Nilon, Charles H.; Aronson, Myla F. J.; Cilliers, Sarel S.; Dobbs, Cynnamon; Frazee, Lauren J.; Goddard, Mark A.; O’Neill, Karen M.; Roberts, Debra; Stander, Emilie K.; Werner, Peter; Winter, Marten; Yocom, Ken P. (2017). Planning For The Future Of Urban Biodiversity: A Global Review Of City-scale Initiatives. Bioscience, 67(4), 331 – 341.
View Publication
Abstract
Cities represent considerable opportunities for forwarding global biodiversity and sustainability goals. We developed key attributes for conserving biodiversity and for ecosystem services that should be included in urban-planning documents and reviewed 135 plans from 40 cities globally. The most common attributes in city plans were goals for habitat conservation, air and water quality, cultural ecosystem services, and ecological connectivity. Few plans included quantitative targets. This lack of measurable targets may render plans unsuccessful for an actionable approach to local biodiversity conservation. Although most cities include both biodiversity and ecosystem services, each city tends to focus on one or the other. Comprehensive planning for biodiversity should include the full range of attributes identified, but few cities do this, and the majority that do are mandated by local, regional, or federal governments to plan specifically for biodiversity conservation. This research provides planning recommendations for protecting urban biodiversity based on ecological knowledge.
Keywords
Sustainability; Urban Planning; Urban Biodiversity; Urban Ecology (biology); Water Quality; Air Quality; Biodiversity Conservation; Ecosystem Services; Governance; Policy Regulation; Green Infrastructure; Climate-change; Human Health; Cities; Opportunities; Metaanalysis; Framework; Richness
Lin, Brenda B.; Ossola, Alessandro; Alberti, Marina; Andersson, Erik; Bai, Xuemei; Dobbs, Cynnamon; Elmqvist, Thomas; Evans, Karl L.; Frantzeskaki, Niki; Fuller, Richard A.; Gaston, Kevin J.; Haase, Dagmar; Jim, Chi Yung; Konijnendijk, Cecil; Nagendra, Harini; Niemela, Jari; Mcphearson, Timon; Moomaw, William R.; Parnell, Susan; Pataki, Diane; Ripple, William J.; Tan, Puay Yok. (2021). Integrating Solutions to Adapt Cities for Climate Change. Lancet Planetary Health, 5(7), E479 – E486.
View Publication
Abstract
Record climate extremes are reducing urban liveability, compounding inequality, and threatening infrastructure. Adaptation measures that integrate technological, nature-based, and social solutions can provide multiple co-benefits to address complex socioecological issues in cities while increasing resilience to potential impacts. However, there remain many challenges to developing and implementing integrated solutions. In this Viewpoint, we consider the value of integrating across the three solution sets, the challenges and potential enablers for integrating solution sets, and present examples of challenges and adopted solutions in three cities with different urban contexts and climates (Freiburg, Germany; Durban, South Africa; and Singapore). We conclude with a discussion of research directions and provide a road map to identify the actions that enable successful implementation of integrated climate solutions. We highlight the need for more systematic research that targets enabling environments for integration; achieving integrated solutions in different contexts to avoid maladaptation; simultaneously improving liveability, sustainability, and equality; and replicating via transfer and scale-up of local solutions. Cities in systematically disadvantaged countries (sometimes referred to as the Global South) are central to future urban development and must be prioritised. Helping decision makers and communities understand the potential opportunities associated with integrated solutions for climate change will encourage urgent and deliberate strides towards adapting cities to the dynamic climate reality.
Keywords
Urban; Resilience; Energy; Water; Transformations; Sustainability; Opportunities; Challenges; Mitigation; Knowledge
Green Futures Lab is dedicated to supporting interdisciplinary research and design that advances our understanding of, visions for, and design of a vital and ecologically sustainable public realm. The Lab’s goal is to develop green infrastructure solutions within a local and global context.
The Green Futures Lab explores and promotes planning and design for active transportation, including cycling and pedestrian environments; conducts research and design projects that aim to improve the ability of public spaces to build community and provide recreation and revitalization; works to improve the health of our water bodies and sustain our water resources through green infrastructure innovations, ecosystem restoration, and open space protection; innovates strategies for creating quality habitat, particularly within urban environments where it is most limited; and explores low-carbon urban design solutions to mitigate climate change.
Working with the University of Washington, local communities, and international partners, the lab provides planning, design, and education for healthy, equitably accessible, and regenerative urban and ecological systems.
The Circular City + Living Systems Lab (CCLS) is an interdisciplinary group of faculty and students applying principles of research and design to investigate transformative strategies for future cities that are adaptive and resilient while facing climate change.
Synthesizing expertise from architecture, landscape architecture, engineering, planning, biology, and ecology, the Lab’s innovative research spans core topics such as the integration of living systems in the built environment to produce and circulate resources within the food-water-energy nexus, and spatial design responses to COVID-19.
Ongoing work at the CCLS includes research on urban integration of aquaponics, urban and building-integrated agriculture, circular economies in the food industry, algae production, and green roof performance.
Monica Huang is a research engineer for the Carbon Leadership Forum at the University of Washington with expertise in environmental life cycle assessment (LCA). Recent research topics include the environmental impact of housing, optimizing tall wood structures, and developing data on the environmental impact of earthquake damage. She was also the lead author for a guide on the use of LCA in design and construction practice. Past research experience includes diverse topics such as astronomy, electronic waste, and sea level rise. As a graduate student, she developed the Port of Seattle’s first study on the impacts of sea level rise on seaport structures.
Christine Bae is an Associate Professor in the Department of Urban Design and Planning at the University of Washington, Seattle. She received her Ph.D. in Urban and Regional Planning from the University of Southern California. Her primary areas of interest are transportation and the environment; land use, growth management and urban sprawl; urban regeneration; environmental equity and justice; and international planning and globalization. She recently co-authored an article on measuring pedestrian exposure to PM2.5 in the Seattle, Washington, International District. She teaches a course “Mega City Planning”, in which she leads a group of students to Seoul, South Korea for two weeks in spring quarter. She is currently the West Representative for the Association of Collegiate Schools of Planning, and a Board Member for the Western Regional Science Association. She is also the recipient of an on-going Sea Grant for The Economic and Environmental Impacts of Moorage Marinas in the West Coast.
Marina Alberti is Professor of Urban and Environmental Planning in the Department of Urban Design and Planning at the University of Washington. She is Director of the Urban Ecology Research Lab and PI of the NSF Funded Research Collaboration Networks on Urban Eco-Evolutionary Dynamics. She teaches courses in Urban Science, Urban Ecology, Environmental Planning, Research Design, Geographic Information Systems, and Group Dynamic and Conflict resolution. Alberti’s research interests are in urban ecology and evolution. Her studies focus on the interactions between urban patterns and ecosystem function, urban signatures of evolutionary change, and the properties of cities that enhance their resilience and transformative capacity. She also leads research on urban ecological modeling, scenario planning, and urban ecological metrics to monitor progress and inform policy-making and planning. In her book Cities That Think like Planets (UW Press 2016), Alberti advances a science of cities that work on a planetary scale and link unpredictable dynamics to the potential for socio-ecological innovation.
Ken Yocom is Department Chair and Professor in the Department of Landscape Architecture. He also has an adjunct appointment in the Department of Urban Design and Planning, serves on the steering committee of the PhD in the Built Environments Program, and is core faculty for the Interdisciplinary PhD Program in Urban Design and Planning within the College of Built Environments. He primarily teaches seminar and studio courses in theory, ecology, and urban design.
Trained as an ecologist and landscape architect with professional experience in the environmental consulting and construction industries, he is a graduate of our MLA program (2002). Ken also earned his PhD from the Program in the Built Environments (2007), where he researched nature and society relations through the contemporary context of urban ecological restoration practices.
Ken’s current research, teaching, and practice explore the convergence of urban infrastructure and ecological systems through adaptive design approaches that serve to demystify emerging strategies and technologies for sustainable and resilient development. More specifically, he investigates how water –in all its forms- shapes the past to future functions and patterns of our built environments. He has written extensively on the themes developed from his work including two books, Ecological Design (with Nancy Rottle, Bloomsbury, 2012) and NOW Urbanism: The Future City is Here (with Jeff Hou, Ben Spencer, and Thaisa Way (editors), Routledge, 2014). He has also written for professional practice and scholarly publications on issues of global biodiversity, urban environmental governance, ecological design, and contemporary nature and society relations in the urban context.
In his teaching, Ken emphasizes the development of a holistic and integrated approach that embraces the complexity of our built environments, yet discreetly explores the intersections and overlaps that frame our understanding and appreciation of particular places. He has a strong belief that collaboratively, the allied design professions can act as catalysts in recognizing, utilizing, and transforming the inherent potential of our built environments into places that are socially equitable, environmentally just, and economically sustainable.
Professor Nancy Rottle brings over two decades of landscape architecture professional experience to her role at the UW, where she has been teaching since 2001. Her work centers upon design as a means to create places that are ecologically healthy, culturally meaningful, and educationally and experientially resonant. Her recent scholarship, including the co-authored book Ecological Design, has focused on the application of theory and new practices to regenerate the health of urban and urbanizing environments.
Professor Rottle currently directs the UW’s Green Futures Research and Design Lab, which addresses questions and projects related to urban green infrastructure, topics on which Nancy publishes and lectures (www.greenfutures.washington.edu). Collaborative projects and publications include the use of waterfronts to treat and re-use stormwater; urban green infrastructure for city streets and college campuses; public space planning and design; pedestrian and active transport environments; green roofs and walls; metrics to evaluate sustainable design projects; public engagement to envision positive futures; and the role of green infrastructure in mitigating and adapting to climate change. She co-edited the 2007 special journal edition of Places on Climate Change and Place, and researched this topic in New Zealand supported by a Senior Scholar Fulbright Fellowship.
Professor Rottle teaches design studio, theory and technical courses and advises on theses that examine the potential of design to positively affect our urban ecological futures, taking a special focus on public space design, water in the landscape and design for environmental literacy. Professor Rottle regularly teaches courses that integrate water into the planning and design process, from watershed to site scales, integrating knowledge of urban water-based projects from around the world. With support from the ScanlDesign Foundation, she leads urban design study tours to Denmark and Sweden, and collaborates with Gehl Architects of Copenhagen to teach interdisciplinary studios at the UW that merge considerations for ecological, economic, social and physical health. As the UW’s ScanlDesign Endowed Chair in Built Environments she also facilitates internships and exchanges between the UW and Denmark.
A registered landscape architect, Nancy’s professional and academic planning and design projects have won local and national awards, including the acclaimed Cedar River Watershed Education Center, and Open Space Seattle 2100, a multidisciplinary planning process to develop a 100-year vision for Seattle’s green infrastructure. Her studios, thesis students and work of the Green Futures Lab have also won prestigious college, local, national and international awards. Passionate about sharing ecological design approaches and models, Nancy has lectured in the US, New Zealand, China, Canada, Russia and Europe.
Gundula Proksch is a scholar, licensed architect, and Professor in the Department of Architecture and Adjunct Professor in the Department of Landscape Architecture. She is the Founding Director of the Circular City + Living Systems Lab (CCLS), an interdisciplinary research group investigating transformative strategies for sustainable urban futures. The CCLS leverages research and design methods to investigate the potential of synergetic systems to apply circular economy principles and integrate living systems in buildings and cities. These approaches produce and circulate resources within the food-water-energy nexus toward efficient, just, and sustainable urban built environments.
Professor Proksch is the Principal Investigator of the National Science Foundation (NSF) funded research project “Belmont Forum Collaborative Research: CITYFOOD.” As part of an international research consortium, with partners in Germany, Sweden, Norway, the Netherlands and Brazil, CITYFOOD investigates the potential of integration of aquaponic systems into cities on a broad scale, as an innovative solution to mitigate daunting environmental, economic, and social challenges. Her book Creating Urban Agricultural Systems: An Integrated Approach to Design (Routledge, 2017) is the first source book on how to approach urban agriculture from a systems perspective. It explores the ways urban farms provide integrated environmental systems, innovative operational strategies, and design approaches to create environmentally sound and economically viable urban agricultural operations.
Professor Proksch’s interdisciplinary sustainability research builds on her professional experience spanning fifteen years of practice in Europe and the United States. She practiced with renowned architects, David Chipperfield in London and Richard Meier, Stan Allen and Roger Duffy of SOM in New York. She holds a Master of Architecture from Cornell University and a master-level degree from the Technical University Braunschweig in Germany. She received a DAAD scholarship for independent studies at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, ETH Zurich in Switzerland.