Urban development and sustainability challenges chronicled by a century of construction material flows and stocks in Tiexi, China  

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jing Guo ◽  
Tomer Fishman ◽  
Yao Wang ◽  
Alessio Miatto ◽  
Wendy Wuyts ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Urban Development ◽  
Construction Material ◽  
Material Flows ◽  
Sustainability Challenges

Exposing smart cities and eco-cities: Frankenstein urbanism and the sustainability challenges of the experimental city

2017 ◽  
Vol 50 (1) ◽  
pp. 73-92 ◽  
Author(s):  
Federico Cugurullo
Keyword(s):  
Urban Development ◽  
Smart City ◽  
Smart Cities ◽  
Experimental Models ◽  
Built Environments ◽  
Sustainable City ◽  
Incompatible Elements ◽  
The World ◽  
Scientific Approach ◽  
Sustainability Challenges

In recent years, the world has seen the emergence of a number of urban projects which, under the banner of experimentation, have promoted alternative models of city-making capable, in theory, of creating sustainable built environments. Among these supposedly experimental models, the smart city and the eco-city stand out in terms of geographical diffusion, and are hailed by their advocates as the mark of an innovative urbanism based on a scientific approach to urban development. Through the analysis of Hong Kong and Masdar City, examples of a smart-city agenda and an eco-city project respectively, this paper questions the sustainability of so-called smart cities and eco-cities, by investigating the extent to which they are developed in a controlled and systematic manner as their developers claim. More specifically, the paper counterclaims mainstream understandings of smart and ecological urbanism, arguing that what are promoted as cohesive settlements shaped by a homogeneous vision of the sustainable city, are actually fragmented cities made of disconnected and often incongruous pieces of urban fabric. Theoretically, these claims are discussed through the concept of Frankenstein urbanism which draws upon Mary Shelley’s novel as a metaphor for unsuccessful experiments generated by the forced union of different, incompatible elements.

scholarly journals Experimental Governance and Urban Planning Futures: Five Strategic Functions for Municipalities in Local Innovation

2021 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
pp. 183-194
Author(s):  
Erica Eneqvist ◽  
Andrew Karvonen
Keyword(s):  
Urban Planning ◽  
Urban Development ◽  
Triple Helix ◽  
First Century ◽  
Public Private Partnerships ◽  
Analytic Framework ◽  
Local Authorities ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
The World ◽  
Sustainability Challenges

Experimental governance is increasingly being implemented in cities around the world through laboratories, testbeds, platforms, and innovation districts to address a wide range of complex sustainability challenges. Experiments often involve public-private partnerships and triple helix collaborations with the municipality as a key stakeholder. This stretches the responsibilities of local authorities beyond conventional practices of policymaking and regulation to engage in more applied, collaborative, and recursive forms of planning. In this article, we examine how local authorities are involved in experimental governance and how this is influencing their approach to urban development. We are specifically interested in the multiple strategic functions that municipalities play in experimental governance and the broader implications to existing urban planning practices and norms. We begin the article by developing an analytic framework of the most common strategic functions of municipalities in experimental governance and then apply this framework to Stockholm, a city that has embraced experimental governance as a means to realise its sustainability ambitions. Our findings reveal how the strategic functions of visioning, facilitating, supporting, amplifying, and guarding are producing new opportunities and challenges to urban planning practices in twenty-first century cities.

scholarly journals How to Contextualize SDG 11? Looking at Indicators for Sustainable Urban Development in Germany

2018 ◽  
Vol 7 (12) ◽  
pp. 464 ◽  
Author(s):  
Florian Koch ◽  
Kerstin Krellenberg
Keyword(s):  
Sustainable Development ◽  
Urban Development ◽  
Development Strategy ◽  
National Level ◽  
Sustainable Urban Development ◽  
The Sustainable Development ◽  
Governmental Organization ◽  
Agenda 2030 ◽  
Global North ◽  
Sustainability Challenges

Agenda 2030 pursues a universal approach and identifies countries in the Global South and in the Global North that are in need of transformation toward sustainability. Therefore, countries of the Global North such as Germany have signed the commitment to implement the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). However, the SDGs need to be “translated” to the specific national context. Existing sustainability indicators and monitoring and reporting systems need to be adjusted as well. Our paper evaluates how three different initiatives translated SDG 11 (“Make cities and human settlements inclusive, safe, resilient, and sustainable”) to the German context, given the specific role of cities in contributing to sustainable development. These initiatives included the official ‘National Sustainable Development Strategy’ of the German Government, a scientific initiative led by the ‘German Institute for Urban Affairs’, and a project carried out by the ‘Open Knowledge Foundation’, a non-governmental organization (NGO). This article aims to analyze how global goals addressing urban developments are contextualized on a national level. Our findings demonstrate that only a few of the original targets and indicators for SDG 11 are used in the German context; thus, major adjustments have been made according to the main sustainability challenges identified for Germany. Furthermore, our results show that the current contextualization of SDG 11 and sustainable urban development in Germany are still ongoing, and more changes and commitments need to be made.

scholarly journals Global urban subway development, construction material stocks, and embodied carbon emissions

2021 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Ruichang Mao ◽  
Yi Bao ◽  
Huabo Duan ◽  
Gang Liu
Keyword(s):  
Traffic Congestion ◽  
Construction Material ◽  
Construction Materials ◽  
Ghg Emissions ◽  
Rapid Expansion ◽  
Ghg Emission ◽  
Mobility Service ◽  
Subway System ◽  
Embodied Carbon Emissions ◽  
Sustainability Challenges

AbstractUrban subway system, as an important type of urban transportation infrastructure, can provide mass mobility service and help address urban sustainability challenges such as traffic congestion and air pollution. The continuous construction of subways, however, causes large amounts of construction materials and embodied greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. In this study, we characterized the patterns of subway development, construction material stocks, and embodied emissions covering all 219 cities in the world in which subways are found by July 2020. The global subway length reached 16,419 km in 2020, and the construction material stocks amounted to 2.5 gigatons, equaling to an embodied emission of 560 megatons. In particular, China’s subway system contributes to ~40% of the total global stocks, with a pattern of moderate and steady stocks growth before 2010 and a rapid expansion afterwards, implying the late-development advantages and infrastructure-based urbanization mode. Our results demonstrated that identifying the spatiotemporal characteristics of subway materials stocks development is imperative for benchmarking future resource demand, informing sustainable subway planning, prospecting urban mining and waste management opportunities and challenges, and mitigating the associated environmental impacts for global GHG emission reduction.

Information Systems for Co-Operative Procurement of Organic Food as a Basis for Decentralised Eco-Villages

2005 ◽  
pp. 243-259
Author(s):  
Stefan Naumann
Keyword(s):  
Construction Material ◽  
Organic Food ◽  
Limited Area ◽  
Material Flows ◽  
Minimum Order ◽  
Organic Products ◽  
Local Restriction ◽  
Order Quantities ◽  
Essential Contribution ◽  
Eco Village

In this chapter we describe the “eFood-Coop” software system that supports an eco-community in ordering, purchasing and delivering organic products such as food, clean construction material and so forth. In addition, offering services and hiring or lending goods such as tools and so forth can be supported. Besides presenting products, the software supports communication and co-operation among the members/consumers. This promotes a sustainable economy locally and makes it possible to order organic food at wholesale (which requires collecting single orders to exceed the minimum order quantities required to obtain wholesale sales units). Thus, it is one essential contribution to a decentralised eco-village structure, where several hundred people consider themselves as inhabitants of a virtual village. This village is spread over a limited area with a diameter of about 20-30 miles. The local restriction is necessary because otherwise material flows would be too extensive and maintaining social bindings would be more difficult.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document