scholarly journals One fits all?

2018 ◽  
Vol 76 (1) ◽  
pp. 51-64
Author(s):  
Paulina Schiappacasse ◽  
Bernhard Müller

Abstract Resilience ranks high on the environmentally oriented research agenda on sustainable urban and regional development. The annual “Global Forum on Urban Resilience and Adaptation” has become a meeting point for academia and practice. The United Nations 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development uses the term in two of their 17 Sustainable Development Goals, i.e., in Goal No. 9 on infrastructure as a basis for economic development and No. 11 on cities and human settlements. Moreover, resilience has become a prominent topic in the New Urban Agenda. Against this background, the article provides an overview of recent discussion on resilience. It scrutinizes how the concept has been used by different researchers from diverse disciplines with special reference to urban, regional and environmental studies. A systematic literature review on resilience was carried out in order to shed light on recent developments of thought and practice. All in all, 650 articles were reviewed. Following an introduction into the topic and description of the applied methodological approach, different facets of the debate on resilience are presented, and conclusions are drawn. It can be seen that the discussion of resilience needs more specificity, transdisciplinary approaches, and regional contextualization, especially in urban and regional development studies in the countries of the global south.

2020 ◽  
Vol 12 (2) ◽  
pp. 550 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sylvia Croese ◽  
Cayley Green ◽  
Gareth Morgan

Urban resilience is increasingly seen as essential to managing the risks and challenges arising in a globally changing, connected, and urbanized world. Hence, cities are central to achieving a range of global development policy commitments adopted over the past few years, ranging from the Paris Climate Agreement to the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). However, knowledge of the ways in which cities are going about implementing resilience or of how such efforts can practically contribute to the implementation of global agendas is still limited. This paper discusses the experience of cities that were members of the 100 Resilient Cities (100RC) network, an entity pioneered by The Rockefeller Foundation. It reviews the resilience strategies developed by 100RC members to show that 100RC cities are increasingly aligning their resilience work to global development policies such as the SDGs. It then draws on the case of the city of Cape Town in South Africa to illustrate the process of developing a resilience strategy through 100RC tools and methodologies including the City Resilience Framework (CRF) and City Resilience Index (CRI) and its alignment to the SDGs and reflects on lessons and learnings of Cape Town’s experience for the global city network-policy nexus post-2015.


2020 ◽  
Vol 11 (2) ◽  
pp. 195-217
Author(s):  
Debolina Kundu ◽  
Andre Mueller ◽  
Volker Schmidt-Seiwert ◽  
Regine Binot ◽  
Lukas Kiel ◽  
...  

Human civilization reached a milestone in the first decade of the 21st century, when the global urban population became higher than rural for the first time. However, the process of urbanisation is not uniform across the globe, and striking differences exist in the spatial structure and trends of urbanisation in developed and developing regions because of varying rates of demographic and economic growth. The success of Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) depends on addressing urbanisation challenges with comparative knowledge of the spatial structure and growth pattern of the cities across regions. In this context, the present study examines the spatial structures and urbanisation trends of cities in Asia and Europe through standardised data and visualisation, with particular reference to India and Germany. The results show that ‘shrinking cities’ are more common in Europe and particularly in Germany. In contrast, Indian cities have registered an overall increase in population of cities, although at a slower growth rate. Also, the rate of growth of the built-up areas is relatively higher in India than Europe. However, both these geographies are experiencing higher growth of built-up areas as compared to population. A detailed analysis of the built-up areas in select cities of Europe and India in different time-periods reveals the cities’ growth pattern to be aligned with transport routes. The study concludes that developing a common methodological approach to study the spatial structures and trends of different geographies is a crucial prerequisite for achieving the goals set under SDGs and the New Urban Agenda.


2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (8) ◽  
pp. 4153
Author(s):  
Angeliki Mentzafou ◽  
Momčilo Blagojević ◽  
Elias Dimitriou

Among the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) established in the 2030 Agenda, goals 6.3, regarding clean water and improve of water quality, and 6.5, regarding integrated water resources management, highlight the need for the implementation of successful environmental water quality monitoring programs of transboundary river waterbodies. In the present study, the designation of high priority areas for water quality monitoring of Drin transboundary watershed is performed using a suitability model, a GIS-based multicriteria decision analysis (GIS-MCDA) approach that takes into consideration the most important conditioning factors that impose pressures on rivers. Based on the results, the methodological approach used manages to sufficiently delimit the areas with increased need for water quality monitoring in the Drin watershed, and the validation procedure produces a correlation coefficient of 0.454 (statistically significant at a 0.01 level). Limitations arise in the case of a lack of detailed information or inaccurate input data and due to the inconsistency among the input data and the different methodological approaches regarding the information collection of each country involved. These restrictions foreground the need for cooperation between the countries involved regarding the exchange of scientific knowledge and common legislation, so as to achieve integrated, effective, and sustainable management of water resources of the area.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Renaud Richard

A bit under 10 years: That’s what it took engineers and project managers to bring some human beings to the Moon in the 60’s. That’s also the time we have to act and rebuild a smart and sustainable human society for the world, and one good indicator for this is reaching the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals by the year 2030. The Sulitest’s matrix gives an excellent structure to explain the current situation and share information in a structured and helpful way; a way in which all can find an answer to this key question: “What can YOU do NOW to rebuild a smart and sustainable society for the world?” The Framework for Strategic Sustainable Development, also known as The Natural Step Framework, is the best approach I’ve found to help create needed systemic and strategic changes. Examples from the business or scientific areas can shed light on how to achieve this incredibly needed change to discuss the role of technology, and to explore how systems change and can be transformed. In this paper, I’ll share some of the experience and learnings I’ve gained over the last 20 years, trying to acce lerate change towards sustainability. I’ll share the fact that it’s fun and motivating, as well as an incredible opportunity for all, even if it’s not necessarily always easy like most good things which do require efforts to reach. And for all the ones who won’t be able to read further: If not now, when? If not here, where? If not you and I, who?


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