Urbanization is a global phenomenon with strong sustainability implications across multiple scales. Urban governments are tasked with the responsibility of managing not only water resources but also sanitation, waste, food, and air quality. 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. What sources of urbanization can create water pollution? See also Holmes and Pincetl (2012). 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. Resources Cities need resources such as water, food and energy to be viable. A Review of Policy Responses on Urban Mobility" Sustainability 13, no. How can farmland protection policies respond tourban sustainability challenges? Sustainability is a community concern, not an individual one (Pelletier, 2010). There are different kinds of waste emitted in urban areas. 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. Furthermore, the development of indicators should be supported with research that expresses the impact of the indicator. Farmland protection policies are policies that prevent the conversion of agricultural land to anything non-agricultural-related. Cities with a high number of these facilities are linked with poorer air quality, water contamination, and poor soil health. ), as discussed in Chapter 2. There are several responses to urban sustainability challenges that are also part of urban sustainable development strategies. 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). Non-point source pollution is when the exact location of pollution can be located. Fossil fuel energy (coal, oil, and natural gas) currently supplies most of the world's energy, emitting carbon and other pollutants into the atmosphere that exacerbate climate change and reduce air quality. 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. 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. 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). Urban sustainability is the goal of using resources to plan and develop cities to improve the social, economic, and environmental conditions of a city to ensure the quality of life of current and future residents. Not a MyNAP member yet? This briefing provides an initial overview of how the . More about Challenges to Urban Sustainability, Fig. Extreme inequalities threaten public health, economic prosperity, and citizen engagementall essential elements of urban sustainability. 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). Every indicator should be connected to both an implementation and an impact statement to garner more support, to engage the public in the process, and to ensure the efficiency and impact of the indicator once realized. As one example, McGranahan and Satterthwaite (2003) suggested that adding concern for ecological sustainability onto existing development policies means setting limits on the rights of city enterprises or consumers to use scarce resources (wherever they come from) and to generate nonbiodegradable wastes. Discussions should generate targets and benchmarks but also well-researched choices that drive community decision making. Commitment to sustainable development by city or municipal authorities means adding new goals to those that are their traditional concerns (McGranahan and Satterthwaite, 2003). More than half the worlds population lives in urban areas, with the U.S. percentage at 80 percent. 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. 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. 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. Indicates air quality to levels to members of the public. Share a link to this book page on your preferred social network or via email. Transportation, industrial facilities, fossil fuels, and agriculture. Cities in developed countries may create more waste due to consuming and discarding a greater amount of packaging. Meeting the challenges of planetary stewardship demands new governance solutions and systems that respond to the realities of interconnectedness. 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. There is evidence that the spatial distribution of people of color and low-income people is highly correlated with the distribution of air pollution, landfills, lead poisoning in children, abandoned toxic waste dumps, and contaminated fish consumption. This is a challenge because it promotes deregulated unsustainable urban development, conversion of rural and farmland, and car dependency. Because an increasing percentage of the worlds population and economic activities are concentrated in urban areas, cities are highly relevant, if not central, to any discussion of sustainable development. What is the ideal pH for bodies of water? of the users don't pass the Challenges to Urban Sustainability quiz! High amounts of nutrients that lead to an algal bloom and prevents oxygen and light from entering the water. Chapter 4 explores the city profiles and the lessons they provide, and Chapter 5 provides a vision for improved responses to urban sustainability. There are many policy options that can affect urban activities such that they become active and positive forces in sustainably managing the planets resources. 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. In practice cities could, for example, quantify their sustainability impacts using a number of measures such as per capita ecological footprint and, making use of economies of scale, make efforts to reduce it below global levels of sustainability. True or false? (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. Show this book's table of contents, where you can jump to any chapter by name. Health equity is a crosscutting issue, and emerging research theme, in urban sustainability studies. Create flashcards in notes completely automatically. Poor waste management can lead to direct or indirect pollution of water, air, and other resources. UCLA will unveil plans on Nov. 15 designed to turn Los Angeles into a global model for urban sustainability. when only one kind of use or purpose can be built. All of the above research needs derive from the application of a complex system perspective to urban sustainability. See our explanation on Urban Sustainability to learn more! Thankfully, the world has many resources and the capacity to properly distribute them. Introduction. Meeting development goals has long been among the main responsibilities of urban leaders. First, large data gaps exist. 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). 3 Clark, C. M. 2015. Sign up to highlight and take notes. 2. 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. However,. It is also important to limit the use of resources that are harmful to the environment. Finally, the greater challenge of overpopulation from urban growth must be addressed and responded to through sustainable urban development. Healthy human and natural ecosystems require that a multidimensional set of a communitys interests be expressed and actions are intentional to mediate those interests (see also Box 3-2). This can include waste made by offices, schools, and shops.
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