Elena Domene

Urbanisation and Water Consumption: Influencing Factors in the Metropolitan Region of Barcelona

This paper is concerned with the relationships between urbanisation and residential water consumption, taking as a case study the Metropolitan Region of Barcelona. More precisely, it investigates the influence of certain demographic, behavioural and housing factors on this consumption using descriptive statistics and a regression analysis. The data are derived from a sample of 532 households in 22 municipalities of the study area. Results show that income, housing type, members per household, the presence of outdoor uses (garden and swimming pool), the kind of species planted in the garden and consumer behaviour towards conservation practices play a significant role in explaining variations in water consumption. It is concluded that, along with prices and incomes, further research is needed on other demographic and housing variables in order to obtain a more comprehensive understanding of the determinants of domestic water consumption in areas periodically affected by water stress.

Urbanization and Sustainable Resource Use: The Case of Garden Watering in the Metropolitan Region of Barcelona

Urban sprawl is eroding the traditionally compact, diverse, and mixed Southern European cities. Besides the rise in land and energy consumption, the expansion of low density urban forms also affects water, a critical resource in the region. This study examines garden watering in the Metropolitan Region of Barcelona in order to illustrate the importance of outdoor water use in the urbanization process, and, following the insights provided by urban political ecology, to highlight the differences in garden types and water spending according to power relations derived from income levels. Results indicate that, generally, higher income households prefer and can afford more water-consuming Atlantic gardens whereas lower income households have to resort to more climate-adapted species. These differences produce in turn different urban natures based on who can and who cannot afford water costs.

Towards an energy–landscape integrated analysis? Exploring the links between socio-metabolic disturbance and landscape ecology performance (Mallorca, Spain, 1956–2011)

AbstractContextThe role of agricultural landscapes in biodiversity conservation is an emerging topic in a world experiencing a worrying decrease of species richness. Farm systems may either decrease or increase biological diversity, depending on land-use intensities and management. ObjectivesWe present an intermediate disturbance-complexity model (IDC) of cultural landscapes aimed at assessing how different levels of anthropogenic disturbance on ecosystems affect the capacity to host biodiversity depending on the land matrix heterogeneity. It is applied to the Mallorca Island, amidst the Mediterranean biodiversity hotspot.MethodsThe model uses the disturbance exerted when farmers alter the Net Primary Production through land-use change as well as when they remove a share of it (HANPP), together with Shannon–Wiener index (H′) of land-cover diversity. The model is tested with a twofold-scalar experimental design (1:50,000 and 1:5000) of a set of landscape units along three time points (1956, 1989, 2011). Species richness of breeding and wintering birds, taken as a biodiversity proxy, is used in an exploratory factor analysis.ResultsThe results clearly show that when intermediate levels of HANPP are performed within intermediate levels of complexity (H′) in landscape patterns, like agro-forest mosaics, great bird species richness and high socio-ecological resilience can be maintained. Yet, these complex-heterogeneous landscapes are currently vanishing due to industrial farm intensification, rural abandonment and urban sprawl.ConclusionsThe results make apparent the usefulness of transferring the concept of intermediate disturbance-complexity interplay to cultural landscapes. Our spatial-explicit IDC model can be used as a tool for strategic environmental assessment of land-use planning.

Changing Conceptions of Sustainability in Barcelona's Public Parks

ABSTRACT. In this article we explore the relationships between public parks and a broad interpretation of sustainability, taking as a case study the city of Barcelona, Spain. Recent official discourses in Barcelona insist on sustainability as one of the fundamental assets of public parks. Yet whether these urban artifacts actually contribute to sustainability objectives in environmental and social terms remains to be examined. We compare two public parks in Barcelona‐the Parc Joan Miró (1983), and the Parc de Diagonal Mar (2002)–and show how, in the former, the integration of the social, political, and environmental dimensions of sustainability was largely achieved, whereas in the latter, only the environmental dimension appears to have been considered.

Assessing the Integration of Landscape Connectivity into Comprehensive Spatial Planning in Spain

Abstract The integration of landscape connectivity criteria into spatial planning through ecological networks formed by coherent open space systems has received increasing attention in Europe in the last few decades. In Spain, such integration began recently, in parallel with the development of a supralocal comprehensive spatial planning policy, which was practically non-existent a decade ago. An assessment of such integration is reported here, specifically on ecological networks inclusion within the spatially explicit zoning regulations of 11 regional and 66 subregional plans which had been approved in Spain until the end of 2012. At the same time, a survey was conducted among 22 Spanish and 14 European practitioners in order to detect possible deficiencies and opportunities to optimise this integration in Spain through a comparison with other European countries. An increasing integration of ecological networks into supralocal plans was observed, especially in subregional plans approved in the last five years, coinciding with a period of greater development in supralocal spatial planning policy, the end of the Spanish speculative housing bubble and new national legislation which encourages the promotion of ecological networks. However, the integration process is very uneven because homogeneous guidelines are not applied in the different regions. Spanish practitioners discerned wide room for improvement. The integration of ecological networks into multiscale spatial planning should be optimised in Spain, including improvements in local planning, strategic environmental assessment and training of planners in this topic.

Water as an Element of Urban Design: Drawing Lessons from Four European Case Studies

One of the most challenging problems that urban areas will face in the future is adaptation to the effects of climate change, particularly with regard to local problems of water management (e.g., flooding caused by heavy rain events, degradation of urban streams, and water scarcity). Sustainable local management of stormwater calls for approaches that connect technical and ecological solutions with urban design aspects and socioeconomic factors. This in turn opens up great opportunities to advance knowledge toward the application of water-sensitive urban design (WSUD), an approach that integrates the water cycle into urban design to simultaneously minimize environmental degradation, improve aesthetic and recreational appeal, and support social cohesion. A comparative study of four case studies across Europe reveals some of the successes and limits of WSUD implemented so far and presents new considerations for future developments. Best practices on integrated management as well as concepts to re-establish natural water cycles in the urban system while ensuring water quality, river health, and sociocultural values are included. In the selected case studies, water takes a structuring role in urban development, which has been designed to serve diverse public functions and maximize environmental quality, urban renovation, resilience to change and sustainable growth.