Welcome to the ECOCITY 2022 Interactive Programme

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People are the key to transforming cities, to balancing urban and natural processes. An easy, effective method to engage people in sustainability is essential for transformation. This has global implications. World resilience expert Karl Folke wrote that we need adaptive social-ecological systems in tune with the resilience of the Biosphere. Yet this goal has eluded us. Human and natural systems are both too complex to be reconciled by any institution or program. But a global culture of sustainability can do it. Culture is organic and can interface with complex systems. Culture evolves, growing through human actions, and guiding human activities. By engaging people in sustainability, we create a culture a culture of sustainability, which will produce the adaptive social-ecological systems we need for transformation. A Biosphere Eco-City (BEC) is an area with an urban core and surrounding countryside, where people cooperate for sustainability. The BEC approach grows a culture of sustainability through engagement. And it strengthens urban-rural balance. 10 BEC Themes focus on all areas of direct action for sustainability. These stimulate discussions and projects that reconcile human and natural processes. Five BEC Tools of Engagement promote understanding, involvement, innovation and sharing. All are interactive. For example, sustainability plans assemble ideas in schools or communities, to stimulate individual and collective projects. Human capital is BEC’s key resource, ensuring strong community focus and building sustainability, even outside the monetary system. Ottawa BEC began in 2009 with a $100 budget, demonstrating BEC’s affordability. With over 250 volunteers, it tested BEC’s Themes and Tools, and now helps develop BEC initiatives in other Canadian cities. Initiatives are easy to start. An educational website (https://bec-evb.ca) explains how, and any organization can lead. There is no application form. All that is asked is that proponents in a city use the 10 Themes and at least one of the Tools, and share what they learn. If a single new city used the BEC approach, it could easily enhance the scope of its sustainability at low cost. If many cities used the BEC approach, they could significantly reinforce the resilience of the Biosphere.

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ClimateCafé is a multi-, trans-, interdisciplinary and international event of several days in which young professionals, stakeholders and scientist come together to collect data and design (potential) solutions for climate change adaptation in rural or urban areas. ClimateCafé mainly aims to enhance resilience and reduce vulnerability of communities by sharing knowledge, raising awareness and building capacity. ClimateCafé addresses global issues, such as climate change and sustainable development, on a local scale. In a ClimateCafé, context specific challenges, related to climate change and sustainable development, are proposed by local stakeholders and often relate to a specific problem area. Over the past decade, more than 28 ClimateCafés have been organised around the globe, including the Netherlands-Rotterdam, Sweden-Malmö, the Philippines-Manila, and Peru-Pirua. Since the first edition in Thailand (2012), ClimateCafé evolved in content and adopted a ‘learning by doing’ paradigm. Our results indicate ClimateCafé fosters integrated thinking across disciplines, cultures and knowledge sectors while reducing uncertainties affiliated with climate change adaptation. This is demonstrated by participants of previous ClimateCafés having various backgrounds including: law, civil engineering, water management, art, urban planning and environmental engineering. Furthermore, co-production is composed through workshops facilitated by stakeholders of the, so called, quadruple helix including academia, government, civic society and industry. Workshops make use of scientifically embedded methods, always related to the contextual challenge. For example, urban heat stress is measured by sensors on a bike and collecting urban green with online platform ClimateScan, community perceptions are collected through interviews, water quality is measured with the use of drones and perceptions and responsibilities of institutional actors are identified by interviews and field visits. Additionally, data is processed and design workshops facilitate integrated design of potential solutions which is disseminated through participants presenting their findings at conferences. Although ClimateCafé is resource intensive, requires active participation of stakeholders and currently mainly attracts students of affiliated universities, we argue this multi-, inter-, transdisciplinary and international knowledge exchange methodology fosters the innovation that is dearly needed to address global sustainability challenges and climate change adaptation.

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The United States relies on a complex, nested, and interconnected system of governance to deliver clean water and promote public health. While there are many opportunities for interaction between drinking water systems and public health, the mechanisms we have created are vulnerable to exogenous and endogenous shocks, or disruptions. In complex systems, tensions exist between efficiency, responsiveness, effectiveness and resilience, which is the ability to absorb and manage critical infrastructure to recover and adapt after adverse events. Less is known about interactions during a global pandemic that has exposed the need for coordinated and interconnected responses. The experience of COVID-19 provides an opportunity to better understand how disruptions impact interactions between systems, adequacy of disaster responses, and how systems interface differently because of disruption.

This presentation summarizes work from a study funded by multiple sources that examines data from a nationwide survey of water systems and local public health departments that explores their interactions with each other during the COVID-19 crisis. The presentation will examine the different types of interactions between water and public health systems, such as exchanging information and data; coordinating messages and trainings; changing policies; and planning for recovery. We will also report the degree to which formal and informal communications, coordination of resources and institutionally supported planning, processes, and procedures have been altered during the COVID-19 crisis. The pandemic has also created opportunities for policy changes to reduce water-related health risks and illustrates the willingness of systems to engage with one another. For instance, we will discuss policy changes related to water shutoffs, water quality monitoring, water access points and coordinated flushing of buildings with extended vacancies.

To sustain healthy cities, policymakers must adapt and learn how to increase system resilience. Massive disruptions will continue to happen, so thriving ecocities will require resilient interdependent systems to continually interact, evolve, and respond to both internal and external pressures. This presentation offers data on the intersection of drinking water and public health systems to enhance understanding of system interdependencies through the COVID-19 pandemic.

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Chrono-urban planning has become a new urban planning modality aimed not only at sustainable mobility but also at a new concept of healthier life. Many cities have implemented mechanisms to improve time management in the use of transport and urban mobility, promoting healthier and more sustainable mobility habits. However, we are facing a field of research in which new improvements and tools can be proposed through the inclusion of systems based on information technology and spatial analysis of new urban patterns. In the case of Cartagena, a medium-sized city located in the southeast of Spain, the use of GIS tools has allowed the incorporation of new approaches for the development of strategies aimed at sustainable mobility based on the concept of the 15-minute city. This work presents the proposals made through an integrated diagnostic system and an evaluation through AHP systems based on the analysis of the behavior patterns of citizens before and after the effect of COVID-19.

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Today, supermarkets have a stronghold on the UK’s grocery market; as such, they function as the main interface between urban citizens and the food they eat. Based on a nested model of convenience, the fifty-year dominance of supermarket shopping has reshaped cities and resulted in the deterioration of citizen health through issues of access, transparency, and choice. Visualising how supermarket shopping impacts citizen health; from the scale of the city to a shelf, may be an effective strategy to reimagine healthier systems and spaces for the future. This study applies a research-by-design methodology to visualise and reimagine supermarket shopping through the lens of health. A propositional, health-focused supermarket, named Fit-Bytes, is designed using systems thinking and scenario-building techniques. Loosely based in Belfast, UK, the propositional supermarket is visualised through simple ‘from-to’ diagrams and descriptive photomontages. Read together, the drawings function as tools to interrogate current relationships between citizens and food and develop a suite of design moves to holistically embody health in future relationships.

The study’s results suggest that a nested social, ecological, and technological strategy is necessary for food shopping to become healthier. At the urban scale, repositioning both food production and shopping space closer to citizens promotes health through considered consumption, active mobility, and improved air quality. While at the scale of the building and shelf, personalised health and fitness data could generate healthy food choices specific to individual shoppers while also enabling an educational shopping experience. The propositional supermarket, Fit-Bytes, reflects on the agency of supermarket business models to encourage disconnected and impulsive consumption. The proposition theorises that truly healthy food shopping might only be achieved if retailers reframed shoppers as patients, prescribing food as a form of preventative healthcare.

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Latin America is one of the most biodiverse, and yet, unequal regions in the world, with a great share of its urbanized areas critically exposed to the effects of climate change. Many of these areas are characterized by unplanned urbanization, informal settlements, poor infrastructure, and a lack of available data, disproportionally affecting its most vulnerable populations. Women, in particular, are often on the front line of the current multilayer crisis: socioeconomic, sanitary, and environmental. At the same time, they continue to be underrepresented in decision-making processes within the urban planning field.

Gender violence in public spaces, inadequate and unsafe transport systems, and a decline in women’s health due to air pollution, are some of the main issues that women face in urbanized areas. Nonetheless, several female-led gender-sensitive initiatives across the region are addressing many of these challenges alongside the impacts of climate change, emerging as powerful drivers of sustainable urban transformations. From top-down Decarbonization Plans in Central America to bottom-up indigenous strategies on biodiversity conservation, women are leading a path towards a more sustainable urban future. However, in order to disseminate and mainstream these practices in a systematic way, several cultural and governance barriers need to be overcome.

The present study aims to analyze the correlation between non-inclusive urban planning systems in Latin America and their effects on women’s safety, health, and wellbeing. For this, the main barriers that women face in urbanized areas alongside the negative externalities on their health and safety will be identified. Moreover, successful female-led urban transformations across the region will be explored, regarding their governance models, methodologies, and results. Finally, an analysis will be elaborated on how female-led gender-inclusive urban initiatives can become a roadmap for socio-economic and environmental recovery in urban areas of Latin America.

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Background: Urban design features are often studied in relation to health and behavioral outcomes. They can also have major implications for environmental outcomes. Yet the impact of these features on both health and environmental outcomes (co-benefits) is rarely examined. We investigated how urban landscape and street design profiles are related to jointly occurring health and environmental outcomes in Latin America cities.

Methods: The SALURBAL project has compiled and harmonized data on built environment, environmental exposures, and health outcomes for 370 cities in 11 countries: Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Mexico, Nicaragua, Panama, and Peru. Eight city profiles were identified using finite mixture models. Four urban landscape profiles were defined measuring patch (contiguous area of urban development) fragmentation, shape, and isolation. Additional four street design profiles were defined using street connectivity, length, and directness. Multilevel regression models were used to assess associations between the city profiles and several health and environmental outcomes.

Findings (preliminary): As compared to the urban landscape profile labelled ‘scattered pixels’ (low fragmentation, compact shape, high isolation), the ‘proximate stones’ profile (moderate fragmentation, irregular shape, moderate isolation) had significantly higher levels of PM2.5 and NO2, and the ‘proximate inkblots’ profile (moderate-high fragmentation, complex shape, moderate isolation) had significantly higher violence related deaths. As compared to the street design profile labelled ‘labyrinthine’ (low connectivity, moderate length, moderate directness), the ‘semi-hyperbolic grid’ (moderate connectivity, moderate length, moderate directness) and the ‘spiderweb’ (high connectivity, low length, moderate directness) profiles had significantly higher levels of PM2.5 and NO2. While the ‘hyperbolic grid’ profile (moderate connectivity, high length, low directness) had significantly higher levels of NO2 and lower levels of obesity.

Conclusion: Identifying how city profiles are related to environment and health outcomes can shed light on the urban policies that could have the greatest environment and health co-benefits.

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The COVID 19 pandemic has shaped the way citizens perceive their food environment, catalyzing the surge of innovative solutions that answer these new perspectives.

In Germany, the crisis has led to a shift in consumption and eating habits, increasing the demand for regionally produced and organic products and those made under standards of animal welfare, climate, and biodiversity protection.

As a result, many existing alternative food systems solutions (e.g., community-supported agriculture and food assemblies) enjoyed high reactivation and great acceptance at the same time novel initiatives popped-up to supply the demand for these products, such as a boost in e-commerce, new forms of food distribution, and an increase in at-home food production.

Through an exploratory analysis, this study aims to understand better how urban food systems used their potential for innovations and responded to the current health crisis and the lessons learned to promote and enhance more resilient and sustainable urban food systems in the Cologne-Bonn region.