Our world is becoming more urban. More than fifty percent of the global population now lives in cities, which poses new challenges for sustainable development. This book integrates theory and methods of sustainability assessment with concepts from systems science to provide guidelines for assessing the sustainability of urban systems. It discusses different aspects of urban sustainability, from energy and housing, to mobility and health, covering social, economic and environmental factors, as well as the various stakeholders and actors involved. The book argues for the need to find models and solutions in order to design sustainable cities of the future in light of the complexity of urban social life. Including diverse case studies from the developed and developing world, this book provides a useful reference for researchers and students from a broad range of disciplines working in the field of sustainability, as well as for environmental consultants and policy makers.
Preface; General introduction; Part I. Theoretical Background: 1. Sustainability assessment: introduction and frameworks Pekka Halla and Claudia R. Binder; 2. Systems science and sustainability assessment Claudia R. Binder, Michael Hutter, Melissa Pang and Robert Webb; 3. How values play into sustainability assessments: challenges and a possible way forward Franziska Meinherz, Livia Fritz and Flurina Schneider; 4. The politics of participatory sustainability assessments: an analysis of power Livia Fritz and Franziska Meinherz; 5. A concept for Sustainability Transition Assessment (STA): a dynamic systems perspective informed by resilience thinking Thorsten Schilling, Susan Mühlemeier, Romano Wyss and Claudia R. Binder; Part II. Integrative Approaches for Sustainability Assessment: 6. A mixed-method, dialogue-based approach to sustainability assessments: fostering learning for sustainable development Flurina Schneider; 7. Sustainability assessment: integrative concept, methodology, and examples Volker Stelzer and Jürgen Kopfmüller; 8. Sustainability solution spaces Claudia R. Binder, Marta G. Baldi, Baptiste Gex and Emanuele Massaro; 9. Assessing urban sustainability through Participatory Multi-Criteria Approaches (PMCAs): an updated comparative analysis Albert Merino-Saum; Part III. Perspectives on Urban Sustainability: 10. Conceptualising urban systems for sustainability assessment: four powerful metaphors Pekka Halla, Romano Wyss and Claudia R. Binder; 11. Sustainability issues in urban systems from a metabolic perspective João Vitor Meirelles de Miranda, Anna Pagani, Aristide Athanassiadis and Claudia R. Binder; 12. Urban-industrial supply systems: from global challenges to strong urban sustainability Klaus Krumme; 13. Indicators for assessing the sustainability of cities Anne Bösch and André de Montmollin; 14. Ontology-based integration of urban sustainability indicators Emanuele Massaro, Aristide Athanassiadis, Achilleas Psyllidis and Claudia R. Binder; Part IV. Focal Points of Urban Sustainability: 15. Energy challenges in urban systems François Vuille and François Maréchal; 16. Sustainability assessment of the housing system: exploring the interplay between the material and social systems Anna Pagani, Rafael Laurenti and Claudia R. Binder; 17. Sustainability assessment of urban agriculture Giuseppe Feola, Marlyne Sahakian and Claudia R. Binder; 18. Cities and entropy: assessing urban sustainability as a problem of coordination of actions Vinicius M. Nett, João Meirelles and Fabiano L. Ribeiro; 19. Conceptualising urban systems for ecologic sustainability assessments: case study of the Stockholm Royal Seaport City District Ulf Ranhagen and Björn Frostell; 20. A study of ride-sharing opportunities in the City of Santiago de Chile Emanuele Massaro; 21. Mosquito-borne disease and human mobility in urban environments Emanuele Massaro, Damiao Pasetto, Andrea Rinaldo and Claudia R. Binder; Index.
Claudia R. Binder is Professor and Head of the Laboratory for Human-Environment Relations in Urban Systems at École Polytechnique Fédéral de Lausanne (EPFL), Switzerland. She holds the Swiss Mobiliar Chair for Urban Ecology and Sustainable Living. She is a leading researcher in the field of sustainability assessment. Her interests lie in inter- and transdisciplinary research to analyze, model and assess scenarios and policies for transitions of urban systems towards sustainability. Romano Wyss is a research scientist at the Laboratory for Human-Environment Relations in Urban Systems at École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne. He also works as an independent consultant in the field of regional development and sustainability. Wyss's research focuses on sustainable development, resilience theory and energy transitions, linked to social network analysis and transdisciplinary research. Emanuele Massaro is a scientist at the Laboratory for Human-Environment Relations in Urban Systems at the École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne. He received his doctorate in Complex Systems from the University of Florence in 2014 and thereafter he conducted postdoctoral research at Carnegie Mellon University and Massachusetts Institute of Technology. His research interests span the areas of computational epidemiology, urban sustainability and big data analytics.
Reviews for Sustainability Assessment of Urban Systems
'The volume will make a valuable reference for upper-division students and practitioners … Recommended.' R. E. O'Connor, Choice
