Climate change transformation: A definition and typology to guide decision making in urban environments

Climate change presents a threat to the sustainability of cities and their societies, and must be adequately addressed. Urban environments (cities) are responsible for the creation of a significant amount of greenhouse gas emissions which are the source of climate change. Cities have been increasingly the focus of action to address climate change, yet emissions are not significantly reducing. Additionally, there a lack of integration between adaptation and mitigation. This prevents responses adequate to limit global warming to 1.5^OC, and to be well adapted to anticipated changes. This paper critically analyses existing definitions and typologies of climate change actions. A definition of ‘climate change transformation’ is proposed which includes the integration of adaptation and mitigation goals to enable a new regime in which global warming is limited to 1.5^OC. A new three-part typology: ‘coping, malaction and transformation,’ is presented for categorising climate change actions by the extent to which they integrate adaptation and mitigation, and define a new regime. The typology is accompanied by illustrations to demonstrate the relationship between adaptation and mitigation. The definition, typology and illustration serve to guide effective climate change decision making, and provides principles to guide application in urban environments.     

New power relations served here: The growth of food banking in Chicago

While some non-profits have suffered under the political and economic pressures of neoliberal urban governance reform, others have emerged as important institutional players in local governance regimes. This article highlights how non-profits food banks in Chicago have commercialized in order to respond to increased demand, enhance their institutional independence from government, and reassert their local dominance in emergency food service delivery. From a food bank member agency perspective, the consolidation of food bank institutional power has produced new bureaucratic limitations, user fees, and increased competition. These shifts reveal the rise of metropolitan food banks as important players in neoliberal urban governance regimes, as they control the conceptualization of hunger, management of poverty, and organization of food distribution systems.     

我国城市规划中的公众参与研究

公众参与是随着政治文明和法制建设不断成熟、发展而产生的一种民主理念,已经成为城市规划工作中一项必不可少的内容。文章就我国城市规划中公众参与的现状提出我国城市规划过程中公众参与的必要性和紧迫性,总结出我国现阶段公众参与的现状与问题,并提出对策和合理化建议,从而把公众参与真正落实到我国的城市规划过程当中。     

Reclamation-oriented spatiotemporal evolution of coastal wetland along Bohai Rim,China

Coastal wetlands are located in the ecotone of interaction between the land surface and sea, and anthropogenic activities extensively interfere with these wetlands through the reclamation of large tidal wetlands and destruction of the function of the ecosystems. In this study, we investigated the dynamic evolutionary characteristics of the Bohai Rim coastal area over the past 40 years using the Modified Normalized Difference Water Index, the fractal dimension, object-oriented classification, the land-use transfer trajectory, and regression analysis. Additionally, we quantified and monitored the evolution of reclamation and analyzed the correlation between reclamation and coastal wetlands based on 99 Landsat-2, -5, and -8 images (at 60 m and 30 m spatial resolution) over the period 1980–2019. The results are as follows. (1) The coastline of the Bohai Rim increased by 1 631.2 km from 1980 to 2019 with a zigzag variation. The artificial coastline increased by 2 946.1 km, whereas the natural coastline decreased by 90%. (2) The area of man-made wetlands increased by 3 736.9 km2, the area of construction land increased by 1 008.4 km2, and the natural wetland area decreased by 66%. The decrease of tidal flats is the main contributor to the decrease of natural wetland area (takes account for 91.1%). Coastal areas are affected by intense human disturbance, which was taken place across a large area of tidal flats and caused the landscape to fragment and be more heterogeneous. The coastal zone development activities were primarily concentrated in the southern Laizhou Bay, the Yellow River Delta, the Bohai Bay, the northern Liaodong Bay, and the Pulandian Bay. The solidified shorelines and increase in sea level have resulted in intertidal wetlands decreasing and impaired wetland ecology. (3) There is a good agreement between reclamation and the size of the coastal wetlands. Both land reclamation and the reduction in coastal wetland areas are significantly related to the population size, fishery output value, and urbanization rate. In summary, human activities, such as the construction of aquaculture ponds and salt pans, industrialization, and urbanization, are the primary forces that influence the environmental changes in the coastal region. This study is beneficial for establishing and improving the systems for the rational development and utilization of natural resources, and provides theoretical references for restoring wetland ecology and managing future reclamation activities in other coastal zone-related areas.     

A Plan to Push Limits? Investigating the ecologically sustainable development dimensions of Melbourne's Central Region sustainable water strategy

Drawing upon theory from the field of urban political ecology, we analyse a major strategic water plan for Melbourne, Australia—the Sustainable water strategy for the Central Region, published in 2006. We assess the extent to which the strategy identified and addressed ecological sustainability in terms of: cultural frames; ecological context; social equity; and engagement processes. We identify that the strategy's framing of water was largely separate from its social and ecological context. This framing resulted in the importance of issues such as environmental flows, social equity and cultural values being diminished, thus avoiding the inevitable confrontation with environmental limits needed to ensure long-term ecological sustainability. Our analysis shows that the discursive dominance of economics limited the response to persuasive scientific arguments for greater ecological consideration in the strategy. Our findings suggest that broadening engagement with the diverse ways in which water is valued is likely to contribute to more equitable and ecologically sustainable water futures.     

Detecting multi-scale urban growth patterns and processes in the Algarve region (Southern Portugal)

The importance of urban growth processes and their spatial characteristics has led to a growing interest in monitoring these phenomena. Spatial metrics are widely employed for this purpose, appearing in an increasing number of studies where they are used to characterise growth patterns and their evolution over time. This paper presents an analysis of urban growth patterns using spatial metrics in the Algarve (southern Portugal), an area of considerable urban dynamics associated with tourism. Two datasets were used (CORINE 1:100,000 maps and COS 1:25,000 maps) and two time periods (1990 and 2006–2007) in order to compare the different urban land use patterns detected and their evolution over time. The results show differences in urban land use patterns and associated processes at each scale, with stable land use patterns predominating at the 1:100,000 scale whereas the 1:25,000 scale showed a move towards more dispersed patterns. These results have enabled an assessment of the principal differences in urban growth patterns observed at both scales, and the implications for planning these entail.     

Classifying and mapping the urban transition in Vietnam

The urban transition almost always involves wrenching social adjustment as small agricultural communities are forced to adjust rapidly to industrial ways of life. Large-scale in-migration of young people, usually from poor regions, creates enormous demand and expectations for community and social services. One immediate problem planners face in approaching this challenge is how to define, differentiate, and map what is rural, urban, and transitional (i.e., peri-urban). This project established an urban classification for Vietnam by using national census and remote sensing data to identify and map the smallest administrative units for which data are collected as rural, peri-urban, urban, or urban core. We used both natural and human factors in the quantitative model: income from agriculture, land under agriculture and forests, houses with modern sanitation, and the Normalized Difference Vegetation Index. Model results suggest that in 2006, 71% of Vietnam's 10,891 communes were rural, 18% peri-urban, 3% urban, and 4% urban core. Of the communes our model classified as peri-urban, 61% were classified by the Vietnamese government as rural. More than 7% of Vietnam's land area can be classified as peri-urban and approximately 13% of its population (more than 11 million people) lives in peri-urban areas. We identified and mapped three types of peri-urban places: communes in the periphery of large towns and cities; communes along highways; and communes associated with provincial administration or home to industrial, energy, or natural resources projects (e.g., mining). We validated this classification based on ground observations, analyses of multi-temporal night-time lights data, and an examination of road networks. The model provides a method for rapidly assessing the rural–urban nature of places to assist planners in identifying rural areas undergoing rapid change with accompanying needs for investments in building, sanitation, road infrastructure, and government institutions.     

辽河三角洲滨海湿地含水层水文地质参数获取的试验研究

抽水试验是获取水文地质参数的重要方法,为准确获取辽河三角洲滨海湿地潜水含水层的渗透系数,进行了一个抽水孔、两个观测孔的抽水试验。根据单孔抽水试验和多孔抽水试验观测数据,采用潜水非完整井求参公式、巴布什金公式及积分变换等方法计算含水层渗透系数。结果表明,用不同方法计算得出的含水层渗透系数值相差不大。通过试验测定PJ01井组潜水含水层渗透系数为1.15 m/d,PJ03井组潜水含水层渗透系数为0.74 m/d。     

Spatial structure of central places in Jilin Central Urban Agglomeration,Jilin Province,China

Using the radius of gyration from fractal theory, this paper describes the calculation of fractal dimensions for the four tiers of central places in the Jilin Central Urban Agglomeration(JCUA), Jilin Province, China and the structural characteristics of each tier: 1) the 1st tier central place, Changchun Proper(not including Shuangyang District), provides the most service functions and has the most stable primate position; 2) the 2nd tier central places, Jilin Proper, Siping Proper, Liaoyuan Proper and Songyuan Proper have unclear statuses and do not provide certain functions; 3) the 3rd tier central places comprise 23 county-level cities, counties and urban districts(including Shuangyang District of Changchun), exhibiting a dense spatial structure that agrees with theory; 4) the 4th tier contains the largest number of central places(248 designated towns), but they are loosely distributed. In this study, a spatial image of the JCUA was created, based on vectorized data of the urban settlement distribution, which was then modified and abstracted to create a hexagonal network covering the JCUA. Compared to the traditional central place model, the modified spatial image conforms to the K = 3 principle. In reality, however, the growth of some 3rd tier central places should be increased with the cities being upgraded to the 2nd tier so as to overcome that tier′s functional deficiency. The loose distribution in the 4th tier should also be changed. This apparent anomaly can be explained by the fact that the classic hexagon model used to describe the way market areas layout does not exist in the real world. However, this should not be viewed as an obstacle to using central place theory. If its assumptions are properly applied, it can still assist research into the spatial structure of regions.     

Valuation of lake and marsh wetlands ecosystem services in China

Wetlands are highly productive natural ecosystems, providing valuable goods and services. There is growing interest in transferring ecosystem service value from the existing wetlands studied to other wetlands ecosystems at a large geographic scale. The benefit transfer method uses the known values from wetlands to predict the value of other wetland sites. This methodology requires only limited time and resources. The present study calculated the value of the ecological services provided by lake and marsh wetlands in China in terms of biodiversity indices, water quality indices and economic indices. Basic data on wetlands were obtained through remote sensing images. The results show that: 1) The total ecosystem service value of the lake and marsh wetlands in 2008 was calculated to be 8.1841 × 1010 United States Dollars(USD), with the marsh and lake wetlands contributing 5.6329 × 1010 and 2.5512 × 1010 USD, respectively. Values of marsh ecosystem service were concentrated in Heilongjiang Province(2.5516 × 1010 USD), Qinghai Province(1.2014 × 1010 USD), and Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region(1.1884 × 1010 USD). The value of the lakes were concentrated in Tibet Autonomous Region(6.223 × 109 USD), Heilongjiang(5.810 × 109 USD), and Qinghai(5.500 × 109 USD). 2) Waste treatment and climate regulation services contributed to 26.29% and 24.74% respectively, of the total ecosystem service value of the marsh wetlands. Hydrological regulation and waste treatment contributed to 41.39% and 32.75%, respectively, of the total ecosystem service value of the lake wetlands. 3) The total ecological service value of the lake and marsh wetlands was 54.64% of the total service value of natural grassland ecosystems and 30.34% of the total service value of forests ecosystems in China.