Visions, Scenarios and Pathways for Rapid Decarbonisation of Australian Cities by 2040

Sustainable urban systems: Co-design and framing for transformation

“…Urban stakeholders and decision makers are diverse with individual, institutional and political biases contributing to potential conflict and a ‘cognitive dissonance’ barrier to sustainable development (Rees 2010 ). Stakeholder engagement is therefore required on future aspirations and scenarios (Costanza 2014 ; Ryan et al 2015 ) as well as near-term actions (Ryan 2013 ).…”

“…As ‘systems of provision’ (Ryan 2002 , Ryan et al 2015 ) the urban processes in turn provide functions and services, and lead to the enhancement, maintenance or degradation of the urban and remote assets over time. These processes and their impacts also feed back into the drivers of change, and the urban structures and patterns, sometimes leading to unintended consequences.…”

“…The complex system interdependencies can generate many possible urban transition pathways. Alternative urban development trajectories can have very different sustainability outcomes (Bai 2003 ; Newton and Bai 2008 ; Pickett et al 2013 ), and it is also possible that similar sustainability outcomes can be achieved with quite divergent social, cultural and political characteristics (Ryan et al 2015 ). Thus, guiding the realised trajectory becomes critical to achieving goals, while recognising that such complex systems are emergent and not simply amenable to top–down command-and-control approaches.…”

Transforming Built Environments: Towards Carbon Neutral and Blue-Green Cities

“…The project involved a series of workshops in six Australian cities, engaging a total of more than 250 leading water policy-makers, planners and practitioners in iterative discussions to envision 50-year water sensitive futures, identify key enabling pathways for achieving the vision and develop strategic priorities for action. The CRCLCL's aligned project, Vision and Pathways 2040 (VP2040) [64,65] envisioned plausible pathways for an 80% decarbonisation of Australia's largest capital cities by 2040. Here, a panel of 120 experts in a workshop series produced a set of narratives linked to four scenarios capable of achieving the targeted reduction of CO2 emissions, distinguishing between top-down vs bottom-up action, and private vs social benefit motivation and elaborating each for high, medium and low density living outcomes (Figure 7).…”