SPARTACUS – System for Planning and Research in Towns and Cities for Urban Sustainability

Abstract

SPARTACUS is a research and development project within the Environment and Climate Programme of the Fourth Framework Programme of the EC. It belongs under the theme, Human dimensions of environmental change whose main aim is to improve the basis of policies and actions in support of sustainable development in the EU. The project has been funded by DG XII of the European Commission and domestic authorities in Finland, Spain and Italy.

SPARTACUS (System for Planning and Research in Towns and Cities for Urban Sustainability) is a strategic urban planning system based on a state-of-the-art land use / transport model (MEPLAN) combined with a set of urban sustainability indicators, the GIS based Raster method to calculate values for some of the indicators, the MEPLUS database and presentation module as well as the decision support tool (USE-IT). The USE-IT module is used for evaluating the results of policy options based on weighted indicator values representing social, environmental and economic effects of the policies.

SPARTACUS Summary of Final Report

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The SPARTACUS system has been used for assessing options for urban sustainability policies in a systematic way in three cities, Helsinki, Bilbao and Naples. Almost 70 policy elements and their combinations have been analysed. The policy elements represent different pricing, regulatory as well as land use, transport planning and investment measures. Based on the results, policies have been defined comprising several promising policy elements. Combinations of the above policies have also been defined and analysed.

The results show that the level of sustainability can be increased in the test cities in a cost-effective way by using a variety of policies, especially pricing and regulatory policies and their combinations. Negative side effects of individual policies can be mitigated by combining policies and innovative policy combinations can be found.

Recommendations based on the above studies have been given for sustainable urban policies and future research.