what are five responses to urban sustainability challenges? what are five responses to urban sustainability challenges?

Create and find flashcards in record time. when only one kind of use or purpose can be built. Cities have central roles in managing the planets resources sustainability (Seitzinger et al., 2012). This means the air quality is at the level of concern of ____. For instance, with warmer recorded temperatures, glaciers melt faster. All different types of waste must be properly managed in cities. Discussions should generate targets and benchmarks but also well-researched choices that drive community decision making. The challenges to urban sustainability are often the very same challenges that motivate cities to be more sustainable in the first place. Name some illnesses that poor water quality can lead to. Practitioners starting out in the field would be well served by adopting one or more of the best practice standards (e.g., United Nations Sustainable Development Goals, Urban Sustainability Directors Network Sustainability Tools for Assessing and Rating Communities, and International Organization for Standardization Sustainability Standards) rather than endeavoring to develop their own unique suite of metrics as their data would be more comparable between cities and would have some degree of external validity built in. See our explanation on Urban Sustainability to learn more! Upload unlimited documents and save them online. In most political systems, national governments have the primary role in developing guidelines and supporting innovation allied to regional or global conventions or guidelines where international agreement is reached on setting such limits. Fertilizers, pesticides, and insecticides. Since materials and energy come from long distances around the world to support urban areas, it is critical for cities to recognize how activities and consumption within their boundaries affect places and people outside their boundaries. It must be recognized that ultimately all sustainability is limited by biophysical limits and finite resources at the global scale (e.g., Burger et al., 2012; Rees, 2012). Some of the most polluted cities in the world are located in areas of high manufacturing and industrialization. Fossil fuel energy (coal, oil, and natural gas) currently supplies most of the world's energy, emitting carbon and other pollutants into the atmosphere that exacerbate climate change and reduce air quality. Instead they provide a safe space for innovation, growth, and development in the pursuit of human prosperity in an increasingly populated and wealthy world (Rockstrm et al., 2013). Urban systems are complex networks of interdependent subsystems, for which the degree and nature of the relationships are imperfectly known. Moreover, because most cities are geographically separated from their resource base, it is difficult to assess the threat of resource depletion or decline. ), as discussed in Chapter 2. Sustainable solutions are to be customized to each of the urban development stages balancing local constraints and opportunities, but all urban places should strive to articulate a multiscale and multipronged vision for improving human well-being. In particular, the institutional dimension plays an important role in how global issues are addressed, as discussed by Gurr and King (1987), who identified the need to coordinate two levels of action: the first relates to vertical autonomythe citys relationship with federal administrationand the second relates to the horizontal autonomya function of the citys relationship with local economic and social groups that the city depends on for its financial and political support. It focuses on real world examples within two key themes - smart cities and transportation - as a way to look at the challenges and practical responses related to urban sustainability. A comprehensive strategy in the form of a roadmap, which incorporates these principles while focusing on the interactions among urban and global systems, can provide a framework for all stakeholders engaged in metropolitan areas, including local and regional governments, the private sector, and nongovernmental organizations, to enable meaningful pathways to urban sustainability. However, recent scientific analyses have shown that major cities are actually the safest areas in the United States, significantly more so than their suburban and rural counterparts, when considering that safety involves more than simply violent crime risks but also traffic risks and other threats to safety (Myers et al., 2013). Sustainability Challenges and Solutions - thestructuralengineer.info Not a MyNAP member yet? Sustainability | Free Full-Text | Smart and Resilient Urban Futures for Cholera, typhoid, diarrhea, hepatitis A, and polio. Front Matter | Pathways to Urban Sustainability: Challenges and The environment has finite resources, which present limits to the capacity of ecosystems to absorb or break down wastes or render them harmless at local, regional, and global scales. 3, Industrial Pollution in Russia (https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Industry_in_Russia.jpg), by Alt-n-Anela (https://www.flickr.com/people/47539533@N05), licensed by CC-BY-2.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/deed.en), Fig. Launched at the ninth session of the World Urban Forum (WUF9 . In other words, the needs call for the study of cities as complex systems, including the processes at different scales, determining factors, and tipping points to avoid adverse consequence. The development of analysis to improve the sustainability of urbanization patterns, processes, and trends has been hindered by the lack of consistent data to enable the comparison of the evolution of different urban systems, their dynamics, and benchmarks. Energy use is of particular concern for cities, as it can be both costly and wasteful. Its 100% free. Health equity is a crosscutting issue, and emerging research theme, in urban sustainability studies. What are the 5 responses to urban sustainability challenges? This requirement applies to governance vertically at all levels of administration, from local to federal and international, and horizontally among various urban sectors and spaces. Thankfully, the world has many resources and the capacity to properly distribute them. This course is an introduction to various innovators and initiatives at the bleeding edge of urban sustainability and connected technology. Proper disposal, recycling, and waste management are critical for cities. Lack of regulation and illegal dumping are causes for concern and can lead to a greater dispersion of pollutants without oversight. A summary of major research and development needs is as follows. MyNAP members SAVE 10% off online. Once established, urban metabolism models supported by adequate tools and metrics enable a research stream to explore the optimization of resource productivity and the degree of circularity of resource streams that may be helpful in identifying critical processes for the sustainability of the urban system and opportunities for improvement. It is also important to limit the use of resources that are harmful to the environment. Furthermore, this studys findings cross-validate the findings of earlier work examining the recession-induced pollution reductions of the early 1980s. There is the issue, however, that economic and energy savings from these activities may suffer from Jevons Paradox in that money and energy saved in the ways mentioned above will be spent elsewhere, offsetting local efficiencies (Brown et al., 2011; Hall and Klitgaard, 2011). Policies and cultural norms that support the outmigration, gentrification, and displacement of certain populations stymie economic and environmental progress and undermine urban sustainability (Fullilove and Wallace, 2011; Powell and Spencer, 2002; Williams, 2014). Another approach is for government intervention through regulation of activities or the resource base. This helps to facilitate the engagement, buy-in, and support needed to implement these strategies. Ecological footprint analysis has helped to reopen the controversial issue of human carrying capacity. The ecological footprint of a specified population is the area of land and water ecosystems required continuously. Turbidity is a measure of how ___ the water is. Lerne mit deinen Freunden und bleibe auf dem richtigen Kurs mit deinen persnlichen Lernstatistiken. Book Description This title includes a number of Open Access chapters. A practitioner could complement the adopted standard(s) with additional indicators unique to the citys context as necessary. Non-point source pollution is when the exact location of pollution can be located. These goals generally include attracting new investment, improving social conditions (and reducing social problems), ensuring basic services and adequate housing, and (more recently) raising environmental standards within their jurisdiction. Although perfect class and economic equality is not possible, severe urban disparities should remain in check if cities are to realize their full potential and become appealing places of choice for multigenerational urban dwellers and new urban immigrants alike. Human well-being and health are the cornerstones of livable and thriving cities although bolstering these relationships with myopic goals that improve human prosperity while disregarding the health of natural urban and nonurban ecosystems will only serve to undermine both human and environmental. Urban governments are tasked with the responsibility of managing not only water resources but also sanitation, waste, food, and air quality. Cities are not islands. It is beyond the scope of this report to examine all available measures, and readers are directed to any of the numerous reviews that discuss their relative merits (see, for example, uek et al., 2012; EPA, 2014a; Janetos et al., 2012; Wiedmann and Barrett, 2010; Wilson et al., 2007; The World Bank, 2016; Yale University, 2016). PDF Sustainability Challenges and Solutions - thestructuralengineer.info By 2045, the world's urban population will increase by 1.5 times to 6 billion. For instance, over the past 50 years, many U.S. cities experienced unprecedented reductions in population, prominently driven by highly publicized perceptions that city environments are somehow innately unsafe. In practice cities could, for example, quantify their sustainability impacts using a number of measures such as per capita ecological footprint and, making use of economies of scale, make efforts to reduce it below global levels of sustainability. When cities build and expand, they can create greenbelts, areas of wild, undeveloped land in surrounding urban areas. When cities begin to grow quickly, planning and allocation of resources are critical. Sustainable development can be implemented in ways that can both mitigate the challenges of urban sustainability and address the goals. Third, the critical task of developing finance models to support urban sustainability action requires urgent attention. Environmental disasters are more likely to occur with greater intensity; buildings, streets, and facilities are more likely to be damaged or destroyed. The spread and continued growth of urban areas presents a number of concerns for a sustainable future, particularly if cities cannot adequately address the rise of poverty, hunger, resource consumption, and biodiversity loss in their borders. tourism, etc. Improper waste disposal can lead to air, water, and soil pollution and contamination. Clustering populations, however, can compound both positive and negative conditions, with many modern urban areas experiencing growing inequality, debility, and environmental degradation. How can climate change be a challenge to urban sustainability? Health impacts, such as asthma and lung disease. Understanding these interconnections within system boundaries, from urban to global, is essential to promote sustainability. Goals relating to local or global ecological sustainability can be incorporated into the norms, codes, and regulations that influence the built environment. Every indicator should be connected to both an implementation and an impact statement to garner more support, to engage the public in the process, and to ensure the efficiency and impact of the indicator once realized. For the long-term success and resilience of cities, these challenges should serve as a current guide for current and future development. Conceptually, the idea that there is an ecological footprint, and that sustainable cities are places that seek to minimize this footprint, makes great sense (Portney, 2002). Very little information on the phases of urban processes exists, be it problem identification or decision making. To avoid negative consequences, it is important to identify the threshold that is available and then determine the actual threshold values. How many categories are there in the AQI? unrestricted growth outside of major urban areas with separate designations for residential, commercial, entertainment, and other services, usually only accessible by car. While urban areas can be centers for social and economic mobility, they can also be places with significant inequality, debility, and environmental degradation: A large proportion of the worlds population with unmet needs lives in urban areas. Developing new signals of urban performance is a crucial step to help cities maintain Earths natural capital in the long term (Alberti, 1996). How can air and water quality be a challenge to urban sustainability? Urbanization is a global phenomenon with strong sustainability implications across multiple scales. Particulate matter, lead, ground level ozone, nitrogen oxide, sulfur oxide, carbon dioxide, and carbon monoxide. In order to facilitate the transition toward sustainable cities, we suggest a decision framework that identifies a structured but flexible process that includes several critical elements (Figure 3-1). These opportunities can be loosely placed in three categories: first, filling quantitative data gaps; second, mapping qualitative factors and processes; and third, identifying and scaling successful financing models to ensure rapid adoption. The project is the first of six in the UCLA Grand Challenge initiative that will unite the university's resources to tackle some of society's most pressing issues.. Further mapping of these processes, networks, and linkages is important in order to more fully understand the change required at the municipal level to support global sustainability. Read "Pathways to Urban Sustainability: Challenges and Opportunities Frontiers | Grand Challenges in Sustainable Cities and Health If a city experiences overpopulation, it can lead to a high depletion of resources, lowering the quality of life for all. Urban sustainability is the goal of using resources to plan and develop cities to improve the social, economic, and environmental conditions of a city to ensure the quality of life of current and future residents. 2 - River in the Amazon Rainforest; environmental challenges to water sustainability depend on location and water management. Extra-urban impacts of urban activities such as ecological . Sustainable cities: research and practice challenges Furthermore, the governance of urban activities does not always lie solely with municipal or local authorities or with other levels of government. Ultimately, all the resources that form the base on which urban populations subsist come from someplace on the planet, most often outside the cities themselves, and often outside of the countries where the cities exist. Have all your study materials in one place. The roadmap is organized in three phases: (1) creating the basis for a sustainability roadmap, (2) design and implementation, and (3) outcomes and reassessment. Sustainable Cities: Urban Planning Challenges and Policy At its core, the concept of sustainable development is about reconciling development and environment (McGranahan and Satterthwaite, 2003). It will require recognition of the biophysical and thermodynamic aspects of sustainability. Without paying heed to finite resources, urban sustainability may be increasingly difficult to attain depending on the availability and cost of key natural resources and energy as the 21st century progresses (Day et al., 2014, 2016; McDonnell and MacGregor-Fors, 2016; Ramaswami et al., 2016). Meeting development goals has long been among the main responsibilities of urban leaders. . Cities have experienced an unprecedented rate of growth in the last decade. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. I have highlighted what I see as two of the most interesting and critical challenges in sustainable urban development: understanding the 'vision' (or visions) and developing a deeper understanding of the multi-faceted processes of change required to achieve more sustainable cities. These win-win efficiencies will often take advantage of economies of scale and adhere to basic ideas of robust urbanism, such as proximity and access (to minimize the time and costs of obtaining resources), density and form (to optimize the use of land, buildings, and infrastructure), and connectedness (to increase opportunities for efficient and diverse interactions). To improve the threshold knowledge of sustainability indicators and their utility in defining an action strategy, it is necessary to have empirical tests of the performance and redundancy of these indicators and indicator systems.3 This is of increasing importance to policy makers and the public as human production and consumption put increased stress on environmental, economic, and social systems. As climate change effects intensify extreme weather patterns, disturbances in water resources can occur. If development implies extending to all current and future populations the levels of resource use and waste generation that are the norm among middle-income groups in high-income nations, it is likely to conflict with local or global systems with finite resources and capacities to assimilate wastes. How can greenbelts respond tourban sustainability challenges? One challenge in the case of cities, however, is that many of these shared resources do not have definable boundaries such as land. Name three countries with high air quality. 1 Planetary boundaries define, as it were, the boundaries of the planetary playing field for humanity if we want to be sure of avoiding major human-induced environmental change on a global scale (Rockstrm et al., 2009). Cities with a high number of manufacturing are linked with ____. These goals do not imply that city and municipal authorities need be major providers of housing and basic services, but they can act as supervisors and/or supporters of private or community provision. This paper focuses on adaptive actions in response to WEF challenges as well as the environmental implications of these responses in Harare, Zimbabwe. Do you enjoy reading reports from the Academies online for free? Long-term policies and institutionalized activities that can promote greater equity can contribute to the future of sustainable cities. Over 10 million students from across the world are already learning smarter. Create the most beautiful study materials using our templates. Although cities concentrate people and resources, and this concentration can contribute to their sustainability, it is also clear that cities themselves are not sustainable without the support of ecosystem services, including products from ecosystems such as raw materials and food, from nonurban areas. The spatial and time scales of various subsystems are different, and the understanding of individual subsystems does not imply the global understanding of the full system. Key variables to describe urban and environmental systems and their interrelationships; Measurable objectives and criteria that enable the assessment of these interrelationships; and. The clean-up for these can be costly to cities and unsustainable in the long term. It focuses on nine cities across the United States and Canada (Los Angeles, CA, New York City, NY, Philadelphia, PA, Pittsburgh, PA, Grand Rapids, MI, Flint, MI, Cedar Rapids, IA, Chattanooga, TN, and Vancouver, Canada), chosen to represent a variety of metropolitan regions, with consideration given to city size, proximity to coastal and other waterways, susceptibility to hazards, primary industry, and several other factors. 5 big challenges facing big cities of the future UCLA announces plan to tackle 'Grand Challenges,' starting with urban Some of the most prevailing indicators include footprinting (e.g., for water and land) and composite indices (e.g., well-being index and environmental sustainability index). New sustainability indicators and metrics are continually being developed, in part because of the wide range of sustainability frameworks used as well as differences in spatial scales of interest and availability (or lack thereof) of data. Jump up to the previous page or down to the next one. Discriminatory practices in the housing market over many decades have created racial segregation in central cities and suburbs. The transition to sustainable urban development requires both appropriate city management and local authorities that are aware of the implications posed by new urban sustainability challenges. The task is, however, not simple. Maintaining good air and water quality in urban areas is a challenge as these resources are not only used more but are also vulnerable to pollutants and contaminants. Proper land-use designation and infrastructure planning can remedy the effects of urban growth. For a renewable resourcesoil, water, forest, fishthe sustainable rate of use can be no greater than the rate of regeneration of its source. Urban governments are tasked with the responsibility of managing not only water resources but also sanitation, waste, food, and air quality. Sustainable urban development has its own challenges ranging from urban growth to environmental problems caused by climate change. There is evidence that the spatial distribution of people of color and low-income people is highly correlated with the distribution of air pollution, landfills, lead poisoning in children, abandoned toxic waste dumps, and contaminated fish consumption. I. In other words, the challenges are also the reasons for cities to invest in sustainable urban development. Some promising models exist, such as MITs Urban Metabolism framework, that warrant further development (Ferro and Fernndez, 2013). There is a need to go beyond conventional modes of data observation and collection and utilize information contributed by users (e.g., through social media) and in combination with Earth observation systems. Copyright 2023 National Academy of Sciences. Poor waste management likewise can harm the well-being of residents through improper waste disposal. Assessing a citys environmental impacts at varying scales is extremely difficult. Given the uneven success of the Millennium Development Goals, and the unprecedented inclusion of the urban in the SDG process, the feasibility of SDG 11 was assessed in advance of . A holistic view, focused on understanding system structure and behavior, will require building and managing transdisciplinary tools and metrics. Science can also contribute to these pathways by further research and development of several key facets of urban areas including urban metabolism, threshold detection of indicators, comprehension of different data sets, and further exploration of decision-making processes linked across scales. Currently, many cities have sustainability strategies that do not explicitly account for the indirect, distant, or long-lived impacts of environmental consumption throughout the supply and product chains. Regional cooperation is especially important to combat suburban sprawl; as cities grow, people will look for cheaper housing in surrounding rural and suburban towns outside of cities. City leaders must move quickly to plan for growth and provide the basic services, infrastructure, and affordable housing their expanding populations need. Identify your study strength and weaknesses. urban sustainability in the long run. There are many policy options that can affect urban activities such that they become active and positive forces in sustainably managing the planets resources. We choose it not because it is without controversy, but rather because it is one of the more commonly cited indicators that has been widely used in many different contexts around the world. In many ways, this is a tragedy of the commons issue, where individual cities act in their own self-interest at the peril of shared global resources. In each parameter of sustainability, disruptions can only be withstood to a certain level without possible irreversible consequences. Over the long term and at global scales, economic growth and development will be constrained by finite resources and the biophysical limits of the planet to provide the resources required for development, industrialization, and urbanization. Local decision making must have a larger scope than the confines of the city or region. Urban sustainability requires durable, consistent leadership, citizen involvement, and regional partnerships as well as vertical interactions among different governmental levels, as discussed before. The effort of promoting sustainable development strategies requires a greater level of interaction between different systems and their boundaries as the impacts of urban-based consumption and pollution affect global resource management and, for example, global climate change problems; therefore, pursuing sustainability calls for unprecedented system boundaries extensions, which are increasingly determined by actions at the urban level. How can sanitation be a challenge to urban sustainability? 4, Example of a greenbelt in Tehran, Iran (https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Tochal_from_Modarres_Expressway.jpg), by Kaymar Adl (https://www.flickr.com/photos/kamshots/), licensed by CC-BY-2.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/deed.en). The other is associated to the impact of technology intensity that is assumed for characterizing productivity in terms of the global hectare. Cities that are serious about sustainability will seek to minimize their negative environmental impacts across all scales from local to global.