Addressing the Sustainable Urbanization Challenge Health equity is a crosscutting issue, and emerging research theme, in urban sustainability studies. UCLA announces plan to tackle 'Grand Challenges,' starting with urban Be perfectly prepared on time with an individual plan. 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. October 15, 2015. 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. Specific strategies can then be developed to achieve the goals and targets identified. Some of the most prevailing indicators include footprinting (e.g., for water and land) and composite indices (e.g., well-being index and environmental sustainability index). What are some effects of air pollution on society. Firstly, we focused on the type of the policy instrument, the challenge it wants to address, as well as its time horizon. Poor resource management can not only affect residents in cities but also people living in other parts of the world. 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). Over 10 million students from across the world are already learning smarter. and the second relates to horizontal autonomy, which is a function of the citys relationship with local economic and social groups that the city depends on for its financial and political support. If development implies extending to all current and future populations the levels of resource use and waste generation that are the norm among middle-income groups in high-income nations, it is likely to conflict with local or global systems with finite resources and capacities to assimilate wastes. At its core, the concept of sustainable development is about reconciling development and environment (McGranahan and Satterthwaite, 2003). The DPSIR framework describes the interactions between society and the environment, the key components of which are driving forces (D), pressures (P) on the environment and, as a result, the states (S) of environmental changes, their impacts (I) on ecosystems, human health, and other factors, and societal responses (R) to the driving forces, or directly to the pressure, state, or impacts through preventive, adaptive, or curative solutions. This kind of waste is produced by factories or power plants. Urban sustainability refers to the ability of a city or urban area to meet the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs. High amounts of nutrients that lead to an algal bloom and prevents oxygen and light from entering the water. Cities have experienced an unprecedented rate of growth in the last decade. The article aims to identify the priority policy/practice areas and interventions to solve sustainability challenges in Polish municipalities, as well as . 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. The COVID-19 pandemic is likely to influence Europe's transition towards more environmentally sustainable urbanisation patterns for years to come. Understanding indicators and making use of them to improve urban sustainability could benefit from the adoption of a DPSIR framework, as discussed by Ferro and Fernndez (2013). Third, the critical task of developing finance models to support urban sustainability action requires urgent attention. 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. Best study tips and tricks for your exams. Sustainable management of resources and limiting the impact on the environment are important goals for cities. How can urban growth boundaries respond to, How can farmland protection policies respond to, How can the redevelopment of brownfields respond to. Efforts have been made by researchers and practitioners alike to create sets of indicators to assist in measuring and comparing the sustainability of municipalities, but few thresholds exist, and those that do often seem unattainable to municipal leaders. 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. However, some cities are making a much more concerted effort to understand the full range of the negative environmental impacts they produce, and working toward reducing those impacts even when impacts are external to the city itself. However, what is needed is information on flows between places, which allows the characterization of networks, linkages, and interconnections across places. Many of these class and cultural inequalities are the products of centuries of discrimination, including instances of officially sanctioned discrimination at the hands of residents and elected leaders (Fullilove and Wallance, 2011; Powell and Spencer, 2002). 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. 2Abel Wolman (1965) developed the urban metabolism concept as a method of analyzing cities and communities through the quantification of inputswater, food, and fueland outputssewage, solid refuse, and air pollutantsand tracking their respective transformations and flows. Each of these urban sustainability challenges comes with its own host of issues. Ultimately, all the resources that form the base on which urban populations subsist come from someplace on the planet, most often outside the cities themselves, and often outside of the countries where the cities exist. Fill in the blanks. Urbanization Causes and Impacts | National Geographic Lack of regulation and illegal dumping are causes for concern and can lead to a greater dispersion of pollutants without oversight. Local responses to global sustainability agendas: learning from Wrong! Science can also contribute to these pathways by further research and development of several key facets of urban areas including urban metabolism, threshold detection of indicators, comprehension of different data sets, and further exploration of decision-making processes linked across scales. Intensive urban growth can lead to greater poverty, with local governments unable to provide services for all people. The main five responses to urban sustainability challenges are regional planning efforts, urban growth boundaries, farmland protection policies, greenbelts, and redevelopment of brownfields. Low density (suburban sprawl) is correlated with high car use. Three elements are part of this framework: A DPSIR framework is intended to respond to these challenges and to help developing urban sustainability policies and enact long-term institutional governance to enable progress toward urban sustainability. Right? Furthermore, this studys findings cross-validate the findings of earlier work examining the recession-induced pollution reductions of the early 1980s. Urban Development Home. 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. Urban governments are tasked with the responsibility of managing not only water resources but also sanitation, waste, food, and air quality. . Development, i.e., the meeting of peoples needs, requires use of resources and implies generation of wastes. Indicates air quality to levels to members of the public. 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. Create beautiful notes faster than ever before. Urban Development Overview - World Bank 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). I. ), as discussed in Chapter 2. . In a kickoff event at UCLA's Royce Hall (see event video), Chancellor Gene Block will describe the ambitious project . How can sanitation be a challenge to urban sustainability? This is because as cities grow, more resources are needed for maintaining economic conditions in a city. 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. 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. Frontiers | Grand Challenges in Urban Agriculture: Ecological and Learn about and revise the challenges that some British cities face, including regeneration and urban sustainability, with GCSE Bitesize Geography (AQA). 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. Conceptually, the idea that there is an ecological footprint, and that sustainable cities are places that seek to minimize this footprint, makes great sense (Portney, 2002). 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). How can air and water quality be a challenge to urban sustainability? What pollutants occur due to agricultural practices? This is a challenge because it promotes deregulated unsustainable urban development, conversion of rural and farmland, and car dependency. Launched at the ninth session of the World Urban Forum (WUF9 . The overall ecological footprint of cities is high and getting higher. Healthy people, healthy biophysical environments, and healthy human-environment interactions are synergistic relationships that underpin the sustainability of cities (Liu et al., 2007). PDF Sustainability Challenges and Solutions - thestructuralengineer.info 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: Cities with a high number of manufacturing are linked with ____. However,. Ensuring urban sustainability can be challenging due to a range of social, economic, and environmental factors. 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. 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. More regulation and penalties can assist with waste management, but many countries, both developed and developing, struggle with this. Power plants, chemical facilities, and manufacturing companies emit a lot of pollutants into the atmosphere. The highest AQI range (at the level of concern of hazardous) means that air quality is extremely poor and poses dangerous health risks to all. So Paulo Statement on Urban Sustainability: A Call to Integrate Our 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. This course is an introduction to various innovators and initiatives at the bleeding edge of urban sustainability and connected technology. Another approach is for government intervention through regulation of activities or the resource base. Show this book's table of contents, where you can jump to any chapter by name. 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. Improper waste disposal can lead to air, water, and soil pollution and contamination. Extreme inequalities threaten public health, economic prosperity, and citizen engagementall essential elements of urban sustainability. What are six challenges to urban sustainability? Overpopulation occurs when people exceed the resources provided by a location. Cities of Refuge: Bringing an urban lens to the forced displacement 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. The major causes of suburban sprawl are housing costs,population growth,lack of urban planning, andconsumer preferences. How can farmland protection policies respond tourban sustainability challenges? A Review of Policy Responses on Urban Mobility" Sustainability 13, no. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. How does air pollution contribute to climate change? A comprehensive strategy in the form of a roadmap, which incorporates these principles while focusing on the interactions among urban and global systems, can provide a framework for all stakeholders engaged in metropolitan areas, including local and regional governments, the private sector, and nongovernmental organizations, to enable meaningful pathways to urban sustainability. Ultimately, the laws of thermodynamics limit the amount of useful recycling. Jump up to the previous page or down to the next one. Free and expert-verified textbook solutions. One challenge in the case of cities, however, is that many of these shared resources do not have definable boundaries such as land. Indeed, often multiple cities rely on the same regions for resources. Cities are not islands. 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. Complementary research showed that clean air regulations have reduced infant mortality and increased housing prices (Chay and Greenstone, 2005; EPA, 1999). A concern for sustainable development retains these conventional concerns and adds two more. Reducing severe economic, political, class, and social inequalities is pivotal to achieving urban sustainability. These policies can assist with a range of sustainability policies, from providing food for cities to maintaining air quality and providing flood control. See the explanations on Suburbanization, Sprawl, and Decentralization to learn more! 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. Energy use is of particular concern for cities, as it can be both costly and wasteful. How many categories are there in the AQI? This could inadvertently decrease the quality of life for residents in cities by creating unsanitary conditions which can lead to illness, harm, or death. limate, precipitation, soil and sediments, vegetation, and human activities are all factors of declining water quality. In recent years, city-level sustainability indicators have become more popular in the literature (e.g., Mori and Christodoulou, 2012). Without paying heed to finite resources, urban sustainability may be increasingly difficult to attain depending on the availability and cost of key natural resources and energy as the 21st century progresses (Day et al., 2014, 2016; McDonnell and MacGregor-Fors, 2016; Ramaswami et al., 2016). More about Challenges to Urban Sustainability, Fig. Consequently, what may appear to be sustainable locally, at the urban or metropolitan scale, belies the total planetary-level environmental or social consequences. It's a monumental task for cities to undertake, with many influences and forces at work. This is a challenge because it promotes deregulated unsustainable urban development, conversion of rural and farmland, and car dependency. Copyright 2023 National Academy of Sciences. 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. The majority of natural resources in the world are consumed in cities. Further, sprawling urban development and high car dependency are linked with greater energy use and waste. To avoid negative consequences, it is important to identify the threshold that is available and then determine the actual threshold values. 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. Thus, urban sustainability cannot be limited to what happens within a single place. Urban Development. Local decision making must have a larger scope than the confines of the city or region. 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. 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. City leaders must move quickly to plan for growth and provide the basic services, infrastructure, and affordable housing their expanding populations need. This can assist governments in preserving natural areas or agricultural fields. Examples include smoke and dust. It must be recognized that ultimately all sustainability is limited by biophysical limits and finite resources at the global scale (e.g., Burger et al., 2012; Rees, 2012). In other words, the challenges are also the reasons for cities to invest in sustainable urban development.