Details
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Pages (from-to) | 566-573 |
| Number of pages | 8 |
| Journal | Ecological indicators |
| Volume | 70 |
| Publication status | Published - 1 Nov 2016 |
| Externally published | Yes |
Abstract
Cities and urbanized regions are complex, dynamic, and highly integrated systems linking social, ecological, and technical infrastructure domains in ways that create deep challenges for good governance, policymaking, and planning. The combination of impacts from climate change in cities, air pollution, rapid population growth, multiple sources of development pressure and overall urban system complexity make it difficult for decision-makers to develop and guide development trajectories along more livable, equitable, and at the same time, more resilient pathways. Advancing urban sustainability and resilience agendas requires expanding the scope of inter- and trans-disciplinarity approaches, moving beyond the historically separate social–ecological and socio-technical approaches to jointly study social–ecological–technical infrastructure systems in cities. We take urban complexity as a given and suggest that in both research and practice we need to better capture and understand feedbacks, interdependencies, and non-linearities which create uncertainties and challenge the efficacy of governance practices to achieve normative goals for society. Here, we explore new methods, tools, and approaches to advance our understanding of urban system complexity through a series of journal special issue articles that examine urban structure–function relationships, urban sustainability transitions, green space availability, social–ecological memory, functional traits, and urban land use scenarios.
Keywords
- Cities, Resilience, Social–ecological–technical systems, Sustainability, Urban complexity
ASJC Scopus subject areas
- Decision Sciences(all)
- General Decision Sciences
- Agricultural and Biological Sciences(all)
- Ecology, Evolution, Behavior and Systematics
- Environmental Science(all)
- Ecology
Sustainable Development Goals
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In: Ecological indicators, Vol. 70, 01.11.2016, p. 566-573.
Research output: Contribution to journal › Editorial in journal › Research › peer review
}
TY - JOUR
T1 - Advancing understanding of the complex nature of urban systems
AU - McPhearson, Timon
AU - Haase, Dagmar
AU - Kabisch, Nadja
AU - Gren, Åsa
N1 - Funding information: TM was supported by the Urban Resilience to Extreme Weather-related Events Sustainability Research Network (URExSRN; NSF Grant No. SES 1444755 ) and Urban Sustainability Research Coordination Network (NSF Grant No. RCN 1140070 ).This research was funded by the ERA-Net BiodivERsA, with the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research, part of the 2011 BiodivERsA call for research proposals and was conducted within the BiodivERsA research project URBES (2011–2014). This work was also financially supported by GREEN SURGE, EU FP7 collaborative project, FP7-ENV.2013.6.2-5-603567.
PY - 2016/11/1
Y1 - 2016/11/1
N2 - Cities and urbanized regions are complex, dynamic, and highly integrated systems linking social, ecological, and technical infrastructure domains in ways that create deep challenges for good governance, policymaking, and planning. The combination of impacts from climate change in cities, air pollution, rapid population growth, multiple sources of development pressure and overall urban system complexity make it difficult for decision-makers to develop and guide development trajectories along more livable, equitable, and at the same time, more resilient pathways. Advancing urban sustainability and resilience agendas requires expanding the scope of inter- and trans-disciplinarity approaches, moving beyond the historically separate social–ecological and socio-technical approaches to jointly study social–ecological–technical infrastructure systems in cities. We take urban complexity as a given and suggest that in both research and practice we need to better capture and understand feedbacks, interdependencies, and non-linearities which create uncertainties and challenge the efficacy of governance practices to achieve normative goals for society. Here, we explore new methods, tools, and approaches to advance our understanding of urban system complexity through a series of journal special issue articles that examine urban structure–function relationships, urban sustainability transitions, green space availability, social–ecological memory, functional traits, and urban land use scenarios.
AB - Cities and urbanized regions are complex, dynamic, and highly integrated systems linking social, ecological, and technical infrastructure domains in ways that create deep challenges for good governance, policymaking, and planning. The combination of impacts from climate change in cities, air pollution, rapid population growth, multiple sources of development pressure and overall urban system complexity make it difficult for decision-makers to develop and guide development trajectories along more livable, equitable, and at the same time, more resilient pathways. Advancing urban sustainability and resilience agendas requires expanding the scope of inter- and trans-disciplinarity approaches, moving beyond the historically separate social–ecological and socio-technical approaches to jointly study social–ecological–technical infrastructure systems in cities. We take urban complexity as a given and suggest that in both research and practice we need to better capture and understand feedbacks, interdependencies, and non-linearities which create uncertainties and challenge the efficacy of governance practices to achieve normative goals for society. Here, we explore new methods, tools, and approaches to advance our understanding of urban system complexity through a series of journal special issue articles that examine urban structure–function relationships, urban sustainability transitions, green space availability, social–ecological memory, functional traits, and urban land use scenarios.
KW - Cities
KW - Resilience
KW - Social–ecological–technical systems
KW - Sustainability
KW - Urban complexity
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=84964570150&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1016/j.ecolind.2016.03.054
DO - 10.1016/j.ecolind.2016.03.054
M3 - Editorial in journal
AN - SCOPUS:84964570150
VL - 70
SP - 566
EP - 573
JO - Ecological indicators
JF - Ecological indicators
SN - 1470-160X
ER -