scholarly journals [Re]covering Jeddah’s Wadis – Building the City’s Resilience through Green Infrastructure

2018 ◽  
Vol 11 (4) ◽  
pp. 228
Author(s):  
Hanaa Motasim

Jeddah, Saudi Arabia’s largest coastal city, is positioned between two prominent natural features: the mountain range on its eastern side and the Red Sea on its west. The city faces many challenges central to which is storm water drainage. The natural drainage of the city through its pre-existing wadis, bringing down the rain water from the steep mountain ranges through the low inclining coastal plane and into the sea, has been interrupted in the last few decades by massive road infrastructural projects cutting through the city and interrupting the natural flow. The outcome of these interventions has been excessive flooding calamities, of which the ones in 2009 and 2011 were the most extreme, causing severe damage to infrastructure, property and lives.In light of climate change the intensity of flash floods is expected to increase, placing enormous stress on the city. To control the floods the city has pushed forward heavily engineered solutions, canalizing the rich network of wadis, almost 80 in number, into 4 major concrete channels that discharge the rain water accumulated in the mountains directly into the sea. This solution, which has been prohibitive in cost, has robbed the city of any potential of utilizing the precious supply of rain water. This paper explores the potential of recovering Jeddah’s wadis and creating green corridors across the city. As opposed to engineered solutions which address singular problematics, green infrastructures could provide numerous benefits to the city and the region as a whole.

Land ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 10 (4) ◽  
pp. 375
Author(s):  
Jan Łukaszkiewicz ◽  
Beata Fortuna-Antoszkiewicz ◽  
Łukasz Oleszczuk ◽  
Jitka Fialová

The current crisis of worldwide agglomeration and economic, spatial, and ownership factors, among others, mean that there is usually a shortage of new green areas, which are socially very beneficial. Therefore, various brownfields or degraded lands along public transport routes, e.g., tram lanes, are effectively transformed for this purpose. The significant potential of tram systems is that they can became a backbone of green corridors across the city. This case study of the Warsaw tram system (total length over 300 km of single tracks in service in 2019) enables us to simulate the potential growth of a biologically active area connected with an increasing share of greenery around tram lanes in Warsaw. Experience allows the authors to present the types of greenery systems based on existing and future tram corridors best suited for this city. The suggested usage of tram lanes as green corridors is in line with the generally-accepted concept of urban green infrastructure. Therefore, the aim of the authors is to present in a condensed fashion their views on a very important issue within the program of the revitalization of the Warsaw landscape by converting where possible the existing tram lines, as well as planning new ones according to the “green point of view”.


2020 ◽  
Vol 961 (7) ◽  
pp. 56-64
Author(s):  
G.Y. Morozova ◽  
I.D. Debelaia

Protected areas are key elements of the green infrastructure and ecological framework of cities. They have multifunctional significance as centers of investment attractiveness. The percentage of protected zones in the city’s total area is an indicator of its sustainable development. Their total area in Khabarovsk is 567.8 ha (1.5% of the city area)


Author(s):  
Christian D. Liddy

The political narrative of late medieval English towns is often reduced to the story of the gradual intensification of oligarchy, in which power was exercised and projected by an ever smaller ruling group over an increasingly subservient urban population. This book takes its inspiration not from English historiography, but from a more dynamic continental scholarship on towns in the southern Low Countries, Germany, and France. Its premise is that scholarly debate about urban oligarchy has obscured contemporary debate about urban citizenship. It identifies from the records of English towns a tradition of urban citizenship, which did not draw upon the intellectual legacy of classical models of the ‘citizen’. This was a vernacular citizenship, which was not peculiar to England, but which was present elsewhere in late medieval Europe. It was a citizenship that was defined and created through action. There were multiple, and divergent, ideas about citizenship, which encouraged townspeople to make demands, to assert rights, and to resist authority. This book exploits the rich archival sources of the five major towns in England—Bristol, Coventry, London, Norwich, and York—in order to present a new picture of town government and urban politics over three centuries. The power of urban governors was much more precarious than historians have imagined. Urban oligarchy could never prevail—whether ideologically or in practice—when there was never a single, fixed meaning of the citizen.


Author(s):  
Gabriel Lefebvre-Ropars ◽  
Catherine Morency ◽  
Paula Negron-Poblete

The increasing popularity of street redesigns highlights the intense competition for street space between their different users. More and more cities around the world mention in their planning documents their intention to rebalance streets in favor of active transportation, transit, and green infrastructure. However, few efforts have managed to formalize quantifiable measurements of the balance between the different users and usages of the street. This paper proposes a method to assess the balance between the three fundamental dimensions of the street—the link, the place, and the environment—as well as a method to assess the adequation between supply and demand for the link dimension at the corridor level. A series of open and government georeferenced datasets were integrated to determine the detailed allocation of street space for 11 boroughs of the city of Montréal, Canada. Travel survey data from the 2013 Origine-Destination survey was used to model different demand profiles on these streets. The three dimensions of the street were found to be most unbalanced in the central boroughs of the city, which are also the most dense and touristic neighborhoods. A discrepancy between supply and demand for transit users and cyclists was also observed across the study area. This highlights the potential of using a distributive justice framework to approach the question of the fair distribution of street space in an urban context.


Forests ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 11 (12) ◽  
pp. 1374
Author(s):  
Hefei Wang ◽  
Zongping Pei

The undergoing trend and development towards urbanization and the consequences of socio-ecological and climate change are increasing the pressure on cities worldwide. The planning of urban green and blue spaces is essential for sustainable urban development, especially for the conservation of urban ecosystems in fast-growing cities. In this context, the spatial-explicit and ecological connectivity analyses of urban green infrastructure are helpful tools for planning and the evaluation of spatial patterns and their changes for the sustainability of urban development. The aim of this study is to understand the influence of urban expansion on the urban green corridors. In this paper, we present an analysis of ecological networks for green infrastructure planning at the city level, making the most out of morphological spatial pattern analysis (MSPA) techniques and social-ecological analysis methods. The findings reveal the changes of spatial patterns of urban green and blue areas in Gaoyou city and disclose its ecological corridors and connectivity from 1990 to 2012. The urban green corridors analysis method proposed here can be used in other cities and allow for the production of spatially detailed urban ecological connectivity assessment and monitoring. Recommendations to enhance and conserve green corridors and ecological networks such as reserving networks in the east of the example city have been concluded. The conclusion obtained using our spatial analysis method can be used in other municipalities to serve as spatial-explicit tools for urban green spaces and land use planning.


2011 ◽  
Vol 44 (6) ◽  
pp. 774-776 ◽  
Author(s):  
João Victor Leite Dias ◽  
Bethânia Alves de Avelar ◽  
Hildebrando Cirqueira Júnior ◽  
Liléia Diotaiuti ◽  
Herton Helder Rocha Pires

INTRODUCTION: Triatomine bug captures in the wild are laborious and time-consuming. Some traps may assist in this task. We report a new trap design and the capture of a specimen of a triatomine rarely found. METHODS: Two luminous traps were installed in the city of Diamantina, State of Minas Gerais, and surveyed weekly for a year. RESULTS: A Triatoma arthurneivai female and other triatomine bugs were caught. CONCLUSIONS: A new trap design may be used in triatomine bugs field captures, mainly in low density areas. We assume the center of endemism of Triatoma arthurneivai is the Espinhaço Mountain range.


2018 ◽  
Vol 33 ◽  
pp. 01004 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alla Kopeva ◽  
Olga Ivanova ◽  
Olga Khrapko

The purpose of this study is to identify the facilities of green infrastructure that are able to improve living conditions in an urban environment in high-rise residential apartments buildings on steep slopes in the city of Vladivostok. Based on the analysis of theoretical sources and practices that can be observed in the world, green infrastructure facilities have been identified. These facilities meet the criteria of the sustainable development concept, and can be used in the city of Vladivostok. They include green roofs, green walls, and greening of disturbed slopes. All the existing high-rise apartments buildings situated on steep slopes in the city of Vladivostok, have been studied. It is concluded that green infrastructure is necessary to be used in new projects connected with designing and constructing of residential apartments buildings on steep slopes, as well as when upgrading the projects that have already been implemented. That will help to regulate the ecological characteristics of the sites. The results of the research can become a basis for increasing the sustainability of the habitat, and will facilitate the adoption of decisions in the field of urban design and planning.


2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (17) ◽  
pp. 9617 ◽  
Author(s):  
Wesam M. Elbardisy ◽  
Mohamed A. Salheen ◽  
Mohammed Fahmy

In the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region, studies focused on the relationship between urban planning practice and climatology are still lacking, despite the fact that the latter has nearly three decades of literature in the region and the former has much more. However, such an unfounded relationship that would consider urban sustainability measures is a serious challenge, especially considering the effects of climate change. The Greater Cairo Region (GCR) has recently witnessed numerous serious urban vehicular network re-development, leaving the city less green and in need of strategically re-thinking the plan regarding, and the role of, green infrastructure. Therefore, this study focuses on approaches to the optimization of the urban green infrastructure, in order to reduce solar irradiance in the city and, thus, its effects on the urban climatology. This is carried out by studying one of the East Cairo neighborhoods, named El-Nozha district, as a representative case of the most impacted neighborhoods. In an attempt to quantify these effects, using parametric simulation, the Air Temperature (Ta), Mean Radiant Temperature (Tmrt), Relative Humidity (RH), and Physiological Equivalent Temperature (PET) parameters were calculated before and after introducing urban trees, acting as green infrastructure types that mitigate climate change and the Urban Heat Island (UHI) effect. Our results indicate that an optimized percentage, spacing, location, and arrangement of urban tree canopies can reduce the irradiance flux at the ground surface, having positive implications in terms of mitigating the urban heat island effect.


The water consumption in Bengaluru goes to 1853 Million Liter per Day (MLD) mainly sourced from Kaveri river and borewells and in result to produce abbot 1400 MLD of sewage. About 711 MLD is being treated water out come from 26 Secondary Treatment Plants (STP) against their capacity of 1360 MLD. About 462.9 MLD is recycled for various purposes and remaining 248.5MLD is allowed to flow in Sewage Water Drainage or in lakes allowed to mix with the sewage, making practically no use. The Bangalore Water Supply and Sewerage Board (BWSSB) has about 6 STPs in place for a capacity of 453.5 MLD in the Kormangla-Chelghatta valley (K&C Valley) catchment area. One of the best-known sewage recycling in present day in the country is 440 MLD Kormangla-Chelghatta valley project for drought prone Kolar and Chickballapur districts in Karnataka, India to reuse of treated water for ground water recharge and industries and then to agriculture. About 76 tanks have been filled till this date. From these tanks, treated water is allowed to recharge the ground water and then reused through open wells/ borewells for agriculture/ horticulture. No treated water is directly used from such tanks. The project has facilitated to change the socioeconomic status of the farmers, terrestrial, aquatic and marshy ecosystems of the area. The project is bringing change in symbiotic relations by exerting pressure for more sewage treatment at Bengaluru and in turn vegetables/agriculture products supply to it. It also fulfils the obligation of City to provide nutrient rich treated waste-water for farmers’ irrigation needs under distress conditions that they are facing due to drought and water shortage, who grow food and vegetables and thus ensuring symbiotic livelihood security for the farmers and food security for the city. The author is working as expert member appointed by National Green Tribunal for the rejuvenation of lakes in K&C Valley.


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