Globally, over 50% of the population lives in urban areas today. True or false? 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. You're looking at OpenBook, NAP.edu's online reading room since 1999. What pollutants occur due to agricultural practices? Urban Development. Long-term policies and institutionalized activities that can promote greater equity can contribute to the future of sustainable cities. Cities that are serious about sustainability will seek to minimize their negative environmental impacts across all scales from local to global. Providing the data necessary to analyze urban systems requires the integration of different economic, environmental, and social tools. Durable sustainability policies that transcend single leaders, no matter how influential, will also be necessary to foster reliable governance and interconnectedness over the long term for cities. Intensive urban growth can lead to greater poverty, with local governments unable to provide services for all people. Another kind of waste produced by businesses is industrial waste, which can include anything from gravel and scrap metal to toxic chemicals. The environmental effects of suburban sprawl include What are some urban sustainability practices that could prevent suburban sprawl? Name three countries with poor air quality. This is the first step to establish an urban sustainability framework consistent with the sustainability principles described before, which provide the fundamental elements to identify opportunities and constraints for different contexts found in a diversity of urban areas. As described in Chapter 2, many indicators and metrics have been developed to measure sustainability, each of which has its own weaknesses and strengths as well as availability of data and ease of calculation. 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. 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. Intended as a comparative illustration of the types of urban sustainability pathways and subsequent lessons learned existing in urban areas, this study examines specific examples that cut across geographies and scales and that feature a range of urban sustainability challenges and opportunities for collaborative learning across metropolitan regions. 4, Example of a greenbelt in Tehran, Iran (https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Tochal_from_Modarres_Expressway.jpg), by Kaymar Adl (https://www.flickr.com/photos/kamshots/), licensed by CC-BY-2.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/deed.en). Principle 4: Cities are highly interconnected. Sustainable management of resources and limiting the impact on the environment are important goals for cities. As networks grow between extended urban regions and within cities, issues of severe economic, political, and class inequalities become central to urban sustainability. 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. Sign up to highlight and take notes. The concept of planetary boundaries has been developed to outline a safe operating space for humanity that carries a low likelihood of harming the life support systems on Earth to such an extent that they no longer are able to support economic growth and human development . Thinking about cities as closed systems that require self-sustaining resource independence ignores the concepts of comparative advantage or the benefits of trade and economies of scale. Extreme inequalities threaten public health, economic prosperity, and citizen engagementall essential elements of urban sustainability. Name some illnesses that poor water quality can lead to. Ensuring urban sustainability can be challenging due to a range of social, economic, and environmental factors. 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). Share a link to this book page on your preferred social network or via email. Poor resource management can not only affect residents in cities but also people living in other parts of the world. See the explanations on Suburbanization, Sprawl, and Decentralization to learn more! For instance, with warmer recorded temperatures, glaciers melt faster. Nie wieder prokastinieren mit unseren Lernerinnerungen. Nothing can go wrong! In discussing sustainability from a global perspective, Burger et al. Efforts to reduce severe urban disparities in public health, economic prosperity, and citizen engagement allow cities to improve their full potential and become more appealing and inclusive places to live and work (UN, 2016b). More regulation and penalties can assist with waste management, but many countries, both developed and developing, struggle with this. Cities have central roles in managing the planets resources sustainability (Seitzinger et al., 2012). Cities with a high number of manufacturing are linked with ____. Show this book's table of contents, where you can jump to any chapter by name. The second is an understanding of the finite nature of many natural resources (or the ecosystems from which they are drawn) and of the capacities of natural systems in the wider regional, national, and international context to absorb or break down wastes. Sustainability Challenges and Solutions - thestructuralengineer.info Waste disposal and sanitation are growing problems as urban areas continue to grow. How can climate change be a challenge to urban sustainability? How can the redevelopment of brownfields respond tourban sustainability challenges? For a nonrenewable resourcefossil fuel, high-grade mineral ores, fossil groundwaterthe sustainable rate of use can be no greater than the rate at which a renewable resource, used sustainably, can be substituted for it. In recent years, city-level sustainability indicators have become more popular in the literature (e.g., Mori and Christodoulou, 2012). 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. The future of urban sustainability will therefore focus on win-win opportunities that improve both human and natural ecosystem health in cities. Urbanization is a global phenomenon with strong sustainability implications across multiple scales. These win-win efficiencies will often take advantage of economies of scale and adhere to basic ideas of robust urbanism, such as proximity and access (to minimize the time and costs of obtaining resources), density and form (to optimize the use of land, buildings, and infrastructure), and connectedness (to increase opportunities for efficient and diverse interactions). How can farmland protection policies respond tourban sustainability challenges? Taking the challenges forward. Third, the critical task of developing finance models to support urban sustainability action requires urgent attention. To search the entire text of this book, type in your search term here and press Enter. It can be achieved by reducing, reusing, and recycling materials. 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. By 2045, the world's urban population will increase by 1.5 times to 6 billion. Characterizing the urban metabolism constitutes a priority research agenda and includes quantification of the inputs, outputs, and storage of energy, water, nutrients, products, and wastes, at an urban scale. 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. Cities have experienced an unprecedented rate of growth in the last decade. Climate change overall threatens cities and their built infrastructure. The following discussion of research and development needs highlights just a few ways that science can contribute to urban sustainability. Resources Cities need resources such as water, food and energy to be viable. Making cities more resilient against these environmental threats is one of the biggest challenges faced by city authorities and requires urgent attention. Particulate matter, lead, ground level ozone, nitrogen oxide, sulfur oxide, carbon dioxide, and carbon monoxide. A summary of major research and development needs is as follows. Earn points, unlock badges and level up while studying. First, large data gaps exist. Classifying these indicators as characterizing a driver, a pressure, the state, the impact, or a response may allow for a detailed approach to be used even in the absence of a comprehensive theory of the phenomena to be analyzed. Urban sustainability has been defined in various ways with different criteria and emphases, but its goal should be to promote and enable the long-term well-being of people and the planet, through efficient use of natural resources and production of wastes within a city region while simultaneously improving its livability, through social amenities, economic opportunity, and health, so that it can better fit within the capacities of local, regional, and global ecosystems, as discussed by Newman (1999). Stop procrastinating with our study reminders. As discussed by Bai (2007), the fundamental point in the scale argument is that global environmental issues are simply beyond the reach and concern of city government, and therefore it is difficult to tackle these issues at the local level. 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. Furthermore, the governance of urban activities does not always lie solely with municipal or local authorities or with other levels of government. Energy use is of particular concern for cities, as it can be both costly and wasteful. Principle 2: Human and natural systems are tightly intertwined and come together in cities. The challenge is to develop a new understanding of how urban systems work and how they interact with environmental systems on both the local and global scale. This lens is needed to undergird and encourage collaborations across many organizations that will enable meaningful pathways to urban sustainability. Urban governments are tasked with the responsibility of managing not only water resources but also sanitation, waste, food, and air quality. In practice, simply trying to pin down the size of any specific citys ecological footprintin particular, the ecological footprint per capitamay contribute to the recognition of its relative impacts at a global scale. What are five responses to urban sustainability challenges? The effort of promoting sustainable development strategies requires a greater level of interaction between different systems and their boundaries as the impacts of urban-based consumption and pollution affect global resource management and, for example, global climate change problems; therefore, pursuing sustainability calls for unprecedented system boundaries extensions, which are increasingly determined by actions at the urban level. Principle 3: Urban inequality undermines sustainability efforts. This is to say, the analysis of boundaries gives emphasis to the idea of think globally, act locally., Healthy people-environment and human-environment interactions are necessary synergistic relationships that underpin the sustainability of cities. Sustainable development can be implemented in ways that can both mitigate the challenges of urban sustainability and address the goals. Getting an accurate picture of the environmental impacts of all human activity, including that of people working in the private sector, is almost impossible. Two trends come together in the world's cities to make urban sustainability a critical issue today. How can greenbelts respond tourban sustainability challenges? Particularly for developing countries, manufacturing serves as a very important economic source, serving contracts or orders from companies in developed countries. Feedback mechanisms that enable the signals of system performance to generate behavioral responses from the urban community at both the individual and institutional levels. Urban sustainability requires the involvement of citizens, private entities, and public authorities, ensuring that all resources are mobilized and working toward a set of clearly articulated goals. 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. Waste management systems have the task of managing current and projected waste processing. UA is thus integral to the prospect of Urban Sustainability as SDG 11 ("Make cities and human settlements inclusive, safe, resilient and sustainable") of the U.N.'s 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. City leaders must move quickly to plan for growth and provide the basic services, infrastructure, and affordable housing their expanding populations need. It focuses on real world examples within two key themes - smart cities and transportation - as a way to look at the challenges and practical responses related to urban sustainability. It focuses on nine cities across the United States and Canada (Los Angeles, CA, New York City, NY, Philadelphia, PA, Pittsburgh, PA, Grand Rapids, MI, Flint, MI, Cedar Rapids, IA, Chattanooga, TN, and Vancouver, Canada), chosen to represent a variety of metropolitan regions, with consideration given to city size, proximity to coastal and other waterways, susceptibility to hazards, primary industry, and several other factors. Daly (2002) proposed three criteria that must be met for a resouce or process to be considered sustainable: Fiala (2008) pointed to two issues that can be raised regarding the ecological footprint method. However, what is needed is information on flows between places, which allows the characterization of networks, linkages, and interconnections across places. However,. Development, i.e., the meeting of peoples needs, requires use of resources and implies generation of wastes. Thus, urban sustainability cannot be limited to what happens within a single place. 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. A concern for sustainable development retains these conventional concerns and adds two more. Fill in the blanks. View our suggested citation for this chapter. Sustainability is a community concern, not an individual one (Pelletier, 2010). 2. Cities have captured more than 80 percent of the globes economic activity and offered social mobility and economic prosperity to millions by clustering creative, innovative, and educated individuals and organizations. ), as discussed in Chapter 2. 3, Industrial Pollution in Russia (https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Industry_in_Russia.jpg), by Alt-n-Anela (https://www.flickr.com/people/47539533@N05), licensed by CC-BY-2.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/deed.en), Fig. Meeting development goals has long been among the main responsibilities of urban leaders. Learning from existing menu of urban development solutions: Although addressing forced displacement in cities is a relatively new challenge, responses can be informed by proven urban development approaches , ranging from urban upgrading and community driven development to disaster risk management. Extra-urban impacts of urban activities such as ecological . 3 Principles of Urban Sustainability: A Roadmap for Decision Making. Measuring progress towards sustainable or unsustainable urban development requires quantification with the help of suitable sustainability indicators. I have highlighted what I see as two of the most interesting and critical challenges in sustainable urban development: understanding the 'vision' (or visions) and developing a deeper understanding of the multi-faceted processes of change required to achieve more sustainable cities. Healthy people, healthy biophysical environments, and healthy human-environment interactions are synergistic relationships that underpin the sustainability of cities (Liu et al., 2007). 3 Clark, C. M. 2015. Lack of regulation and illegal dumping are causes for concern and can lead to a greater dispersion of pollutants without oversight. The main five responses to urban sustainability challenges are regional planning efforts, urban growth boundaries, farmland protection policies, greenbelts, and redevelopment of brownfields. Register for a free account to start saving and receiving special member only perks. Two environmental challenges to urban sustainability are water quality and air quality. We choose it not because it is without controversy, but rather because it is one of the more commonly cited indicators that has been widely used in many different contexts around the world. How does air pollution contribute to climate change? In this context, we offer four main principles to promote urban sustainability, each discussed in detail below: Principle 1: The planet has biophysical limits. Often a constraint may result in opportunities in other dimensions, with an example provided by Chay and Greenstone (2003) on the impact of the Clean Air Act amendments on polluting plants from 1972 and 1987. Urban sustainability goals often require behavior change, and the exact strategies for facilitating that change, whether through regulation or economic policies, require careful thought. Discussions should generate targets and benchmarks but also well-researched choices that drive community decision making. At its core, the concept of sustainable development is about reconciling development and environment (McGranahan and Satterthwaite, 2003). 5. This common approach can be illustrated in the case of urban food scraps collection where many cities first provided in-kind support to individuals and community groups offering collection infrastructure and services, then rolled out programs to support social norming in communities (e.g., physical, visible, green bins for residents to be put out at the curb), and finally banned organics from landfills, providing a regulatory mechanism to require laggards to act. There is the matter of urban growth that, if unregulated, can come in the form of suburban sprawl. Urban metabolism2 may be defined as the sum of the technical and socioeconomic processes that occur in cities, resulting in growth, production of energy, and elimination of waste (Kennedy et al., 2007). What is the ideal pH for bodies of water? Understanding these interconnections within system boundaries, from urban to global, is essential to promote sustainability. Commercial waste is generated by businesses, usually also in the form of an overabundance of packaged goods. This task is complex and requires further methodological developments making use of harmonized data, which may correlate material and energy consumption with their socioeconomic drivers, as attempted by Niza et al. 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). Name three countries with high air quality. 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. Cholera, typhoid, diarrhea, hepatitis A, and polio. Pathways to Urban Sustainability: Challenges and Opportunities for the United States. Big Ideas: Big Idea 1: PSO - How do physical geography and resources impact the presence and growth of cities? Sustainable urban development has its own challenges ranging from urban growth to environmental problems caused by climate change. Finally, the greater challenge of overpopulation from urban growth must be addressed and responded to through sustainable urban development. The overall ecological footprint of cities is high and getting higher. Farmland protection policies are policies that prevent the conversion of agricultural land to anything non-agricultural-related. Fair Deal legislation and the creation of the GI Bill. 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. . A description of each of these phases is given below. 1, Smog over Almaty, Kazakhstan (https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Smog_over_Almaty.jpg), by Igors Jefimovs (https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Igor22121976), licensed by CC-BY-3.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/), Fig. Generally, rural areas experience more levels of pollution than urban areas. Together, cities can play important roles in the stewardship of the planet (Seitzinger et al., 2012). Sustainable urban development, as framed under Sustainable Development Goal 11, involves rethinking urban development patterns and introducing the means to make urban settlements more inclusive, productive and environmentally friendly. Urban sprawl reduces available water catchment areas, agricultural lands and increases demand for energy. How can urban growth boundaries respond tourban sustainability challenges? Urban sustainability therefore requires horizontal and vertical integration across multiple levels of governance, guided by four principles: the planet has biophysical limits, human and natural systems are tightly intertwined and come together in cities, urban inequality undermines sustainability efforts, and cities are highly interconnected. Currently, many cities have sustainability strategies that do not explicitly account for the indirect, distant, or long-lived impacts of environmental consumption throughout the supply and product chains. Very little information on the phases of urban processes exists, be it problem identification or decision making. Urban Development Home. Examples include smoke and dust. Examples of Urban Sustainability Challenges The roadmap is organized in three phases: (1) creating the basis for a sustainability roadmap, (2) design and implementation, and (3) outcomes and reassessment. Furthermore, this studys findings cross-validate the findings of earlier work examining the recession-induced pollution reductions of the early 1980s. This means the air quality is at the level of concern of ____. Consequently, what may appear to be sustainable locally, at the urban or metropolitan scale, belies the total planetary-level environmental or social consequences. Urban governments are tasked with the responsibility of managing not only water resources but also sanitation, waste, food, and air quality. As such, there are many important opportunities for further research. Power plants, chemical facilities, and manufacturing companies emit a lot of pollutants into the atmosphere. For instance, industrial pollution, which can threaten air and water quality, must be mitigated. What are some effects of air pollution on society. It nevertheless serves as an indicator for advancing thinking along those lines. Discriminatory practices in the housing market over many decades have created racial segregation in central cities and suburbs. Assessing a citys environmental impacts at varying scales is extremely difficult. (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. Low density (suburban sprawl) is correlated with high car use. The sustainability of a city cannot be considered in isolation from the planets finite resources, especially given the aggregate impact of all cities. These strategies should not be developed in isolation, but rather in collaboration with, or ideally, developed by, the practitioners responsible for achieving the goals and targets. Here it is important to consider not only the impact on land-based resources but also water and energy that are embodied in products such as clothing and food. This kind of waste is produced by factories or power plants. The strategies employed should match the context. How can air and water quality be a challenge to urban sustainability? Proper land-use designation and infrastructure planning can remedy the effects of urban growth. Some of the major advantages of cities as identified by Rees (1996) include (1) lower costs per capita of providing piped treated water, sewer systems, waste collection, and most other forms of infrastructure and public amenities; (2) greater possibilities for, and a greater range of options for, material recycling, reuse, remanufacturing, and the specialized skills and enterprises needed to make these things happen; (3) high population density, which reduces the per capita demand for occupied land; (4) great potential through economies of scale, co-generation, and the use of waste process heat from industry or power plants, to reduce the per capita use of fossil fuel for space heating; and (5) great potential for reducing (mostly fossil) energy consumption by motor vehicles through walking. Community engagement will help inform a multiscale vision and strategy for improving human well-being through an environmental, economic, and social equity lens. This helps to facilitate the engagement, buy-in, and support needed to implement these strategies. Urban sustainability requires durable, consistent leadership, citizen involvement, and regional partnerships as well as vertical interactions among different governmental levels, as discussed before. These can be sites where previous factories, landfills, or other facilities used to operate. Urban sustainability challenges 5. Clustering populations, however, can compound both positive and negative conditions, with many modern urban areas experiencing growing inequality, debility, and environmental degradation. outside of major urban areas with separate designations for residential, commercial, entertainment, and other services, usually only accessible by car. Indeed, often multiple cities rely on the same regions for resources. transportation, or waste. Be perfectly prepared on time with an individual plan. Poor waste management likewise can harm the well-being of residents through improper waste disposal. Some promising models exist, such as MITs Urban Metabolism framework, that warrant further development (Ferro and Fernndez, 2013). . This is because without addressing these challenges, urban sustainability is not as effective.