Sustainable Urbanism: Creating Resilient Communities in the Age of Peak Oil and Climate Destabilization

Author(s):  
Gary J. Coates
Author(s):  
Aysen Eren

Peak oil and climate change are two of greatest challenges facing humanity at the beginning of 21st century. They are urging humanity to re-think and consider changing on many personal, social, ecological, and economic fronts. Transition and resilience are key concepts initiating this change to prepare communities to forthcoming challenging times. Transition Movement and the claimed model behind it, Transition Model, have been established to overcome these challenges by transforming communities and settlements. Transition Movement is a community-driven initiative aiming to build ecology friendly resilient community and settlements. Its fast spread has sparked the attention of policy makers, academicians, and practitioners. Relatively little research has been done, however, to understand the dynamics of Transition Movement. Here, I focus on transition and resilience concepts in relation to socio-ecological and socio-technical systems, investigate Transition Movement and Transition Model, and analyze their characteristics and fundamental processes. I classify Transition Movement both as a socio-ecological and a socio-technical system. I claim that Transition Model is not a model but rather a methodology. I question its validity and sufficiency as a methodology and point the improvement areas from systems point of view. I introduce two, non-existent but necessary systems to adapt: a feedback mechanism, and an improvement cycle based on projects and resilient indicators. Finally, I comment on the future of Transition Model and suggest areas for further research. The chapter is concluded with the question how Transition Model can be adapted by the cities, transforming them into resilient communities, ready for the ecological and economical challenges.


2020 ◽  
Vol 119 (820) ◽  
pp. 317-322
Author(s):  
Michael T. Klare

By transforming patterns of travel and work around the world, the COVID-19 pandemic is accelerating the transition to renewable energy and the decline of fossil fuels. Lockdowns brought car commuting and plane travel to a near halt, and the mass experiment in which white-collar employees have been working from home may permanently reduce energy consumption for business travel. Renewable energy and electric vehicles were already gaining market share before the pandemic. Under pressure from investors, major energy companies have started writing off fossil fuel reserves as stranded assets that are no longer worth the cost of extracting. These shifts may indicate that “peak oil demand” has arrived earlier than expected.


Author(s):  
Erna MacLeod

Cape Breton Island is a well-known North American tourism destination with long-standing attractions such as the Cabot Trail and more recently developed world-class offerings such as the Cabot Links Golf Course. Tourism contributes significantly to Cape Breton’s economy, particularly since the mid-20th century as traditional resource-based industries have declined. In the 21st century, culinary tourism has become increasingly important to expand the island’s tourism offerings and to provide “authentic” tourism experiences. This study examines local-food tourism in Cape Breton to illuminate its cultural and economic significance. I conducted interviews with food producers, restaurateurs, government representatives, and tourism executives. I also consulted websites and policy documents and compared local stakeholders’ experiences and perspectives with official tourism strategies. Promoting culinary tourism raises questions of power, autonomy, inclusion, and accountability. My study accentuates possibilities for aligning economic and ecological goals to create resilient communities, foster equitable social and ecological relations, and establish Cape Breton as a culinary tourism destination.


2017 ◽  
Vol 3 (2) ◽  
pp. 177
Author(s):  
Nur Huzeima Mohd Hussain ◽  
Hugh Byrd ◽  
Nur Azfahani Ahmad

Globalisation combined with resources of oil and gas has led to an industrial society in Malaysia.  For the past 30 years, rapid urban growth has shifted from 73% rural to 73% urban population. However, the peak oil crisis and economic issues are threatening the growth of urbanisation and influencing the trends of population mobility. This paper documents the beginnings of a reverse migration (urban-to-rural) in Malaysia.  The method adopted case study that involves questionnaires with the urban migrants to establish the desires, definite intentions and reasons for future migration. Based on this data, it predicts a trend and rate of reverse migration in Malaysia. 


2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (9) ◽  
pp. 4666
Author(s):  
Yoonshin Kwak ◽  
Brian Deal ◽  
Grant Mosey

Given that evolving urban systems require ever more sophisticated and creative solutions to deal with uncertainty, designing for resilience in contemporary landscape architecture represents a cross-disciplinary endeavor. While there is a breadth of research on landscape resilience within the academy, the findings of this research are seldom making their way into physical practice. There are existent gaps between the objective, scientific method of scientists and the more intuitive qualitative language of designers and practitioners. The purpose of this paper is to help bridge these gaps and ultimately support an endemic process for more resilient landscape design creation. This paper proposes a framework that integrates analytic research (i.e., modeling and examination) and design creation (i.e., place-making) using processes that incorporate feedback to help adaptively achieve resilient design solutions. Concepts of Geodesign and Planning Support Systems (PSSs) are adapted as part of the framework to emphasize the importance of modeling, assessment, and quantification as part of processes for generating information useful to designers. This paper tests the suggested framework by conducting a pilot study using a coupled sociohydrological model. The relationships between runoff and associated design factors are examined. Questions on how analytic outcomes can be translated into information for landscape design are addressed along with some ideas on how key variables in the model can be translated into useful design information. The framework and pilot study support the notion that the creation of resilient communities would be greatly enhanced by having a navigable bridge between science and practice.


2021 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Simon Elias Bibri

AbstractA new era is presently unfolding wherein both smart urbanism and sustainable urbanism processes and practices are becoming highly responsive to a form of data-driven urbanism under what has to be identified as data-driven smart sustainable urbanism. This flourishing field of research is profoundly interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary in nature. It operates out of the understanding that advances in knowledge necessitate pursuing multifaceted questions that can only be resolved from the vantage point of interdisciplinarity and transdisciplinarity. This implies that the research problems within the field of data-driven smart sustainable urbanism are inherently too complex and dynamic to be addressed by single disciplines. As this field is not a specific direction of research, it does not have a unitary disciplinary framework in terms of a uniform set of the academic and scientific disciplines from which the underlying theories can be drawn. These theories constitute a unified foundation for the practice of data-driven smart sustainable urbanism. Therefore, it is of significant importance to develop an interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary framework. With that in regard, this paper identifies, describes, discusses, evaluates, and thematically organizes the core academic and scientific disciplines underlying the field of data-driven smart sustainable urbanism. This work provides an important lens through which to understand the set of established and emerging disciplines that have high integration, fusion, and application potential for informing the processes and practices of data-driven smart sustainable urbanism. As such, it provides fertile insights into the core foundational principles of data-driven smart sustainable urbanism as an applied domain in terms of its scientific, technological, and computational strands. The novelty of the proposed framework lies in its original contribution to the body of foundational knowledge of an emerging field of urban planning and development.


Author(s):  
Gül Aktürk ◽  
Martha Lerski

AbstractClimate change is borderless, and its impacts are not shared equally by all communities. It causes an imbalance between people by creating a more desirable living environment for some societies while erasing settlements and shelters of some others. Due to floods, sea level rise, destructive storms, drought, and slow-onset factors such as salinization of water and soil, people lose their lands, homes, and natural resources. Catastrophic events force people to move voluntarily or involuntarily. The relocation of communities is a debatable climate adaptation measure which requires utmost care with human rights, ethics, and psychological well-being of individuals upon the issues of discrimination, conflict, and security. As the number of climate-displaced populations grows, the generations-deep connection to their rituals, customs, and ancestral ties with the land, cultural practices, and intangible cultural heritage become endangered. However, intangible heritage is often overlooked in the context of climate displacement. This paper presents reflections based on observations regarding the intangible heritage of voluntarily displaced communities. It begins by examining intangible heritage under the threat of climate displacement, with place-based examples. It then reveals intangible heritage as a catalyst to building resilient communities by advocating for the cultural values of indigenous and all people in climate action planning. It concludes the discussion by presenting the implications of climate displacement in existing intangible heritage initiatives. This article seeks to contribute to the emerging policies of preserving intangible heritage in the context of climate displacement.


2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (4) ◽  
pp. 2373
Author(s):  
Ali Cheshmehzangi ◽  
Andrew Flynn ◽  
May Tan-Mullins ◽  
Linjun Xie ◽  
Wu Deng ◽  
...  

This paper introduces the new concept of “eco-fusion” through an exploratory case study project. It suggests the importance of multi-scalar practice in the broader field of eco-urbanism. This study introduces eco-fusion as a multiplexed paradigm, which is then discussed in two different development models. This paper first highlights the position of “eco” in urbanism by providing a brief account of key terms and how they relate to one another. It then points out the associations between eco-fusion and sustainable urban development. Through an exploratory case study example in China, the practical factors of eco-development are assessed. The study aims to provide a set of intermediate development stages while maintaining each spatial level’s interface in their own defined and distinguished contexts. The key objective is to consider integrating the natural and built environments, which is considered the best practice of eco-development in urbanism. This study’s findings highlight integrated methods in eco-urbanism and suggest new directions for eco-planning/eco-design strategies.


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