City and Environment Interactions最新文献

In response to the adverse consequences of urbanisation, including the production of over 70% of global emissions and the increase in social inequalities, cities have set ambitious missions to devise a set of innovative solutions in their transition to a circular economy. This exploratory research examines the conditions that should be met for such missions to trigger the development of an innovative system that could support cities in such a transition. While several studies have been conducted on the narrative of the circular economy as a 'way of doing', this article adopts the circular economy as a 'way of thinking'. To further explore the conceptual diversity of the circular economy, this article uses rapid ethnography as a method in the context of a Dutch region by pursuing a circular mission. The results highlight that a mission alone is not enough to create an innovative and inclusive system as the underlying narrative lacks congruence; this, thus, suggests that the circular economy may not be the most compelling narrative for the mission of cities toward a more sustainable development.

Urban sustainability and urban resilience are at the forefront of current urban studies since cities play a crucial role in sustainability and climate-related transformations. Hungarian cities face almost the same challenges regarding climate change as their European counterparts; however, their considerable socio-economic sensitivity makes them highly vulnerable. This study aims to comparatively analyze urban sustainability and heatwave vulnerability in the case of Hungarian cities by applying a mixed approach - min–max feature scaling and fuzzy method. In order to reveal the hidden relationships between the highly interconnected aspects of sustainability and vulnerability dimensions, min–max feature scaling and fuzzy logic have been applied. The selected set of indicators encompasses statistical data regarding socio-economic aspects, moreover as relevant climate change and environmental issues, namely heatwave duration predictions and imperviousness density. The applied fuzzy logic approach reveals interdependencies between the analyzed aspects and maps spatial characteristics regarding the evaluated cities. Applying the min–max feature scaling method shows high sustainability scores regarding Budapest and Western regions, while overall vulnerability performances were lower in cities from less developed regions. However, the applied fuzzy methodology contributes to defining more homogenous performances by distinguishing only two sustainability categories and reducing variability in the case of heatwave vulnerability.

Eco-industrial parks (EIP) are an organization of businesses grouped around material needs and outputs. Functional synergies need to be formed that benefit both or multiple companies in these grouped organizations. Such synergies may be in the form of sharing resources, materials, infrastructure, information, or industrial ecology principles in the form of one entity using the by-product of another entity as input. There are environmental, economic as well as societal gains to be realized through eco-industrial parks. A meta-analysis was conducted to assess EIP success to date, as well as to report experienced advantages of EIPs in practice. Many EIP projects failed to come to fruition or have transformed and fallen back on traditional industrial practices. Close examination of such cases provides valuable lessons for future EIP projects and provides insight into why eco-industrial parks have historically high failure rates in the United States. The study offers a summary and critical analysis of success factors for EIP development (e.g., geographic requirements, stakeholder involvement and dedication, community involvement, and regulatory system/agency support). In addition, the strategies and methods for future success of eco-industrial parks (e.g., agent-based modeling, optimization modeling, non-competitive waste stream selection) are discussed. Agent-based modeling can identify true costs and benefits and enable monitoring of EIPs during their operation. Use of optimization techniques may be applied to overcome the complexity of multi-objective mathematical models aiming to balance the needs of multiple firms and multiple resources being allocated among them. Non-competitive waste streams can alleviate various social concerns between firms in an EIP conglomerate, due to reduced competition and mutual benefit such as re-utilizing waste that is traditional expensive to eliminate, reducing disposal costs, and raw material sourcing costs.

Because biogas systems may take many forms, utilizing different feedstock and finding different end uses for the biogas, it is becomes difficult to produce explanations, inferences, and conclusions about biogas systems in general, which is why concepts for specific types of biogas systems are needed. This paper introduces the concept of the Nordic biogas model, an urban waste-based biogas system where biogas is upgraded to biomethane and used as transport fuel and the digestate applied as biofertilizer on farmland. The Nordic biogas model has three functions, namely, renewable transport fuel production, waste management service, and biofertilizer production that all bring secondary and tertiary positive societal effects, such as reduced climate gas emissions and productivity benefits to industry. This has implications for environmental and sustainability assessment of the Nordic biogas model as the multi-functionality must be considered when choosing reference scenarios, system boundary, and indicators to use within assessments. Finally, the paper discusses policy recommendations for supporting the implementation of the Nordic biogas model. Such policy should respect the multi-functionality of the Nordic biogas model by creating coherent policy mixes that neither neglect nor over-compensate for the multi-functionality of the Nordic biogas model.

The research paper provides an assessment of spatial differences of vulnerability levels for the population Moscow to possible natural and man-made hazards, taking into account the actual population size and aspects of its intraday spatial movement. In addition to official statistical sources, we used data of mobile operators, which made it possible to characterize the localization of subscribers at a certain point in time with the maximal degree of reliability. Thus, it helped us to significantly correct and clarify the current concepts of the population in Moscow. According to the cluster analysis’ results, the potentially most vulnerable areas of Moscow were identified, and grouped into six types. The cluster analysis and typology were based on the characteristics of the density of the existing population, the regime of population fluctuations and the deviation of population indicators from the data of official statistics. In order to man-made risk assessment consideration of sanitary protection zones (SPZ) of industrial and utility facilities of the city have been added to the idea of ​​the population vulnerability. The results of the study show the inconsistency of existing approaches to risk assessment based on official social statistics. The paper also first presents the typology of urban areas of Moscow, which sheds light on the main features of its spatial structure in the context of potential vulnerability of citizens to natural and man-made emergencies.

The pivotal role that urbanisation plays in global development trajectories is clearly acknowledged by the United Nations 2030 Agenda that, among its 17 Sustainable Development Goals, explicitly argues in favour of cities and human settlements to be more inclusive, safe, resilient and sustainable (SDG11). Whereas SDG11 targets are paired with one or more indicators to monitor their achievement, in some cases this process is not straightforward. In particular, when it comes to Target 11.a Support positive economic, social and environmental links between urban, peri-urban and rural areas by strengthening national and regional development planning, the identified indicator does not seem able to grasp the complexity of national and regional governance, policy and planning. With the aim to contribute to this concern, the paper conceptually discusses the contents and implications of the SDG11 target 11.a. On this basis, it develops a multi-dimensional set of indicators to assess the quality of spatial governance and planning in a given context, and divides them into three main categories: (i) procedural indicators, (ii) instrumental indicators and (iii) financial indicators. The result of this work is a toolbox that may support decision-makers and policy-makers in assessing the quality of the efforts they put in place to make their cities and territories more sustainable as well as to reflect on what measures and initiatives could make this action more effective.

Urban agriculture (UA) can be used as a strategy to ensure the building of resilient cities. The objective of this study is to extensively review the literature on what and how UA can contribute to flooding risk management in the effort to build water resilient cities in several ways. UA plays a key role in changing linear water economy to circular thereby cutting the dependence of urban areas on rural for ecosystem service provision including flooding risk management. Urban flood-prone areas can be allocated to UA in pursuit of flood management while at the same time serving as a buffer zone to safeguard environmentally vulnerable areas from the damage of floods. UA exhibits higher infiltration capacity expressed in terms of curve number (CN) and is affected by soil type and management practice. Flooding risk and its management can be shared between government and local institutions to make the system feasible. Rainwater and flood harvesting are important in building a water-resilient city where the Sponge City Concept demonstrated the possibility of reducing 100-year storms to 25-year storms. Urban administrators and planners need to make UA the prior urban land-use type as it enables the building of a water resilient city while responding to multiple policies and objectives than other urban land-use types.

Climate change is causing alterations to the geophysical system; rising global temperatures are causing extreme heat events, wildfires, and changes in infectious agents; sea-level rise and extreme precipitation events are increasing the frequency and intensity of flood events. These climate change impacts have a negative effect on human health, specifically on the most vulnerable populations. Vulnerability is the idea of susceptibility to damage or harm; with respect to climate change, it is a function of exposure, sensitivity, and adaptive capacity. This case study explores the exposure and sensitivity of long-term care facility occupants in British Columbia (B.C.), Canada, because of the high proportion of long-term care residents that are sensitive to climate change. The climate change impacts under review were identified as those with the greatest risk to B.C., the potential to result in significant consequences, as well as current events and prevalence in the region over the past decade. The health effects of these primary climate change impacts were identified through a literature review. Both age and health condition are factors of sensitivity, in B.C. 97% of long-term care facility occupants have chronic diseases (including cardiovascular, endocrine, musculoskeletal, neurological, pulmonary, psychiatric, respiratory, and sensory diseases), and 95% are over the age of 65. A number of chronic diseases (e.g. hypertension and dementia) have been identified that are likely to be exacerbated because of climate change, specifically the four most significant and relevant climate change impacts in B.C.: extreme heat, flooding, changes in infectious agents, and wildfires. In this paper, the proportions of long-term care facility occupants in B.C. with these chronic diseases have been quantified, highlighting the importance of building the adaptive capacity of these populations to decrease their vulnerability. Various building design solutions were explored, confirming the relationship identified in past studies between the built environment, climate change, and occupant health.

Integrated regional planning aims to achieve sustainable development by considering multiple socio-economic, environmental, and ecological goals. However, determining the synergies and trade-offs between sustainability goals is a challenging task that requires an in depth analysis of the system-level effects of the implementation of planning policies. For example, polycentricity (i.e. multiple urban centres) is a common regional urban planning goal, which has shown to be beneficial for a region’s socio-economic conditions, but may also change the configuration of the settlement network (i.e. settlements connected by roads and traffic). Given the dependency of animal species on well-connected habitat networks, another possible planning goal is to maximise habitat availability (i.e. the total amount of habitat that is accessible for an individual animal). However, changes to a region’s settlement network can have a variety of impacts on the region’s habitat networks. Due to these interactions, it is unclear whether maximising polycentricity and habitat availability are compatible planning goals. To address this question, we developed a mathematical model of interacting settlement and habitat networks in a region of Switzerland. The settlement network model allowed us to predict commuter and traffic flows in our study region under a certain distribution of jobs and people across the municipalities. The level of polycentricity in our region was measured by calculating the hierarchy in the commuter flow network. The traffic flow network was linked to the habitat network, which was used to calculate the mean habitat availability. With multi-objective optimisations, both polycentricity and habitat availability were maximised by changing the distributions of jobs and people. Although both goals could be improved compared to the current situation, there was a trade-off between polycentricity and habitat availability along the Pareto front. Developing the region towards either of the planning goals could be achieved by changing the distribution of jobs and people mainly in mid-sized municipalities and by a strong collaboration between municipalities. Our results increase the understanding of the complex interactions in urban regions and can lead to recommendations for integrated urban and conservation planning.