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On 20 July 2021, an extreme rainstorm battered Zhengzhou in China's Henan Province, killing 302 people, including 14 individuals who drowned in a subway tunnel and 6 who drowned in a road tunnel. As the global climate warms, extreme weather events similar to the Zhengzhou flood will become more frequent, with increasingly catastrophic consequences for society. Taking a case study-based approach by focusing on the record-breaking Zhengzhou flood, this paper examines the governance capacity of inland cities in North China for managing extreme precipitation and flooding events from the perspective of the flood risk management process. Based on in-depth case analysis, our paper hypothesizes that inland cities in North China still have low risk perceptions of extreme weather events, which was manifested in insufficient pre-disaster preparation and prevention, poor risk communication, and slow emergency response. Accordingly, it is recommended that inland cities update their risk perceptions of extreme rainfall and flooding events, which are no longer low-probability, high-impact "black swans", but turning into high-probability, high-impact "gray rhinos." In particular, cities must make sufficient preparation for extreme weather events by revising contingency plans and strengthening their implementation, improving risk communication of meteorological warnings, and synchronizing emergency response with meteorological warnings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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Urban areas mediate climate transformations and generate new forms of climate urbanism. Looking at climate action in the twelve fastest-growing cities in China with under one million people, this paper proposes a perspective on urban climate politics 'from elsewhere' that foregrounds the potential role of smaller urban areas in mediating climate transformations. The analysis reveals three climate action strategies that reflect practical, institutional, and personal spheres of climate transformations. Planning action in the personal sphere provides opportunities for urban transformations. A perspective 'from elsewhere' calls for greater attention to planning for diverse change strategies for climate transformation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Carbon dioxide (CO 2) emissions and climate change risk have become constraints on global economic sustainable development. Environmental regulation (ER) is a key method for achieving synergy in CO 2 and pollution reduction in China. This paper is the first study to explore the effects of ER on CO 2 emissions by exploiting the National Environmental Protection 11th Five-Year Plan (NEP11-FYP). The implementation of the NEP11-FYP significantly decreases CO 2 emissions by 19.73% in key environmental cities relative to other cities. Heterogeneity analyses suggest that this negative impact is larger in western cities and cities with more pressure to reduce CO 2 emissions. Scale effects, structural effects, and technical effects might be three potential influencing channels through which ER contributes to the CO 2 reduction effect. In addition, the results of the spatial externality of the NEP11-FYP demonstrate a positive spillover effect in neighboring cities within a distance of 300 km and a negative spillover effect in cities more than 500 km away. Our empirical findings provide policy implications for implementing low-carbon transition strategies and reducing CO 2 emissions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Partnerships emerge as part of an environmental governance paradigm shift towards less hierarchical, more collaborative, and non-regulative steering arrangements. This paper examines the prevalence of partnerships in environmental governance on an urban level in a semi-authoritarian setting, by exploring climate initiatives in cities in China. The paper presents exploratory qualitative analysis of governance in urban China through analysis of a database of 150 climate initiatives in 15 cities, which are seen at the forefront of climate protection. The analysis suggests that climate partnerships are used as a governance strategy in China. Moreover, partnerships perform a range of essential governance functions, from rule-setting and provision of public infrastructure and services, to supporting technology development and low carbon demonstration projects. The results indicate that partnerships can facilitate local climate action by creating access to resources, such as information, technology, and funding, as well as contribute to introduction of emission reduction technology and new policy approaches. However, the inclusion of non-state actors in the formulation and delivery of climate mitigation projects redefines the lines of authority over public issues. This draws attention to two key governance challenges in the context of a comparatively state-controlled, top-down political system: skewed participation and lack of deliberative opportunities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Big cities are often said to have big water problems, and Shanghai is no exception. In this paper, we examine and compare the influence of the major factors that give rise to the risk of water insecurity in Shanghai. There is an extensive and diverse literature on these issues, dealt with in isolation, and here, we provide a synthesis of the literature, together with our own assessments and calculations, to assess what are the risks to Shanghai's water supply and what is our degree of confidence in this assessment. We describe the systems that supply water to the city, and past and future changes in the systems, including changes in the glaciers that supply some water to the river, changes in climate, changes in land use, the construction of dams, and water diversions. We show how, at the same time as Shanghai is increasing its dependence on the Yangtze river, water diversions and sea level rise are increasing the risk that this water will be too saline to consume at certain times of the year. This analysis suggests that most of the major drivers of the risk to water security in Shanghai are within the power of environmental managers to control. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Highlights • The increases of commuting CO 2 emissions are several times larger than the urban size, population, and economics' developments. • Metro services reducing commuting CO 2 emissions near the metro stations is not statistically significant, possibly because the proportions of car users near the metro stations are similar to the two cities' average levels, which is caused by their higher household income and the longer travel time using the metro. • In Beijing, there are the smallest commuting CO 2 emissions in the outer suburbs due to job-housing balances, short distance and large percentage of non-motorized mode uses while the largest commuting CO 2 emissions in the inner sprawl suburbs due to car trips with long distance. Abstract To understand the changing relationships between commuting CO 2 emissions (CCE), travel behavior and urban forms, this paper provides a comparative study between the typical Chinese cities of Beijing (more developed) and Xi'an (rapidly developing). Further, the effects of metro services on reducing CCE were explored, and comparative analysis on CCE between the inner sprawling suburbs and outer suburbs was conducted. It was found that: (i) the increases in CCE are several times larger than the increases in urban size, population, and economic developments; (ii) metro services reducing CCE near metro stations is not statistically significant, maybe because the proportions of car users near the metro stations are similar to the two cities' average levels, which is caused by their higher household income and the longer travel time using the metro; (iii) in Beijing, there are smallest CCE in the outer suburbs due to job-housing balances, short distance and large percentage of non-motorized mode uses while largest CCE in the inner sprawl suburbs due to car trips with long distance. These findings indicate that to cope with the rapidly increasing CCE, more attention should be paid to developing strong industry and real-estate simultaneously; the improvement in the feeder bus and public bicycle systems should also be reinforced to reduce the total travel time of metro users; and satellite cities with job-housing balance are greatly needed. The implications will benefit efforts to reduce CCE and mitigate global climate change, and they also provide empirical evidence and reference values for other global cities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Under the threat of global climate change, China has proposed a dual carbon goal of peak carbon and carbon neutrality. As the vital carrier for territorial spatial planning, production–living–ecological (PLE) spaces drive carbon emissions and are important to the dual carbon goals. In this study, carbon emissions and sinks of PLE spaces in cities in Heilongjiang Province from 2005 to 2020 were calculated and spatial–temporal changes were analyzed. The carbon emission structure was analyzed in segmentation sectors. The land use changes and socioeconomic factors on carbon emissions were analyzed, and emission reduction strategies were implemented. The results show the following: (1) Carbon emissions from production and living spaces increased yearly. Carbon sinks were smaller than emissions, but capacity was stable. (2) Higher-emission cities were concentrated in southwest Heilongjiang, and carbon emission differences between regions gradually increased. (3) Among carbon emission sectors, agricultural and household made up smaller proportions, while animal husbandry, industrial, transportation, and traffic travel contributed most. Carbon emission structures were transformed by adjusting urban development and industrial structure. (4) For most cities, industrial space was the main emission space, but agricultural production and urban–rural living spaces dominated in some cities. (5) GDP, urbanization rate, and area of city paved roads suppressed emissions in cities with decreased carbon emission grades. The industrial structure and coal consumption inhibited emissions in cities with maintaining and increasing carbon emissions grades. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper tries to answer the question that whether farmers can adjust better to climate change in the short-term than in long-term by using panel data models and long difference models respectively. We find that short term weather shocks are less detrimental to maize yield than the long-term climate changes, which can be seen as the evidences of adaptations. For adaptation options, we find farmers choose to decrease maize planting area or enlarge the irrigation inputs to cope with the increase of extreme heat days; when there are more precipitations, farmers will increase the input of fertilizer or labor. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: The Chinese government has promulgated a wide variety of low-carbon initiatives to control the rapid growth of energy consumption and carbon emissions in the cities. Past records, however, show that the central government's policies are often poorly implemented or distorted by local officials. Using a case study from the city of Changchun, this paper examines how and why the issue of poor implementation persists despite the establishment of the Energy Conservation Target Responsibility System (ECTRS). As a key institutional mechanism providing local officials with political incentives to implement low-carbon policies, the ECTRS has been constrained by a number of problems, including a poorly designed scoring system, weak targets, the use of energy intensity instead of absolute energy consumption as a policy objective, and the lack of reliable local energy statistics. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Climate change and urbanization collectively influence precipitation changes. However, their separate potential contributions to precipitation changes are not well understood due to their complex interactions. Hence, a "trajectory"‐based method was used to separate their potential contributions across national, regional and local scales in China. Precipitation changes in non‐urban regions can be regarded as representing the influence of climate change and can serve as a reference for isolating precipitation changes due to urbanization in urban areas. Our results revealed that climate change was the dominant factor for precipitation trends, while urbanization exhibited a relatively weak influence, especially for extreme precipitation at the national scale. At the regional scale, the impacts of urbanization on precipitation became more significant. About 20.2 and −30.6% of positive and negative trends in total precipitation originated from urbanization. At the local scale, the potential contribution of urbanization was strongly correlated with local environmental characteristics. Although there were differences in the potential contributions of climate change and urbanization at national, regional and local scales, climate change was the dominant factor for precipitation trends and urbanization acted as a regulator to drying or wetting due to precipitation under climate change. In general, urbanization causes a greater impact on total precipitation than on precipitation extremes. Due to this, attribution approach is static and broad‐based and does not render the level of confidence that is needed for scale‐aware attribution, future studies are needed to understand the physical mechanisms of impacts of local environment changes on precipitation trends at different geographical locations over China. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Between 1980 and 2007, in the Chinese building sector in urban and rural areas, coal was mainly substituted with electricity and natural gas. Growing income will further increase energy consumption and CO-emissions in the building sector. Using an econometric model, disaggregated energy demand and related CO-emissions in the residential sector as well for the whole economy are estimated and forecasted until 2050. In 2009, the Chinese government pledged itself to reduce CO-intensity by 40%-45% in 2020 compared to 2005. Aim of this article is to assess to which extent the measures in the building sector in China can contribute to this target. Main results of the analysis are: (a) The primary energy source coal was mainly substituted by electricity generated with coal. Apart from convenience gains, the environmental advantages are questionable. (b) Between 2010 and 2050, energy demand in the building sector will grow by 2.0%-4.1% per annum leading to CO-emissions at least almost tripling from about 560 mill. tons in 2010 to about 1,500 mill. tons in 2050. (c) The energy efficiency gains in the building sector and other sectors of the Chinese economy, however, are not enough to fulfill the national CO-intensity targets. The reduction of the CO-intensity of GDP would be 37.2% in the BAU-scenario, and 31.9% in the LOW-scenario. Only in the HIGH-scenario (46.3%), the economy is growing efficient enough relative to the induced CO-emissions. The remaining CO2-emission reductions could be gained by additional promotion of renewable energies (mainly solar and geo-thermal) in the building sector. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents abstracts on land use planning topics, including "Historical Amnesia: New Urbanism and the City of Tomorrow," "More Than Sector Theory: Homer Hoyt's Contributions to Planning Knowledge" and "Methodology for the Survival Analysis of Urban Building Stocks."