scholarly journals Commentary: Inequality, precarity and sustainable ecosystems as elements of urban resilience

Urban Studies ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 57 (7) ◽  
pp. 1588-1595
Author(s):  
W Neil Adger ◽  
Ricardo Safra de Campos ◽  
Tasneem Siddiqui ◽  
Lucy Szaboova
Keyword(s):  
Environmental Risks ◽  
Asia Pacific ◽  
Urban Systems ◽  
Transformative Change ◽  
Urban Resilience ◽  
Public Infrastructure ◽  
Global Environmental ◽  
Physical Infrastructure ◽  
Urban Settlements ◽  
Economic Trends

The science of resilience suggests that urban systems become resilient when they promote progressive transformative change to social and physical infrastructure. But resilience is challenged by global environmental risks and by social and economic trends that create inequality and exclusion. Here we argue that distortionary inequality and precarity undermine social processes that give access to public infrastructure and ecosystems thereby undermining urban resilience. We illustrate how inequality and precarity undermine resilience with reference to social exclusion and insecurity in growing urban settlements in the Asia-Pacific region. Inequality and exposure to environmental risks represent major challenges for governance that can be best overcome through inclusion and giving voice to marginalised populations.

Nature-based climate solutions to grow globally

2019 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Environmental Concern ◽  
Biodiversity Loss ◽  
Environmental Risks ◽  
Transformative Change ◽  
Due Diligence ◽  
Content Type ◽  
Critical Thresholds ◽  
Global Environmental ◽  
Data Gaps ◽  
Global Environmental Concern

Subject Biodiversity and climate change. Significance The Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) has reported that 1 million animal and plant species face extinction and that many ecosystems are moving closer to critical thresholds, describing the rate of global change in nature as "unprecedented in human history". The report calls for "transformative change" in economic and social structures that drive biodiversity loss. As in other areas of global environmental concern, improving biodiversity action is increasingly seen not just as a matter for states, but also as a challenge for the private sector, subnational actors and the international financial system. Impacts Companies will face increased pressure to widen due diligence requirements to include environmental risks. Data gaps on quantifying the value and impact of biodiversity at a localised level will continue to limit policy mainstreaming. Efforts to increase biodiversity finance flows will look to mirror the example of climate finance.

scholarly journals Landscape Design toward Urban Resilience: Bridging Science and Physical Design Coupling Sociohydrological Modeling and Design Process

2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (9) ◽  
pp. 4666
Author(s):  
Yoonshin Kwak ◽  
Brian Deal ◽  
Grant Mosey
Keyword(s):  
Pilot Study ◽  
Landscape Design ◽  
Urban Systems ◽  
Urban Resilience ◽  
Planning Support Systems ◽  
Creative Solutions ◽  
Resilient Communities ◽  
Study Support ◽  
Key Variables ◽  
Resilient Design

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.

scholarly journals A Study on the Integration of Resilience and Smart City Concepts in Urban Systems

2021 ◽  
Vol 6 (2) ◽  
pp. 24
Author(s):  
Anastasia Tzioutziou ◽  
Yiannis Xenidis
Keyword(s):  
Smart City ◽  
Research Field ◽  
Urban Systems ◽  
City Management ◽  
Urban Resilience ◽  
Continuous Growth ◽  
Management And Development ◽  
The Many ◽  
Development And Management

The continuous growth of cities brings out various concerns for improved development and management of the multifaceted urban systems, including those of resilience and smartness. Despite the many significant efforts in the research field, both notions remain changeable, thus retaining the lack of commonly accepted conceptual and terminological frameworks. The paper’s research goals are to designate the current direct and indirect links in the conceptualizations and research trends of the resilience and smart city frameworks and to prove the potential of the conceptual convergence between them in the context of urban systems. The application of a semi-systematic literature review, including bibliometric evidence and followed by content analysis, has led to the observation that as the resilience discourse opens up to embrace other dimensions, including technology, the smart city research turns its interest to the perspective of urban protection. Therefore, both concepts share the goal for urban sustainability realized through specific capacities and processes and operationalized with the deployment of technology. The paper’s findings suggest that the conceptual and operational foundations of these two concepts could support the emergence of an integrated framework. Such a prospect acknowledges the instrumental role of the smart city approach in the pursuit of urban resilience and unfolds a new model for sustainable city management and development.

The Global Environmental Agenda of 2021 and the tasks of sustainable energy-ecological development and cooperation between Japan and countries Southeast Asia

2021 ◽  
pp. 951-965
Author(s):  
Yana Vadimovna Mishchenko
Keyword(s):  
Southeast Asia ◽  
Power Plants ◽  
Thermal Power ◽  
Energy Transition ◽  
Southeast Asian ◽  
Asia Pacific ◽  
Asian Countries ◽  
Global Environmental ◽  
The World ◽  
Southeast Asian Countries

The article discusses the main results of two major international summits held in October-November 2021, the key topics of which were the issues of the global fight against climate change and environmental protection. The decisions taken at these conferences, with the broad participation of world leaders, reflect the fundamental trends of the global environmental agenda. Within the framework of this agenda, Japan and the countries of Southeast Asia are building their modern energy and environmental cooperation. In this context, the article examines the main urgent tasks of energy-environmental interaction and sustainable development of Japan and the states of Southeast Asia. These countries are located in the Asia-Pacific region, which remains until now the main emitter of greenhouse gases in the world. However, the indicators of environmental pollution by Japan and the Southeast Asian countries are relatively not so high, compared to some other states in the region and the world. The article discusses the most relevant and significant examples of bilateral and multilateral cooperation between these countries in areas related to curbing global warming and climate protection. It has been revealed that with all the efforts made, since the 1990s, the indicators of reducing harmful emissions into the atmosphere in Japan remain modest and even lag behind some of the Western countries. The Southeast Asian countries show a serious attitude to the development of renewable energy, but their intention to abandon coal still raises some doubts about the methods of implementing this ambitious plan. In particular, it is currently not entirely clear whether these countries are preparing to make a full-fledged "energy transition" in the coming decades, or whether they just intend to replace their coal-fired thermal power plants with gas ones.

scholarly journals Resilience of Urban Network Structure in China: The Perspective of Disruption

2021 ◽  
Vol 10 (12) ◽  
pp. 796
Author(s):  
Shimei Wei ◽  
Jinghu Pan
Keyword(s):  
Network Structure ◽  
Structural Characteristics ◽  
Maximum Load ◽  
Urban Systems ◽  
Urban Resilience ◽  
Economic Networks ◽  
Urban Network ◽  
Urban Networks ◽  
Location Service ◽  
Popular Subject

In light of the long-term pressure and short-term impact of economic and technological globalization, regional and urban resilience has become an important issue in research. As a new organizational form of regional urban systems, the resilience of urban networks generated by flow space has emerged as a popular subject of research. By gathering 2017 data from the Baidu search index, the Tencent location service, and social statistics, this study constructs information, transportation, and economic networks among 344 cities in China to analyze the spatial patterns of urban networks and explore their structural characteristics from the perspectives of hierarchy and assortativity. Transmissibility and diversity were used to represent the resilience of the network structure in interruption scenarios (node failure and maximum load attack). The results show the following: The information, transportation, and economic networks of cities at the prefecture level and higher in China exhibit a dense pattern of spatial distribution in the east and a sparse pattern in the west; however, there are significant differences in terms of hierarchy and assortativity. The order of resilience of network transmissibility and diversity from strong to weak was information, economic, transportation. Transmissibility and diversity had nearly identical scores in response to the interruption of urban nodes. Moreover, a highly heterogeneous network was more likely to cause shocks to the network structure, owing to its cross-regional urban links in case of disturbance. We identified 12 dominant nodes and 93 vulnerable nodes that can help accurately determine the impetus behind network structure resilience. The capacity of regions for resistance and recovery can be improved by strengthening the construction of emergency systems and risk prevention mechanisms.

Models, Methods, and Metrics to Measure Socioeconomic Resilience

2018 ◽  
pp. 346-367
Author(s):  
Carlos Gonçalves
Keyword(s):  
Social Structure ◽  
Case Studies ◽  
Urban Form ◽  
Urban Systems ◽  
Economic Base ◽  
Urban Resilience ◽  
Regional Context ◽  
The Social ◽  
Indicator Matrix ◽  
Selection Of

This chapter aims to discuss concepts and methods to measure the landscape resilience of urban systems and test the indicators framework in the Portuguese regional context. The objective is to measure the performance and the direction of the urban changes in different phenomena, as well as to evaluate the level of urban systems preparation for a desired and undesired change adaptability. The approach to these issues is analyzed in the literature, dividing the aforementioned analysis into the resilience of the economic base, of the social structure, and of the urban form. In brief, the chapter meets three objectives: firstly, defining the framework of principles more commonly associated with urban resilience; secondly, providing a selection of indicators that embodies the different proposals of measurement; and thirdly, applying the indicator matrix to two Portuguese case studies (Caldas da Rainha and Évora urban systems).

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