Problems of urban environment: A case study of Jodhpur,India

This paper attempts to analyze the environmental problems of Jodhpur city in terms of air quality, water supply, wastewater disposal, and solid waste management. Maps have been prepared to show the boundaries of municipal circles responsible for the disposal of solid wastes. Areas of comparatively higher degrees of air pollution have also been demarcated on the maps. The daily output of urban refuse and the intensity of urban refuse for wards within Jophpur's walled city versus for wards outside the walled city have been cartographically depicted.     

Wastewater re-use for peri-urban agriculture: a viable option for adaptive water management?

Urbanization is known to spur land modification in the form of conversion of common land to human settlements. This factor, combined with climate variability, can alter the duration, frequency and intensity of storm drain overflows in urban areas and lead to public health risks. In peri-urban regions where these risks are especially high it has been argued that, when domestic wastewater is managed, better prospects for freshwater water savings through swaps between urban water supply and irrigated agriculture may be possible. As a consequence of re-use of domestic wastewater, expenditure on inorganic inputs by farmers may decline and source sustainability of water supply could be enhanced. Given the fact that, at present, approximately 20 million ha of land worldwide is being cultivated by re-using domestic wastewater, this paper draws on evidence from India to explore: (1) the economic costs–benefits of wastewater reuse in the context of hypothesized links to climate variability; (2) the role of local farming practices, market conditions and crop variety in influencing wastewater reuse in agriculture; and (3) the role of inter-governmental financing in influencing the selection of technical adaptation options for collection, treatment and disposal of wastewater.     

Water consumption in Barcelona and its regional environmental imprint: a long-term history (1717–2008)

We present the evolution of urban water withdrawal and consumption of Barcelona from the eighteenth to the twenty-first centuries. The boundaries of the urban system have been set into the limits of the current municipality, adjusting the data of earlier periods to include the estimated consumption in former municipalities aggregated to the city. Different sorts of water flows have been either recorded or estimated from scant and indirect information, such as local groundwater extractions obtained from a hydrological model calibrated with historical data on variations in the water table. The changes experienced in catching infrastructures, the regional ecological imprint of the domestic or industrial water consumed together with the rates of growth in population, economic activity and water intensity have been taken into account as driving forces. The series obtained reveal an overall increase in accessibility to safe freshwater, and a corresponding extension of water terrestrial imprints of Barcelona over the Catalan river basins, up to the peak reached in 1967?C1970 both for per capita and total water withdrawn. The subsequent downward trend, mainly driven by a lesser water intensity of the local economy, a halt in population growth, and a recently link to the emergence of a New Sustainable Water Culture in Catalan society, stands out against the alleged need for new transfers from farthest basins such as the Ebro or Roine rivers.     

Ecological footprints and shadows in an urban estuary, Narragansett Bay, RI (USA)

Because the rise of cities in North America was much later than in many other parts of the world, their connections to the hinterland were influenced early in their development by railroads and steam-powered water transport. These fossil fuel-based links made it possible to widely separate the ??upstream?? autotrophic supporting systems from the heterotrophic cities. Here, we take a different look at the connection between a city (Providence, RI, USA) and its supporting natural systems by focusing on the export of industrial and metabolic wastes from the city to the ??downstream?? coastal ecosystem in Narragansett Bay. In this way, we can track the history of a city by examining the concentrations of nutrients, metals, and hydrocarbons in the water and sediments of the estuary. In the greater Providence metropolitan area at the head of Narragansett Bay, there was rapid population and industrial expansion during the 1800s without the proper infrastructure to deal with water supply for public safety and health. On the other hand, the absence of a public water supply kept industrial and metabolic wastes largely on land. However, from the fall of 1871, on with the construction of a public water supply and sewer system, human wastes began flowing into the estuary. By reconstructing the historical record of metals and other pollutants, we illustrate clear temporal and spatial gradients of urban impact on the bay. Unfortunately, while numerous studies during the 1970s and 1980s focused on documenting metal and hydrocarbon pollution in the bay, there has been little effort to quantify the impact of mitigation efforts that have greatly reduced the input of metals and hydrocarbons to the system. Nutrient reductions are more recent and ongoing.     

重庆市“禁磷”绩效评估

国内外研究表明，水体中的磷16％左右来自使用含磷洗涤用品。为保护三峡水库水环境,防止库区水体富营养化，重庆市政府决定，从2003年１月１日起，在全市范围内禁止销售和使用含磷洗涤用品。含磷洗衣粉的磷含量平均为4%，无磷洗衣粉的磷含量平均为0.013%，“禁磷”后洗衣粉的磷削减率平均为99.7%。监测结果表明，“禁磷”前后主城区城市污水排放口总磷浓度平均降幅为15.12%、中等城市为18.36％、县城为33.66％；禁磷前，城市居民洗衣粉磷排放量占城市污水总磷的13.77％，禁磷后只占0.05％；禁磷前，农村居民洗衣粉磷排放量占农村生活污水总磷排放量的30.53％，禁磷后只占0.01％。按城市综合污水总磷浓度变化计算（考虑到城市公建商贸行业的洗涤剂用量），则禁磷后城镇削减磷排放量1 056.2 t/a；农村居民按洗衣粉实际使用量计算，入河生活污水削减磷1 203.8 t/a；城镇和农村共削减总磷排放量2 260 t/a，占重庆市磷污染负荷总量的6.0％。     

Historical changes in the food and water supply systems of the New York City Metropolitan Area

The history of New York City (NYC) is much shorter than those of most European cities, but New York shares in common the problem of providing sufficient water and food to its inhabitants from its watershed and foodshed. These resource provision areas have grown over time and changed in character as they expanded in tandem with the growth of the city. In contrast to some cities, such as Paris, which historically has been supported by local food production, NYC??s status as a trade center has enabled the supply of food from distant sources from early in its history. NYC??s transportation system has rapidly evolved from early roads to canals, railroads, and modern surface and air transport networks. The development of the hydraulic engineering of the City??s reservoir, aqueduct, and tunnel system determined the extent of its water supply watersheds. Deviations from general growth trends in food and water consumption have occurred due to environmental and economic disruptions. As the growth of the city slowed in the last few decades, environmental technology has reduced the impact of the City on its environment, due to water metering, reduction of leakage, and improvements in waste treatment. However, per capita food consumption in the US continues to increase, with implications for the environmental health of New York and its region, as well as other centers of net anthropogenic nutrient inputs.     

History of the urban environmental imprint: introduction to a multidisciplinary approach to the long-term relationships between Western cities and their hinterland

This paper introduces a series of 11 studies on the relationships between large Western cities (Paris, London, Brussels, Vienna, Barcelona, Athens, New York, Providence) and their surrounding territories over a long historical time period. The concept of hinterland is introduced to designate a rural territory structured by its function of supplying the city with food, fuel, water and other material. The papers question the usefulness of this concept in the current globalized world, where cities are often considered as simple nodes of a network of worldwide trade exchanges, but where new citizen aspirations for reconnecting urban and rural territories are emerging.     

Typifying cities to streamline the selection of relevant environmental sustainability indicators for urban water supply and sewage handling systems: a recommendation

Measuring performance and setting targets and benchmarks for the future entail the adoption of metrics or indicators. Sustainability is a multi-pronged objective encompassing social, economic, health, cultural, governance and environmental aspects. Indicators can be grouped under these categories. The selection of environmental sustainability indicators for a water and wastewater utility in a city needs to be based on concerns specific to the utility in question. The authors, in this paper, have recommended the classification of cities into city types based on specific attributes and identification of relevant environmental sustainability indicators, from a pool of 13 indicators, for these different city types. Having selected the relevant indicators, utilities can use them as tools to improve their environmental performance. The purpose is to not facilitate inter-utility comparisons within or across city types. Every utility would compare its environmental performance at a given point in time with what it was in the past. Towards the end, the paper also applies the methodology to nine cities across four continents—Europe (Oslo, Trondheim and Turin), Asia (the National Capital Territory of Delhi, Beijing, Tel Aviv and Male), North America (Sacramento) and South America (São Paulo). In all, 13 environmental sustainability indicators have been identified. Two cities—Oslo and Trondheim (both from Norway) belong to the same city type, while the other seven are different from each other in this regard. The number of relevant indicators ranged from 4 for Trondheim to 11 for Tel Aviv. The methodology is not restricted to urban water supply and sewage handling systems. It can be extended to other infrastructure systems as well—waste management, transportation, etc.     

The cradle of the city: the environmental imprint of Brussels and its hinterland in the High Middle Ages

As a popular assumption, the cities are considered to exert a major impact on their hinterland. In fact, little is known about this imprint on the earlier period. This paper will thus try to delineate as far as possible urban and rural contributions to the imprint by using a cause and effect analysis. The paper argues that the birth of second generation cities like Brussels is the result of a demographic and economic process occurring in the rural environment. Above all in a second phase, once the process of human concentration within the city initiated and the town became a market center and a consumer power, rural developments changed under the urban imprint: at that moment the city imposed a certain spatial structure on the rural system with intensive and high profitability cultures replacing extensive practices.     

中国城市土地供给制度绩效评价指标体系的建立及其应用研究

对一种制度的绩效进行量化评价是近年来制度经济学研究的热点问题之一。城市土地是城市形成与发展的基础，而土地资源的供给直接关系到城市的兴衰与区域的发展。近年来我国在城市土地供给制度上进行了较大的改革，作为一种制度改革，其绩效的评价具有一定的现实意义，可以实现评价的诊断功能和预瞀功能。本文通过对制度绩效评价分析，提出对制度绩效评价可以转化为对制度目标实现程度的评价，归纳出我国城市土地供给制度绩效的评价标准，遵循“效率优先。兼顾公平”的原则，以土地结构配置效应、经济效应和公平配置效应为表现，初步提出了现行的城市土地供给制度的绩效评价指标体系，并对南京市近年来的城市土地供给制度的绩效进行了实证研究，提出了相关建议。     

Factors of Richness of Urban Floras in the Ural–Volga Region

Original data on 14 urban floras in the Ural–Volga region have been analyzed to estimate the effect of the geographic location, topography, climate, size, and age of a city on the species richness of its flora. This parameter in different cities varied from 288 to 973 species, with the proportion of alien species varying from 21 to 41%. Factors of flora richness were estimated by multiple linear regression using principal component estimates obtained by factor analysis of 13 city characteristics as predictors. It has been confirmed that the richness of urban floras depends primarily on the city size, which accounts for greater proportions of variation in the number of native species (56%), the number of alien species (91%), and the total number of species (71%). In addition, variation in the number of native species is determined by terrain elevation (22%), increasing at higher elevations. The proportion of alien species in the urban flora does not depend on the size of the city and is negatively correlated with terrain elevation.     

基于生态适宜性的昆明城市空间增长边界研究

城市空间增长是城市发展中的重要研究内容,基于生态适宜性评价的刚性增长研究还未得到充分的关注。研究结合昆明高原山地生态环境的脆弱性和独特性特点,选取地形、地质、河湖水库、历史文化遗产保护区、自然保护区、土地覆被等指标,运用层次分析法进行土地生态适宜性评价,研究划定昆明城市空间刚性增长边界范围面积为782.45 km~2。研究表明:(1)对比刚性UGB范围和昆明城市总体规划的中心城区空间管制范围(852.93 km~2)发现,城市总体规划应制定更为严格的生态环境保护措施,尤其是滇池沿岸的水资源环境保护;(2)现状建设用地超出刚性UGB的总面积为27.74 km~2,占总体建设用地面积的6.49%,主城区发展空间受限,未来建设用地最大增长余量为355.21 km~2,主要集中在呈贡新区和空港新区。需要从区域的角度进行宏观调控,进一步降低资源、产业、人口在主城集聚的程度;尤其是结合滇池流域水资源供给现状合理制定人口规模和产业规划等内容。提出规划建议:(1)加强生态管控和土地利用结构整合。在滇池沿岸及面山生态敏感区周边建立生态保护缓冲区(带),保护生态脆弱区的生态安全;(2)严格控制城市建设用地开发时序,分期完成城市内部更新及新区建设;(3)分阶段将超出刚性UGB范围的建设用地进行退让转移,保证生态安全本底边界和城市周边生态环境的完整性。     

基于演化树模型的长江三角洲城市紧凑度综合评价

紧凑城市是一种高效的城市空间组织模式,对实现城市可持续发展战略具有重要意义。通过密度、规模、结构和强度维度建立紧凑城市四维理论模型,并以此为基础构建由4个二级指标和12个三级指标组成的城市紧凑度综合评价演化树模型。通过对长江三角洲16个核心城市实证分析,评价结果显示：整体城市紧凑度下降,且影响紧凑度因素存在区际差异;在空间上,紧凑城市大致呈现沪杭甬沿线高于南北两翼的空间格局;从演化过程上分析,城市紧凑度与城市发展阶段发展水平具有一定的关联性,城市化率和产业结构与城市紧凑度呈现显著正相关。近年来开发区分散建设、城市建设用地面积扩张等因素是造成长三角城市紧凑度下降的重要原因,交通、医疗等公共服务设施投入不足、分布不均及政府有限的约束力也在一定程度上制约城市的紧凑发展模式。因此,需要在未来加强协调市场和政府两种力量以推动城市发展的高效高质     

Application of the City Blueprint Approach to assess the challenges of water management and governance in Quito (Ecuador)

In this paper, we provide an assessment of the challenges of water, waste and climate change in the city of Quito by performing the City Blueprint Approach consisting of three assessment frameworks: (1) the Trends and Pressure Framework (TPF), (2) the City Blueprint Framework (CBF) and (3) the water Governance Capacity Framework (GCF). The TPF summarizes the main social, environmental and financial aspects that may affect urban water management. The CBF provides a clear overview of sustainable urban water management performance and its bottlenecks in municipalities and regions. The GCF comprises nine governance conditions which each consist of three indicators. The GCF provides insight in the most effective improvements to increase the governance capacity to address the identified urban water challenges. Our results show that poor wastewater treatment and long-term drinking water security are Quito’s main water challenges that may be jeopardized given the city’s rapid urbanization and economic pressure. The GCF analysis reveals that cooperation between stakeholders, implementing capacity and citizens’ awareness are the most important conditions for further development to find adequate solutions for Quito’s long-term drinking water security. We also suggest that more attention should be drawn to the transparency, accountability and participation principles. The results of Quito show that the City Blueprint Approach can serve as an affordable quick-scan to facilitate cities in their strategic planning to reach their sustainable development goals.     

苏州地区地下水资源城市应急利用适宜性研究

随着太湖水体富营养化程度的不断加剧,建立安全、稳定、可靠的应急备用水源日益重要。利用2005~2009年苏州地区地下水水质连续监测和补充监测资料,对第Ⅱ承压含水层进行了应急利用(生活饮用和工业利用)的水质适宜性和安全性评价分析。研究结果表明:第Ⅱ承含水层主要水化学类型为Na-HCO3、Ca-HCO3和Na-CaHCO3型,水质总体稳定,年际差异很小;地下水水质指数(WQI)均值较低(位于49.98~68.75之间),地下水没有受到有机物污染,可作为应急利用水源;WQI的水质指标贡献率表明,As、Fe、pH和Mn指标的贡献率最大,局部区域As、Fe、Mn及氨氮和亚硝酸盐含量较高,应急利用时应进行处理。朗格里尔饱和指数(LSI)和拉森比(LnR)评价结果表明,该水源易结垢,具有轻微腐蚀倾向,作为工业备用水源时应进行适当的处理。为苏州地区地下水应急水源建设和安全利用提供了科学依据和参考。     

城镇化过程对鄱阳湖流域生态系统的影响

城镇化是社会经济发展和现代文明的重要标志,但带来了严重的资源危机和生态环境问题。以鄱阳湖独特的流域特征为研究对象,以城市人口数量表征城镇化的进程,分类解析1990~2011年江西省统计年鉴数据,通过讨论鄱阳湖土地资源结构变化、水资源变化特征、湿地生态系统、生物多样性等资源消耗程度,以及大气污染和水污染为代表的城镇主要污染问题,探讨快速城镇化下鄱阳湖生态环境对干扰的响应。结果表明：鄱阳湖流域各城市的城镇化进展及其机制不同,南昌、九江和上饶城市扩张迅速,而景德镇和赣州发展较平缓;城镇化导致水资源日益紧缺,各城市年总用水量2003年以后均呈增加趋势,其中农业用水量逐年增加,工业用水量各城市年变化存在差异;生物多样性特征受到严重威胁,湖泊水面及湿地面积的持续减少,生物环境的组成和结构发生改变;九江等城市工业废气排放量加大、南昌等城市工业废水排放高,造成湖区环境恶化。根据分析,建议鄱阳湖流域未来从规划土地利用类型、统一调配水资源、制定生物多样性保护对策、加强环境污染治理、强化环保宣传和规划与政策法律化等多方面采取措施。本文为鄱阳湖生态系统可持续发展和生态经济区的城镇化建设提供理论参考     

Urbanization and sustainability: challenges and strategies for sustainable urban development in Bangladesh

Like other developing countries, urbanization in Bangladesh is a growing phenomenon, which is steady in nature but fretfully affects urban sustainability in the wake of lacking in good governance. Despite urban authorities are concerned about this issue, they often fail to address the problems due to the fact of uncontrollable and unpredictable rural to urban migration, and negligence of urban poor’s sustainable living and access to basic services. Virtually the rural poverty problem has been transposed to urban areas, particularly in Dhaka City, Bangladesh. Inadequacy of infrastructural services, basic amenities and environmental goods; environmental degradation; traffic jam and accidents; violence and socioeconomic insecurity are the major challenges which are created through rapid urbanization. This paper provides a general understanding of urbanization in Bangladesh and tries to embrace related sustainability issues and challenges hindrance to sustainable urban development in Dhaka city. In addition, it presents a brief case study of water supply in Dhaka city which introduces an issue of ‘system hijack’. The paper concludes providing some strategies that might be helpful to the policy makers in formulating development policies for sustainable urban services.     

Wastewater management and the east-bound growth of the city of Kolkata: a compatibility analysis

Kolkata, home of 4.5 million people, is generating 1112 million liters of sewage per day and facing the challenge of managing this wastewater. The 125 km² wide wetland on the eastern fringe of the city, popularly known as the East Kolkata Wetlands is serving as a natural sewage treatment plant for more than a century where nearly 78 % of city sewage goes through an intricately designed canal network. This wetland is a designated RAMSAR site where the sewage treatment process is a rare example of an intertwined symbiotic relation between wastewater treatment and wetland aquaculture, where livelihood dependence of the local people on sewage-fed fisheries becomes of strategic importance in sustainable performance of the system. An aggressive urban expansion in the eastern fringe of the city is disturbing this age-old eco-balance by making this sewage water pisciculture less profitable. There is push factor due to reduced attraction of the wastewater fisheries and a pull factor due to emergence of alternative livelihood options through rapid urbanization. To protect wetland in its original form, the civil society and the administrative authorities are designing active interventions. However, these are not generating expected results as these instruments are targeting to mitigate the push factor only without paying much heed to the push–pull interactions.     

城市化过程及其绿地储碳研究——以上海“城-郊-乡”样带为例

城市化会影响城市生态系统的结构和功能,基于航空遥感影像,选取了上海市典型的"城-郊-乡"样带,利用地理信息系统(ArcGIS9.3)和景观格局分析(Frastates3.3)软件,选用6个城市化指标,基于主成分分析(PCA)和多元线性回归分析,在对研究区域城市化水平进行评估的基础上,结合植物相关生长方程和城市绿地冠层面积,对研究区域绿地系统碳储量的空间分异性进行研究。结果表明:(1)所选用的城市化物理指标和景观指数,能够快速地用于评估城市化水平;(2)"城-郊-乡"样带上,总的碳储量为4 475 410.7 Mg C,碳密度为71.1Mg C/hm2;(3)城市绿地系统碳储量空间分异性明显,绿地碳储量大小表现为城市化水平高的市中心、城市化水平相对较高的郊区以及城市化水平最低的乡村依次升高,主要原因是由于市中心绿地分散且面积较小,而在农村和郊区其面积较大的生产绿地较多。     

Exploring the effects of population growth on future land use change in the Las Vegas Wash watershed: an integrated approach of geospatial modeling and analytics

The Las Vegas Valley metropolitan area is one of the fastest growing areas in the southwestern United States. The rapid urbanization has presented many environmental challenges. For instance, as population growth and urbanization continue, the supply of sufficient clean water will become a concern. In addition, the area is also experiencing the longest drought in history, and the volume of water storage in Lake Mead, the main fresh water supply for the entire region, has been reduced greatly. The water quality in the main stem of the Las Vegas Wash (LVW) and Lake Mead may also be significantly affected. In order to develop effective sustainable management plans, the very first step is to predict the plausible future urbanization and land use patterns. This paper presents an approach to predict the future land use pattern at the LVW watershed using a Markov cellular automata model. The multi-criteria evaluation was used to couple population density as a variable depicting the driving force of urbanization in the model. Moreover, landscape metrics were used to analyze land use changes in order to better understand the dynamics of urban development in the LVW watershed. The predicted future land use maps for the years 2030 and 2050 show substantial urban development in the area, much of which are located in areas sensitive to source water protections. The results of the analysis provide valuable information for local planners and policy makers, assisting their efforts in constructing alternative sustainable urban development schemes and environmental management strategies.