Pub Date : 2024-07-18DOI: 10.1038/s44284-024-00094-w
Yongting Shen, Qiliang Wang, Lin Lu, Hongxing Yang
Developing green buildings with high indoor air quality (IAQ) and low energy consumption is essential for urban decarbonization. However, achieving this objective remains challenging because maintaining high IAQ requires frequent ventilation for the timely removal of human-exhaled carbon dioxide (CO2), inevitably resulting in substantial air-conditioning energy demand. One emerging solution is indoor CO2 capture (ICC) technology comprising a CO2 capture device and a heating, ventilation and air-conditioning system to directly capture indoor CO2 and recirculate the treated CO2-lean air to minimize the demand for ventilation. In this Review, we describe the recent progress in leveraging ICC technology to achieve CO2 removal, high IAQ and energy savings in urban buildings. We provide an overview of the fundamental working principles of representative ICC methods and summarize the strategies that can enhance the capture capacity and moisture tolerance of ICC systems for improved indoor adaptability. Furthermore, we describe the energy-saving potential of ICC and its correlation with city climates. Finally, we identify the remaining technical, political and social challenges and provide future directions to promote the widespread implementation of ICC technologies to fortify the climate resilience and sustainability of cities. This Review makes the case for enhancing indoor air quality through indoor CO2 capture and describes how technological advances in materials and chemistry enabled these improvements. New constructions or retrofitting buildings would allow these advances to be implemented to improve CO2 capture.
{"title":"Recent progress in indoor CO2 capture for urban decarbonization","authors":"Yongting Shen, Qiliang Wang, Lin Lu, Hongxing Yang","doi":"10.1038/s44284-024-00094-w","DOIUrl":"10.1038/s44284-024-00094-w","url":null,"abstract":"Developing green buildings with high indoor air quality (IAQ) and low energy consumption is essential for urban decarbonization. However, achieving this objective remains challenging because maintaining high IAQ requires frequent ventilation for the timely removal of human-exhaled carbon dioxide (CO2), inevitably resulting in substantial air-conditioning energy demand. One emerging solution is indoor CO2 capture (ICC) technology comprising a CO2 capture device and a heating, ventilation and air-conditioning system to directly capture indoor CO2 and recirculate the treated CO2-lean air to minimize the demand for ventilation. In this Review, we describe the recent progress in leveraging ICC technology to achieve CO2 removal, high IAQ and energy savings in urban buildings. We provide an overview of the fundamental working principles of representative ICC methods and summarize the strategies that can enhance the capture capacity and moisture tolerance of ICC systems for improved indoor adaptability. Furthermore, we describe the energy-saving potential of ICC and its correlation with city climates. Finally, we identify the remaining technical, political and social challenges and provide future directions to promote the widespread implementation of ICC technologies to fortify the climate resilience and sustainability of cities. This Review makes the case for enhancing indoor air quality through indoor CO2 capture and describes how technological advances in materials and chemistry enabled these improvements. New constructions or retrofitting buildings would allow these advances to be implemented to improve CO2 capture.","PeriodicalId":501700,"journal":{"name":"Nature Cities","volume":"1 8","pages":"501-511"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2024-07-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141825932","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2024-07-17DOI: 10.1038/s44284-024-00092-y
The rural land covers that surround a city can mitigate the urban heat island effect for the entire city. In addition, specific rural locations and proposed landscape design strategies can maximize the potential for urban heat mitigation.
{"title":"Neighboring rural areas provide cities with ‘green clothes’ that reduce urban heat islands","authors":"","doi":"10.1038/s44284-024-00092-y","DOIUrl":"10.1038/s44284-024-00092-y","url":null,"abstract":"The rural land covers that surround a city can mitigate the urban heat island effect for the entire city. In addition, specific rural locations and proposed landscape design strategies can maximize the potential for urban heat mitigation.","PeriodicalId":501700,"journal":{"name":"Nature Cities","volume":"1 8","pages":"499-500"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2024-07-17","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141831042","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2024-07-12DOI: 10.1038/s44284-024-00101-0
Michele Acuto, Daniel Pejic, Sombol Mokhles, Benjamin Leffel, David Gordon, Ricardo Martinez, Sayel Cortes, Cathy Oke
{"title":"Publisher Correction: What three decades of city networks tell us about city diplomacy’s potential for climate action","authors":"Michele Acuto, Daniel Pejic, Sombol Mokhles, Benjamin Leffel, David Gordon, Ricardo Martinez, Sayel Cortes, Cathy Oke","doi":"10.1038/s44284-024-00101-0","DOIUrl":"10.1038/s44284-024-00101-0","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":501700,"journal":{"name":"Nature Cities","volume":"1 8","pages":"533-533"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2024-07-12","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.nature.com/articles/s44284-024-00101-0.pdf","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141968535","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Globally, the deteriorating Urban Heat Island (UHI) effect poses a significant threat to human health and undermines ecosystem stability. UHI mitigation strategies have been investigated and utilized extensively within cities by the provision of green, blue or gray infrastructures. However, urban land is precious and limited for these interventions, making it challenging to address this issue. Neighboring rural land cover may serve as a cooling source and have a great potential to mitigate UHI through processes such as heat absorption and circulation. This study aims to address the following questions: (1) what is the location of neighboring rural land cover to effectively mitigate UHI for the entire city and (2) what are the key parameters of the landscape. We investigated the quantitative and qualitative relationships between rural land cover and UHI, drawing on geographical and environmental data from 30 Chinese cities between 2000 and 2020. We found that the rural land cover extending outward from the urban boundary, approximately half of the equivalent diameter of city, had the most pronounced impact on UHI mitigation. The number and adjacency of landscape patches (a patch is a homogeneous and nonlinear basic unit of a landscape pattern, distinct from its surroundings) emerged as two key factors in mitigating UHI, with their individual potential to reduce UHI by up to 0.5 °C. The proposed recommendations were to avoid fragmentation and enhance shape complexity and distribution uniformity of patches. This work opens new avenues for addressing high-temperature urban catastrophes from a rural perspective, which may also promote coordinated development between urban and rural areas. This study considers how urban heat islands are affected by rural regions neighboring cities, which may be a source of cooling for city centers. An analysis of 30 Chinese cities from 2000 to 2020 makes advances in defining urban–rural boundaries and specifying the importance of maintaining diverse, rich, dense rural land cover to mitigate urban heat.
{"title":"Mitigating urban heat island through neighboring rural land cover","authors":"Miao Yang, Chen Ren, Haorui Wang, Junqi Wang, Zhuangbo Feng, Prashant Kumar, Fariborz Haghighat, Shi-Jie Cao","doi":"10.1038/s44284-024-00091-z","DOIUrl":"10.1038/s44284-024-00091-z","url":null,"abstract":"Globally, the deteriorating Urban Heat Island (UHI) effect poses a significant threat to human health and undermines ecosystem stability. UHI mitigation strategies have been investigated and utilized extensively within cities by the provision of green, blue or gray infrastructures. However, urban land is precious and limited for these interventions, making it challenging to address this issue. Neighboring rural land cover may serve as a cooling source and have a great potential to mitigate UHI through processes such as heat absorption and circulation. This study aims to address the following questions: (1) what is the location of neighboring rural land cover to effectively mitigate UHI for the entire city and (2) what are the key parameters of the landscape. We investigated the quantitative and qualitative relationships between rural land cover and UHI, drawing on geographical and environmental data from 30 Chinese cities between 2000 and 2020. We found that the rural land cover extending outward from the urban boundary, approximately half of the equivalent diameter of city, had the most pronounced impact on UHI mitigation. The number and adjacency of landscape patches (a patch is a homogeneous and nonlinear basic unit of a landscape pattern, distinct from its surroundings) emerged as two key factors in mitigating UHI, with their individual potential to reduce UHI by up to 0.5 °C. The proposed recommendations were to avoid fragmentation and enhance shape complexity and distribution uniformity of patches. This work opens new avenues for addressing high-temperature urban catastrophes from a rural perspective, which may also promote coordinated development between urban and rural areas. This study considers how urban heat islands are affected by rural regions neighboring cities, which may be a source of cooling for city centers. An analysis of 30 Chinese cities from 2000 to 2020 makes advances in defining urban–rural boundaries and specifying the importance of maintaining diverse, rich, dense rural land cover to mitigate urban heat.","PeriodicalId":501700,"journal":{"name":"Nature Cities","volume":"1 8","pages":"522-532"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2024-07-05","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.nature.com/articles/s44284-024-00091-z.pdf","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141674545","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2024-07-01DOI: 10.1038/s44284-024-00090-0
The forms and functions of our cities sustain us in many ways. They also deeply impact the air we breathe and the climate we experience, suggesting the value of cities working individually and collectively to help mitigate air pollution and climate change.
{"title":"City lines and city skies","authors":"","doi":"10.1038/s44284-024-00090-0","DOIUrl":"10.1038/s44284-024-00090-0","url":null,"abstract":"The forms and functions of our cities sustain us in many ways. They also deeply impact the air we breathe and the climate we experience, suggesting the value of cities working individually and collectively to help mitigate air pollution and climate change.","PeriodicalId":501700,"journal":{"name":"Nature Cities","volume":"1 7","pages":"447-447"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2024-07-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.nature.com/articles/s44284-024-00090-0.pdf","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141500511","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2024-07-01DOI: 10.1038/s44284-024-00085-x
Anna Zhelnina
Historical preservation of buildings can entail a preservation of the whole skyline. Anna Zhelnina tells the story of Saint Petersburg’s ‘city defenders’ and their mobilization.
{"title":"Safeguarding Saint Petersburg’s Skyline","authors":"Anna Zhelnina","doi":"10.1038/s44284-024-00085-x","DOIUrl":"10.1038/s44284-024-00085-x","url":null,"abstract":"Historical preservation of buildings can entail a preservation of the whole skyline. Anna Zhelnina tells the story of Saint Petersburg’s ‘city defenders’ and their mobilization.","PeriodicalId":501700,"journal":{"name":"Nature Cities","volume":"1 7","pages":"490-490"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2024-07-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141500477","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2024-07-01DOI: 10.1038/s44284-024-00089-7
Sebastián Villamizar Santamaría
{"title":"Social and spatial mobility opportunities provided by small cities","authors":"Sebastián Villamizar Santamaría","doi":"10.1038/s44284-024-00089-7","DOIUrl":"10.1038/s44284-024-00089-7","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":501700,"journal":{"name":"Nature Cities","volume":"1 7","pages":"448-448"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2024-07-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141500518","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2024-06-27DOI: 10.1038/s44284-024-00088-8
Chengqi Xia, Heran Zheng, Jing Meng, Yuli Shan, Xi Liang, Jin Li, Zihua Yin, Minggu Chen, Pengfei Du, Can Wang
Outsourced carbon mitigation between cities means that some cities benefit from the carbon mitigation efforts of other cities more than their own. This problem conceals the recognition of cities’ mitigation contributions. Here we quantify local and outsourced carbon mitigation levels from 2012 to 2017 and identified ‘outsourced mitigation beneficiaries’ relying on outsourced efforts more than their own among 309 Chinese cities by using a city-level input–output model. It found that the share of outsourced emissions rose from 78.6% to 81.9% during this period. In particular, 240 cities (77.7%) were outsourced mitigation beneficiaries, of which 65 were strong beneficiaries (their local carbon emissions still grew) and 175 cities were weak beneficiaries (with larger outsourced mitigation efforts than local mitigation efforts). Strong beneficiaries were often industrializing cities with more agriculture and light manufacturing, focusing on local economic growth. In contrast, weak beneficiaries were mainly at the downstream of supply chains with services and high-tech manufacturing, which have stronger connections with upstream heavy industry cities. The findings suggest the need for policies to manage outsourced mitigation of supply chains and encourage transformation, improving the fair acknowledgment of cities’ carbon mitigation efforts. This study identifies the phenomenon of outsourced carbon mitigation in Chinese cities. It found that about 78% of these cities outsource their carbon mitigation efforts in varying degrees, which affects the way carbon mitigation policies should work.
{"title":"Outsourced carbon mitigation efforts of Chinese cities from 2012 to 2017","authors":"Chengqi Xia, Heran Zheng, Jing Meng, Yuli Shan, Xi Liang, Jin Li, Zihua Yin, Minggu Chen, Pengfei Du, Can Wang","doi":"10.1038/s44284-024-00088-8","DOIUrl":"10.1038/s44284-024-00088-8","url":null,"abstract":"Outsourced carbon mitigation between cities means that some cities benefit from the carbon mitigation efforts of other cities more than their own. This problem conceals the recognition of cities’ mitigation contributions. Here we quantify local and outsourced carbon mitigation levels from 2012 to 2017 and identified ‘outsourced mitigation beneficiaries’ relying on outsourced efforts more than their own among 309 Chinese cities by using a city-level input–output model. It found that the share of outsourced emissions rose from 78.6% to 81.9% during this period. In particular, 240 cities (77.7%) were outsourced mitigation beneficiaries, of which 65 were strong beneficiaries (their local carbon emissions still grew) and 175 cities were weak beneficiaries (with larger outsourced mitigation efforts than local mitigation efforts). Strong beneficiaries were often industrializing cities with more agriculture and light manufacturing, focusing on local economic growth. In contrast, weak beneficiaries were mainly at the downstream of supply chains with services and high-tech manufacturing, which have stronger connections with upstream heavy industry cities. The findings suggest the need for policies to manage outsourced mitigation of supply chains and encourage transformation, improving the fair acknowledgment of cities’ carbon mitigation efforts. This study identifies the phenomenon of outsourced carbon mitigation in Chinese cities. It found that about 78% of these cities outsource their carbon mitigation efforts in varying degrees, which affects the way carbon mitigation policies should work.","PeriodicalId":501700,"journal":{"name":"Nature Cities","volume":"1 7","pages":"480-488"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2024-06-27","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.nature.com/articles/s44284-024-00088-8.pdf","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141500522","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2024-06-26DOI: 10.1038/s44284-024-00083-z
Andrea Cattaneo, Serkan Girgin, Rolf de By, Theresa McMenomy, Andrew Nelson, Sara Vaz
Urban centers are pivotal in shaping societies, yet a systematic global analysis of how countries are organized around multiple urban centers is lacking. We enhance understanding by delineating city–regions worldwide, classifying over 30,000 urban centers into four tiers—town, small, intermediate and large city—based on population size and mapping their catchment areas based on travel time, differentiating between primary and secondary city–regions. Here we identify 1,403 primary city–regions employing a 3 h travel time cutoff and increasing to 4,210 with a 1 h cutoff, which is more indicative of commuting times. Our findings reveal substantial interconnectedness among urban centers and with their surrounding areas, with 3.2 billion people having physical access to multiple tiers within an hour and 4.7 billion within 3 h. Notably, among people living in or closest to towns or small cities, twice as many have easier access to intermediate than to large cities, underscoring intermediate cities’ crucial role in connecting surrounding populations. This systematic identification of city–regions globally uncovers diverse organizational patterns across urban tiers, influenced by geography, level of development and infrastructure, offering a valuable spatial dataset for regional planning, economic development and resource management. This study uncovers the surprising interconnectedness of urban centers globally, finding that 3.2 billion individuals can access multiple urban tiers ranging from towns to large cities within an hour’s travel. It particularly emphasizes the strategic importance of intermediate cities in linking various urban and rural areas, crucial for effective regional development.
{"title":"Worldwide delineation of multi-tier city–regions","authors":"Andrea Cattaneo, Serkan Girgin, Rolf de By, Theresa McMenomy, Andrew Nelson, Sara Vaz","doi":"10.1038/s44284-024-00083-z","DOIUrl":"10.1038/s44284-024-00083-z","url":null,"abstract":"Urban centers are pivotal in shaping societies, yet a systematic global analysis of how countries are organized around multiple urban centers is lacking. We enhance understanding by delineating city–regions worldwide, classifying over 30,000 urban centers into four tiers—town, small, intermediate and large city—based on population size and mapping their catchment areas based on travel time, differentiating between primary and secondary city–regions. Here we identify 1,403 primary city–regions employing a 3 h travel time cutoff and increasing to 4,210 with a 1 h cutoff, which is more indicative of commuting times. Our findings reveal substantial interconnectedness among urban centers and with their surrounding areas, with 3.2 billion people having physical access to multiple tiers within an hour and 4.7 billion within 3 h. Notably, among people living in or closest to towns or small cities, twice as many have easier access to intermediate than to large cities, underscoring intermediate cities’ crucial role in connecting surrounding populations. This systematic identification of city–regions globally uncovers diverse organizational patterns across urban tiers, influenced by geography, level of development and infrastructure, offering a valuable spatial dataset for regional planning, economic development and resource management. This study uncovers the surprising interconnectedness of urban centers globally, finding that 3.2 billion individuals can access multiple urban tiers ranging from towns to large cities within an hour’s travel. It particularly emphasizes the strategic importance of intermediate cities in linking various urban and rural areas, crucial for effective regional development.","PeriodicalId":501700,"journal":{"name":"Nature Cities","volume":"1 7","pages":"469-479"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2024-06-26","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.nature.com/articles/s44284-024-00083-z.pdf","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141500478","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2024-06-26DOI: 10.1038/s44284-024-00087-9
We uncovered the degree of interconnectedness of urban centres globally, finding that 3.2 billion individuals can access multiple urban tiers ranging from towns to large cities within an hour of travel. These findings emphasize the strategic importance of intermediate cities in linking various urban and rural areas, which is crucial for effective regional development.
{"title":"Access to multiple urban centres is now the norm for billions","authors":"","doi":"10.1038/s44284-024-00087-9","DOIUrl":"10.1038/s44284-024-00087-9","url":null,"abstract":"We uncovered the degree of interconnectedness of urban centres globally, finding that 3.2 billion individuals can access multiple urban tiers ranging from towns to large cities within an hour of travel. These findings emphasize the strategic importance of intermediate cities in linking various urban and rural areas, which is crucial for effective regional development.","PeriodicalId":501700,"journal":{"name":"Nature Cities","volume":"1 7","pages":"449-450"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2024-06-26","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141500519","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
京公网安备 11010802042870号
京ICP备2023020795号-1
扫码关注我们
求助内容：
应助结果提醒方式：