Andrea Sarzynski

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

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.

Evolving United States metropolitan land use patterns

We investigate spatial patterns of residential and nonresidential land use for 257 United States metropolitan areas in 1990 and 2000, measured with 14 empirical indices. We find that metropolitan areas became denser during the 1990s but developed in more sprawl-like patterns across all other dimensions, on average. By far, the largest changes in our land use metrics occurred in the realm of employment, which became more prevalent per unit of geographic area, but less spatially concentrated and farther from the historical urban core, on average. Our exploratory factor analyses reveal that four factors summarize land use patterns in both years, and remained relatively stable across the two years: intensity, compactness, mixing, and core-dominance. Mean factor scores vary by metropolitan population, water proximity, type, and Census region. Improved measurement of metropolitan land use patterns can facilitate policy and planning decisions intended to minimize the most egregious aspects of urban sprawl.

Typologies of sprawl: Investigating United States metropolitan land use patterns

We investigate patterns of residential and nonresidential land use in 311 United States metropolitan (Extended Urban) areas in 2000 using four measures: intensity, compactness, mixing, and core-dominance. A cluster analysis revealed four distinctive groups of land use patterns: (1) Most-Intense, Least-Compact, Least-Mixed, More-Monocentric Development, (2) Less-Intense, Most-Compact, Less-Mixed, Less-Monocentric Development, (3) Least-Intense, Less-Compact, Most-Mixed, Most-Monocentric Development, (4) More-Intense, More-Compact, More-Mixed, Polycentric Development. Bivariate statistics demonstrated that geographic, historic, economic, demographic, and transport variables differentiate land use pattern types. Based on their multidimensional distinctions, we label the four types of metropolitan areas: Ascendants, Insulars, Redevelopers, and Cosmopolitans.

The geography of greenhouse gas emissions from within urban areas of India: a preliminary assessment

This paper examines the patterns of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from urban areas in India–a rapidly growing and urbanizing nation. It uses a new dataset, Emission Data for Global Atmospheric Research (EDGAR), to estimate the urban share of national GHG emissions. It presents a geographic picture of emission variation by urban form (urban population size, area size, density, and growth rate), and economic (GDP and GDP per capita), geographic (location of emissions released: 20, 40, and 80 km from urban areas), and biophysical (ecosystem and climate: cooling degree days) characteristics. Dependent variables include emissions of carbon dioxide (CO2), methane (CH4), nitrous oxide (N2O), and hexafl uoride (SF6) from 14 source activities (agricultural soils, agricultural wastes, aviation, energy, fossil-fuel fi res, fugitive escapes from solids, industry, livestock, navigation, non-road transport, oil and gas production, residential, road transport, and waste) for the year 2000 that are allocated on a 0.1° global grid. We examine 721 urban areas with more than 50,000 residents (accounting for 92% of the total Indian urban population), present fi ndings, and compare our results with urban-level carbon footprint analyses. The results demonstrate that GHG emissions from urban areas in India are lower than that presented in the literature, and that differences in emissions levels vary with urban form, economic, geographic, and biophysical variables.

Multi-level Governance, Civic Capacity, and Overcoming the Climate Change “Adaptation Deficit” in Baltimore, Maryland

This chapter explores the policy and planning efforts of the city of Baltimore, Maryland, with respect to climate change adaptation using the institutional analysis and development framework. The city’s innovative combined disaster preparedness and climate change adaptation plan was adopted in 2013 and situated within a complex, multi-level climate governance regime established in 2007. It’s planning efforts have been recognized for their high quality from the federal government and nonprofit organizations. Additionally, city staff chose to build civic capacity on climate change resilience early in its implementation efforts, reaching more than one thousand residents to date. Yet civic dialogue around climate adaptation or private adaptive action has not emerged. Instead, adaptation efforts appear squarely rooted within the governmental realm and subject to resource constraints of its primary institutions, leaders, and staff. Thus, the Baltimore case reveals both the resilience of staff when conducting climate adaptation planning in an atmosphere of fiscal constraint, and the difficulties in fostering a community-wide sense of responsibility for climate adaptation action.

Community–Government Partnership for Metered Clean Drinking Water: A Case Study of Bhalwal, Pakistan

The case study explores the design and operation of a community–government partnership initiative for clean drinking water called Changa Pani (Clean Water) Program in Bhalwal, a small city of Pakistan. It is a joint initiative by the city government of Bhalwal and residents, facilitated by a civil society intermediary organization that has succeeded in developing and operating a viable water distribution system to supply metered clean water to residents after purely government-organized efforts did not deliver. The Changa Pani Program (CPP) appears as a manifestation of community-based adaptation to climate change, given rising temperatures, depletion/contamination of groundwater, increased spread of waterborne disease, and childhood stunting. Considering the formidable challenges of access to clean drinking water and sanitation for Pakistan and other countries working to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals, lessons from successful grass root level projects like CPP can be broadly valuable. The case study analyzes determinants of the initiative’s success and the opportunities and challenges for replicating the CPP for other types of infrastructure and/or service in other locations, in Pakistan, and in other rapidly urbanizing nations.

Urbanization and the carbon cycle: Contributions from social science: MARCOTULLIO ET AL.

This paper outlines the contributions of social science to the study of interactions between urbanization patterns and processes and the carbon cycle, and identifies gaps in knowledge and priority areas for future social scientific research contributions. While previously studied as a unidimensional process, we conceptualize urbanization as a multidimensional, social and biophysical process driven by continuous changes across space and time in various subsystems including biophysical, built environment, and socio-institutional (e.g., economic, political, demographic, behavioral, and sociological). We review research trends and findings focused on the socio-institutional subsystem of the urbanization process, and particularly the dynamics, relationships, and predictions relevant to energy use and greenhouse gas emissions. Our findings suggest that a multidimensional perspective of urbanization facilitates a wider spectrum of research relevant to carbon cycle dynamics, even within the socio-institutional subsystem. However, there is little consensus around the details and mechanisms underlying the relationship between urban socio-institutional subsystems and the carbon cycle. We argue that progress in understanding the relationship between urbanization and the carbon cycle may be achieved if social scientists work collaboratively with each other as well as with scientists from other disciplines. From this review, we identify research priorities where collaborative social scientific efforts are necessary in conjunction with other disciplinary approaches to generate a more complete understanding of urbanization as a process and its relationship to the carbon cycle.