Search

Copyright of Urban Studies (Sage Publications, Ltd.) is the property of Sage Publications, Ltd. and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

The balance between agricultural development and maintenance of agro-ecological environment becomes a huge challenge because of global climate changes. Existing literature on the low-carbon pilot policy proposed by the government of China and whether the problems of agricultural development and agricultural environmental protection can be solved or not have not been reviewed. This paper analyzes the impact of low-carbon pilot policies on agricultural eco-efficiency by using SARAR model based on the data of 281 cities in China. Results show the spatial spillover effects between low-carbon pilot policies and agricultural eco-efficiency. The implementation of low-carbon pilot policy can improve agricultural eco-efficiency. Although restrained by agricultural economic development, this policy has disequilibrium effect on agricultural eco-efficiency, has a relatively large impact on agricultural eco-efficiency in western China and other poor areas, and promotes the reduction of agricultural carbon emission. The effect of the implementation of low-carbon pilot policy is affected by the initial agricultural economic development and urban economic conditions. This research aims to improve the agricultural eco-efficiency and enforce the green development of the agricultural economy via the perspective of the low-carbon pilot policy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Environment & Urbanization is the property of Sage Publications, Ltd. and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Abstract: This paper contributes to filling the theoretical and practical gaps of city resilience literature, which lacks multifaceted theorizing and typically overlooks the multidisciplinary and complex nature of urban resilience. Furthermore, most studies on the subject make use of general, vague, and confusing terminology. This paper suggests a new innovative conceptual framework (the Resilient City Planning Framework or RCPF) that addresses the critical question of what cities and their urban communities should do in order to move towards a more resilient state in the future. Accordingly, the RCPF takes complexity and uncertainty into account. It is affected by a multiplicity of economic, social, spatial, and physical factors and its planning involves a wide range of stakeholders. RCPF is a network of four interlinked concepts that together, provide a comprehensive understanding of City Resilience. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

This paper details a method for residential water consumption modeling within the Integrated Urban Metabolism Analysis Tool (IUMAT), a computational modeling platform for evaluating environmental performance of urban communities under alternative growth scenarios. A bottom-up approach is introduced to generate end-use indoor and outdoor water profiles by applying GLM and Ridge regression methods to Residential End Uses of Water, Version 2 (REU II-2016) dataset and investigating the influence of demographic and climate factors, as well as utility rate structures on patterns of consumption. The data is collected from 2010 through 2013 by nine utilities that operate in North America on 771 and 838 single family units for indoor and outdoor water use respectively. Potential advances to surveying methods as well as the need for tools that allow simultaneous, isolated assessment of educational and technological conservation measures are explained. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Summary Changing climates and growing populations have prompted policy makers to shift to more climate resilient, technology-driven water sources, such as seawater desalination. Desalination is a prominent water resource in the Middle East but countries in other parts of the world with similar scarcity issues and good access to sea water, such as Australia, have been comparatively slow to adopt it. This paper explores attitudes to desalination in Perth, Western Australia, and the factors that influence its acceptance. We compared individuals’ acceptance of desalination over two time periods by using identical surveys administered in 2007 and 2012. We then examined the attitudinal factors – attitudes towards desalination and attitudes towards the environment – that influence acceptance. Acceptance of desalination was reasonably high and stable at both times (74% and 73% in 2007 and 2012 respectively). We found that respondents’ attitudes to perceived outcomes and benefits, fairness, environmental obligation and risk were important predictors of their acceptance of desalination in both surveys. However the weight given to these aspects varied over time. The findings show that there is still mixed community sentiment towards desalination, which helps to explain why acceptance has not increased since desalination was introduced in 2006. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: The implications of climate change and the end of the fossil fuel era suggest that we are entering a period of major, transformative, change requiring the restructure of the most fundamental systems for urban living. But rapid structural change is hard to negotiate within existing communities. In Melbourne Australia, a research unit known as the Victorian Eco-Innovation Lab (VEIL) has developed a unique process to co-create visions for a 25 year horizon for specific urban communities in response to climate change. The need to bring that process from vision to intervention, to catalyse rapid transformation of an existing urban environment, has produced a new program –Eco-Acupuncture – for work with local precincts in metropolitan Melbourne and regional communities. Eco-Acupuncture focuses on multiple small interventions in an existing urban precinct that can shift the community's ideas of what is permissible, desirable and possible and provide transformation points for a new trajectory of development to a resilient low-carbon future. The paper describes the context and evolution of the program and the framework developed to deliver new locally specific starting points for urban transformation, a process involving academic researchers and designers, a shifting network of professional designers, many hundreds of design masters students, representatives of local government, business and the wider community. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]