Situating Knowledge and Action for an Urban Planet

Parnell, Susan; Elmqvist, Thomas; McPhearson, Timon; Nagendra, Harini; Sörlin, Sverker

doi:10.1017/9781316647554.002

Cited by 18 publications

(11 citation statements)

References 657 publications

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“…As noted by the multidisciplinary group of urban academics which authored the recent Urban Planet volume (Parnell et al, 2018), highlighting this context brings to the fore the tensions of working across disciplinary boundaries and methods, and the problems inherent in 'co-producing' urban knowledge. This speaks, as observed by Parnell et al (ibid.…”

Section: Benchmarking Backmentioning

confidence: 99%

TAKING CITY RANKINGS SERIOUSLY : Engaging with Benchmarking Practices in Global Urbanism

Acuto¹,

Pejic²,

Briggs³

2021

Int. J. Urban Reg. Res.

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Who cares if our case study city has dropped a place in the so‐and‐so list of such‐and‐such cities? Whilst city rankings are soaring to popularity in media reports and everyday practitioner parlance in municipalities and the consulting world, benchmarking exercises raise more than a few eyebrows within the field of urban studies. As we argue here, whilst not condoning the superficiality of some of these indices, this is an important problem that needs rebalancing. The ‘comparative imagination’ is today not just a renewed locus of urban theory debate, but an economy in its own right at the heart of networked forms of global urbanism, both in the public and private sectors. Reviewing the global landscape of rankings, the rise of a benchmarking industry and the questions that it raises for urban theorizing, our intervention asks urban studies to take rankings seriously. We argue that they have a key place in the changing imaginary of ‘comparative gestures’ and in shaping a more ‘global’ way of worlding by cities. We advocate theorizing ‘back’ to rankings and, building on debates on ‘urban science’, we call for more proactive participation in influencing the political economy of benchmarking.

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Section: Benchmarking Backmentioning

confidence: 99%

TAKING CITY RANKINGS SERIOUSLY : Engaging with Benchmarking Practices in Global Urbanism

Acuto¹,

Pejic²,

Briggs³

2021

Int. J. Urban Reg. Res.

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“…This parallels the growing recognition among policy-and decision-makers that cities have an important role to play in local and global sustainability. Metropolitan areas are the grounds of experimenting not only with new technologies, but also with new systems-level approaches towards livability, sustainability, and resilience [7,8].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

An Observatory Framework for Metropolitan Change: Understanding Urban Social–Ecological–Technical Systems in Texas and Beyond

et al. 2019

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In Texas and elsewhere, the looming realities of rapid population growth and intensifying effects of climate change mean that the things we rely on to live—water, energy, dependable infrastructure, social cohesion, and an ecosystem to support them—are exposed to unprecedented risk. Limited resources will be in ever greater demand and the environmental stress from prolonged droughts, record-breaking heat waves, and destructive floods will increase. Existing long-term trends and behaviors will not be sustainable. That is our current trajectory, but we can still change course. Significant advances in information communication technologies and big data, combined with new frameworks for thinking about urban places as social–ecological–technical systems, and an increasing movement towards transdisciplinary scholarship and practice sets the foundation and framework for a metropolitan observatory. Yet, more is required than an infrastructure for data. Making cities inclusive, safe, resilient, and sustainable will require that data become actionable knowledge that change policy and practice. Research and development of urban sustainability and resilience knowledge is burgeoning, yet the uptake to policy has been slow. An integrative and holistic approach is necessary to develop effective sustainability science that synthesizes different sources of knowledge, relevant disciplines, multi-sectoral alliances, and connections to policy-makers and the public. To address these challenges and opportunities, we developed a conceptual framework for a “metropolitan observatory” to generate standardized long-term, large-scale datasets about social, ecological, and technical dimensions of metropolitan systems. We apply this conceptual model in Texas, known as the Texas Metro Observatory, to advance strategic research and decision-making at the intersection of urbanization and climate change. The Texas Metro Observatory project is part of Planet Texas 2050, a University of Texas Austin grand challenge initiative.

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“…The unprecedented rate of urbanisation in the past century is a significant contributor to the rapid degradation of the environment. The expanding urban environment has been linked to food insecurity, global warming, climate change, air pollution, overexploitation of water resources, and decrease in forest cover, among other problems [39]. Yet a growing school of thought and practice under civic environmentalism aims at generating positive ecological and social outcomes in human-dominated landscapes through participatory environmental restoration and management initiatives.…”

Section: Urban Farming As a Civic-ecology Initiativementioning

confidence: 99%

Managing Sustainable Transitions: Institutional Innovations from India

Chebrolu

Dutta

2021

Sustainability

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Despite the widespread disruptions of lives and livelihoods due to the COVID-19 pandemic, it could also be seen as a gamechanger. The post-pandemic recovery should address fundamental questions concerning our food systems. Is it possible to reset existing ecologically unsustainable production systems towards healthier and more connected systems of conscious consumers and ecologically oriented farmers? Based on three illustrative cases from different parts of India, we show how managing transitions towards sustainability require institutional innovations and new intermediaries that build agency, change relations, and transform structures in food systems. Lessons from three diverse geographies and commodities in India are presented: urban farming initiatives in Mumbai, conscious consumer initiatives in semi-urban Gujarat for pesticide-free mangoes, and resource-poor arid regions of Andhra Pradesh. Through these examples, we show that, beyond the technological solutions, institutional innovations such as urban community-supported farming models, Participatory Guarantee Schemes, and Farmer Producer Organisations (FPOs) can enable sustainable transitions. Sustainable lifestyles in a post COVID-19 world, as the cases show, require collective experimentation with producers that go beyond changed consumer behaviour to transform structures in food systems.

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Situating Knowledge and Action for an Urban Planet

Cited by 18 publications

References 657 publications

TAKING CITY RANKINGS SERIOUSLY : Engaging with Benchmarking Practices in Global Urbanism

TAKING CITY RANKINGS SERIOUSLY : Engaging with Benchmarking Practices in Global Urbanism

An Observatory Framework for Metropolitan Change: Understanding Urban Social–Ecological–Technical Systems in Texas and Beyond

Managing Sustainable Transitions: Institutional Innovations from India

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