Enabling Future Sustainability Transitions

Pincetl, Stéphanie; Chester, Mikhail; Circella, Giovanni; Fraser, Andrew; Mini, C.; Murphy, Sinnott; Reyna, Janet; Sivaraman, Deepak

doi:10.1111/jiec.12144

Cited by 60 publications

(31 citation statements)

References 28 publications

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“…As centers of population and economic activity, cities have a dominant influence on the scale and form of anthropogenic material and energy flows, consequently playing a central role in any shifts towards sustainability (Dearing et al 2014;Pincetl et al 2014). Hitherto, the general tenor in promoting urban sustainability has been a focus on minimizing fossil fuel intensive transport, reducing the energy consumption of buildings, and shifting cities towards renewable energy sources (Grubler et al 2012;IPCC 2014a).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Urban versus conventional agriculture, taxonomy of resource profiles: a review

Goldstein

Hauschild

Fernández

et al. 2016

Agron. Sustain. Dev.

141

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Urban agriculture appears to be a means to combat the environmental pressure of increasing urbanization and food demand. However, there is hitherto limited knowledge of the efficiency and scaling up of practices of urban farming. Here, we review the claims on urban agriculture's comparative performance relative to conventional food production. Our main findings are as follows: (1) benefits, such as reduced embodied greenhouse gases, urban heat island reduction, and storm water mitigation, have strong support in current literature. (2) Other benefits such as food waste minimization and ecological footprint reduction require further exploration. (3) Urban agriculture benefits to both food supply chains and urban ecosystems vary considerably with system type. To facilitate the comparison of urban agriculture systems we propose a classification based on (1) conditioning of the growing space and (2) the level of integration with buildings. Lastly, we compare the predicted environmental performance of the four main types of urban agriculture that arise through the application of the taxonomy. The findings show how taxonomy can aid future research on the intersection of urban food production and the larger material and energy regimes of cities (the "urban metabolism").

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Urban versus conventional agriculture, taxonomy of resource profiles: a review

Goldstein

Hauschild

Fernández

et al. 2016

Agron. Sustain. Dev.

141

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…Motivated by identifying options to decouple urbanization from its energy and carbon impacts, engineers and industrial ecologists have designed metabolism and life‐cycle analyses to quantify the energy and material inputs (electricity and fossil fuels) and GHG emissions of components of the built environment ( or technological ) system such as the construction, operation, and end‐of‐life management of transportation, building, water, energy generation, and waste [ Pincetl et al ., ]. They have analyzed the quality of life implications of increasing reliance on remote material and energy supply [ Chester et al ., ].…”

Section: What Is Neededmentioning

confidence: 99%

A critical knowledge pathway to low‐carbon, sustainable futures: Integrated understanding of urbanization, urban areas, and carbon

et al. 2014

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Independent lines of research on urbanization, urban areas, and carbon have advanced our understanding of some of the processes through which energy and land uses affect carbon. This synthesis integrates some of these diverse viewpoints as a first step toward a coproduced, integrated framework for understanding urbanization, urban areas, and their relationships to carbon. It suggests the need for approaches that complement and combine the plethora of existing insights into interdisciplinary explorations of how different urbanization processes, and socio-ecological and technological components of urban areas, affect the spatial and temporal patterns of carbon emissions, differentially over time and within and across cities. It also calls for a more holistic approach to examining the carbon implications of urbanization and urban areas, based not only on demographics or income but also on other interconnected features of urban development pathways such as urban form, economic function, economic-growth policies, and other governance arrangements. It points to a wide array of uncertainties around the urbanization processes, their interactions with urban socio-institutional and built environment systems, and how these impact the exchange of carbon flows within and outside urban areas. We must also understand in turn how carbon feedbacks, including carbon impacts and potential impacts of climate change, can affect urbanization processes. Finally, the paper explores options, barriers, and limits to transitioning cities to low-carbon trajectories, and suggests the development of an end-to-end, coproduced and integrated scientific understanding that can more effectively inform the navigation of transitional journeys and the avoidance of obstacles along the way. Why Urbanization, Urban Areas, and Carbon?In recent years, the relationships between urbanization, urban areas, and the carbon cycle have generated increased interest in research and policy circles for a variety of reasons. We have urbanized our planet to an unprecedented level. The concentrations of infrastructure, economic and social activities, and populations in cities create growing demands for fossil fuels and carbon-intensive materials to build and power domestic services, commercial buildings, industrial processes, telecommunications systems, water COMMENTARY 10.1002/2014EF000258Special Section: Urbanization, carbon cycle, and climate change Key Points:• We need integrated, coproduced approaches to urbanization, urban areas, and carbon • Urbanization uncertainties are of similar magnitude to carbon uncertainties • Lock-ins in urbanization, cities, and carbon constrain low-carbon transitions provision, waste production, travel, and a seemingly endless array of other uses. By 2050, the global urban population is expected to increase from 3.6 billion to over 6 billion, mainly in low-and middle-income countries [United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs, 2010]. With urban extent forecast to triple between 2000 and 2030, more urban land e...

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“…Spatiotemporally resolved FFCO 2 emission data products from the global to the urban are developed using two general approaches which we refer to here as "bottom-up" and "downscaling." Bottom-up approaches use direct flux monitoring and sectoral activity data gathered from various socioeconomic sources to develop spatiotemporally explicit, mechanistic FFCO 2 emissions (Brondfield et al, 2012;Gately et al, 2013;Gately & Hutyra, 2017;Gurney et al, 2009;Jones & Kammen, 2014;Parshall et al, 2010;Patarasuk et al, 2016;Pincetl et al, 2014;Porse et al, 2016;Shu & Lam, 2011;VandeWeghe & Kennedy, 2007;. At the urban scale, this approach has been pioneered by the Hestia Project which estimates FFCO 2 emissions for urban landscapes at the building/street spatial scale and hourly temporal scale with sectoral, fuel, and functional details (Gurney et al, 2012).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Comparison of Global Downscaled Versus Bottom‐Up Fossil Fuel CO₂ Emissions at the Urban Scale in Four U.S. Urban Areas

et al. 2019

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Spatiotemporally resolved urban fossil fuel CO2 (FFCO2) emissions are critical to urban carbon cycle research and urban climate policy. Two general scientific approaches have been taken to estimate spatiotemporally explicit urban FFCO2 fluxes, referred to here as “downscaling” and “bottom‐up.” Bottom‐up approaches can specifically characterize the CO2‐emitting infrastructure in cities but are labor‐intensive to build and currently available in few U.S. cities. Downscaling approaches, often available globally, require proxy information to allocate or distribute emissions resulting in additional uncertainty. We present a comparison of a downscaled FFCO2 emission data product (Open‐source Data Inventory for Anthropogenic CO2 (ODIAC)) to a bottom‐up estimate (Hestia) in four U.S. urban areas in an effort to better isolate and understand differences between the approaches. We find whole‐city differences ranging from −1.5% (Los Angeles Basin) to +20.8% (Salt Lake City). At the 1 km × 1 km spatial scale, comparisons reveal a low‐emission limit in ODIAC driven by saturation of the nighttime light spatial proxy. At this resolution, the median difference between the two approaches ranged from 47 to 84% depending upon city with correlations ranging from 0.34 to 0.68. The largest discrepancies were found for large point sources and the on‐road sector, suggesting that downscaled FFCO2 data products could be improved by incorporating independent large point‐source estimates and estimating on‐road sources with a relevant spatial surrogate. Progressively coarsening the spatial resolution improves agreement but greater than approximately 25 km2, there were diminishing returns to agreement suggesting a practical resolution when using downscaled approaches.

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Enabling Future Sustainability Transitions

Cited by 60 publications

References 28 publications

Urban versus conventional agriculture, taxonomy of resource profiles: a review

Urban versus conventional agriculture, taxonomy of resource profiles: a review

A critical knowledge pathway to low‐carbon, sustainable futures: Integrated understanding of urbanization, urban areas, and carbon

Comparison of Global Downscaled Versus Bottom‐Up Fossil Fuel CO₂ Emissions at the Urban Scale in Four U.S. Urban Areas

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Enabling Future Sustainability Transitions

Cited by 60 publications

References 28 publications

Urban versus conventional agriculture, taxonomy of resource profiles: a review

Urban versus conventional agriculture, taxonomy of resource profiles: a review

A critical knowledge pathway to low‐carbon, sustainable futures: Integrated understanding of urbanization, urban areas, and carbon

Comparison of Global Downscaled Versus Bottom‐Up Fossil Fuel CO2 Emissions at the Urban Scale in Four U.S. Urban Areas

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About

Comparison of Global Downscaled Versus Bottom‐Up Fossil Fuel CO₂ Emissions at the Urban Scale in Four U.S. Urban Areas