Urban Sustainability: Policy and Praxis

Urban Sustainability: Policy and Praxis
Author: Jay D. Gatrell
Publisher: Springer
Total Pages: 266
Release: 2016-03-05
Genre: Science
ISBN: 3319262181

This book explores the environmental, economic, and socio-political dynamics of sustainability from a geographic perspective. The chapters unite the often disparate worlds of environment, economics, and politics by seeking to understand and visualize a range of sustainability practices on the ground and in place. In concert, the book provides an overview of a range of geotechnical applications associated with environmental change (water resources, land use & land cover change); as well as investigates more nuanced and novel examples of local economic development in cities. The diverse collection maps local practices from urban farming to evolving and thriving industries such as metal scrapping and craft beer. Additionally, the book provides an integrated geo-technical framework for understanding and assessing ecosystem services, explores the deployment of unmanned systems to understand urban environmental change, interrogates the spatial politics of urban green movements, examines the implications of revised planning practices, and investigates environmental justice. The book will be of interest to researchers, students, and anyone seeking to better understand sustainability at multiple scales in urban environments.

Geographic Perspectives on Urban Sustainability

Geographic Perspectives on Urban Sustainability
Author: V. Kelly Turner
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 158
Release: 2021-05-13
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 1000331881

The 21st century has been called the "century of the city." Unprecedented and uneven urban growth and expansion coupled with climate change have compounded concerns that current urbanization pathways are not sustainable. Calls for scholarship on urban sustainability among geographers cite strengths in both examining human-environment interactions and unravelling urbanization patterns and processes that positioned the discipline to make unique contributions to critical research needs. Geographic Perspectives on Urban Sustainability reflects on the contributions that geographers have made to urban sustainability scholarship on varied domains such as transportation, green infrastructure, and gentrification. Contributed chapters probe uniquely geographic perspectives on urban resilience, environmental justice, political ecology, and planning that arise from empirically integrating social and biophysical realms that arise from considering spatial dimensions of problems like scale- and place-based peculiarities of phenomena. This book will be of great value to scholars, students, and policymakers interested in Urban and City Planning, Political Ecology, and Sustainable Urbanism. The chapters in this book were originally published as a special issue of Urban Geography.

GIS in Sustainable Urban Planning and Management

GIS in Sustainable Urban Planning and Management
Author: Martin van Maarseveen
Publisher: CRC Press
Total Pages: 352
Release: 2018-12-07
Genre: Technology & Engineering
ISBN: 1351379097

The Open Access version of this book, available at http://www.tandfebooks.com/doi/view/10.1201/9781315146638, has been made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives 3.0 license. GIS is used today to better understand and solve urban problems. GIS in Sustainable Urban Planning and Management: A Global Perspective, explores and illustrates the capacity that geo-information and GIS have to inform practitioners and other participants in the processes of the planning and management of urban regions. The first part of the book addresses the concept of sustainable urban development, its different frameworks, the many ways of measuring sustainability, and its value in the urban policy arena. The second part discusses how urban planning can shape our cities, examines various spatial configurations of cities, the spread of activities, and the demands placed on different functions to achieve strategic objective. It further focuses on the recognition that urban dwellers are increasingly under threat from natural hazards and climate change. Written by authors with expertise on the applications of geo-information in urban management, this book showcases the importance of GIS in better understanding current urban challenges and provides new insights on how to apply GIS in urban planning. It illustrates through real world cases the use of GIS in analyzing and evaluating the position of disadvantaged groups and areas in cities and provides clear examples of applied GIS in urban sustainability and urban resilience. The idea of sustainable development is still very much central in the new development agenda of the United Nations, and in that sense, it is of particular importance for students from both the Global South and Global North. Professionals, researchers, and students alike will find this book to be an invaluable resource for understanding and solving problems relating to sustainable urban planning and management.

Spaces of Sustainability

Spaces of Sustainability
Author: Mark Whitehead
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 257
Release: 2007-01-24
Genre: Science
ISBN: 1134246374

Spaces of Sustainability is an engaging and accessible introduction to the key philosophical ideas which lie behind the principles of sustainable development. This topical resource discusses key contemporary issues including global warming, third world poverty, transnational citizenship and globalization. Combining the latest research and theoretical frameworks Spaces of Sustainability offers a unique insight into contemporary attempts to create a more sustainable society and introduces the debates surrounding sustainable development through a series of interesting transcontinental case studies. These include: discussions of land-use conflicts in the USA; agricultural reform in the Indian Punjab; environmental planning in the Barents Sea; community forest development in Kenya; transport policies in Mexico City; and political reform in Russia. Written in an approachable and concise manner, this is essential reading for students of geography, planning, environmental politics and urban studies. It is illustrated throughout with figures and plates, along with a range of explanatory help boxes and useful web links.

Urban Sustainability

Urban Sustainability
Author: Igor Vojnovic
Publisher:
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2013
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 9781611860559

More than half the world's population currently lives in urban areas, and virtually all of the world's population growth over the next three decades is expected to be in cities. What impact will this growth have on the environment? What can we do now to pave the way for resource longevity? Sustainability has received considerable attention in recent years, though conceptions of the term remain vague. Using a wide array of cities around the globe as case studies, this timely book explores the varying nature of global urban-environmental stresses and the complexities involved in defining sustainability policies. Working with six core themes, the editor examines the past, present, and future of urban sustainability within local, national, and global contexts.

Rediscovering Geography

Rediscovering Geography
Author: National Research Council
Publisher: National Academies Press
Total Pages: 260
Release: 1997-03-28
Genre: Education
ISBN: 0309051991

As political, economic, and environmental issues increasingly spread across the globe, the science of geography is being rediscovered by scientists, policymakers, and educators alike. Geography has been made a core subject in U.S. schools, and scientists from a variety of disciplines are using analytical tools originally developed by geographers. Rediscovering Geography presents a broad overview of geography's renewed importance in a changing world. Through discussions and highlighted case studies, this book illustrates geography's impact on international trade, environmental change, population growth, information infrastructure, the condition of cities, the spread of AIDS, and much more. The committee examines some of the more significant tools for data collection, storage, analysis, and display, with examples of major contributions made by geographers. Rediscovering Geography provides a blueprint for the future of the discipline, recommending how to strengthen its intellectual and institutional foundation and meet the demand for geographic expertise among professionals and the public.

Pathways to Urban Sustainability

Pathways to Urban Sustainability
Author: National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine
Publisher: National Academies Press
Total Pages: 193
Release: 2016-11-11
Genre: Technology & Engineering
ISBN: 0309444535

Cities have experienced an unprecedented rate of growth in the last decade. More than half the world's population lives in urban areas, with the U.S. percentage at 80 percent. Cities have captured more than 80 percent of the globe's economic activity and offered social mobility and economic prosperity to millions by clustering creative, innovative, and educated individuals and organizations. Clustering populations, however, can compound both positive and negative conditions, with many modern urban areas experiencing growing inequality, debility, and environmental degradation. 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. 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. 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.

Urban Transformations

Urban Transformations
Author: Sigrun Kabisch
Publisher: Springer
Total Pages: 402
Release: 2018-01-08
Genre: Science
ISBN: 3319593242

The book addresses urban transformations towards sustainability in light of challenges of global urbanization processes and the consequences of global environmental change. The aim is to show that urban transformations only succeed if both innovative scientific solutions and practice-oriented governance approaches are developed. This assumption is addressed by providing theoretical insights and empirical evidence pointing particularly at 3 concepts or qualities which are determined here as being central for achieving urban sustainability: resource efficiency, quality of life and resilience. Urban case studies from several international research projects illustrate our conceptual approach of urban transformations towards sustainable development. Thus, the book reaches far beyond a mere additive description of single case studies. It incorporates the results of condensed synthesis, resulting from comparisons and evaluations. It provides, based on cross-cutting reflection of single cases and different scales and methods of analysis, general and transferable findings. They do not only consider the scientific sphere but deliberately go beyond it discussing transferability of knowledge into practice, governance options and the feasibility of policy strategies in order to pave the way for sustainable urban transformations to happen today and in the future.