Welcome to the ECOCITY 2022 Interactive Programme

Abstract Body

In July 2013, a 72-car train carrying crude oil derailed and exploded in the heart of Lac-Mégantic (Quebec, Canada). For this municipality of 6,000 inhabitants, beyond the 47 victims and the loss of the completely destroyed city center, the challenge is to rebuild a cohesive living environment, while focusing on new development strategies. Many initiatives have been put in place as part of the reconstruction process: the creation of the Town Center Planning and Implementation Committee (CAMEO), the citizen participation process Reinventing the City, opening up the Reconstruction Office (funded by Canada Economic Development), responsible for stimulating recovery and supporting the community in reclaiming the city center. The authorities have chosen to position themselves in a proactive posture, seeking to anticipate the changes that will affect its socio-demographic structure and its practices (in its governance, in the daily lives of citizens, etc.). The city also faces many mutations, undergone or chosen. Forms of resistance can also be observed, affecting both speeches and projects. Today, a lot has been achieved; some projects have failed.

This post-disaster concept brings out the concept of urban transition: from the moment a disaster takes place to the new normal, actions taken by the authorities and the community (notably through the activities of an outreach team) have had to take into consideration issues from both the disaster itself and the general transformation of a small-sized town (aging of the population, changes in the economy, etc.). Almost 10 years later, what lessons can be learned? Did the rupture caused by the accident created a momentum to define - or redefine – the community as a whole? This communication will explore how local initiatives, put forward by various stakeholders, have transformed both the physical characteristics of the town and the perceptions the stakeholders have of their environment. From this analysis, it should allow for a better understanding of local issues; taking them into account in the municipality's short, medium and long-term strategic planning.

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Increasingly cities are re-envisioning streets to both decrease greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and adapt to climate change to help address flooding. Planning for and designing resilient streets that are climate mitigated and adapted is challenging, but increasingly becoming a new model to address climate change. One of the emerging policy tools for advancing these goals is the use of knowledge transfer from best practice communities to cities on the cusp of a sustainable transportation breakthrough. International partnerships like the European Union’s Handshake project that link best practice leaders with up-and-coming cities and C40 Cities Walking and Bicycling Network have proven to be a successful models for policy transfer.

In the United States, the Big Jump Project from People for Bikes selected 10 communities to create a connected set of best practice bicycle facilities to triple cycling use in core areas of these communities. The project provided advanced training and the use of study tours to best practice leaders to help both envision change and provide the tools necessary to make the projects move forward.

This research explores the project's impact in New Orleans, LA. New Orleans is struggling to adapt to climate change and simultaneously decrease GHG emissions, improve livability and safety, and provide equitable access to employment. The research explores New Orleans use of project templates from Seville Spain to improve network connectivity and examples from the Netherlands to improve the use of green infrastructure to better manage water. These multiple best practice examples have formed the backbone of an ambitious effort to ad 75 miles (120 km) of new bicycling facilities over a 3-year period. Through interviews with project leaders and the use of before and after data on key corridors, the research analyzes both the administrative challenges of the project as well as key impact metrics. The challenge in this setting is to discover how communities can begin to use best practices to bounce forward towards creating resilient streets that both meet local needs and address the complex challenges of climate change.

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Ongoing urbanisation and current environmental concerns such as global warming, climate change and the required transition towards a more circular and renewable way of living, will have a large impact on the character and functionality of our cities and in particular of local neighbourhoods – the building blocks of our cities. Sustainable solutions for urban resource management are increasingly organised in a decentral way and need to be spatially embedded and supported by local communities. Local and global goals towards a sustainable future are often visionary and ambitious, however the reality of designing and implementing effective measures is not so straightforward due to complex institutional systems, vested interests and local resistance to the proposed change. This transition requires therefore new forms of design and development processes for the (re)development of neighbourhoods.

This particular study aims at getting insight in how participatory processes can enhance the implementation of circular initiatives at the level of the neighbourhood in order to accelerate the transition towards sustainable urban areas. Six recently implemented Dutch circular initiatives are analysed following the ‘value flower field method', which has been specifically developed for this research. This method enables a multi-layered analysis of ambitions, actors, resource cycle(s), spatial interventions and value creation. The data is gathered through interviews with key stakeholders, site observations and a study of the policy documents and plans. The results demonstrate that ambitious (organised) citizens are able to create multiple local value by closing resource cycles at neighbourhood level. Collaboration of the initiators with the local municipality is often not straightforward because the organizational structures of the local municipality often work against the integral approach inherently needed by the nature of the locally initiated interventions. The value flower field map method provided insight in the integrality of the urban metabolism implementation and value creation processes and could therefore be used as a process tool for future initiatives.

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Cities are nodes of economic and social activity, with great impact on the environment. They serve as important points of intervention for sustainable development, and cities are looking for strategies to tackle issues in three domains: social, economic and environmental. Urban development research and policy often focuses on specific issues, such as the environment, poverty and energy. These issues are typically addressed within siloed structures in both research and in practice by designated departments. However, the achievement of goals within the different domains are strongly interlinked, with the relationships between them forming a complex urban system. Therefore, a systemic perspective is useful for achieving urban sustainability goals. Dynamic analysis improves understanding of how multiple interventions can interact, creating synergies, and identifying possible trade-offs between different goals. Understanding the urban system requires not only an inter- but also transdisciplinary approach. System Dynamics, rooted in Systems Thinking, is well suited for addressing urban sustainability holistically. In 1969, pioneering System Dynamicist Jay Forrester published his seminal book Urban Dynamics, developing an urban development model including the interactions across some aspects of these domains. Working closely with urban planners, they found that commonly accepted policies intending to reduce urban poverty, such as job creation programs and low-cost housing, contributed significantly to urban blight in the long-term. With the continued progress of System Dynamics since then, and its ability to model complex socioeconomic environments and decision-making structure, it is even better suited today to support inter- and transdisciplinary research. We aim to show how the application of System Dynamics in urban planning can improve sustainability in cities through: 1) quantitative and qualitative methods allowing for the comprehension of each domain and their interlinkages; 2) scenario exploration that enables analysis of the emerging synergies and tradeoffs for achieving specific goals; and 3) identifying and understanding leverage points (key areas that are impeding the achievement of targets) for transformation. We provide both a research-based overview of the strengths and weaknesses of this method for sustainable urban development and, by working directly with cities, provide insights from two practical case studies.

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Long before the times of lockdowns and travel restrictions, we knew about the benefits of green spaces and fresh air. Yet restrictions drew our radius closer to home, and so the Viennese population too started flocking to their own doorstep: the Vienna Woods. However, the increased use of the area for recreation by the urban population are leading to growing number of conflicts between sustainable land use and recreational use addressed by different stakeholder groups. Whether through active rule breaking or merely unknowingly, users of this sensitive landscape have a(n negative) impact on the forest ecosystem and thus stirred new debates on conservation and monitoring strategies to adapt to the new normal. The stakeholders influencing use and conservation of the Vienna Woods (e.g. tourism and athletic associations, forest services, local government, etc.) follow a variety of goals ranging from pure nature conservation to improving usability for recreation. As the assumption remains, that use of these areas is a trend to stay. The question was posed, how the arising user conflicts are being adapted into strategies and policies and to what extent monitoring is implemented to maintain sustainable use of the Vienna Woods.

In order to create a comprehensive picture of the (conflict) situation, a mixed-method approach based in the field of environmental and landscape planning was used. First a media analysis and investigation of visitor statistics were used to determine how visitor behavior and trends have developed since March 2020. Following this, stakeholder analysis used to identify new and rising conflicts and the areas in which they occur. Finally, a policy analysis was conducted to identify how new trends and conflicts are being addressed in local strategies.

This contribution displays the changes that have rapidly occurred and concludes with recommendations on how local authority can improve strategies to protect peri-urban recreation areas and which aspects need closer monitoring to ensure future sustainability and uphold the invaluable function the Vienna Woods have for the urban population.

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The effects of global climate change on weather patterns will result in more extreme heat, drought and rainfall. Urban areas are particularly vulnerable to these effects as a large share of these environment are soil-sealed and densely constructed. In order to prepare for extreme weather, many urban environments are currently aiming to increase the carrying capacity of the environment through climate change adaptation. In current practice, urban climate change adaptation is mainly aimed at assessing the vulnerability of the environment through climatological modelling and risk assessment and not as much on identifying opportunities and barriers for climate change adaptation. An example of this can be seen in the Dutch Delta programme on climate change adaptation. This national policy document emphasises the need for monitoring climatological risks on a five-year basis and making policies to reduce vulnerability. There is currently a lack of knowledge regarding which climate adaptative measures can be implemented in different urban spatial configurations. This, in addition to the focus on vulnerability has led to a situation where the risks of extreme weather are developing faster than adaptive measures are implemented.

Using a GIS-based method that combines public land-use data with data from climatescan.org, a database on the locations of adaptive measures, can aid in finding opportunities for adaptation in different neighbourhood typologies. This study made use of these datasets to gain insight in the relationship between public land-use and potential for implementing climate adaptation measures in urban environments throughout the Netherlands. The outcome of this analysis shows that there seems to be a relationship between neighbourhood characteristics and the implementation of climate adaptive measures. This indicates that neighbourhood typologies could potentially have major implications on which green-blue measures can be taken in different urban landscapes. The outcome of this study can give urban planners more grip on the effectiveness of policy instruments and public investments on urban climate resilience and to monitor the implementation of adaptive measures in the urban context.

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While mitigation of the Urban Heat Island effect raising night-time temperatures is on the agenda of most cities, little attention has been paid to the impact of heat stress at daytime. 2020 was the hottest recorded across Europe increasing the urgency of addressing daytime temperatures to ensure the liveability of cities. COVID-19 has further raised awareness of the societal need for more comfortable outdoor spaces, resulting in community support for increasing climate resilience and the urgency of climate-proofing cities.

In the recent past decision-makers have increasingly focused on pedestrian-centric and cyclist-centric strategies in urban design. Climate resilience is often considered separately in the planning process, and this may be detrimental to success. City authorities may not be fully aware of the potential impact of heat stress on the functions of outdoor and adjacent indoor spaces or of the factors that contribute to it such as the position of buildings, height/width ratio of spaces. When locations with heat stress are identified, municipalities need to select the appropriate type of intervention, such as trees, water features or shading sails, but appear to struggle to justify the expense or to determine how much heat stress mitigation is necessary.

This paper describes the Cool Towns project, in which a systems-based approach to climate-driven urban change is taken to mitigate heat stress at street-level. Partners, including municipalities, universities, and climate adaptation specialist companies, have developed guidance to enable a Thermal Comfort Assessment (TCA) to be carried out at street-level. This gives guidance on: (1) conducting interviews to give insight into the user’s experience of local thermal conditions, (2) analyse site characteristics to understand what is influencing the microclimate and how the space is used and (3) making Physiological Equivalent Temperature (PET) measurements with mobile weather stations. The measurements from 2 years of fieldwork confirm that trees can reduce the PET by between 10-17 °C but a more important finding has been identifying precisely where heat stress is an issue and generating proof of the effectiveness of heat stress interventions at the local scale.

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The vulnerable location of Guayaquil, port in South America, settled on a delta, and the possibilities of drastic changes on weather and level of the waters, demand urban-ecological-socio-economic responses. Establish guidelines to create resiliency on ecosystems, educate the already resilient community on possible unexpected evacuations, and develop emergency and contingency strategies in case of dramatic rise of water.

The Gulf of Guayaquil is the biggest entrance of water from the Pacific Ocean in South America (230Km. from Santa Elena to Cabo Blanco), facilitating exterior commerce with Asia, Oceania, Panama and Caribbean regions. The 70% private exportations and 83% of importations are coming through this port. (APG, 2016).

The city had grown on marshes, on swampy and clayey soils, on a delta formed by branches of the Pacific Ocean, and Rivers Daule, Babahoyo and Guayas; located on the Seismic Pacific Belt. The wet clay of the soils had mitigated the telluric movements, offering some elastic resistance. The main construction type are 1-2 floors predominantly, coping the nature of the soils. The most relevant ecosystems are the mangroves and the dry tropical forest with richness of mollusks, crustacean, flora and fauna biodiversity.

Built on the sea level, the city already present flooding problems, the BID, 2013, informed that the flooding will be the most significate economic loss for the city on the hostile effects of the climate change. This problem is aggravated by the sewage and pluvial systems that will collapse in case they will be covered by the water. The IPCC defined vulnerability: degree of susceptibility or incapacity of a system to face the adverse effects of the climate change, and in particular the variability of weather and extreme phenomenon.

The document explore guidelines stablishing degrees of vulnerable areas, selecting and proposing sheltering areas locations for families to be evacuated in case of Emergency. Resilient, Adaptive, contingent recommendations to prevent a collapse on the city. Guayaquil, had been placed in fourth place of vulnerability for flooding caused by the uncertainties of the climate change on the world by BID and OCDE.