Search

Citizen engagement is heralded as essential for food democracy and equality, yet the implementation of inclusive citizen engagement mechanisms in urban food systems governance has lagged behind. This paper aims to further the agenda of citizen engagement in the transformation towards healthy and sustainable urban food systems by offering a conceptual reflection on urban living labs (ULLs) as a methodological platform. Over the past decades, ULLs have become increasingly popular to actively engage citizens in methodological testbeds for innovations within real-world settings. The paper proposes that ULLs as a tool for inclusive citizen engagement can be utilized in two ways: (i) the ULL as the daily life of which citizens are the experts, aimed at uncovering the unreflexive agency of a highly diverse population in co-shaping the food system and (ii) the ULL as a break with daily life aimed at facilitating reflexive agency in (re)shaping food futures. We argue that both ULL approaches have the potential to facilitate inclusive citizen engagement in different ways by strengthening the breadth and the depth of citizen engagement respectively. The paper concludes by proposing a sequential implementation of the two types of ULL, paying attention to spatial configurations and the short-termed nature of ULLs.

According to Lefebvre's analysis, urbanisation is not only an expansion of urban footprint but, in a broader sense, the radical socio-spatial transformation of society. The cultural setting and its physical manifestation creating distinctive identities within a city are transformed by rapid urbanisation and gentrification. The effects will be analysed in three terms of simultaneous sociocultural-spatial changes; cultural displacement, physical transformation of neighbourhoods, and change in cultural identities. The paper intends to hypothesise whether cultural displacement and altering cultural identities by gentrification and rapid urbanisation will signify gentrified homogenised cities in the future. The paper investigates aspects of multiculturalism and inter-culturalism to mitigate the challenges in sustaining multicultural places in cities. It tries to find the complementary approach of both to generate harmonious multicultural diversities and socio-economic sustainability, keeping the cultural identities intact. One of the examples of rapid urbanisation and gentrification challenging multicultural aspects and altering cultural identities lies in the core of the cultural capital of India, Kolkata in Tangra, Chinatown. The cultural identity of India's only existing Chinatown is changing from 2 to 3 storey live-work based multicultural communities to 30 floors high-rise homogenous gentrified enclaves displacing the diverse cultural communities from the core of the city.

Increasingly guided by the use of ICT, the flow of humans and materials, smart cities and autonomous mobility amalgamate into a game changer in urban planning. This paper critically explores the role of autonomous (driverless) vehicles in plans for urban futures. By looking into the urban plans of 10 European capitals, we investigate the anticipated promises and hazards of autonomous vehicles. Theoretically, the paper draws upon critical urban mobilities studies that invite interlinking carbon reduction, smart cities and mobility planning. By examining these plans, the paper critically evaluates current urban planning for autonomous vehicles by asking whether one can identify any links to the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals of sustainable cities and communities. A practice-based view on automation is then suggested as a pathway to promote a thorough sustainable mobility transition. It is concluded that none of the plans of the 10 capitals studied require AVs to integrate with public means of transport or to be fuelled by renewable energy sources. Hence, AVs are likely to individualise and intensify the existing automobility regime further and emissions are likely to increase, according to the comparative urban analysis. We therefore conclude that urban policy-making needs to contest the existing techno-centric conception of autonomous vehicles if these are to support the sustainable development goals of cities.

Sustainability is a concept characterized by its longevity: it remains, after several decades, a popular concept within public organizations, as well as public discourse more generally. In this paper, we trace various translations of sustainability in urban planning documents of three mid-sized cities in Northwest Europe. Emphasizing the importance of a longitudinal approach to assess the uses and definitions of sustainability, we examine translations of the concept across plans through an analytical framework that considers the hierarchical, sequential and integrative linkages between different urban policy documents to understand how local uses of the concept change or remain similar over time. The examination of change and continuity in the translations of sustainability offers insights into how the different manifestations of the concept are influenced by policies external to the city administrations, as well as by imitations of internal, previous policies. This study adds to previous research on contents of plans in relation to how descriptions of concepts take form in a web of interrelated planning and policy documents over time. This paper does so by showing how sustainability as a concept remains on the agenda by being translated into different times and settings, constantly reused with other ideas, and thereby made continuously relevant.

Germany looks back at a rapidly changing developmental period in which the western part of the country experienced economic prosperity during the 1950s, whereas the eastern part experienced a different start. This situation persisted till the German reunification in 1989. After reunification, Germany's policies were similar to those of the post-WWII period—it focused on the most important needs such as social injustice in cities and quarters and too much (eastern federal states) or too little (western federal states) living space. In more recent times, urban development programs have actively promoted sustainability and tackled the risks posed by climate change in accordance with the Leipzig Charter (2007). This paper provides an overview of the increasingly diverse financing programs implemented by German authorities and identifies the specific target of each program, in addition to budget size and regional distribution. The six major funding programs discussed were all active until 2019. They reflect the development of German city planning funding programs and clarify the diversity of the cities' needs. On the downside, this diversity led to a complexity that requires community planning experts to search for the program (s) that best suit their community's individual development concept and project. The paper also summarizes the most recent developments in terms of new programs and a leaner program structure. The German funding system continues to adapt as the conditions change.

The environmental dimension of sustainability implies the role of cities, considering their institutional vocation to territorial management and their proximity to the needs expressed by the community. This paper aims to investigate the implementation of a sustainable approach by cities in the realization of environmental policies. The methodology followed is regression (GLS method) that relates the expenses for the environmental policy of a sample of Italian cities (116) to some environmental indicators for the same municipalities (considering 2003–2011). Furthermore, t-test methodology is applied to compare the sample average values to the Italian average values of the selected environmental indicators. The paper takes into account not only a specific phase of sustainability, but it also considers the whole sustainability approach. In fact, the research connects the financial starting point of environmental policy (city's environmental financial commitment) to its environmental impacts (environmental indicators). The results obtained show that the investigated cities, on the one hand, direct environmental expenses to critical factors affecting environmental sustainability but, on the other hand, their environmental policies are not very effective. The research output gives useful information to city managers and politicians in order to focus their environmental policy on a sustainability approach that is effectiveness oriented.

One of the tenets of urban sustainability is that more compact urban forms that are more densely occupied are more efficient in their overall use of space and of energy. In many designs this has been translates into high-rise buildings with a focus on energy management at their outer envelopes. However, pursuing this building focused approach alone means that buildings are treated as stand-alone entities with minimal consideration to their impact on the surrounding urban landscape and vice versa. Where urban density is high, individual buildings interact with each other, reducing access to sunshine and daylight, obstructing airflow and raising outdoor air temperature. If/when each building pursues its own sustainability agenda without regard to its urban context, the result will diminish the natural energy resources available to nearby buildings and worsen the outdoor environment generally. This paper examines some of these urban impacts using examples from the City of London where rapid transformation is taking place as very tall buildings with exceptional energy credentials are being inserted into a low-rise city without a plan for the overall impact of urban form. The focus of the paper is on access to sunshine and wind and the wider implications of sustainable strategies that that focuses on individual buildings to the exclusion of the surrounding urban landscape. The work highlights the need for a framework that accounts for the synergistic outcomes that result from the mutual interactions of buildings in urban spaces.

The current fabric of urban areas is largely the result of past land development and land-use planning decisions. Historically, there was relatively little consideration of the impact of these decisions upon hydrological systems within and outside urban areas. Despite their close relationship, urban and regional planning and water resources management have typically been carried out separately and guided by different institutional arrangements. The range of impacts of urbanisation on hydrological systems at the city-region scale, and the dependence of urbanised areas upon these systems, call for better integration between the sectors of urban and regional planning and water resources management to ensure the sustainability and resilience of cities and their regions to future changes and uncertainties. This paper evaluates the extent to which planning mechanisms currently support integration between land-use and water resource sectors. The evaluation draws on a comparative analysis of 113 statutory and non-statutory planning mechanisms in three Australian capital city-regions: South East Queensland, and the Melbourne and Perth Metropolitan regions. Results indicate that the function of water at the city-region scale, including its role in supporting environmental connectivity, needs to be better understood and considered by land-use planning systems; improved institutional capacity is required to enable both sectors to deal with future changes and uncertainties related to water resources; and emergent planning trends supportive of the consideration of water connectivity at the city-region scale are yet to be fully implemented. Based on the results, the paper concludes by exploring how the concept of urban metabolism may facilitate better integration between the two sectors, along with the identification of best suited planning mechanisms and needed changes in governance and institutional arrangements conducive to integration.

The aim of this paper is to present an overarching theoretical perspective on the paradox of inequalities and the paradigm shift in mobilities by reflecting on the challenges and opportunities in urban areas faced by the COVID-19 measures. The question of blurring boundaries between the human and the technological aspects and the ways in which they alter the form of communication and action is tackled reflecting on the digital divide and socio- spatial inequalities. In order to connect theory and practice, implications from different cases are provided for shedding light on the expected impacts and scenarios for the changing patterns of mobility and accessibility. The results indicate hybridization of the on-site and online forms of mobilities, as well as new approaches to make culture and leisure more inclusive and accessible. Promoting local integration, emerging forms of local tourism such as staycations, using digital tools to foster co-creation, co-curation, and audience engagement, developing new models of business and consumption reflect the changing patterns of mobility and accessibility. There are avenues for further research that revolve around the questions of inequalities, over-consumption, sociality and sustainability.

In policy and practice, urban Nature-Based Solutions (NBS) are considered promising innovations for sustainable urban transformation. NBS are interventions that use nature to address multiple sustainability challenges simultaneously. As such, they present a novel perspective on urban land use and development. Yet their current uptake into urban development lags behind EU ambitions. Drawing from transitions studies, this paper suggests that the limited uptake of NBS innovation stems from structural conditions that keep urban development systems locked in their current state, thereby favouring traditional ‘grey’ development. With a systematic literature review, we identify preliminary structural conditions that likely affect the uptake of urban NBS, culminating in a framework of ‘urban infrastructure regimes’, which we then illustrate with two European examples of urban NBS. Our findings indicate the relevance of using a transitions studies perspective for generating insights into the structural conditions – knowledge base, policy paradigms, etc. – that underlie barriers and opportunities for NBS uptake. We particularly argue that identifying the state and obduracy of these conditions provides a deeper understanding of how NBS uptake takes place. Findings also suggest that nature-based innovations require a customised transitions framework that accounts for the role of physical geographies.

Cities, as entities, are inevitably exposed to a range of the internal and external factors that shape their urban development and planning. As complex adaptive systems, cities possess different capabilities and opportunities for the re-configuration, transformation and learning from these disturbances. This city profile explores these processes using Darwin, the Northern Territory's capital and Australia's eighth-largest city as an example. The city profile is situated within Urban Resilience Theory. It unpacks the nuanced way geographic factors and spatial isolation; natural disasters, World War 2 bombing, border security threats, natural resource extraction, and tourism have shaped Darwin's urban development. Understanding these nuances and their spatiotemporal dynamics coalesces into the identified system susceptibilities and opportunities for an adaptive and sustainable development presented in this paper. The city's unique urban governance, successive reconstruction, socio-spatial dynamics, history, and challenges make it an excellent case study of city growth dynamics and resilience within the Asian-Pacific region. The profile highlights Darwin's regional planning and the (historic) production of urban space, along with climate change risks and adaptation, increasingly inaccessible housing and unaffordability, economic growth challenges and demographic dynamics.

This paper explores the mental-models of Swedish planners in order to understand the extent to which they support the ideals of sustainable transport. Focussing on three critical challenges: forecast-led versus vision-led planning; tackling congestion; and, public acceptability; the findings, drawn from in-depth interviews, demonstrate mostly advanced thinking. However, implementation can be at odds with these mental models, highlighting important lessons for other cities. There is a disconnect between the objectives of reducing car use and the continuation of investments in increasing road capacity, and a difficulty in transitioning from forecast-led planning to back-casting. Political controversies and public acceptability for measures to decrease car use are an added challenge.

Government-backed high-density infill residential developments are used as a planning policy tool for engaging the building industry and promoting sustainable urban development. There is limited research into the influence such buildings have on the building industry and urban development outcomes. This paper presents analysis from interviews with 14 leading building-industry stakeholders about a demonstration mixed-use building developed by the Victorian state government in Melbourne, Australia. The development included innovative elements addressing environmental sustainability, governance, mixed tenure, mixed use and modular construction. The analysis found that stakeholders were acutely aware of the development, with some innovative elements – such as the modular construction – being monitored by stakeholders informally; other elements – such as environmental sustainability – were of nominal interest. Translation of informal learnings to stakeholder's own companies was lagging. While it is evident that the development has played a role in influencing the building industry to some extent, more effort is required to communicate practical outcomes and learnings in a formal way if sustainable urban development is to be facilitated through the demonstration development planning approach.

Urban-led change for sustainability is a key site of intervention in delivering the ambitions of the Sustainable Development Goals. Within this broad discourse, four umbrella concepts have emerged in recent decades: urban sustainability, urban transitions, urban transformation and urban resilience. This literature review aims to offer a qualitative assessment of the types of interventions currently being advocated for in academic-led literature. Firstly, the paper presents an overview of the concepts and summarises current gaps; secondly, it uses Donella Meadows' Leverage Points as analytical framework to categorise and discuss interventions supported in the literature. Our findings indicate that although the literature advocates for systemic change towards sustainability as an outcome of a large palette of urban interventions, less consideration is given to the means of achieving these. The findings highlight the need to focus on processes as much as on outcomes when advocating, devising or implementing interventions. This requires a process of understanding and negotiating trade-offs and the different worldviews and values that underpin them. Addressing this entails going beyond technocratic skills through cultivating reflexivity, effective communities of practice and new forms of organising for knowledge production, as well as interrogate our roles and agency as urban researchers.

The unsustainable use of our planet's resources needs to be tackled from different angles and multiple levels of governance. As the human population urbanizes, having access to reliable, cross-cutting, quantitative city-level sustainability metrics is key to understanding the environmental impacts of urban dwellers and the role cities can play in the 21st century sustainability challenge. Framing the environmental pillar of urban sustainability with an overarching metric like the Ecological Footprint informs stakeholders and citizens about a city's overall pressure on the biosphere. In Portugal, six cities established a pioneering collaborative project to guide their transition to sustainability and support city governance; this paper presents the results of the first phase of the project. We tracked annual demand for natural resources and ecological services by the city residents and compared it against the “carrying capacity” of the cities' ecological assets. We then assessed the ability of this new data to increase local environmental awareness and support local public policies in Portugal and elsewhere. Lessons from this study inform the ongoing debate on the Ecological Footprint's usefulness as sustainability metric for cities, and point to specific policy insights for managing key consumption sectors and reaching key targets such as the UN SDGs.

Although urbanization can promote social and economic development, it can also cause various problems. As the key decision makers of urbanization, local governments should be able to evaluate urbanization performance, summarize experiences, and find problems caused by urbanization. This paper introduces a hybrid Entropy–McKinsey Matrix method for evaluating sustainable urbanization. The McKinsey Matrix is commonly referred to as the GE Matrix. The values of a development index (DI) and coordination index (CI) are calculated by employing the Entropy method and are used as a basis for constructing a GE Matrix. The matrix can assist in assessing sustainable urbanization performance by locating the urbanization state point. A case study of the city of Jinan in China demonstrates the process of using the evaluation method. The case study reveals that the method is an effective tool in helping policy makers understand the performance of urban sustainability and therefore formulate suitable strategies for guiding urbanization toward better sustainability.

Purpose This study examines the density of polluting industry by neighborhoods in Baltimore over the long term, from 1950 to 2010, to determine if high pollution burdens correspond spatially with expected demographic and housing variables predicted in the environmental justice literature. For 1960–1980 we use data on heavy industry from Dun and Bradstreet directories and for 1990–2010 the US EPA’s Toxics Release Inventory to calculate a Hazards Density Index. Drawing on the decennial censuses for 1960–2010, we populate census tracts from corresponding years with data on race, ethnicity, educational attainment, income, and housing tenure. Findings Density of polluting industry is positively correlated with low-income neighborhoods and renter-occupied housing in 1960 and by 2010 with white, Hispanic, and low educational attainment populations. In general, over time density of polluting facilities shifts from an association with wealth to race and ethnicity while educational attainment remains a significant variable throughout. This study confirms earlier analyses on Baltimore that white neighborhoods are more likely than African–American neighborhoods (1990–2010) to contain polluting facilities but reveals for the first time that educational attainment is also significant. The paper concludes with a discussion of the Baltimore Sustainability Plan and its weak efforts to address persistent environmental injustices.

High housing prices in Greater Kuala Lumpur have made it difficult for potential first-time homebuyers to own a house. As a result, affordable housing schemes were introduced recently to assist potential homeowners. The Malaysian government has launched many kinds of public low-cost housing schemes; however, many housing projects resulting from these schemes have turned into slums that do not provide a wholesome environment for families. To avoid building more slums and to provide more benefits for young buyers, the goal of this paper is to determine the correct housing attributes required for first-time homebuyers in the urban area. Three hundred questionnaires were distributed to young Malaysians in Greater Kuala Lumpur (KL), and 265 questionnaires were returned. The responses to the questionnaire revealed that accessibility and neighborhood environment play a role in the decision to own. It can also be observed that ecologically friendly homes that embrace sustainability are important considerations for prospective homebuyers.

The City of Perth in Western Australia is a relatively modern city and was founded in 1829. A considerable amount of its built stock will become redundant in the near future. An issue that will face many building owners, designers, property developers and planners will be to adapt or demolish existing buildings to meet changing economic and social needs and issues related to sustainability. The rhetoric associated with the benefits of adaptive reuse has been widely espoused. It would appear in reality; however, that owners and practitioners are only embracing this sustainability strategy in a piecemeal manner within Perth. This paper examines owners’ and practitioners’ views and experiences associated with adaptive reuse. In conjunction with the normative literature and the research findings, a building viability process model is presented that can be used by owners, occupiers and planners to determine the strategy needed to meet changing commercial and regulatory demands being required of buildings.

City managers need indicators for target setting, performance assessment, monitoring, management and decision-making purposes. The choice of the most suitable indicator framework is crucial, but difficult, as it requires expert knowledge. To help cities in their choice, this paper compares seven recently published indicator standards for Smart sustainable cities. A taxonomy was developed to evaluate each of their 413 indicators against five conceptual urban focuses (types of urban sustainability and smartness), ten sectoral application domains (energy, transport, ICT, economy, etc.) and five indicator types (input, process, output, outcome, impact). The results clearly discriminate between indicator standards suited for evaluating the implementation of predominantly smart city approaches versus standards more focused on sustainability assessment. A further distinction is possible in standards almost fully oriented towards impacts reached, and standards that allow for progress evaluation according to steps in the implementation process. Some standards provide a narrow focus on output indicators evaluating the progress in implementing smart urban ICT solutions (e.g. number of smart meters installed). Cities are encouraged to complement such evaluations with impact indicators that demonstrate the effects of those solutions. This paper provides guidance for city managers and policy makers to select the indicators and standard that best correspond to their assessment need and goals, and align with their stage in Smart sustainable city implementation.

Urban areas face a conundrum, they need to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions and consumption of resources, whilst also increasing their resilience to climate change and extreme weather, and improving wellbeing. However, it is widely recognized that well intended intervention to address one of these sustainability objectives in isolation can undermine other objectives. This paper presents a framework to efficiently identify spatial development strategies that provide the best outcomes against multiple objectives. The framework has been applied to London (UK) to identify strategies that can simultaneously: (i) minimize exposure to future heat wave events; (ii) minimize the risk from flood events; (iii) minimize transport emissions; (iv) minimize urban sprawl; (v) maximize brownfield development; and, (vi) prevent development of greenspace that is recognized as important to wellbeing. Prioritizing each objective in isolation leads to considerably different spatial planning structures, exposing conflicts between many objectives. These include tradeoffs between urban heat risk and transport emissions; and also previously undocumented conflicts between minimizing flood and heat risks. Allowing greater flexibility in development density is shown to provide benefits in terms of heat risk reduction, whilst not significantly affecting mitigation objectives. The framework is shown to significantly improve upon the London Spatial Development Strategy for the objectives analyzed. Further analysis identifies optimal spatial strategies to achieve a Low Carbon, Low Risk or Low Density city - however, these cannot be simultaneously maximized. This work shows there are difficult, and often irreconcilable, choices to be made in the spatial planning of sustainable cities. Spatial search and optimization tools strengthen the evidence-base for planning. Rapid identification of development strategies that satisfy, and minimize conflicts between, multiple objectives helps planners to develop strategies that simultaneously improve urban sustainability and reduce the risks from natural hazards.