what are five responses to urban sustainability challenges?

2 Urban Sustainability Indicators and Metrics, The National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, Pathways to Urban Sustainability: Challenges and Opportunities for the United States. However, recent scientific analyses have shown that major cities are actually the safest areas in the United States, significantly more so than their suburban and rural counterparts, when considering that safety involves more than simply violent crime risks but also traffic risks and other threats to safety (Myers et al., 2013). Free and expert-verified textbook solutions. Urban sustainability strategies and efforts must stay within planetary boundaries,1 particularly considering the urban metabolism, constituted by the material and energy flows that keep cities alive (see also Box 3-1) (Burger et al., 2012; Ferro and Fernndez, 2013). Simply put, any sustainability plans, including those applied in urban areas, cannot violate the laws of nature if they are to achieve acceptable, long-term outcomes for human populations. The roadmap is organized in three phases: (1) creating the basis for a sustainability roadmap, (2) design and implementation, and (3) outcomes and reassessment. The results imply that poor air quality had substantial effects on infant health at concentrations near the U.S. Environmental Protection Agencymandated air quality standard and that roughly 1,300 fewer infants died in 1972 than would have in the absence of the Act. What are the 5 responses to urban sustainability challenges? Such limits can be implemented through local authorities guidelines and regulations in planning and regulating the built environment, e.g., guidelines and regulations pertaining to building material production, construction, building design and performance, site and settlement planning, and efficiency standards for appliances and fixtures. Measuring progress towards sustainable or unsustainable urban development requires quantification with the help of suitable sustainability indicators. Can a city planner prepare for everything that might go wrong, but still manage to plan cities sustainably? Two environmental challenges to urban sustainability are water quality and air quality. Sign up for email notifications and we'll let you know about new publications in your areas of interest when they're released. Ecological footprint analysis has helped to reopen the controversial issue of human carrying capacity. The ecological footprint of a specified population is the area of land and water ecosystems required continuously. The overall ecological footprint of cities is high and getting higher. It can be achieved by reducing, reusing, and recycling materials. The continuous reassessment of the impact of the strategy implemented requires the use of metrics, and a DPSIR framework will be particularly useful to assess the progress of urban sustainability. Only about 2 hectares (4.94 acres) of such ecosystems are available, however, for each person on Earth (with no heed to the independent requirements of other consumer species). There is the matter of urban growth that, if unregulated, can come in the form of suburban sprawl. If a city experiences overpopulation, it can lead to a high depletion of resources, lowering the quality of life for all. By registering you get free access to our website and app (available on desktop AND mobile) which will help you to super-charge your learning process. Factories and power plants, forestry and agriculture, mining and municipal wastewater treatment plants. You're a city planner who has gotten all the support and funding for your sustainability projects. Extreme inequalities threaten public health, economic prosperity, and citizen engagementall essential elements of urban sustainability. Poor neighborhoods have felt the brunt of dumping, toxic waste, lack of services, and limited housing choices (Collin and Collin, 1997; Commission for Racial Justice, 1987). Given the relevance and impact of these constraints to the discussion of various pathways to urban sustainability, a further examination of these issues and their associated challenges are described in Appendix C (as well as by Day et al., 2014; Seto and Ramankutty, 2016; UNEP, 2012). This is a challenge because it promotes deregulated unsustainable urban development, conversion of rural and farmland, and car dependency. Activities that provide co-benefits that are small in magnitude, despite being efficient and co-occurring, should be eschewed unless they come at relatively small costs to the system. Specifically, market transformation can traditionally be accomplished by first supporting early adopters through incentives; next encouraging the majority to take action through market-based approaches, behavior change programs, and social norming; and, finally, regulating to prompt action from laggards. Poor resource management can not only affect residents in cities but also people living in other parts of the world. Examples of Urban Sustainability Challenges The task is, however, not simple. A large suburban development is built out in the countryside. Restrictive housing covenants, exclusionary zoning, financing, and racism have placed minorities and low-income people in disadvantaged positions to seek housing and neighborhoods that promote health, economic prosperity, and human well-being (Denton, 2006; Rabin, 1989; Ritzdorf, 1997; Sampson, 2012; Tilley, 2006). Human well-being and health are the cornerstones of livable and thriving cities although bolstering these relationships with myopic goals that improve human prosperity while disregarding the health of natural urban and nonurban ecosystems will only serve to undermine both human and environmental. For example, as discussed by Bai (2007), at least two important institutional factors arise in addressing GHG emission in cities: The first is the vertical jurisdictional divide between different governmental levels; the second is the relations between the local government and key industries and other stakeholders. when people exceed the resources provided by a location. The main five responses to urban sustainability challenges are regional planning efforts, urban growth boundaries, farmland protection policies, greenbelts, and redevelopment of brownfields. This lens is needed to undergird and encourage collaborations across many organizations that will enable meaningful pathways to urban sustainability. Ultimately, the goal of urban sustainability is to promote and enable the long-term well-being of people and the planet, yet doing so requires recognition of the biophysical constraints on all human and natural systems, as well as the acknowledgment that urban sustainability is multiscale and multidimensional, both encompassing and transcending urban jurisdictions. In an era that is characterized by global flows of commodities, capital, information, and people, the resources to support urban areas extend the impacts of urban activities along environmental, economic, and social dimensions at national and international levels, and become truly global; crossing these boundaries is a prerequisite for sustainable governance. When cities build and expand, they can create greenbelts, areas of wild, undeveloped land in surrounding urban areas. 1 Planetary boundaries define, as it were, the boundaries of the planetary playing field for humanity if we want to be sure of avoiding major human-induced environmental change on a global scale (Rockstrm et al., 2009). Best study tips and tricks for your exams. Learn about and revise the challenges that some British cities face, including regeneration and urban sustainability, with GCSE Bitesize Geography (AQA). Principle 4: Cities are highly interconnected. Commitment to sustainable development by city or municipal authorities means adding new goals to those that are their traditional concerns (McGranahan and Satterthwaite, 2003). The results do show that humans global ecological footprint is already well beyond the area of productive land and water ecosystems available on Earth and that it has been expanding in the recent decades. Ready to take your reading offline? Switch between the Original Pages, where you can read the report as it appeared in print, and Text Pages for the web version, where you can highlight and search the text. Sustainability is a community concern, not an individual one (Pelletier, 2010). New sustainability indicators and metrics are continually being developed, in part because of the wide range of sustainability frameworks used as well as differences in spatial scales of interest and availability (or lack thereof) of data. Local decision making must have a larger scope than the confines of the city or region. Thus, some strategies to manage communal resources, such as community-based, bottom-up approaches examined by Ostrom (2009a), may be more difficult to obtain in urban settings. Therefore, the elimination of these obstacles must start by clarifying the nature of the issue, identifying which among the obstacles are real and which can be handled by changing perceptions, concerns, and priorities at the city level. Let's take a look at how the challenges of sustainable urban development may not be challenges at allit all depends on perspective! A multiscale governance system that explicitly addresses interconnected resource chains and interconnected places is necessary in order to transition toward urban sustainability (Box 3-4). This paper focuses on adaptive actions in response to WEF challenges as well as the environmental implications of these responses in Harare, Zimbabwe. Poor resource management can not only affect residents in cities but also people living in other parts of the world. Although cities concentrate people and resources, and this concentration can contribute to their sustainability, it is also clear that cities themselves are not sustainable without the support of ecosystem services, including products from ecosystems such as raw materials and food, from nonurban areas. How does air pollution contribute to climate change? This is a target that leading cities have begun to adopt, but one that no U.S. city has developed a sound strategy to attain. A strip mall is built along a major roadway. As simple and straightforward as this may sound, the scale argument encompasses more than spatial scaleit is composed of multiple dimensions and elements. Create and find flashcards in record time. 4, Example of a greenbelt in Tehran, Iran. Further, unpredictable timing and quantity of precipitation can both dry up growing crops or lead to flash floods. Launched at the ninth session of the World Urban Forum (WUF9 . Urban sustainability goals often require behavior change, and the exact strategies for facilitating that change, whether through regulation or economic policies, require careful thought. View our suggested citation for this chapter. These same patterns of inequality also exist between regions and states with poor but resource-rich areas bearing the cost of the resource curse (see also Box 3-3). There is a need to go beyond conventional modes of data observation and collection and utilize information contributed by users (e.g., through social media) and in combination with Earth observation systems. Making cities more resilient against these environmental threats is one of the biggest challenges faced by city authorities and requires urgent attention. Urban sprawl reduces available water catchment areas, agricultural lands and increases demand for energy. Sustainable solutions are to be customized to each of the urban development stages balancing local constraints and opportunities, but all urban places should strive to articulate a multiscale and multipronged vision for improving human well-being. It is beyond the scope of this report to examine all available measures, and readers are directed to any of the numerous reviews that discuss their relative merits (see, for example, uek et al., 2012; EPA, 2014a; Janetos et al., 2012; Wiedmann and Barrett, 2010; Wilson et al., 2007; The World Bank, 2016; Yale University, 2016). In a kickoff event at UCLA's Royce Hall (see event video), Chancellor Gene Block will describe the ambitious project . However,. Nie wieder prokastinieren mit unseren Lernerinnerungen. Cities with a high number of these facilities are linked with poorer air quality, water contamination, and poor soil health. Share a link to this book page on your preferred social network or via email. Ecological footprint calculations show that the wealthy one-fifth of the human family appropriates the goods and life support services of 5 to 10 hectares (12.35 to 24.70 acres) of productive land and water per capita to support their consumer lifestyles using prevailing technology. Indicates air quality to levels to members of the public. (2012) argued that the laws of thermodynamics and biophysical constraints place limitations on what is possible for all systems, including human systems such as cities. How many categories are there in the AQI? Fig. Identify your study strength and weaknesses. limate, precipitation, soil and sediments, vegetation, and human activities are all factors of declining water quality. Bai (2007) points to threethe spatial, temporal, and institutional dimensionsand in each of these dimensions, three elements exist: scale of issues, scale of concerns, and scale of actions and responses. Together, cities can play important roles in the stewardship of the planet (Seitzinger et al., 2012). Principle 2: Human and natural systems are tightly intertwined and come together in cities. over time to produce the resources that the population consumes, and to assimilate the wastes that the population produces, wherever on Earth the relevant land and/or water is located. To analyze the measures taken at an urban level as a response to the challenges posed by the pandemic (RQ1), we used a set of criteria. Over 10 million students from across the world are already learning smarter. Cities are not islands. Fine material produced in air pollution that humans can breathe in. The metric most often used is the total area of productive landscape and waterscape required to support that population (Rees, 1996; Wackernagel and Rees, 1996). Instead they provide a safe space for innovation, growth, and development in the pursuit of human prosperity in an increasingly populated and wealthy world (Rockstrm et al., 2013). Right? Meeting the challenges of planetary stewardship demands new governance solutions and systems that respond to the realities of interconnectedness. Climate change, pollution, inadequate housing, and unsustainable production and consumption are threatening environmental justice and health equity across generations, socioeconomic strata, and urban settings. Fair Deal legislation and the creation of the GI Bill. Regional cooperation is especially important to combat suburban sprawl; as cities grow, people will look for cheaper housing in surrounding rural and suburban towns outside of cities. . Examples include smoke and dust. The success of the Sustainable Development Goal 11 (SDG 11) depends on the availability and accessibility of robust data, as well as the reconfiguration of governance systems that can catalyse urban transformation. Urban systems are complex networks of interdependent subsystems, for which the degree and nature of the relationships are imperfectly known. The unrestricted growthoutside of major urban areas with separate designations for residential, commercial, entertainment, and other services, usually only accessible by car. Here we advocate a DPSIR conceptual model based on indicators used in the assessment of urban activities (transportation, industry. Sustaining natural resources in the face of climate change and anthropogenic pressures is increasingly becoming a challenge in Africa [ 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 ]. Finally, the redevelopment of brownfields, former industrial areas that have been abandoned, can be an efficient way of re-purposing infrastructure. In an increasingly urbanized and globalized world, the boundaries between urban and rural and urban and hinterland are often blurred. Urban Development. What are five responses to urban sustainability challenges? This is a challenge because it promotes deregulated unsustainable urban development, conversion of rural and farmland, and car dependency. How many goods are imported into and exported from a city is not known in practically any U.S. city. One is that the ecological footprint is dominated by energy as over 50 percent of the footprint of most high- and middle-income nations is due to the amount of land necessary to sequester greenhouse gases (GHGs). How can urban growth boundaries respond to, How can farmland protection policies respond to, How can the redevelopment of brownfields respond to. The six main challenges to urban sustainability include: suburban sprawl, sanitation, air and water quality, climate change, energy use, and the ecological footprint of cities. MyNAP members SAVE 10% off online. 2, River in Amazon Rainforest (https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:River_RP.jpg), by Jlwad (https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=User:Jlwad&action=edit&redlink=1), licensed by CC-BY-SA-4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/deed.en), Fig. Discriminatory practices in the housing market over many decades have created racial segregation in central cities and suburbs. Some of the challenges that cities and . Each city's challenges are unique; however, many have implemented one or more of the following in their efforts to develop their own integrated solutions: The spread and continued growth of urban areas presents a number of concerns for a sustainable future, particularly if cities cannot adequately address the rise of poverty, hunger, resource consumption, and biodiversity loss in their borders. A description of each of these phases is given below. A practitioner could complement the adopted standard(s) with additional indicators unique to the citys context as necessary. See the explanations on Suburbanization, Sprawl, and Decentralization to learn more! But city authorities need national guidelines and often national policies. They found that while those companies lost almost 600,000 jobs compared with what would have happened without the regulations, there were positive gains in health outcomes. This is because as cities grow, more resources are needed for maintaining economic conditions in a city. Register for a free account to start saving and receiving special member only perks. For a renewable resourcesoil, water, forest, fishthe sustainable rate of use can be no greater than the rate of regeneration of its source. For example, in order to ensure that global warming remains below two degrees Celsius, the theoretical safe limit of planetary warming beyond which irreversible feedback loops begin that threaten human health and habitat, most U.S. cities will need to reduce GHG emissions 80 percent by 2050. Regional planning can also help create urban growth boundaries, a limit that determines how far an urban area will develop spatially. Because urban systems connect distant places through the flows of people, economic goods and services, and resources, urban sustainability cannot be focused solely on cities themselves, but must also encompass places and land from which these resources originate (Seto et al., 2012).