scholarly journals Participatory mapping and engagement with urban water communities

Author(s):  
Özlem Edizel ◽  
Graeme Evans

This chapter focuses on the application of cultural ecosystems mapping as a participatory, co-produced visualisation and engagement method. Using a case study of the Lee Valley in London, it investigates how local communities relate to and engage with urban water environments using arts and humanities methodologies. Engaging people with issues around cultural ecosystem services through the interaction with large-scale maps of the local area helps to ground the more abstract issues of identity, connectivity, sense of place, emotional attachment, and spirituality, as well as overcome the traditional barriers to participation and inclusion at various spatial scales. Cultural mapping in particular helps to articulate the spatial and historical relationships and triggers debate over connectivity, governance, environmental justice, and both environmental and social change.

Author(s):  
Ilda Vagge ◽  
◽  
Gioia Maddalena Gibelli ◽  
Alessio Gosetti Poli ◽  
◽  
...  

The authors, with the awareness that climate change affects and changes the landscape, wanted to investigate how these changes are occurring within the metropolitan area of Tehran. Trying to keep a holistic method that embraces different disciplines, reasoning from large scale to small scale, the authors tried to study the main problems related to water scarcity and loss of green spaces. Subsequently they dedicated themselves to the identification of the present and missing ecosystem services, so that they could be used in the best possible way as tools for subsequent design choices. From the analysis obtained, the authors have created a masterplan with the desire to ensure a specific natural capital, the welfare of ecosystem services, and at the same time suggest good water management practices. It becomes essential to add an ecological accounting to the economic accounting, giving dignity to the natural system and the ecosystem services that derive from it.


2011 ◽  
Vol 5 (2) ◽  
pp. 147-157
Author(s):  
Dan Goren

Whilst the application of online multimedia digital technology within arts and humanities research has burgeoned over the last decade, the practice of openly conducting collaborative and in particular discursive research publicly online remains one of the most unfamiliar and conceptually problematic areas for many academics in the field. Based on user surveys, blog posts, and forum discussions, this article provides both an account and assessment of Web 2.0 technologies in use on a large-scale arts and humanities research project. Examining usage by and impressions of both the project team and the wider community of users, it investigates both the advantages gained and problems faced through the use of a virtual research environment (VRE). It also pays special attention to the use of video and its implications for research practices.


2014 ◽  
Vol 43 ◽  
pp. 67-112 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tracy-Lynn Humby

In South Africa, the constitutional and statutory framework seemingly establishes a strong synergy between environmental rights and environmental justice. A prevailing notion of transformative constitutionalism additionally positions law as the foundation for large-scale social change through non-violent political processes. A case study of the Tudor Shaft Informal settlement on the Witwatersrand goldfields elucidates the ambiguities in the notion of environmental justice and the tensions between claims based on the environmental right and socio-economic rights. By highlighting the existence of local moral orders—political alliances based on access to resources that frequently employ violence to achieve political ends—it also suggests the limited reach of the constitutional order and the project of transformative constitutionalism.


Author(s):  
Marcel Thomas

This chapter introduces the reader to the two case study villages Neukirch and Ebersbach, explains the methodology of the study, and outlines the structure of the book. It also sets out the central argument that there were parallel histories of responses to social change among villagers in the divided Germany. The chapter then outlines the three major ways in which the book contributes to scholarship on postwar Germany: Firstly, by highlighting similarities between East and West, it complicates persisting Cold War divisions in the historical literature. Secondly, it emphasizes the complex ways in which East and West Germans engaged with large-scale changes through peculiarly local meanings. Thirdly, by focusing on two case study localities which question conventional divides between the urban and the rural, it challenges understandings of the rural as the traditional ‘other’ in modern society.


Author(s):  
Gavin Shatkin

India’s postliberalization urban politics is captured well by Solomon Benjamin’s concept of ‘occupancy urbanism’, a dynamic in which varied groups deploy their power of the vote and other forms of social power to solidify claims to urban space in contravention of state planning and corporate interest. This dynamic helps to explain why few large scale planned urban developments have come to fruition, despite ambitious plans. This chapter examines the very mixed record of urban real estate megaproject development in Kolkata, paying particular attention to the strategies that the Government of West Bengal has deployed to gain control of land and push through large developments in the face of grassroots political opposition. It documents a case study of Calcutta Riverside, a project that has made some progress due in large part to the developer’s effort to allay concerns of local communities by integrating social and ecological concerns into the design of the project.


2018 ◽  
Vol 10 (12) ◽  
pp. 4532 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Cuéllar-Gálvez ◽  
Yesid Aranda-Camacho ◽  
Teresa Mosquera-Vásquez

The scaling up of the innovations concept has gained importance in recent years, underlining the importance of disseminating successful innovations on a large scale to increase their socio-economic impact, seeking to sustain broad rural development and promoting public policies that generate equal and sustainable results. However, few projects take advantage of the adoption of innovative technologies to promote social change. This paper reports on an intervention model that incorporates common elements, from the literature, of scaling up, and includes novel such as linking technological and social innovations, with an exit strategy to build sustainable processes and results. The model is based on a trans-disciplinary approach, and leadership, that involves local communities and stakeholders to establish synergies, to give coherence to the whole process, and to build an exit strategy involving territorial dynamics related to the innovation. The model includes a clear definition of the objects, and the process, that should be transformed, and the specific methodologies to involve local communities and stakeholders, to reach the final target user. The model was applied to develop the project, More Nutritious Potatoes, for scaling up new yellow potatoes varieties with improved agronomic and nutritional attributes. To implement the project, the research team, local communities, and stakeholders agreed on specific actions to improve food security and nutrition in a sustainable manner. The operational objectives were, the strengthening of capabilities for autonomy and governance in public policies, the entrepreneurship to build inclusive businesses, the valorization of agro-biodiversity, the acquisition of good food habits, and the promotion of social equity. The methodologies employed allowed building of social and scientific capabilities for Colombia.


2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (10) ◽  
pp. 1908
Author(s):  
Sinan Li ◽  
Youyong He ◽  
Hanliang Xu ◽  
Congmou Zhu ◽  
Baiyu Dong ◽  
...  

Exploring impacts of urban expansion on ecosystem services has become a hot topic for regional sustainable development, while analyzing the ecological effects of urban expansion forms under different expansion intensities and city sizes is relatively rare. Therefore, taking a typical urban agglomeration, Shanghai-Hangzhou Bay Urban Agglomeration, as a case study, this study first analyzed the dynamics of urban expansion forms (leapfrogging, edge-expansion, and infilling) and four critical ecosystem services (carbon sequestration, food supply, habitat quality, and soil retention) in three periods from 1990 to 2019. The multiple linear regression model and zonal statistics analysis model were used to quantitatively identify the impacts of urban expansion forms on ecosystem services, taking into account different expansion intensities and city sizes. The results showed that the urban expansion trend in the study area experienced a morphological change from integration to diffusion and then to integration in 1990–2019; edge-expansion was the dominant expansion form. Food supply decreased continuously while other ecosystem services had fluctuating changes, and they all had spatial heterogeneity. The leapfrogging, edge-expansion, and infilling all had negative impacts on ecosystem services, and among them, the edge-expansion intensity had the highest influence degree in the early expansion, and the leapfrogging intensity occupied the dominant position in all influences with the expansion of urban scales. For different city sizes, the impact of edge-expansion in large-scale cities was greater than in small-scale cities in the early expansion, and the impact of leapfrogging in large-scale cities exceeded the edge-expansion in the subsequent expansion. These findings will help further understand the influential mechanisms between urban expansion and ecosystem services and provide a scientific basis for formulating reasonable urban planning.


One Ecosystem ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 3 ◽  
Author(s):  
Steffen Reichel ◽  
Hermann Klug

Since the foundation of the ecosystem services concept in the ninetieth of the last century (Costanza et al. 1998, Costanza et al. 1997, de Groot 1992), many methods to map and assess ecosystem services have been developed and applied to policy and business questions worldwide. While many flexible methods exist at different spatial scales and ecosystem types, Jax et al. (2018) express the difficulty in choosing and applying the correct method to the right topic of interest. To enable a selection of appropriate methods, Harrison et al. (2018) developed a decision tree approach. However, Dunford et al. (2018) argue that often not a single method but a combination of methods are required for appropriate decision-making in real world situations. Thus, applying the concept of ecosystem services in practice is challenging, especially at institutional level (Saarikoski et al. 2018). This hampers comparability, applicability and transferability of ecosystem services assessments and related mapping applications across scales and European regions. It also impedes a solid overview of existing methods suitable for use at different scales in different biomes and types of ecosystems. These challenges require a consistent knowledge capitalisation infrastructure, where information is synthesised in a publicly accessible portal to enable a consistent description of different ecosystem conditions and the services they provide. Going beyond the previously mentioned challenges requires a flexible methodology for assessing and mapping ecosystem services. The Horizon 2020 project ESMERALDA (Enhancing ecoSysteM sERvices mApping for poLicy and Decision mAking) developed this methodology and implemented it into the "MAES explorer"*5 and the "MAES Methods Explorer*1 (MME)". The MME complements previous developments from the EU projects OpenNESS*2 and OPERAs*3. In contrast to the OPPLA*4 case-study-finder with case study areas and accompanied study area booklets and descriptions, MME focuses on methods for mapping and assessing ecosystem services and links those to selected literature and case studies. Additionally, MME provides a comprehensive and publicly searchable collection of peer-reviewed journal references and grey literature about mapping and assessing ecosystem services in Europe. This compilation is cross-related with the case study booklets produced by the ESMERALDA project and particularly methods, which are specifically used to assess and map particular ecosystem services within the case study area. Thus, searching for and filtering of particular case study areas, (related) literature references and/or methods is possible. Santos-Martin et al. (2018) provide the detailed description about the scientific procedure behind the MME tool described here.


Author(s):  
Ann Marie Crosse ◽  
Margaret M. Barry ◽  
Mary Jo Lavelle ◽  
Jane Sixsmith

Earth’s life-supporting ecosystems are integral to human and planetary health. Ecosystem services connect ecosystem functions to human wellbeing. The complex, multifaceted socio-ecological challenges of ecosystem decline necessitate a transdisciplinary approach, including the active and meaningful engagement and participation of local communities. Communities uniquely possess expert local knowledge, which, when integrated into policy development and community planning, has the potential to enhance and sustain ecosystem benefits for health and wellbeing. Community-informed mapping tools provide an opportunity for integrating science, policy, and public participation in data collection. However, there is a dearth of community-informed mapping tools demonstrating the interconnection of the ecological and social determinants of health at a place-based level. This paper presents a study that employs a community-based participatory research approach to mapping local knowledge systems on EcoHealth. The study seeks to develop a community mapping tool for shared dialogue and decision-making on EcoHealth between local communities and policymakers. The participatory research methods used to explore community awareness and knowledge regarding ecosystem services, health, and sustainability in the local area are described. The process of co-producing a Community EcoHealth Toolkit, based on the integration of different knowledge systems into local policy and planning, is discussed.


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