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The debate on the role of urban agriculture in the sustainable city discourse remains unresolved in the conventional literature. Therefore, the purpose of this study was to review relevant literature to clarify the role of urban agriculture in sustainable cities. The search for literature was guided by themes such as: a) urban agricultural practices, b) indicators for the measurement of sustainable cities, c) economic, social and environmental benefits of urban agriculture, and d) negative effects of urban agriculture on the city. The results from a synthesis of the literature indicate that urban agriculture supports the economic, social and environmental sustainability of cities. However, if the discussion gives credence to only the economic dimension of sustainability, then urban agriculture loses the debate. This is because the economic benefits of prime city land that is used used for non-agricultural purposes (such as commercial or industrial) is profound. However, the social and environmental functions of responsible urban agriculture, particularly in reducing the rift between urbanisation and nature, may be difficult to quantify. These social and environmental functions underscore the importance of urban agriculture in the city landscape. The paper concludes by arguing that focussing on only economic sustainability in the urban agriculture-sustainable city discourse is a travesty of the idea of sustainable development. The paper presents practical steps that can be taken to preserve agriculture in cities towards their sustainability.

Impacted by the compounding effects of climate change and urbanization, cities are facing a panoply of risks that threaten their sustainability. Recognizing the potentially catastrophic ramifications of inaction, local governments are increasingly involved in resilience-building activities that are informed by a vast body of research related to different socio-economic, environmental, and institutional aspects of urban planning and design. However, despite its significant impacts on growth and evolution of cities, limited research exists on how urban form can enhance resilience by increasing the abilities to plan for, absorb, recover from, and adapt to adverse events. As a step towards filling this gap, this paper explores how meso-scale urban form elements can affect urban resilience. This is done through synthesizing theoretical and empirical evidence reported in the literature. The focus is on morphological parameters related to the following urban form elements: neighborhoods, blocks, lots, and open spaces. Results show that existing evidence is mainly related to the associations between ‘neighborhood density, size and configuration of open spaces, and land use mix’ and resilience to ‘climate change impacts’, ‘earthquakes’, ‘social issues’, and ‘resource scarcity’. There is also considerable evidence on the association between design of blocks/lots and resilience in terms of climate change adaptation/mitigation and adaptability to changing circumstances. The analysis also shows that each element influences and is influenced by other elements in the urban system and different elements should not be studied in isolation and the interplay between them should be considered. Existing evidence on conflicts is mainly related to density, but measures related to other elements may also involve conflicts. The paper concludes with a set of recommendations for future research towards improving resilience of urban form at the meso-scale.

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.

The city of Lhasa has experienced urban transformation in recent decades. Accordingly, this paper aims to discover and characterise the urbanisation process of Lhasa, which is the first large, high-altitude city in China to be urbanised. Until 1995, Lhasa mainly served as a regional capital in China with political and administrative functions. Since 2005, the rapid economic development of Lhasa has become a key driver of its urban expansion due to the presence of market mechanisms and the continuous inflow of visitors. After the opening of the Qinghai–Tibet Railway in 2006, the development of urban infrastructures in Lhasa has facilitated the development of the city as well as promoted the health and well-being of its citizens. However, these advancements were accompanied by changes in land use. The land use/cover change reveals the large floating population in Lhasa and underscores the role of high population growth in the economic prosperity of the former agricultural and pastoral areas in the city. The increased amount of air and water pollution, the reduction in the size of agriculture land and the changes in the environment intensify the contradictions between urbanisation and sustainability in a nature-sensitive region such as Lhasa. The paper also proposes some strategies, planning practices and implication on the land use and urban development in the frontier regions of West China cities.

Assigning labels to cities that evoke desirable features has become increasingly popular in recent years with city administrators promoting various notions of the desired city. This article examines the various labels used to classify cities and identifies the key characteristics that each label tends to highlight. It is contended that as proponents of variously labelled cities pursue certain aspects of sustainability, their focus may be too narrow to cover the broad spectrum of sustainability. A literature review of various notions of desirable cities promoted under various labels suggests that cities of the future would need to be dynamic and intelligent in every aspect of social, economic and environmental sustainability. Therefore, it is important that all aspects of sustainability are considered in envisioning the desired future in which to conceptualize the cities of the future. It can be assumed from the past trends of urbanization that future cities will continue to uphold and build upon common goals and values of existing cities such as promoting pleasant urban form, community engagement, economic opportunities, and technological advancement and cultural diversity. This paper reports on a systematic critical review of literature of twelve popular notions/labels of desirable cities as apparent from a scan of citation indices of peer reviewed articles. It identifies the level of consideration of various aspects of sustainability in the central focus of proponents of each notion. It then maps out the concern for sustainability along ten dimensions of sustainability. The findings of the study demonstrate that not all notions/labels of desired cities consider sufficient breadth of the sustainability spectrum. Similarly, in cumulative terms, the various notions of desirable cities amount to different levels of consideration for various aspects of sustainability. The paper concludes by pointing out the need to ensure that the overall focus of scholars dealing with the built environment at any given time provides a balanced regard to all aspects of sustainability.

Urban development has always been related to water systems throughout history. Suzhou is a city with a proud past that is mostly built out of Chinese ingenuity in making water management a development factor. Its parallel pattern of land and water not only gave rise to the first water city model that displays the unique features of the south of Yangtze River Delta, but is also an active reflection of the planning and management of ancient Chinese cities when dealing with natural, urban development and human activities. The paper tells Suzhou's story about the interaction of water and city from urban morphology and urban governance perspectives. Through re-mapping, it will go into the distinguished periods to explore how the specific urban features (distinguished in natural and artificial waterways) have influenced urban development. Along with the prosperity of the water-cities, massive urban construction and environmental issues are enormous challenges in human process. In the rapid urbanization today, how to balance the historical city conservation and sustainable development? Learning from successful historical experiences, the paper sets the scene for more resilient approaches, to integrate and renovate resources for future developments, enhancing the adaptability and sustainability of cities in response to development-conservation challenges.

The paper presents an insight to the household energy consumption in urban Afghanistan, and is based on household surveys conducted in one of its growing cities – Kandahar. The analysis shows that the energy consumed in residential sector has the major share in the total energy consumed in urban Afghanistan. About 72% of the total residential energy is spent for cooking purposes, and firewood is still the predominant form of energy with a share of around 58% for different end uses. Details on current energy process and the energy expenditure for different income levels have been presented. Although the total energy consumption in urban household is relatively lower in Afghanistan, the paper argues that the increase in consumption and transition to modern fuels is likely with increased urbanization, socioeconomic development and improved electricity supply. Against the backdrop of likely increase in energy use, the issue of sustainability becomes significant and therefore, policies are key to ensuring energy development taking into consideration sustainability concerns.

This paper shows the results of a study carried out on the central area of Irbid, Jordan in order to assess the effect of the modern urbanization process on the degradation and loss of the city’s heritage. This type of work comes as a result of the need to study the interaction between modern and heritage landscapes, which are in a direct physical contact with each other, and thus to address the problems facing sustainable development. This paper investigates a number of urban planning concerns that include: assessment of heritage/modern landscape compatibility, heritage building degradation, urban land use change and its role in the fragmentation and lack of connectivity between historic sites, visual pollution and the effectiveness of the existing urban system infrastructure. For each problem, a complete scientific analysis supported by a detailed mapping system is performed, resulting in recommendations for the necessary engineering solutions. Spatial analysis through GIS, e.g. 3D modeling, focuses on evaluating the current condition of the urban system near the heritage landscape. The paper presents important findings, such as identifying the impact of urban and infrastructural expansion, detected from historical aerial images at different epochs, on the historic center of Irbid. The study emphasizes the urgent need to solve the current problems related to the urban system, to achieve the vision of sustainability, which includes solving traffic problems for improving system accessibility, and reevaluating the policies and regulations to achieve a balanced interaction between the heritage and modern landscapes within the city.

This paper analyzes a model depicting the trend of Chinese urbanization and explores relationships between urbanization and the supply and demand of major energy and mineral resources and between the gross domestic product (GDP) and the urbanization of China. Then it predicts Chinas supply and demand trends from 2005 to 2050. It is predicted that until 2010 Chinas GDP and urbanization will grow at high speed, slowing slightly yet still growing strongly on to 2050. It also argues that the supply of cement, steel, aluminum and coal and the demand of timber, cement and steel have significant effects on urbanization. The paper concludes that China will inevitably face a long shortage of resources if future urbanization is faster than predicted, i.e., China cannot meet the targets of the current urbanization strategy while continuing current energy and resource consumption for its industrialization and modernization.

Rapid economic globalization presents major challenges to the sustainable development of ‘development zones’ in many countries. Development zones in China evolved from the concept of Export Processing Zones (EPZs) in the western world. After China’s accession to the World Trade Organisation, however, they have lost their special preferential status to the overseas investors in terms of promotion of industrialization and inward investment. With the changing global and national circumstances, spatial, economic and social transformations are taking place in these development zones. Given the vast number of development zones in China, the successful integration of these development zones into the regional and urban contexts will have great implications on the economic and social development of China. Based upon a case study of Guangzhou Development District (GDD) which is one of the earliest development zones of China, this paper examines the evolution of development zones in the mainland with particular reference to the development problems associated with their urbanisation in recent years. Although this paper primarily focuses on GDD, the findings and discussion will provide insights for other development zones of China in reviewing their development strategies as most of them are sharing similar development problems.

The immense growth of cities, especially in developing countries, is resulting in the urbanization of both poverty and environmental degradation to a greater degree than ever before. This paper examines the processes of growth and degradation in the Greater Cairo Metropolitan Region (GCMR), currently the world’s tenth largest mega-city. It reviews the region’s growth and selected environmental issues as well as impacts of current efforts on managing the region. The assertion of this paper is that current management policies and bodies lack a comprehensive view of urban governance for the region, which does not bode well for the future environmental and economic sustainability of the region.

This paper revisits the potential of urban cycle models to investigate the current challenges of urbanisation in India. It contributes not only by empirically examining the past, current and future trend of urban development, but also by predicting the demand for social infrastructure for sustainably accommodating the predicted growth. Using a non-spatial model, rapid growth is predicted in small cities in developed regions and in intermediate cities in developing regions. The adopted spatial model suggests a decline of megacity cores, but the growth of million-plus city cores and respective peripheries should be anticipated. Socio-economic factors are helpful for understanding the growth of million-plus city cores and megacity suburbs. In those cities predicted to grow, the provision of health and education infrastructure will be below the government norms. Given the data constraints, rapid growth and institutional constraints, this research develops and implements an analytical approach, thereby enhancing understanding of spatial development and elucidating the policy reforms needed to reduce the spatial disparities in India. This approach is transferable to the regions of the Global South facing similar constraints.

Rapid urbanization and industrialization in China have seriously threatened the ecosystem and urban sustainability. This paper estimated the dynamic variations of ecosystem service value (ESV) in response to changes of land use/land cover (LULC) under rapid urbanization, and it analyzed their impacts on sustainability of urban system. Tianjin, the largest coastal city in China, was selected as the study area. The total ESV of Tianjin was approximately 8791.86 million Yuan in 2003, 7948.04 million Yuan in 2007, and 8378.53 million Yuan in 2011. By taking the total dynamic ESV as one of the key factors, we calculated the indexes of urban sustainability from 2003 to 2011. It was found that the dynamic variations of ESV in response to LULC changes had significant impacts on the sustainability of urban system. Therefore, in order to increase the capacity for urban sustainable development, there is an urgent need to lighten the heavy burden on the ecosystem through rational land use management during rapid urbanization.

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.

In recent years, there has been rapid urbanization worldwide, resulting in both benefits and problems. Sustainable urbanization has become an important aspect in promoting sustainable development. Existing studies have introduced various methodologies to guide urbanization towards sustainable practices. The application of these methods has contributed to improving urban sustainability. To further support the effective applications of the principles of sustainable urbanization, a tool is needed to evaluate whether a particular process of urbanization is sustainable. In this paper, we introduce an alternative model for evaluating sustainable urbanization by investigating the relationship between urbanization and urban sustainability. The practice of sustainable urbanization is defined as a dynamic process that enables urban sustainability to improve or to maintain a certain level of practice. By employing this definition, we introduce a sustainable urbanization elasticity coefficient eSU, which is defined by two parameters: urbanization velocity (VμR) and urban sustainability velocity (VμS). The sustainability of an urbanization process is measured by the value of eSU or read from the VμR–VμS coordinate. A case study demonstrates the application of the measure eSU and the VμR–VμS coordinate. The proposed model is an effective tool to help policy makers understand whether the urbanization processes they support are sustainable and thus whether to correct practices. The model also allows comparison of different urbanization practices and thereby encourages the sharing of successful experiences.

In 2005 Mexico City had just under 20 million inhabitants in the whole metropolitan area. Although over the last 20 years the city has registered a slower population growth, its urban area continues to expand. The particular problem with the expansion to the south is that urbanization is invading a so-called Preservation Zone (Suelo de Conservacion) that represents a territory subject to preservation given its ecological value in terms of climate regulation, water recharge, forest communities, agricultural cultivation, and hilly landscape. In this particular space, there is a process of diffused urbanization with very low densities in the Preservation Zone. In recent years it has been possible to identify a high number of illegal settlements of low income populations within its limits. This is a continuous, small-scale process, but in the medium and long term it means a significant loss of land with high ecological value. This process happens despite land use planning regulations being in existence since the late 1970s. From 1970 to 1995 just over 10 thousand hectares were lost including irrigation land and forest areas. The analysis includes, the dynamics and main patterns of urbanization in the Preservation Zone, the description of planning norms, and a precise measurement of illegal settlements. The paper concludes that this peri-urban process shows, a marked environmental damage, lack of effectiveness of planning norms and of increasing living standards of the poor, all of which show an ineffective urban governance, that does not contribute to sustainability in the Preservation Zone and in the city in general.

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.

This paper examines the use of urban space by dairy production activities in two areas of Mexico City with different degrees of urbanization (east and south). These activities have adapted to the recent urban conditions, from an original rural state. Dairy production is carried out in the house area, and producers pay for urban services as other residents. In the eastern zone, the activity is the sole form of income, while in the south, livelihoods are more diversified. In the east, a wide variety of food wastes from various sources are used, while in the south grass remains an important part of the diet. Raw milk in the east is usually sold direct to the consumer, while intermediaries are more common in the south. Herds tend to be larger and more specialized in the east than the south. In both cases there is important use of local resources both for housing and feeding the animals. Manure is used in pre-Hispanic agricultural systems in sub and peri-urban areas. Based on the range of functions provided to the city by these systems, and the present unnecessary dependence of Mexico City on imported milk, the options for policy and development support are discussed.