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Background: Some of the main urban issues we currently face include ageing populations, the impact of the built environment, and the treatment of urban ecosystems. Yet the dynamic relationships and synergies between these issues, and how they are influenced by urban growth and evolution, receives little attention. Research focus: We explore the nexus between people, the urban built environment, and ecosystems as they grow, age, change, and evolve and propose an integrated approach to examine the relationships, synergies, and challenges that may emerge over time within urban neighbourhoods. We argue that this should draw on the lived-experience and wisdom of older people as part of an intergenerational approach underpinned by local, traditional, and ecological knowledge. We propose Growing Older Urbanism as an ecological, co-evolutionary, and complex-adaptive-systems-based framework to explore the nexus between ageing, the built environment, and urban ecosystems and to reveal the synergies and antagonisms that might exist between these three elements. This framework is designed to be used for various types of urban neighbourhoods, and by a diverse range of stakeholders. As part of this approach we provide a preliminary visual canvas to illustrate how the framework might be used within a selected neighbourhood over an agreed timespan. Conclusion: This paper presents some early thinking around the Growing Older Urbanism concept, while also outlining questions and a proposed transdisciplinary research programme to further develop the framework. We argue that understanding the relationship between ageing and the co-evolution of people, place, and ecosystems may teach us about our past, present, and future, and help us grow towards inclusive and sustainable communities. Science Highlights: • The nexus between ageing, the urban built environment, and urban ecosystems is highlighted. • The potential synergies between people, the built environment, and ecosystems as they age and evolve are scrutinised. • The important role for ageing, wisdom, lived experience, and local knowledge in urban transformation is discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Between 60% and 80% of global energy is consumed in urban areas and given the projected increase in world׳s urban population, this share is expected to further increase in the future. Continuity of energy supply in cities is affected by climate change and a growing array of other threats such as cyber attacks, terrorism, technical deficiencies, and market volatility. Determined efforts, acknowledging the interactions and interlinkages between energy and other sectors, are needed to avoid adverse consequences of disruption in energy supply. Resilience thinking is an approach to management of socio-ecological systems that aims to develop an integrated framework for bringing together the (often) fragmented, diverse research on disaster risk management. The literature on urban resilience is immense and still growing. This paper reviews literature related to energy resilience to develop a conceptual framework for assessing urban energy resilience, identify planning and design criteria that can be used for assessing urban energy resilience, and examine the relationship of these criteria with the underlying components of the conceptual framework. In the conceptual framework, it is proposed that in order to be resilient, urban energy system needs to be capable of “planning and preparing for”, “absorbing”, “recovering from”, and “adapting” to any adverse events that may happen in the future. Integrating these four abilities into the system would enable it to continuously address “availability”, “accessibility”, “affordability”, and “acceptability” as the four sustainability-related dimensions of energy. The paper explains different resilience principles associated with these abilities and sustainability dimensions. Also, different planning and design criteria were extracted from the literature and categorized into five themes: infrastructure; resources; land use, urban geometry and morphology; governance; and socio-demographic aspects and human behavior. Examination of the relationship of these criteria with the underlying components of the conceptual framework highlighted the complexity and multi-faceted nature of energy resilience. Exploration of the relevance of the identified criteria to climate change mitigation and adaptation revealed that most of the identified criteria can provide both mitigation and adaptation benefits. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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. • Population growth was associated with capital projects, resource extraction booms, and military presence in Darwin. • Complex political, socio-economic, and disruptive forces shaped population growth, urban planning, and development. • Darwin has one of the most expensive rental housing markets among Australian capital cities. • Current spatial growth and development furthered automobile-dependent mobility among households. • Project-based development approaches proved to be inadequate to deliver sustainable and resilient urban development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]