Eco-neighbourhoods: A review of projects

The recent literature on sustainable urban form has stressed the need to move away from a system of land-use segregation and towards one which intersperses land uses and facilitates localisation. The strategy of dispersed concentration gives shape to this mixed-use principle, and has been equated with the need to plan more self-sufficient neighbourhoods. There are several problematic issues raised by such a strategy, particularly in relation to the propensity of local people to use local facilities when the friction of distance is low. The image of sustainable neighbourhoods purveyed by advocates is at odds with the reality of suburban development. A review of current eco-neighbourhood projects around the world points to the varying degrees to which they have successfully overcome the implementational and behavioural difficulties. Market-led projects — particularly in semi-rural areas — have achieved rather limited success across the range of sustainability criteria. Some large-scale municipally led plans have faired better. Projects led by community non-profit trusts have been able to be most radical and demonstrate the practicability of eco-neighbourhoods in specific situations. Overall, however, the paucity of successful projects highlights the need for a more proactive central and local government stance.     

Indicators of Sustainability: Challenges and Opportunities at the Interface of Science and Policy

Rising global interest in sustainability has triggered attention in indicators as a means of achieving a more sustainable world. Although the search for indicators has led to the development of criteria for good indicators, it has also been dominated by scientific elites. The consequences of such dominance leads to significant social and policy implications, particularly with regard to how the search for sustainability has become defined primarily as a technical/scientific exploration when it is actually a moral and ethical issue. Our discussion about sustainability and appropriate indicators centers on what constitutes the public interest, a question that requires inclusiveness and centers on the interface of science and policy. The paper reviews the rationale for selecting indicators, the functions they serve, and the implications and consequences involved when one sector—science—dominates the debate. The paper concludes with suggestions about appropriate roles of science, policy and the public in the indicator selection process.     

Sustainable value assessment of farms using frontier efficiency benchmarks

Appropriate assessment of firm sustainability facilitates actor-driven processes towards sustainable development. The methodology in this paper builds further on two proven methodologies for the assessment of sustainability performance: it combines the sustainable value approach with frontier efficiency benchmarks. The sustainable value methodology tries to relate firm performance to the use of different resources. This approach assesses contributions to corporate sustainability by comparing firm resource productivity with the resource productivity of a benchmark, and this for all resources considered. The efficiency is calculated by estimating the production frontier indicating the maximum feasible production possibilities. In this research, the sustainable value approach is combined with efficiency analysis methods to benchmark sustainability assessment. In this way, the production theoretical underpinnings of efficiency analysis enrich the sustainable value approach. The methodology is presented using two different functional forms: the Cobb–Douglas and the translog functional forms. The simplicity of the Cobb–Douglas functional form as benchmark is very attractive but it lacks flexibility. The translog functional form is more flexible but has the disadvantage that it requires a lot of data to avoid estimation problems. Using frontier methods for deriving firm specific benchmarks has the advantage that the particular situation of each company is taken into account when assessing sustainability. Finally, we showed that the methodology can be used as an integrative sustainability assessment tool for policy measures.     

Measuring sustainable development using a multi-criteria model: A case study

This paper shows how Multi-criteria Decision Analysis (MCDA) can help in a complex process such as the assessment of the level of sustainability of a certain area. The paper presents the results of a study in which a model for measuring sustainability was implemented to better aid public policy decisions regarding sustainability. In order to assess sustainability in specific areas, a methodological approach based on multi-criteria analysis has been developed. The aim is to rank areas in order to understand the specific technical and/or financial support that they need to develop sustainable growth.The case study presented is an assessment of the level of sustainability in different areas of an Italian Region using the MCDA approach. Our results show that MCDA is a proper approach for sustainability assessment. The results are easy to understand and the evaluation path is clear and transparent. This is what decision makers need for having support to their decisions. The multi-criteria model for evaluation has been developed respecting the sustainable development economic theory, so that final results can have a clear meaning in terms of sustainability.     

Participatory Impact Assessment of Soil and Water Conservation Scenarios in Oum Zessar Watershed, Tunisia

Environmental threats and progressive degradation of natural resources are considered critical impediments to sustainable development. This paper reports on a participatory impact assessment of alternative soil and water conservation (SWC) scenarios in the Oum Zessar watershed, Tunisia. The first objective was to assess the impact of three SWC scenarios on key social, economic and environmental land use functions. The second objective was to test and evaluate the applicability of the 'Framework for Participatory Impact Assessment (FoPIA)' for assessing scenario impacts in the context of a developing country, in this case Tunisia. The assessed scenarios included: the originally planned SWC policy implementation at 85 % coverage of arable land of the watershed, the current implementation (70 %), and a hypothetical expansion of SWC measures to the entire watershed (100 %). Our results suggest that implementation of the SWC policy at 100 % coverage of arable land achieves the maximum socioeconomic benefit. However, if stakeholders' preferences regarding land use functions are taken into account, and considering the fact that the implementation of SWC measures also implies some negative changes to traditional landscapes and the natural system, SWC implementation at 85 % coverage of arable land might be preferable. The FoPIA approved to be a useful tool for conducting a holistic sustainability impact assessment of SWC scenarios and for studying the most intriguing sustainability problems while providing possible recommendations towards sustainable development. We conclude that participatory impact assessment contributes to an enhanced regional understanding of key linkages between policy effects and sustainable development, which provides the foundation for improved policy decision making.     

TIM: Assessing the sustainability of agricultural land management

TIM (Threat Identification Model) is a framework for the ex ante assessment of agricultural land management sustainability at the land unit scale that identifies sources of unsustainability within agricultural land management systems. The model explicitly links defined hazards to land productivity and environmental integrity, land resource data and information, and land management practice options using expert and local knowledge on land management and its potential effects. The model was tested in the Crystal Creek Subcatchment, a narrow coastal strip of land situated in north Queensland, Australia. This area was chosen due to the expansion of the sugar industry onto increasingly marginal land in the area, which represents a threat to sustainable land use and a requirement for careful land-use planning and land management.TIM may be used in a relational database as a stand alone decision support system for land-management planning. Its usefulness in land-use planning is greatest when it is linked to a Geographic Information System (GIS) as shown in this paper. GIS allows TIM outputs, such as constraints to agriculture and site-specific best-management practices, to be identified in a spatially explicit manner.The main advantages of TIM are that it can be done ex ante, it removes the need to define sustainability assessment criteria and indicators, it utilises current understanding of the causes and effects of land degradation and how different land-management practices influence these, and links this knowledge to definite land-management options.     

GIS-based urban sustainability assessment: The case of Dammam city, Saudi Arabia

This paper applies an integrated approach to assessing urban sustainability in Dammam City, Saudi Arabia. The approach, based on geographic information systems (GIS), involves the evaluation of the planning process, the master plan and the land use activities resulting from planning. It concludes that some aspects of sustainability are not addressed by the planning process and the plan document. The planning process and the plan document addressed economic sustainability issues more than social and environmental issues. The result of the GIS-based sustainability assessment of the study area produces similar findings. The paper develops a sustainable planning guidance and makes some recommendations based on the findings.     

城市土地可持续利用评价研究——以南京市为例

城市土地利用系统是一个典型的“生态-经济-社会”复合系统，对其可持续利用水平进行综合评价涉及到的指标多而复杂。从影响城市土地可持续利用的资源、社会、环境和经济等方面综合考虑，选取了耕地面积、粮食产量和年末总人口等15个相关指标，运用主成分分析方法，对南京市1995-2002年的土地利用状况进行综合评价。结果表明，用主成分分析方法对城市土地可持续利用水平进行综合评价，其评价结果与南京市的实际相符，具有一定的实用性和可操作性。     

Linking carbon sequestration science with local sustainability: an integrated assessment approach

This paper introduces an integrated assessment (IA) approach for a Canada-China joint research project that linked forest carbon sequestration, forest resource management, and local sustainability enhancement. The purpose of the IA was to improve the measurement of carbon in different land uses and vegetation covers, as well as to direct decision makers to those land uses or options as an CO₂ emission reduction strategy while supporting rural sustainable development. In this connection, three questions are addressed in this paper:

1)

How will forestry carbon sequestration land use policies affect regional sustainability prospects in rural China?     

Implicating waterfronts in regional sustainability

Advocates of sustainable urban development often privilege the region as a scale for coordinated action and investment. However, discourses of sustainability institutionalised through regional planning, and conflated with notions of liveability, lend themselves to recruitment by competing, and opposing, development interests. To be regionally sustainable, an individual land development should, both on-site and through its connections to other sites, contribute to overall sustainability of the region. Using examples of industrial waterfront redevelopment in metropolitan Vancouver, we show how particular urban spaces are misrepresented as lynchpins of regional sustainability. In a plan for residential redevelopment, it is claimed that sustainable redevelopment will reunite citizens with “their waterfront”, reframed as liveable, pure, clean, ecologically vital and non-industrial. At an adjacent site, it is claimed that waterfront industrial land should be protected to combat industrial sprawl. Yet, in both cases the developers have lobbied for the expansion of road transportation making the claims of regional sustainability doubtful.     

SELECTION AND SUSTAINABILITY OF LAND AND WATER RESOURCE MANAGEMENT SYSTEMS1

ABSTRACT: Most spatial decision support systems for natural resource planning and management are limited by their scenario-based (non-behavioral), deterministic (non-stochastic) structure. A spatial decision support system is developed that uses a multiple attribute decision-making model to explain how a property manager selects a land and water resource management system (LWRMS) based on its multiple, stochastic economic and environmental attributes. The decision support system assesses sustainable resource management at the property and watershed scales and identifies the most cost-effective policy for enhancing sustainable resource management. Economic attributes are determined with an economic model and environmental attributes are simulated with an environmental model. Input parameters for both models are generated with a geographic information system. The decision support system is used to rank five LWRMS for a sample of 20 farmers in Missouri's Goodwater Creek watershed and for two hypothetical watershed alliance groups. Results indicate that the average farmer and the two alliance groups would rank the five LWRMS in the same manner. From the viewpoint of the watershed alliance, the most preferred LWRMS for the average farmer in the watershed is sustainable.     

An innovative sustainability assessment for urban wastewater infrastructure and its application in Chengdu, China

Sustainability assessments are an increasingly common tool for measuring progress towards sustainable development. Despite their popularity, sustainability assessments and the indicators that compose them are said to have had little impact on the policy arena. In this paper we discuss four attributes that we contend will improve the use of sustainability assessments to guide decision making: non-compartmentalization, site specificity, built-in guidance for target setting, and ability to measure active sustainability. We present a novel assessment tool for wastewater treatment infrastructure that illustrates these attributes. The assessment is composed of two-dimensional indicators we call “burden to capacity” ratios, that reveal and quantify the local value of resources embodied in wastewater and treatment byproducts, and the tradeoffs between designing systems for disposal versus reuse. We apply the sustainability assessment framework to an existing treatment plant in Chengdu, China and discuss the results.     

An optimization model for integrated urban planning: development and application to Algeria's Reghaïa and Heraoua municipalities

In this paper, I develop an optimization model for integrated urban planning for land use at the municipality level, in which decisions arise from an area-based weighted-GDP maximisation algorithm whose weights represent the sustainability and implementability of the land uses. The model favours the involvement of stakeholders in urban governance, but does not use complicated assessment procedures for non-economic indicators or relative weights to combine economic, social and environmental indicators; instead, the integration between economic activities and environmental status is represented objectively and non-linearly by referring to initial and sustainability conditions. The model accounts for both human and environmental dynamics by adopting a spatial structure that permits compromises between economic information (available at a macro level) and ecological information (available at a micro level). A single value is attached to each urban governance, with an elicitation of future decisions (including acceptance of the status quo) and the ability to provide an evaluation of past decisions: some environmental policies are considered. The model’s predictions are based on reasonably reliable knowledge that can be easily collected, with reliability determined by calculating the confidence level. The resulting urban governance can then be presented and further analysed within a geographical information system. A case study of the model’s application to Algeria’s Regha?a and Heraoua municipalities provides insights into optimal urban governance, with and without water quantity or quality policies, in terms of resource sustainability, sectoral development, and pollution sustainability. I also assess the previous master plan in terms of the land uses suggested by the model.     

长株潭城市群生态宜居水平综合评价

随着长株潭城市群工业化进程加快,其经济发展水平和城镇化水平得到飞速的提升,但是生态环境和宜居环境受到较大影响。基于层次分析法,从生态环境、资源节约、公共配套、社会民生4个维度构建生态宜居综合评价指标体系,综合测度2010~2018年长株潭城市群的生态宜居水平。结果显示2010~2018年间,长株潭城市群生态宜居综合水平呈总体上升趋势,生态环境质量先降后升,资源利用效率得到有效提升,公共配套水平逐年提高,社会民生保障持续增长。未来长株潭城市群需深化“两型社会”建设,保护生态环境,建设和谐宜居城市,形成良好的生态宜居环境,实现城市的可持续发展。     

Designing sustainable and economically attractive brownfield revitalization options using an integrated assessment model

We describe the development of an integrated assessment model which evaluates redevelopment options of large contaminated brownfields and we present the application of the model in a case study. Aiming to support efficient and sustainable revitalization and communication between stakeholders, the presented assessment model integrates three pinnacles of brownfield revitalization: (i) subsurface remediation and site preparation costs, (ii) market-oriented economic appraisal, and (iii) the expected contribution of planned future land use to sustainable community and regional development. For the assessment, focus is set on the early stage of the brownfield redevelopment process, which is characterized by limited data availability and by flexibility in land use planning and development scope. At this stage, revealing the consequences of adjustments and alterations in planning options can foster efficiency in communication between the involved parties and thereby facilitates the brownfield revitalization process. Results from the case-study application indicate that the integrated assessment provides help in the identification of land use options beneficial in both a sustainable and an economical sense. For the study site it is shown on one hand that brownfield redevelopment is not automatically in line with sustainable regional development, and on the other hand it is demonstrated that additional contributions to sustainability are not intrinsically tied to increased costs.     

资源环境承载力研究方法综述

资源环境承载力是区域发展战略决策的基础,对指导区域可持续发展和服务国家战略需求具有重要意义。本文系统梳理了资源环境承载力评价从土地资源承载力向水资源承载力、环境承载力和生态承载力发展,再到近年来以土地开发强度为特征,以及基于供给能力的资源环境承载力评价兴起的历程。资源环境承载力评价从单一资源走向各类主要自然资源、环境要素及综合要素的承载力评价,研究方法不断完善。但目前资源环境承载力研究仍存在更多地关注承载的极限容量,对发展容量的关注不足;缺乏具有普适性、可推广的资源环境承载力评价理论及方法体系等问题,其研究仍面临严峻的挑战。未来资源环境承载力研究仍需在承载力从极限容量向发展容量转变,形成具有广泛指导意义的资源环境承载力评价方法体系,强化以空间开发利用为特征的资源环境承载力评价等方面的研究,以此深化资源环境承载力理论及实践应用研究,为区域可持续发展及服务国家战略提供支撑。     

Land Resources Allocation Strategies in an Urban Area Involving Uncertainty: A Case Study of Suzhou,in the Yangtze River Delta of China

A large number of mathematical models have been developed to support land resource allocation decisions and land management needs; however, few of them can address various uncertainties that exist in relation to many factors presented in such decisions (e.g., land resource availabilities, land demands, land-use patterns, and social demands, as well as ecological requirements). In this study, a multi-objective interval-stochastic land resource allocation model (MOISLAM) was developed for tackling uncertainty that presents as discrete intervals and/or probability distributions. The developed model improves upon the existing multi-objective programming and inexact optimization approaches. The MOISLAM not only considers economic factors, but also involves food security and eco-environmental constraints; it can, therefore, effectively reflect various interrelations among different aspects in a land resource management system. Moreover, the model can also help examine the reliability of satisfying (or the risk of violating) system constraints under uncertainty. In this study, the MOISLAM was applied to a real case of long-term urban land resource allocation planning in Suzhou, in the Yangtze River Delta of China. Interval solutions associated with different risk levels of constraint violation were obtained. The results are considered useful for generating a range of decision alternatives under various system conditions, and thus helping decision makers to identify a desirable land resource allocation strategy under uncertainty.     

Environmental space and barriers to local sustainability: Evidence from Edinburgh, Scotland

This paper steps into the minefield that is urban sustainability studies. It defends a rigorous definition of sustainable development called Environmental Space. This approach starts from the assumption that (1) there are limits to the biophysical capacity of the ecosystem and (2) that — within these limits — each individual has equal access rights to natural capital. On this basis, per capita sustainable consumption targets are calculated which can be (and are being) used as policy objectives. The paper explores how environmental space has influenced local sustainability politics in Edinburgh, Scotland. By doing so, it finds that environmental space targets are still far from being achieved. Reasons for this failure are investigated and Edinburgh's continued commitment to the material growth of her economy is identified as one key barrier. This point is illustrated through the investigation of recent policy decisions in Edinburgh which were justified as being necessary for growth, but which clearly contradict the aims of sustainable development.     

Incorporating sustainable development concerns into an urban regeneration project: how politics can defeat procedures

It is often thought that new procedural arrangements can help embed sustainable development as a policy goal into policy practice. This is the hope of tools such as environmental assessment, sustainability audits and sustainability indicators. Using a case study of urban regeneration in the London Borough of Southwark, this paper critically examines these claims. It shows how sustainable development was sidelined as a policy goal during the evaluation of the Master Plan for the area, the appraisal of individual projects for funding under the Single Regeneration Budget and the development of two local sustainability indicator projects. In each case the local political circumstances were key factors in shaping policy practice and outcomes. This leads to a re-evaluation of such procedural policy tools, emphasizing the importance of local governance contexts.