NEW STUDY: Material and Energy Requirements of Inclusive Development in 10 Indian Cities

What are the resource requirements of inclusive development  in cities? Will providing infrastructure services to underserved urban residents dramatically increase community-wide resource demand? These questions are at the heart of new findings from Sustainable Healthy Cities researchers who quantified the material and energy flows needed to upgrade infrastructure and services for residents consuming below median values in 10 Indian cities.

Study results show that more equitable service provision for underserved households will not dramatically alter community-wide resource flows. Instead, it is the highest consuming households, as well as commercial businesses and industry, that have the largest impact on community-wide material and energy use. The full study was published in the journal Environmental Research Letters. Access the findings here.

Among the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) are targets to reduce poverty and hunger, advance good health and wellbeing, provide clean water and sanitation, ensure access to clean energy, reduce inequality, and foster sustainable cities and communities. Individual SDGs that are specifically connected to goals of increasing access to infrastructure services and material development are often framed as being pitted against SDGs that have efficiency, conservation, and environmental sustainability as their aim. The thinking goes that rising levels of infrastructure service consumption among the world’s urban poor will put untenable strain on resources.

This study partially debunks that argument by showing that for the most part, inclusive development efforts in the 10 Indian cities studied would not substantially alter community-wide resource flows. The work required first quantifying service provision deficits (relative to median use levels or established benchmarks in various sectors) in each city and then comparing that quantified value to community-wide material and energy flows. The methodology was applied across the sectors of housing, electricity, and household cooking fuels.

Across all 10 cities, results show:

• To provide basic electricity (25 kWh capita-month) to all will require a 1% to 10% in current community-wide electricity use
• To provide basic clean liquid petroleum gas (LPG) fuel (1.2 kg capita-month) to all requires an increase of 5% to 40% in current community-wide LPG use

In Delhi and Chandigarh specifically, results show:

• Providing permanent shelter (implemented over a ten year period) to populations living in non-permanent housing would require a 6% to 14% increase over current annual community-wide cement use
• To provide permanent housing to all people living in structurally unsound housing andthose living in overcrowded housing (<5 m cap−2) would require 32%–115% of current community-wide cement flows

The study authors note that, “except for the last scenario, these results suggest that social policies that seek to provide basic infrastructure provisioning for all residents would not dramatically increase current community-wide resource flows.”

Moreover, the study’s findings show wealthier households consuming many times more than the lowest consuming households. As a result, the authors note, “the increase to community-wide resource flows that would be needed for socially inclusive development policies as a percentage of overall community-wide resource flow is much less than the percentage of homes that are underserved or that must be upgraded.”

The study offers a methodology than can be replicated in cities globally using location-specific data to understand service provision deficits and the material and energy flows needed to correct those deficits via inclusive development policies.

Lead author Anu Ramaswami is director of the Sustainable Healthy Cities Network and is the Charles M. Denny, Jr., Chair of Science, Technology, and Public Policy at the University of Minnesota’s Humphrey School of Public Affairs. Co-lead author Ajay Nagpure is an affiliated Sustainable Healthy Cities researcher and a post-doctoral fellow at the Humphrey School of Public Affairs. Co-author Mark Reiner is a research associate at the Humphrey School of Public Affairs.

COMMENTARY: Social Media Analysis for Urban Design, Management and Planning

Sustainable Healthy Cities researcher Richard Plunz, of the Urban Design Lab at Columbia University’s Earth Institute, is using social media analysis to understand how people use and engage with infrastructure and public space in cities. The tools his team is experimenting with represent a frontier for using social media analysis to inform urban design, management, and planning.

Twitter density analysis for understanding patterns and flows of people in public spaces, sentiment analysis for understanding connections between infrastructure and subjective wellbeing, and crowdsourced monitoring of storm water infrastructure during heavy rain events are just a few of the applied urban design, management and planning uses of social media that Plunz’s team is exploring.

Read the full story below. This post was originally published by Columbia News, written by Eve Glasberg. Access the original post here. 

5 Questions: Richard Plunz on Crowdsourcing Urban Design with Twitter

During a storm, several thousand swales (low-lying channels that are shallower than a ditch) across New York City collect rainwater runoff and keep it from flooding the sewers. While working on an app to help monitor this system, Richard Plunz and his colleagues at the Earth Institute’s Urban Design Lab found that community involvement would be just as critical to its success as technology.

“The only practical way to monitor these sites is via social media, allowing people in the neighborhood to report on the status of green infrastructure,” said Plunz, director of the Urban Design Lab and a professor at the Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation.

Now, he and his colleagues are studying how this crowdsourcing approach might apply to the entire field of urban design. Their project combines mapping techniques with Twitter-usage data to gain a real-time understanding of how people occupy public space.

“Social media provides the first tool for gauging how areas with high-density tweets, such as parks, tourist attractions and transit hubs are actually used,” said Plunz, whose team collaborates on a broad range of multidisciplinary research projects, including investigations of new ecological realities facing cities, next-generation economic development and the intensifying effects of climate change. “Over time, we anticipate that social media will help us to produce a new generation of urban design and planning tools that address how to make these spaces more environmentally and socially resilient.”

Plunz, who is known for a wide range of innovative urban research, development and design projects, has a particular expertise in infrastructure. His landmark 1990 book, A History of Housing in New York City, was republished in a revised edition in 2016. In 2017 he published, City Riffs: Urbanism, Ecology, Place, which traces the changing perspectives of urban design by moving between 16 cities, including New York, Rome, New Delhi, Caracas and Seoul.

Q. What have you learned from analyzing Twitter use in public parks?

A. We have been able to confirm the efficacy of real-time geospatial tracking of information, which is already an important breakthrough in terms of urban design. What we did not anticipate was the potential for understanding sentiment regarding urban settings and in response to real-time tracking, and especially in affirming the accuracy of Twitter data relative to specific events and conditions. We have also considered the potential for predictions related to people and events. For example, in our work on the High Line, we can distinguish between New York residents and tourists. We can anticipate hours before an event that it could be oversubscribed and therefore require special precautions relative to security and logistics.

Q. What made you choose Bryant Park, Washington Square Park and the High Line?

A. These particular parks are representative of three differing ways that public space is used. Bryant Park has the most potential for Twitter-based analytics, given its heavy usage, especially on weekday lunchtimes. Washington Square Park has a much greater full-time occupancy, which gives a more expansive view of its use. The High Line’s long trajectory and large percentage of tourists provides yet another reading and perspective on the relationship between a park and its people. We are researching the effectiveness of Twitter in helping to understand these different characteristics in real time and the possibilities for correlating them with many variables, including weather patterns and social events.

Q. What can Twitter tell us that surveys can’t?

A. Twitter data is 24/7 and in continuum, a conscious stream, a collective picture of social responses to particular situations and contexts. It provides a tool for future planning as opposed to a system focused on specific issues at specific times. It is fundamentally cognitive in nature and, therefore, represents a huge advance in our comprehension of how we interact with our environment and vice versa.

Q. What are the practical applications?

A. There is real-time monitoring of public space density-of-use patterns and even usage prediction related to specific public events. It’s also possible to use Twitter density and sentiment as a tool for long-term design considerations. This can include, at different scales, the redesign of public parks—adding more grass and trees, for example, or new activity areas, or figuring out if nearby buildings or construction are having a negative impact on vegetation. Is a park being overused? Or are users dissatisfied and, if so, why? How can a park be more effective and have more social benefits? The next 10 years will be huge in reaching a new understanding of every aspect of our built environment via social media data.

Q. What are the limitations of this approach? Where would you like to see it go?

A. Perhaps the biggest limitation now is the uneven distribution of Twitter usage throughout the city. In our study we ended up focusing on lower Manhattan, in part because there is sufficient Twitter data for these areas. Central Park had to be eliminated because the Twitter-density patterns are so dispersed. We anticipate that this problem will disappear as the use of Twitter-like social media grows. That will be the moment when techniques like ours become everyday practice, opening a new window on to urban cognition. The cognitive mapping of urban environments entails a mental decoding of information. It has been a preoccupation for centuries, but more as a metaphysical construct. There have been iconic studies, from Italian architect Giambattista Nolli’s 1748 plan of Rome to Baudelaire’s 1847 Flâneur—who walks the city in order to experience it—to urban planner Kevin Lynch’s Image of the City analytics of the 1950s. We are moving from urban cognition as a primarily literary and conceptual tool into the realm of its becoming an operational tool for spatial design. This is a new moment for an ages-old preoccupation.

 

UPCOMING CONFERENCES: Cities, Sustainability, and Infrastructure Related Research Convenings

The following upcoming research conferences are convenings that may be of interest to the Sustainable Healthy Cities research  community. The conferences are variously focused on topics of cities, sustainability, and infrastructure.

IPCC Cities and Climate Change Conference 

The International Panel on Climate Change is hosting a conference on cities  with the intent of inspiring the next frontier of research focused on the science of cities and climate change.

Themes of the conference include:

1. Cities & climate change (Imperatives for action)
2. Urban emissions, impacts and vulnerabilities (Science and practice of cities)
3. Solutions for the transition to low carbon and climate resilient cities (Science and practice for cities)
4. Enabling transformative climate action in cities (advancing science and advancing cities)

The conference will be held March 5-7, 2018 in Edmonton, Canada. Learn more about the conference here. 

Gordon Research Conference: The Role of Industrial Ecology in Reaching the Sustainable Development Goals

The conference will focus on investigating the “newest insights on how Industrial Ecology can contribute towards achieving the SDGs” with a particular focus on “methods and approaches for assessing achievements and exploring synergies and tradeoffs between SDGs.”

The conference will be held May 20-25, 2018 at the Les Diablerets Conference Center in Switzerland. Learn more about the conference here. 

2018 International Symposium on Sustainable Systems and Technology

In its 25th year, ISSST is one of the longest-running research conferences related to sustainability and the intersection of technology, policy, and behavior.  The 2018 ISSST Conference will include a specific theme on circular economies.

The conference will be held June 26-28, 2018 in Buffalo, New York. Learn more about the conference here. 

2018 APPAM International Conference: Public Policy for Sustainable Metropolitan Development

The Association for Public Policy Analysis and Management’s 2018 international conference will focus on concerns of sustainable urban development, paying special attention to how those concerns connect with the implementation of UN Habitat’s New Urban Agenda and the larger UN Sustainable Development Goals. The conference will highlight research that applies a metropolitan focus to concerns of sustainable urban development, particularly highlighting  the challenges of multi-jurisdictional governance.

The conference will be held July 19-20, 2018 in Mexico City. Learn more about the conference here. 

Urban Transitions 2018: Integrating Urban and Transport Planning, Environment and Health for Healthier Urban Living

Hosted by Elsevier conferences, Urban Transitions 2018 will consider the goal of promoting “healthy urban development”and  provide enhanced understanding of  linkages across health and urban development while providing insights to help guide multi-sector solutions. Supporting Elsevier publications include: Cities, Environment International, Environmental Pollution, Preventative Medicine, and Transportation Research.

The conference will be held November 25-27, 2018 in Barcelona, Spain. Learn more about the conference here. 

NEW REPORT: Articulating a Next Generation Vision for Sustainable Urban Systems Research to NSF

The Advisory Committee on Environmental Research and Education (AC-ERE) to the US National Science Foundation (NSF) has released a new report articulating a next generation vision for sustainable urban systems research. Read the full report here.

In 1950, fewer than one-third of the world’s people lived in cities. By 2050, urban areas will be home to some two-thirds of Earth’s human population. This scale and pace of urbanization has never been seen in human history and requires a new type of science that transcends traditional disciplines and that intentionally links from intra-urban to urban-regional to global scales. No single discipline, from urban planning to public policy to engineering has the scope to address this challenge. Scientists need new data, methods and theories to assess the interactions among people, policy, infrastructure, technologies, governance institutions, and natural systems to understand urban to global system functions and change.

The AC-ERE released the report in response to this broader landscape and the challenges therein. The report seeks to provide a long-term vision to guide NSF and other funding agencies as they invest in new science and science-to-action partnerships moving from an exclusive focus on cities to a focus on sustainable urban systems.

The report was prepared by the Sustainable Urban Systems subcommittee to the AC-ERE, chaired by Anu Ramaswami, director of the Sustainable Healthy Cities Network and professor at the Humphrey School of Public Affairs. See the full press release from NSF here.

NEW REPORT: Two UN Environment Reports Launched: The Weight of Cities (Global) and Sustainable Infrastructure Transitions in the ASEAN (Southeast Asia)

Can we better design cities to support local and global sustainability goals? That is the subject of two new reports recently released by UN Environment including a global report, The Weight of Cities: Resource Requirements of Future Urbanization, and a regional report for Southeast Asia, Sustainable Urban Infrastructure Transitions in the ASEAN Region: A Resource Perspective.

Both reports call for new strategies to meet the needs of 21st-century urbanization, ones that will result in cities that are low carbon, resource efficient, socially just, and in which people can live healthy lives. Read UN Environment’s full press release here.

Policy-maker summaries for both reports were recently launched at UN Habitat’s 9th World Urban Forum. The summary of the global report can be found here. The summary of the regional Southeast Asia report can be found here.

Anu Ramaswami, director of the Sustainable Healthy Cities Network, was a contributing author to the global report and lead author of the regional report. Sustainable Healthy Cities Network staff researchers Ashly McFarlane and Sam Tabory, as well as post-doctoral fellow Rylie Pelton, were contributing authors to the regional report.

Both reports were developed by UN Environment as part of their ongoing efforts to promote resource efficient urbanization. Learn more about the work of UN Environment’s Global Initiative for Resource Efficient Cities here.

 

POLICY ENGAGEMENT: Ecological Landscapes in Cities at the World Urban Forum

How can connections between the built environment, natural ecosystems, and urban metabolism be leveraged in cities to advance both local and global sustainability targets? That is the question that Anu Ramaswami, director of the Sustainable Healthy Cities Network and professor at the Humphrey School of Public Affairs, was tasked with helping to answer as a speaker at UN Habitat’s plenary session on Ecological Landscapes in Cities at the 9^th World Urban Forum in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.

Ramaswami joined speakers from the Word Bank, UN Habitat, UN Environment, the Government of Malaysia, the Mayor of Quito and civil society and youth representatives to discuss the role of landscapes as mediators between urban built environments and natural landscapes.

Panelists discussed the need to simplify urban metabolism models as a way to engage youth champions in the cause of sustainability, the role that green and blue spaces in cities will play in addressing challenges of climate change adaptation, and the general benefits to biodiversity and resilience that ecosystem services in cities are able to offer residents.

Ramaswami presented leading edge research from the Sustainable Healthy Cities Network quantifying the impact of urban infrastructure sectors and food supply on regional land and water resources, their contributions to global greenhouse gas emissions, and their role in broadly shaping human health and wellbeing, in turn affecting almost all of the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals. She also spoke of how the work is informing a new urban systems research frontier in which scientists are able to model comprehensive sustainability scenarios across multiple infrastructure sectors in individual cities, ultimately connecting those results to higher-level models that look at the impact of all urban areas in a country or region.

The plenary session highlighted the importance of ongoing research and policy engagement to promote resource efficient cities. The panel was hosted by UN Habitat’s Greener Cities Partnership, a collaboration between UN Habitat and UN Environment. More from UN Habitat and the Greener Cities Partnership can be found here. More from UN Environment on resource efficient cities can be found here.