli 1983, pp 15f.), such as:

– Decentralization can be a means of overcoming the severe limitations of centrally controlled national planning

– Officials’ knowledge of and sensitivity to local problems and needs can be

increased

– Decentralization can lead to more flexible, innovative, and creative

admini-stration

– Decentralization allows local leaders to locate services and facilities more

effectively within communities

– Decentralization can increase political stability and national unity by giving

groups the ability to participate more directly in development

decision-making

Community participation is commonly reflected in community-based planning

(CBP), a pattern of participatory planning which focuses on community actions

and promotes community involvement in the planning process CBP comes in

many forms, from participation in local organizations to the preparation of a

community-based plan for official adoption CBP may seek to address a variety

of issues including preserving neighborhood identities, promoting affordable

housing and facilitating new development It establishes a participatory process

for mobilizing communities and planning around grassroots issues and how the

issues can relate to the broader municipal planning perspective (compilation

from “Community Based Planning Background”1)

In developing countries, CBP is rather new and SC seems to be a distant

target These countries are facing many socio-economic and political challenges

on the way toward sustainability Many people are living in the way that they

can get quick benefits in the short run, no matter how badly it affects their living

environment in the long run, especially with the vision to their future

genera-tions Thus, the environment is getting worse This is a challenge of balancing

developmental and environment priorities that most countries are facing

More-over, developing countries lack not only financial capacity, but also technology,

knowledge, expertise and experience in promoting CBP and SC Therefore, the

role of international collaboration and technology and experience transfer from

the foregoers (mainly developed countries) are very essential For instance, in

the case study sections, we can see the important role of Japan International

Cooperation Agency (JICA), Deutsche Gesellschaft für Technische

Zusammen-arbeit (GTZ) or US Aid (USAID) in transferring know-hows, knowledge and

experience to Vietnam and/or Indonesia in many collaborative development

projects in the two countries Another big issue for developing countries is the

weak urban governance

1 Community Based Planning Background eThekwini Online publication (URL: http://

www.durban.gov.za/durban/government/abms/index_html/conference/ntsiki/)

“Regulation of economic activities requires state capacity and commitments that are all too rare in developing countries Market mechanisms also hold promise to motivate more environmentally sound actions However, few developing coun-tries have the institutional conditions necessary to advance market-based strate-gies for environmental protection.” (O’Rourke 2003, pp 1f.)

Therefore, good SC initiatives in developing countries are valuable and aging, and should be explored and expanded to more communities

encour-1.3 From Theory and Concept to Practice and Initiative

In practice, urban planning is very much case-based, in contrast to the general theories introduced above Urban areas differ with respect to a number of factors such as locality, socio-cultural context, economic development level, local living culture, etc

To reflect some of the aspects of the theoretical discussion above, such as the intersection among “social”, “economic” and “cultural” pillars (see Figure 2, zone 12) in the four-pillar sustainability concept and the community participa-tion movement, the following interesting showcases in two developing coun-tries, i.e Vietnam and Indonesia, are introduced based on field surveys in recent years

2.1 Overview of CBP Issues in Vietnam

Urban planning in Vietnam has been very much top-down oriented There have been a limited number of bottom-up approaches from the community Accord-ing to the World Bank, one of the biggest sponsors for participatory planning projects in the country:

“In early 2000-s, the government started a new pilot policy to decentralize the cision-making from central to provincial level The new approach invited local beneficiaries to participate in the decision-making process and the implementa-tion of local development projects They neither knew how to participate nor had adequate capacity and experience At the same time, the mechanism for people’s participation was weak, and guidance and information to help them take part in the decision-making process were not available.” (World Bank 2011b)

de-Nevertheless, along with the course of international integration, the situation gradually changed

“In Vietnam, over two million people have escaped poverty thanks to a

bottom-up, participatory planning approach that provided small-scale infrastructure for

poor, vulnerable communes and income for local people through employment in

its construction.” (World Bank 2011b)

There are still big challenges for CBP in Vietnam

“For a long time, top-down planning was seen as the way to implement political

choices in efforts to improve living standards in Vietnam However, this led to the

development of infrastructure that failed to match community needs, largely as a

result of weak administrative capacity, a lack of transparency and accountability

in the use of public funds, the disconnect between the decision-makers and

bene-ficiaries, and the lack of project-based planning.” (O’Rourke 2003, p 2) And

“popular participation and grassroots demand for a political voice have grown,

but the country remains a one-party state, centrally driven for the most part

Al-though the country has moved forward with its decentralization framework, the

implementation is uneven.” (World Bank 2011c)

2.2 Introduction of the Case Study Site: The Old Quarter of Hanoi

Hanoi is the most ancient capital city in Southeast Asia, having celebrated its

millennium in 2010 It is the second largest city in Vietnam (after Ho Chi Minh

City) and an important socio-cultural and politico-economic center of the

coun-try Hanoi has rich traditional streetscapes and cultural heritage sites, and

com-prises a mixture of traditional settlements and new developments During its

long urban evolution, Hanoi was alternately ruled by different foreign regimes,

through which many exotic cultural elements were brought in However,

indige-nous elements have always remained and flourished, particularly in the Old

Quarter (OQ) – the root of the city This 100 ha quarter (also commonly called

“36 Old Streets” or sometimes “Ancient Quarter”) has been serving as an

ad-ministrative center, a highly dense residential area (app 660 residents/ha in late

1990’s) as well as a trade center for many centuries (To 2008, p 457; see Figure

3 and Figure 4)

With regard to cultural properties, the popular dwelling form called a “tube

house” is the most significant housing form here Additionally, there are a

num-ber of religious buildings like temples and pagodas

Although Hanoi has a long history of urban development, it is only after the

“Doi Moi” (Economic Reform) in 1986 that urbanization became remarkable,

making drastic changes in urban fabrics (see Figure 5)

“The OQ is not an exception Under rising modernization processes, many old

tube houses (especially those over 100 years old) were torn down for new

com-mercial-oriented constructions.” (To 2008, p 458; see Figure 6)

Figure 3: Map of Central Hanoi (dotted line shows the OQ)

Author’s archive

Figure 4: Panoramic View of Hang Buom Street (Formerly a Chinatown), an

East-West Arterial Busy Street during Off-Pick Hour

Author’s archive

Figure 5: Comparison of Different Factors on Hanoi before and after

Source: HAIDEP 2006

Many temples and pagodas have also been destroyed, occupied, modified, or

reconstructed Thus, it has become a pressing task to preserve, reclaim and

re-store those cultural properties (Figure 7 shows my effort for preservation

through a virtual restoration project) Therefore, the OQ was officially

recog-nized as a National Heritage site for preservation in 2004, which should be

com-pliant with the Heritage Act

The biggest challenge now is how to balance new development with the

preservation task The OQ has three dominant roles:

(1) a vibrant central business district,

(2) a very high density neighborhood and

(3) the most popular sightseeing spot in Hanoi

From the tourism industry aspect, a large part of the community gets benefits

from the industry (e.g hotels, restaurants, travel agencies, shops, etc.) Tourists

come to the OQ for both tangible and intangible properties (see Figure 8) So

tourism boosts up the need for more and better services Consequently, more

cultural properties have been invaded But this physical modernization ruins the

tangible and intangible values This is the “Preservation-Development” dilemma

in the OQ

Figure 9 shows the complexity of the dilemma from the system dynamics

viewpoint The “plus” and “minus” arrows respectively indicate the

“reinforc-ing” and “balanc“reinforc-ing” impacts In this diagram, we can see that both phenomena

that influence the strength of “traditional values”, “international integration” and

“commercialization & modernization”, are incompatible with it The diagram reflects the paradox of preservation and development happening in many touris-tic old towns like Hanoi and it is not easy to solve it

Figure 6: A Tube House Located at Gateway to the OQ (Arrow) was being

Reconstructed to Become a Restaurant (2006)

Figure 8: Traditional Values of the OQ

Author’s archive

Figure 9: Complexity of “Preservation-Development” Dilemma in the OQ from

the System Dynamics Viewpoint

Author’s archive

Figure 10 shows a comparison of schemes of all stakeholders in the OQ

preservation before 1990 and now In the past, there were three stakeholders:

The Old Quarter Management Board (OQMB) founded in 1996, ward

authori-ties, and domestic experts The community had no role in the process