Nigel Forrest

Life cycle environmental implications of residential swimming pools.

There are more than 8 million private swimming pools in the U.S. [1][2]. Though known to be prodigious consumers of water and energy, apparently there has been no systematic analysis of their environmental impact to date. Additional impacts arise from pool chemical use and pool construction. Phoenix, Arizona, has one of the highest concentrations of pools in the country [3]. This is despite large evaporative water losses due to the hot, arid climate, and a reliance on imported water supplies [4]. Given this context a hybrid life cycle assessment of Phoenix area residential pools was undertaken to determine their water consumption, energy use and climate change impacts.

Selecting and coordinating local and regional climate change interventions

Local and regional organizations are designing and implementing interventions to mitigate greenhouse gas emissions through various programs and projects. These efforts have been less effective than anticipated, and emissions have continued to rise. Because awareness, intent, planning, and actions are all present, yet results not being achieved, the processes organizations use to select interventions may be insufficient. We derive criteria to assess intervention selection processes from the literature and use them to evaluate the intervention selection processes of a county-wide climate change mitigation initiative in Sonoma County, California. The initiative in Sonoma County is far short of its 2015 emissions reduction goal. Our analysis suggests the initiative’s process has shortcomings including poor coordination, a focus on end-use emissions instead of systemic solutions, and short-term opportunism. We also find that the governance of the county-wide initiative may also have been a significant factor in failing to achieve the goal.

Worth the trouble?!: An evaluative scheme for urban sustainability transition labs (USTLs) and an application to the USTL in Phoenix, Arizona

© 2017 selection and editorial matter, Niki Frantzeskaki, Vanesa Castan Broto, Lars Coenen and Derk Loorbach; individual chapters, the contributors. The world’s population is currently undergoing a significant transition towards urbanisation, with the UN expecting that 70% of people globally will live in cities by 2050. Urbanisation has multiple political, cultural, environmental and economic dimensions that profoundly influence social development and innovation. This fundamental long-term transformation will involve the realignment of urban society’s technologies and infrastructures, culture and lifestyles, as well as governance and institutional frameworks. Such structural systemic realignments can be referred to as urban sustainability transitions: fundamental and structural changes in urban systems through which persistent societal challenges are addressed, such as shifts towards urban farming, renewable decentralised energy systems, and social economies. This book provides new insights into how sustainability transitions unfold in different types of cities across the world and explores possible strategies for governing urban transitions, emphasising the co-evolution of material and institutional transformations in socio-technical and socio-ecological systems. With case studies of mega-cities such as Seoul, Tokyo, New York and Adelaide, medium-sized cities such as Copenhagen, Cape Town and Portland, and nonmetropolitan cities such as Freiburg, Ghent and Brighton, the book provides an opportunity to reflect upon the comparability and transferability of theoretical/conceptual constructs and governance approaches across geographical contexts. Urban Sustainability Transitions is key reading for students and scholars working in Environmental Sciences, Geography, Urban Studies, Urban Policy and Planning.The global process of urbanization has left environmental, economic, and social consequences yet to be understood. One concern of scholars and urban administrators is the resilience of cities; how urban activities can ‘bounce back’ after a significant disturbance, and ‘bounce forward’ through learning and responding to these events (Seeliger and Turok 2013). This maintenance of urban function is salient in the context of cities, as their highly engineered landscapes can leave citizens vulnerable. With large socio-technical systems delivering essential services such as energy, water, transport, housing, and health care, there is an argument that urban populations in developed countries have moved from a modest level of self-reliance to high levels of technical reliance. Natural disasters provide the most frequent evidence of this vulnerability, exposing citizens when failure in large technocratic systems leaves them to provide for their own basic needs. In major cities in some developing countries, those without access to urban infrastructure services may be less reliant on central technologies, but their subsistence within the resources of the urban landscape is a daily struggle, made more difficult in times of crisis.In this concluding chapter, we draw insights from earlier chapters on (i) urban transitions as a key phenomenon and (ii) transition theory, especially the role of place and space therein.

Life cycle environmental implications of residential swimming pools in Phoenix, Arizona

There are more than 8 million private swimming pools in the U.S. [1][2]. Though known to be prodigious consumers of water and energy, apparently there has been no systematic analysis of their environmental impact to date. Additional impacts arise from pool chemical use and pool construction. Phoenix, Arizona, has one of the highest concentrations of pools in the country [3]. This is despite large evaporative water losses due to the hot, arid climate, and a reliance on imported water supplies [4]. Given this context a hybrid life cycle assessment of Phoenix area residential pools was undertaken to determine their water consumption, energy use and climate change impacts.