Abstract
HISTORY/THEORY/ADMINISTRATION
11. Concepts of Planning
11-1 APPROACHES (COMPREHENSIVE/STRATEGIC/COLLABORATIVE)
36-5698
Collaborative planning. Environmental value. Market analysis.
This paper focuses on the contentious transition to viability-driven planning in England, whereby development viability and the potential for land value capture dominate the work of planning. Drawing on interviews and fieldwork in London and the north east of England, the paper reflects on the variable outcomes and challenges in places with different development markets, political cultures, development histories and capacities for action. It finds that viability-driven planning is further entrenching already existing spatial disparities and inequalities and draws conclusions about the state of English urban policy in the context of a broader shift towards the marketisation of planning.
36-5699
Collaboration. Collaborative planning. Design. Design factors.
This paper discusses experimental studios within an incremental collaboration framework to better understand the opportunities of peer-to-peer learning and student collaboration. Using qualitative methods including observation, interviews, peer-evaluations, and descriptive assessments of student work, the study revealed that collaboration can lead to both progression and regression in overall learning processes depending on the approach (mandatory/self-directed), group composition, and how students arrive at common decisions. The findings suggest that a strategically designed studio structure combined with multiple, diversified collaboration strategies are essential to give students successful learning experiences in both explicit and tacit forms.
36-5700
Accessibility. Industrialization. National parks.
This paper describes an integrated approach to transform an industrial park into an eco-industrial park by combining three interconnected goals, namely, the consolidation of industrial symbiosis, the promotion of sustainable accessibility and the development of multi-functionalities. The result is an interdependent approach where industrial and territorial ecosystems are jointly planned, seeking a more sustainable level of development that considers industrial activity, the transportation of people and goods and the spatial articulation with the neighbouring environment and urban areas. The critical points and challenges for improving the territorial integration of the French industrial park of Salaise-Sablons are discussed, providing lessons for the future. Regardless of the specificities of the case study, this approach has the potential to be adopted in similar industrial parks.
36-5701
Europe. Growth. Land use planning. Management.
Urban growth is a key issue for spatial planning as it influences urban patterns and disrupts open landscapes. To effectively steer urban growth towards compact urban forms, many growth-management policies have been developed over recent decades. However, few studies have assessed how municipal policy mixes have evolved over time. In our representative Swiss-wide survey, we evaluated the prevalence and the time of introduction of 18 policies. Our results indicate that large municipalities use a broad range of reinforcing policies over decades. In contrast, small municipalities mostly rely on conventional land-use regulations. The lack of innovative, incentive-based policies casts doubt on small municipalities’ ability to effectively manage urban growth. However, our analyses reveal recent efforts by small municipalities to diversify approaches to growth management and adopt innovative policies. These efforts should be supported by guiding small municipalities in their policy choices, and providing support to those lacking planning capacity.
11-2 PLANNING THEORIES
36-5702
Cultures of resistance. Displacement. Gender. Gender differences.
Urban development and city expansion in Yangon, Myanmar happened through the forced resettlement of people from the city toward the periphery. Forced resettlement has become the main mode of urban production since the British colonisation, and is sustained by laws, orders and policies. Building on Benjamin’s and Agamben’s essays on violence, we claim that it is possible to interrupt the endless cycle of law and violence by locating violence outside the debate around ‘means and ends’. Stemming from the authors’ experience and repeated encounters with practices of social mobilisation of women in Yangon over the last five years, we have traced the potential for deactivating the ‘signature’ of violence in the everyday practices of resistance of urban dwellers in the township of HlaingTharYar in Yangon. Through the incremental occupation, trespassing and building up of peripheral ‘vacant’ land, organised women’s groups are challenging the spatial order established by post/colonial regimes.
36-5703
Colonialism. Development. Governance. Indigenous organizations. Indigenous people.
This paper examines Indigenous property development, drawing on research into the development of treaty settlement lands in Manitoba, Canada, and Canterbury, New Zealand. It highlights two contradicting ways of understanding this work: Indigenous peoples as self-determining, with authority to develop their own urban planning approaches, and Indigenous peoples as conventional property developers, subject to the same rules as any other private interest. This contradiction is used to expose a need for alternative, decolonial ways of understanding relationships between the ‘planner’ and the ‘planned’, grounded in the recognition of overlapping governance roles and responsibilities which Indigenous peoples are now (re)claiming in the urban environment.
36-5704
Education. Empirical research. Health and well-being. Inequality.
The global COVID-19 pandemic is affecting people’s work-life balance across the world. For academics, confinement policies enacted by most countries have implied a sudden switch to home-work, a transition to online teaching and mentoring, and an adjustment of research activities. In this article we discuss how the COVID-19 crisis is affecting our profession and how it may change it in the future. We argue that academia must foster a culture of care, help us refocus on what is most important, and redefine excellence in teaching and research. Such re-orientation can make academic practice more respectful and sustainable, now during confinement but also once the pandemic has passed. We conclude providing practical suggestions on how to renew our practice, which inevitably entails re-assessing the social-psychological, political, and environmental implications of academic activities and our value systems.
36-5705
Conservation planning. Environmental planning. Environmental regulation. European Union.
Debates around the impacts of the UK’s exit from the European Union (‘Brexit’) have exposed the limited critical attention given to how planning systems intersect with environmental protection. This is an important omission, especially given deregulatory pressures on both planning and environment in many countries. In response, this paper uses documentary, interview and focus group data, to conceptualise different regulatory styles governing the environment-planning interface, and assess UK planning practitioner attitudes to EU environmental legislation and scenarios for future change. The data show practitioners largely supporting the fixed standards and robust oversight characteristic of EU environmental regulatory styles, anxious about deregulation, and interested in procedural flexibility. More fundamentally, it also reveals the compromises struck in regulatory design, and the importance of concrete development-environment challenges in constructing arguments for change. Consequently, planning occupies a pivotal position within wider debates about new environmental policy fixes, warranting more extensive professional discussion.
36-5706
Citizenship. Governance. Human settlements. Informal sector. National urbanization.
This paper is in conversation with two important bodies of literature: one on informal settlements (informal and insurgent grassroots practices) and another on camps (spatial practices and governance of refugees). Reading inhabitants’ experiences in Korail, an informal settlement in Dhaka, Bangladesh, through the literature grounded in the experiences of refugees, we seek to contribute to the relational theorization of informal settlements and camps as an expanding and overlapping reality in the era of intensified global displacements. Weaving back and forth between the camp literature and Korail’s reality, we bring to light the comparable spatial practices and governance of the so-called citizens and the so-called stateless. We present the insights we gain from this analytical conversation under three organizing themes: experiential to highlight the precarious relationship of the two groups to citizenship and place, what we call a state of “citizenship in wait” and “in-situ displacement”; institutional to highlight the humanitarian matrices of care that provide governmental structures in both contexts; and micropolitical, to characterize dwellers’ contestations with state and humanitarian governance that constitute the processes of life-making in informal settlements, much as in the camps. Conceptually the paper lends a forceful voice to the mounting critiques of the state-centered canon in planning theories and the needed Southern turn in planning theorization. Politically, it lends a hand to the efforts of activists working to overcome exclusions and erasures that are endemic to the politics of citizenship, that pit refugees against the poor, and to gesture toward forging solidarities for a humane urbanism.
36-5707
City planning. Co-evolution. Environmental nongovernmental organizations. Evolution. Growth.
Mainstream urban planning relies on economic growth to produce social and environmental benefits, but in low-growth areas that relationship is not functional. We argue that urban planning in low-growth areas could reveal new ways to produce welfare by taking action without pre-defining the outcomes. We define such planning as co-evolutionary, and study how urban planners in the City of Turku, Finland, applied it in three low-growth contexts. We conclude that the approach was recognized, but taking action under conditions of uncertainty was challenging. Further, we identify three activities and challenges related to co-evolutionary urban planning in low-growth areas.
36-5708
City planning. Communication technology. Communicative planning. Information and communication technology.
In recent decades cities and urban planning have become increasingly digitised, complex and data rich. Despite this, the planning theory literature has largely ignored the role and impact of information and communication technologies in shaping planning’s ontologies, epistemologies, and methodologies. This article explores empirical studies and three major planning paradigms, to explore the changing role and influence of information and communication technologies (ICTs) on planning theory and practice. Based on this, the paper argues that ICTs are driving a shift towards a more interactive, intelligent, self-organising, and interconnected planning paradigm.
36-5709
Adaptation strategies. Adaptive management. Complexity in planning. Displacement. Food retailing.
Retail decentralisation from town centres has led to international concern. In response, some town centres have planned for retail property development to attract brand name retailers. However, in the context of further decentralisation (including the internet), town centres are experiencing brand name loss and an oversupply of retail space. In order to better assess the nature of the problem and how best to respond, this paper explores and develops conceptual understanding of town centre change and appropriate strategic policy responses. There is a need to rethink place-based change. Town centres should be seen as complex adaptive places, their multi-functionality must be treasured and recognition given to the unpredictability/serendipity of opportunities emerging within them. A delicate balance is required between ‘umbrella’ policies that maintain their core central visitor/community attraction function, deliberate strategies that help develop ‘processes’ of revival and an emergent policy orientation that allows reflective strategic learning as synergies of activity emerge.
36-5710
Canada. Comparative analysis. Decentralization.
My study aims to identify checks and balances in planning systems through a detailed examination of three systems, where rapidly growing urban regions are located. Ontario serves as a prime example for vertical checks on decentralized decisions, mainly via an appeal board and binding planning documents. Horizontal checks predominate in decentralized British Columbia (BC), demonstrating the crucial significance of restraint in decision-making within a balanced triangle of mayor/councillors, planning bureaucracy and community. Checks and balances in centralized Israel have been based on a three-level hierarchy of commissions and plans. The two more centralized systems – Israel and Ontario – are more susceptible to pressures for reform, but exhibit the multidirectional nature of reforms and path-dependent constraints on radical transformations.
36-5711
Complexity in planning. Europe. Land use conflict.
This article argues that applying a polysemic understanding of the concept of ‘social transformation’, in which inclusion-, power-, and subjectification-oriented approaches to social transformation are all taken into account, provides a richer understanding of the transformative dynamics at work in contentious urban planning processes. We illustrate this argument through an empirical investigation of the transformative dynamics in the Oosterweel link road conflict in Antwerp, Belgium. In this case, citizens whose voices were treated as irrelevant presented themselves as equals, altering the symbolic order (subjectification). Through mass mobilisation and legal action, citizen movements gained enough power to form a threat to the government and its plans, forcing the government to invite these movements to the negotiation table (inclusion). The case shows that different forces of transformation intertwine and can be mutually reinforcing in contentious planning processes.
36-5712
Complexity in planning. Continuation. Europe.
The concept of continuous planning (CP) refers to the periodic revisions of master plans in response to uncertainties faced by long-term urban planning. In this paper, we analyse CP practices in two European cities – Stavanger (Norway) and Belgrade (Serbia) and present how they cater for innovative planning tools which respond to the need to balance between both stability and change in long-term planning. We argue that in spite of its limitations, the CP approach adjusted to the local context, contributes to the certainty and stability of urban communities.
11-5 APPLICATIONS/TECHNIQUES
36-5713
Communication technology. Information technology. Models.
This study used georeferenced data and technologies to develop a technique for quantifying natural surveillance characteristics of building openings in 3-dimensions. The natural surveillance model accounted for the specification of observer and target points (occupant and road surveillability), architectural and landscape features, and eyewitness identification distance. Occupant and road surveillability measured surveillability of building openings as seen by neighbours and from roads, respectively. Yard vegetation had a significant impact on reducing occupant surveillability. Solid fencing had a significant effect on the reduction of road surveillability. This technique may be used to expand the study of natural surveillance in urban environments.
36-5714
Complexity in planning. Informal sector. Mapping techniques. Maps.
This article demonstrates a way of analysing planning governance in relation to human settlements and exposes the micro-politics at play that precipitate particular forms of planning in Lima. Adopting a socio-material perspective, it focuses on mundane institutional practices in the production, use and circulation of cartography, to reveal conflicting and competing rationalities. It uncovers the multiple ways the politics of representation play out through omission, inclusion and partial visibility of low-income settlements, as well as the production and reproduction of cartographic palimpsests, giving way to an urban governance regime that works against the normative objectives of the state.
11-7 CITIZEN PARTICIPATION
36-5715
Adaptive management. Ecosystem. Ecosystem conservation. Environmental nongovernmental organizations. Land.
Engaging civil society in conservation activities is an important complementary strategy to counteract ongoing biodiversity decline and loss of ecosystem services. Since 2011, the Swedish Anglers Association (SAA) has cooperated with landowners to restore wetlands nationwide. We investigated factors that enabled or hindered civil society-led wetland restoration in Sweden through interviews and surveys with the SAA’s project leaders and landowners. Principal internal and external factors contributing to the project’s implementation included: flexibility and adaptive management of its leadership; support from authorities and policies; the good reputation of the SAA team; and landowners’ willingness to cooperate. The latter was linked to their feelings of environmental responsibility, the low investment required by them, and expectations of some benefits. We discuss the need to enable adaptive management in environmental management projects, adjust existing policies to their needs, and re-think funding strategies to consider the long-term nature of such projects.
36-5716
Adaptation strategies. Citizen involvement. Citizenship. Governmental legitimacy. Identity.
Citizen-led initiatives raise practical and theoretical questions about the criteria by which their democratic legitimacy should be judged. While existing analytical and normative frameworks are problematically based on a `state’/`citizen’ binary, a network ontology which sees these as strategically-deployed constructs is more practically adequate for analysis. We demonstrate this through a case of a successful citizen initiative, and conclude that such analysis should examine processes of strategic networking, along with claims and constructions of representation and identity. This means not taking participants’ categories, identities, and evaluations for granted, and privileging the possibility of challenge as a fundamental democratic criterion.
36-5717
Citizen participation. City residents. Community participation. Ground transportation systems. Highways. Information costs.
This study investigates resident satisfaction with provided involvement activities during highway planning processes, with particular attention given to the planned Southern Ring Road highway project in Groningen, the Netherlands. In-depth interviews with 38 residents living in the project area reveal important themes contributing to satisfaction. Satisfaction with passive information activities is motivated by the extent to which information addresses concerns, but (dis)trust in government and other information sources also plays a role. For residents preferring to obtain additional information, perceived access to such information and the extent to which it reduces concerns are also important to satisfaction. Finally, for residents who would rather participate actively, satisfaction is motivated by their perceived access to participation activities and the sense of being heard. Study results show how residents’ evaluations of the themes underpinning involvement satisfaction are based on their perceptions of actual project team activities and contextual factors.
36-5718
Citizen participation. Community participation. Environmental planning. Implementation.
Although planning scholars often argue that public participation improves implementation outcomes, this relationship is rarely empirically tested. This study investigates how public engagement, during planning and after plan adoption, impacts on the speed of local government sustainability plan implementation. It includes a correlation analysis of quantized in-depth interviews with sustainability planners in 36 American cities. The study finds that individual characteristics of public engagement, both during planning and after plan adoption, had statistically significant relationships to implementation speed, but in some cases this relationship was negative. The correlations imply that sustainability planners can make strategic choices to improve implementation speed through public participation in plan creation and after plan adoption. Alternatively, planners also make choices during participatory planning that slow implementation, a problematic outcome when the ultimate goal of a planning process is on-the-ground change.
36-5719
Endangered species. Functionality. Habitat. Motivation.
Volunteers play an important role in the management of natural habitats. Understanding what motivates volunteers to join conservation initiatives and how motivations change over time is essential to enhance the environmental and social benefits of their engagement. Using a repeated qualitative survey and semi-structured interviews, we explore volunteers’ initial and sustained motivations in the management of the invasive tree mallow (Lavatera arborea) on Scottish seabird islands. Caring for nature, the performance of volunteering activities, and social interactions were the main drivers of involvement. Over time, motivations were shaped by the interplay between individual expectations and experiences with the social and ecological context. They changed from identifiable functions to more complex attachments to the place and the group. We discuss the limitations of functional methodologies in making sense of these attachments and of the performative nature of environmental volunteering. We then explore the practical implications of the dynamics of volunteering motivations.
36-5720
Citizen participation. City planning. Community participation. Equality.
We examine how urban planners in Helsinki work as intermediaries to “balance power” between actively participating citizens and more marginalised groups – citizens who do not traditionally participate – in online discussions about urban planning. We study the tensions planners experience while interacting with citizens in online environments, especially on social media. Using a questionnaire and interviews, we report on tensions between planners’ perceptions of active vs. passive roles in social media, equal vs. equitable opportunities to participate, and sides in the debate over allocation of resources. The study shows that engaging marginalised groups requires offline interventionist strategies.
36-5721
Citizenship. City planning. Competition.
This paper describes the formation of the planning issue ‘Nordic Superblock’ through the early planning phase of the Hiedanranta area in Tampere, Finland. The workshops with citizens and professionals as participants, held after a planning competition, were an important part of the area’s initial planning. The paper argues that the superblock issue emerged because the institutional context differed from the traditional zoning process. Furthermore, the issue itself challenged the traditional planning process and the current urban development regime. The case is a promising example of the outcome of expert–citizen interaction; however, it also reveals some bottlenecks in the planning process.
36-5722
Citizen participation. Community participation. Environmental planning.
This paper presents an agile participatory urban soundscape planning process model, which is proposed as a prerequisite on which to build and reference the efficacy of urban soundscape planning. The model was developed through data synthesis and analysis and mapping engagement with diverse stakeholders across four applied soundscape projects in Brighton and Hove, UK. To the best of the authors’ knowledge, the model is the first of its kind in applied soundscape practice. The data was collected through semi-structured interviews with key stakeholders and document analysis of published resources. The framework used for the analysis of the findings comprised four core urban planning stages: goals and objectives, engagement (e.g. prediction/modelling/design/planning), implications, evaluation. The study found that when integrating soundscape planning with core urban planning stages it was necessary to first identify the appropriate stakeholders in relation to the project context. It was found that these stakeholders could be wide-ranging and unexpected, thereby reinforcing the appropriateness of incorporating an agile approach in the resulting model. The study also found that users’ perceptions are central to soundscape practice and need to be considered at each stage of a planning process to produce an effective and sustainable outcome. A variety of specific events, appropriate to the requirements of the stakeholders, are important for engaging planning authorities, users and other stakeholders at different stages. This study also demonstrated that an evidence-based evaluation method is recommended in an agile participatory urban soundscape planning process to assess stakeholders’ engagement at each stage and to inform and guide subsequent steps in the planning process relevant to the local context(s).
14. Planning and Society
14-6 CRIME/DELINQUENCY
36-5723
Community. Crime. Crime rates.
In Caracas’s barrios, criminal and religious activities accompanied by flexible community dynamics influence residents’ social construction of their territory. This article presents how these activities continuously reshape conceptualizations: the public, private, community and spatial boundaries of barrios. By applying a qualitative approach to interpreting participants’ perspectives, the relationship between criminality and religiosity, and their link to territory are analysed. The study shows that criminal gangs privatize barrio public spaces, and that through Catholic processions those spaces become public again, thus demonstrating the temporality and flexibility of the public-private and territorial conceptions.
14-7 HEALTH/EDUCATION/SOCIAL SERVICES
36-5724
Age differences. Choice model. Mortality.
This study reports the results from a discrete choice experiment conducted in Beijing China. It aims to elicit monetary values for the value of a statistical life (VSL) and the value of a statistical illness (VSI) that can be considered for policy purposes in China, and to examine how different payment regimes influence willingness to pay (WTP) and whether WTP is age-dependent. We find that our estimates are robust between different econometric model specifications and that they are reliable when compared to previous Chinese findings. We find no evidence of any VSL–age relationship but we find that the payment scheme had an effect on the levels of the estimates of the VSL and VSI, and that taking into account the payment regimes when estimating the models improved their performance. However, levels were relatively close and not statistically significantly different for VSL which may suggest that respondents considered both schemes as similar.
METHODOLOGY/QUANTITATIVE/ECONOMIC/QUALITATIVE
22. Economics
22-6 SPATIAL ANALYSIS/MODELS
36-5725
Cost-benefit analysis. Economic modeling. Economic planning. Economy. Environment. Environmental economics.
This paper develops a new method for evaluating benefit estimates prepared for major environmental rules and addresses three criticisms of existing practices: (1) using benefit estimates from the literature without adjusting for the conceptual differences underlying their meaning, (2) ignoring feedback effects of policy, and (3) failing to recognize the potential for economy-wide effects of large policies. Our approach adapts a general equilibrium framework characteristic of macroeconomic models and focuses on the effects of introducing nonmarket environmental services into the aggregate or “stand-in” preference function. Two recent policies illustrate how it can be used to assess economy-wide effects.
22-7 ECONOMIC THEORY
36-5726
Agricultural policy. Agriculture. Farmland preservation. Models.
Many farmland valuation studies rely on survey estimates to form the dependent variable in a first-stage hedonic model. This study, based in New York State, provides a microscale comparison of transaction prices and producers’ market value estimates from the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s June Area Survey. Although we find similar weighted value distributions, regression results identify differences in marginal effect estimates and illustrate how market thinness plays a role in the comparability of observed transaction prices and self-reported values. The findings have implications for future hedonic studies, including insights into behavioral differences concerning how farmers and market participants perceive the value of farmland.
PHYSICAL/ENVIRONMENTAL
30. Housing and Real Estate
30-1 HOUSING/REAL ESTATE POLICY
36-5727
Cultural justice. Design. Housing.
This paper examines a public housing project conceived with a progressive commitment to socio-spatial inclusion in Bogota. With a focus on comprehensive planning goals, implementation processes, urban design features, and resident reactions, we show how and why the project’s form and function failed to address inhabitants’ livability concerns. After tracing this outcome to a mismatch between city-wide policy goals and neighbourhood-level actions, reinforced by divergent professional assumptions, we argue that the theory and practice of social justice planning should better take into account the mismatches of scale of well-intentioned progressive ideals, if such outcomes are to be avoided.
36-5728
Common property. Housing. Land-use planning.
A combination of development constraint, low wages in seasonal employment and market intrusion by more affluent households generates housing access and affordability difficulties in many rural amenity areas. In response, residents’ groups and public planners have sometimes sought to prioritise ‘local needs’, restricting the occupancy of new housing to key workers or others deemed ‘local’. Drawing on examples from England, this paper illustrates how these down-stream interventions are often rendered ineffective by the upstream and structural drivers of housing access inequality, revealing a need for up-stream reforms focused on community control of land and the tax treatment of housing.
31. Energy
31-1 ENERGY POLICY
36-5729
Efficiency. Energy efficiency. Environment. Local networks.
In this paper, we focus on assessing airline environmental efficiency with network structure and build a three-stage efficiency production process. Then, we propose a new model, network range-adjusted measure with weak-G disposability, to measure the environmental efficiency of 29 global airlines based on the data from 2008 to 2015. Finally, a second-stage regression analysis is done to explore the important influencing factors. The main findings are as follows: (1) Eva Air is the airline with the highest efficiency among these 29 airlines; (2) Delta is at the bottom of the efficiency ranking among the 29 airlines and this result is in correlation with its old aircraft fleet; (3) the average efficiency change index in 2014 is the highest in the period 2009–2015; (4) only average fleet age has a slightly significant impact on the overall efficiency and Services efficiency.
36-5730
Buildings. Energy conservation. Energy policy. Institutional barriers. Motivation.
The willingness of private individuals in Israel to invest in energy-saving retrofit of the envelope of residential buildings was studied by means of a survey. Responses show that awareness of the need to conserve energy is high, but that willingness to participate in a retrofit project is modest and is limited to relatively small outlays. The decision on whether to retrofit at all, and then how much to invest in the project, is characterized as a two-stage process in which different factors may affect the outcome of each of the two stages. The major barrier to building retrofit is the perception (justified, in most cases) that the direct economic benefit to the homeowner from the resulting energy saving is small, and that given Israel’s relatively mild climate, the payback period is very long. The stamp of approval provided by a government subsidy of 25% would have a large non-proportional effect on willingness to undertake building retrofit. Funding for the subsidy could be obtained from a Pigovian levy on electricity, applied for a limited period, and its environmental benefits outweigh the cost of the subsidy itself.
36-5731
Community. Energy planning. Energy policy. Local environmental planning.
Any discussion of distributed energy systems inevitably centres on how they compare with the large energy systems, i.e. the traditional centralised model of energy production, and on the viability of local energy systems as alternatives in terms of efficiency and sustainability. At present, the debate on local energy systems and distributed energy production hinges mainly on questions of technology and engineering; at most, some reflections on economy are thrown in. What we believe is essential is to cast the net wider and include other dimensions. In particular, we also need to consider in greater depth the organisational and institutional issues involved – until now, less considered and discussed. In this perspective, the main question addressed by the present article is if and how new forms of local organisations can provide the crucial catalyst for a new polycentric distributed energy scenario.
36-5732
Development. Environmental policy. Evaluation. Livelihoods. Managerial perspective.
The implementation of large-scale programmes for environment and development presents two main challenges: the tensions between both goals and the disconnect across policy levels. To contribute to overcoming these challenges, we assess a national multi-partnership programme for poverty alleviation and wetland restoration in South Africa: Working for Wetlands. We analyse this innovative polycentric programme at the macro and micro levels. At the national level, we assess the policy development and implementation model. At the local level, we analyse its impact on livelihoods and on opinions about development and the environment at a specific location. We use data from in-depth interviews across scales, household surveys (n = 47) and focus group discussions. The strengths of this programme can inform more effective design of further large-scale environment and development policies. However, critical issues originated at the national scale are likely to hinder the permanence of improvements at the micro level.
31-2 ENERGY MODELING
36-5733
Citizen participation. Citizenship. Energy planning. Energy policy. Infrastructure.
In many countries, any substantial increase in the share of renewable energy will require a reinforcement of the electricity transmission grid. We examine the value added by Multi-Criteria Decision Aiding (MCDA), which may support decisions on corridor alternatives for grid reinforcement by including stakeholder preferences. We present the results of a role-playing game to verify whether stakeholders can agree on a priority ranking of criteria for MCDA and whether this agreement can foster acceptance for the outcome of the process. Our results show that agreement among participants on criteria ranking during a common elicitation of the importance of criteria is significantly related to acceptance of the outcome as provided by the MCDA. Additionally, this method creates a common ground for generating acceptable solutions for subsequent steps in planning transmission lines. Our findings suggest that MCDA may generate higher stakeholder acceptance through the common and active inclusion of different actors in grid planning decisions.
31-4 ENERGY RESOURCES/ALTERNATIVES
36-5734
Alternative fuels. Collaborative planning. Collaborative policy making. Energy conservation.
Solar energy policy has become controversial in Virginia and many other states. Proponents point to its environmental, public health, and economic development benefits, and argue that it can help support electric grid operations. However, detractors, including many electric utilities, contend that the growth of customer-owned, distributed solar energy systems will create costs that must be passed on to ratepayers. This article presents a case study in which the authors led a multi-faceted Solar Stakeholder Group to evaluate the costs and benefits of distributed solar energy in Virginia. We examine this project in the context of collaborative planning theory, finding that it created shared learning among participants and facilitated greater understanding of opposing viewpoints, but did not produce a consensus vision for future action. We also note some of the Stakeholder Group’s broader contributions to the ‘value-of-solar’ debate and discuss its implications for future distributed solar energy efforts in Virginia.
32. Environment
32-1 ENVIRONMENTAL POLICY
36-5735
City management. City planning. Data. Metropolitan areas.
Mismanagement of urban runoff can result in inundation which causes serious problems in providing urban services. Best management practices (BMPs) are used for urban runoff management. In this study, a method is proposed to determine the robust optimal set of BMPs for runoff management in data-poor catchments in urban areas. This method includes five main steps: (1) Sensitivity analysis to determine effective parameters in rainfall-runoff simulation model, (2) Calibration of the rainfall-runoff model based on selected effective parameters, (3) Developing a multi-objective optimization model to obtain the optimal sets of BMPs, (4) Selecting the final solutions using the Nash approach for ranking, (5) Evaluation of the robustness of the selected solution using the Management Option Rank Equivalence method. The proposed method is examined in an urban basin located in the north of Tehran, Iran. The results show that the proposed approach provides reliable results for urban runoff management in data-poor areas.
36-5736
Environmental knowledge. Environmental management. Environmental policy. Green areas. Information technology. Knowledge.
Exploiting a balanced panel data set for 103 Italian provinces over the year 1999–2010, we study the effect of technological improvements, environmental policy and their interactions on waste management performance. The results point to the existence of both complementarity and substitution effects between green technological change and environmental policies. Moreover, we extend the baseline analysis to study whether knowledge spillovers play a role in affecting waste management options such as recycling, incineration and landfilling. To account for technological spillovers, we constructed an indicator that sums the patent stock of neighbouring provinces. The evidence suggests that knowledge stock has a positive impact on recycling and knowledge spillovers influence both recycling and incineration.
36-5737
Carbon dioxide. Emissions. Environment. Environmental economics. Environmental planning.
The purpose of this paper is to investigate the impact of environmentally related taxes on carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions in the EU member states. The paper uses a dynamic panel threshold regression model to determine the nonlinear relationship between environmental taxes and CO2 emissions in 15 EU member countries between 1995 and 2013. The results confirm asymmetrical relationships, in which the thresholds of the environmental taxes for total environmental taxes, energy taxes (including CO2 taxes), transport taxes, and taxes on pollution and resources are 3.02%, 2.20%, 0.88%, and 0.23%, respectively. The findings reveal that, after exceeding the threshold level, the effect of environmentally related taxes (excluding transport taxes) on CO2 emissions changes from insignificantly positive to significantly negative. However, the analysis shows a significant effect of transport taxes on CO2 emissions neither below nor above the threshold.
36-5738
Environmental governance. Environmental policy. Local wage tax. Market transition.
The burgeoning literature on sustainable transitions links persistent environmental problems to the functioning of socio-technical systems. Conventional policy instruments, such as environmental taxation, are often rejected by transition scholars but in-depth studies on their potential are scarce. This paper explores the potential of the instrument of environmental taxation for influencing sustainability transitions. The multi-level perspective and the multi-phase perspective from transition thinking and the social practices approach are combined with the environmental economics theories of Pigou and Coase. Our analysis shows that the highest impact of regulatory taxation will be realised at the end of the take-off phase and in the acceleration phase of a transition. Although important barriers exist and many conditions apply, regulatory environmental taxation, especially as part of a smart policy mix, has more potential for contributing to sustainability transitions than hitherto assumed.
36-5739
Carbon dioxide. Emissions. Greenhouses. Investing. Investment.
The Specified Gas Emitters Regulation (SGER) in Alberta, Canada was the first North American regulation to mandate reductions in greenhouse gas emissions. Regulated entities may use carbon offsets to meet their emissions reduction obligations. Although conceptually sound, the offset market has fallen short of its potential to reduce emissions. By analyzing the policies and operations of the Alberta Emissions Offset System (AEOS), enabled by the SGER, we illustrate how participants are impacted by uncertainty in the Alberta carbon offset development process, using ECB Lethbridge Biogas as a case study. Our analysis shows that existing uncertainty from regulation creates risk for projects, which builds barriers that prevent regulated entities, project developers, and the province of Alberta from reaching the full potential of the regulation. We provide recommendations that will help to achieve additionality within the offset system by encouraging increased participation from high-quality projects, ultimately resulting in greater emission reductions.
36-5740
Alternative fuels. Australia. Community. Energy planning. Environmental regulation.
Regulatory failure occurs in diverse and complex circumstances, especially in environmental regulation. The response of policy-makers and regulators to regulatory failure often follows a predictable pattern, with the imposition of increased prescriptive regulatory approaches. This phenomenon has been described as regulatory pendulum swing. If the regulatory failure causes immediate and obvious harm to people or the environment such an approach may be appropriate. However, where the community loses trust in regulatory regimes where harm is less evident, a response of this nature may do little to restore trust. This research examined a case study of coal seam gas regulation in New South Wales, Australia, using a regulatory trust typology. The typology’s dimensions of expertise, stewardship and transparency provided a useful framework to understand regulatory failure and regulatory trust, and for evaluating the responses of policy-makers and regulators to public concerns over coal seam gas development.
36-5741
Carbon dioxide. Emission control. Emissions. Land prices.
With the growing anxiety over global warming, some groups have advocated the mandatory carbon labeling of products, whereas other groups have opposed such labeling. How consumers respond to carbon labels is a key question with important implications for both policy-makers and managers. Using a random nth-price auction experiment together with a questionnaire, we systematically examined the extent to which Chinese consumers care about environmental impacts and how their willingness to pay (WTP) is influenced by carbon labels. We have determined that WTP significantly increases for products with added carbon labels and decreases when the carbon emissions of a product increase. This response to carbon information disclosure is influenced by factors such as the gender and awareness of environmental pollution by the consumer. This study offers valuable insights to policy-makers and managers for carbon labeling promotion and product positioning.
36-5742
Development. Environment. Environmental governance. Environmental indicators. Local environmental planning.
Single territories contribute in different ways to the transition towards a more environmentally sustainable development (SD), according to their structural features. This study returns a multi-dimensional picture of the territorial divides of environmental sustainability across Italy, analysing how it correlates with rurality, with a focus on the urban–rural continuum. Italy represents an interesting case study because of its peculiar territorial urban–rural structure. We first assess the environmental sustainability targets across Italian NUTS 3 regions and their capital cities using two composite sustainability indexes, by referring to both standard values (i.e. conforming to legislation) and optimum values (i.e. desired values). Then, we investigate the relationship between environmental sustainability and rurality. Results suggest that a positive link between the two exists, being stronger at city level. Among major policy implications, the environmental dimensions of territorial cohesion should be integrated more strongly in key European policies to reach a more balanced SD.
36-5743
Boundaries. Common interest. Environmental governance. Governance.
This article deals with the subject of finding common ground in urban governance networks. A theoretical model is developed in which three potential facilitating factors of common ground, i.e. trust, consensus orientation, and boundary spanning activity, are investigated. We have used Structural Equation Modeling in testing the relationships. We have made use of the results of survey research into urban governance networks in the Netherlands. We have selected urban projects and respondents from the four biggest cities in the Netherlands: Amsterdam, Rotterdam, the Hague, and Utrecht to conduct the survey research. We have found that all three factors have a significant relationship with developing common ground in urban governance networks, and can therefore be considered important facilitating factors of common ground.
36-5744
Analysis. Conservation planning. Environmental policy.
Sardinia hosts 186 endemic plant species and represents an important centre for Mediterranean biodiversity. In view of the threats facing its flora, 27 terrestrial vascular plants have been listed in international regulations and 124 sites designated for species and habitat conservation. This study analyses gaps in the Natura 2000 network and the current and future distribution of four representative plants. Each plant population was georeferenced and the effectiveness of the Natura 2000 network was compared according to conservation status and distribution. Future species distributions were modelled by considering current climatic conditions and future scenarios. In apparent discordance with other results, we found that the Natura 2000 network represents most plant species well. This research shows a forward-looking survey on the regional effectiveness of protection measures which led us to confirm the need to enhance the current state of the Natura 2000 network by implementing local legislation and regulations.
36-5745
Climate. Climate change. Conservation planning. Energy efficiency. Municipal governments.
Little is known about municipal planning for energy reduction and climate change in conservative areas of the United States, where opposition to environmentalism is often vocal and persistent. This paper analyzes the experience of 31 municipalities in the Dallas-Fort Worth region of Texas implementing the federal energy efficiency and conservation block grant. A qualitative case study approach and extensive interviews with municipal staff yield a detailed description of the political discourse of energy issues and climate change planning. Many municipalities used the grant funds for necessary maintenance projects and had little impact on long-term energy independence or climate change leadership. A subset of municipalities expressed fear of citizen disapproval and some experienced significant opposition that changed or halted their efforts. Based on effective initiatives and common challenges, recommendations are made to foster energy and climate planning in conservative regions and improve implementation of national policies on the local level.
36-5746
Development. Economic value. Growth. Investment. Mining. Mining industry.
The importance of global corporate green research and development (R&D) investment is gaining momentum and South Africa is no exception. This paper examines growing economic perceptions that green financial and stock-market systems result in heightened corporate hyperopia and therefore increase long-term and future green investment associated with R&D. It reports on the findings of a survey of 14 South African mining firms listed on the Johannesburg Stock Exchange SRI index. The study found, that, these firms’ market value showed a positive association with Green R&D. It also revealed increased Green R&D activity among large mining firms in the country and that they are highly likely to maintain their level of such investment in the coming years. The study’s outcomes thus add to the body of empirical knowledge on firm hyperopia in relation to corporate greening initiatives.
36-5747
Cost estimates. Cost-benefit analysis. Environmental pollution. Environmental quality.
Individuals contribute significant sums to environmental organizations, such as water-related groups, whose goals are to preserve and improve local water quality. These groups also fundraise to support these goals. However, the social cost of water pollution lacks contributions to water groups and their fundraising expenditures. If contributions and fundraising respond to changes in local water quality, there is a willingness to contribute toward mitigation of water pollution. Social costs should count these values. We provide proof of concept for this argument, showing significant evidence of local water quality affecting contributions to environmental nonprofits, as well as fundraising expenditures.
36-5748
Environment. Environmental planning. Environmental policy. Health.
I-ACT is a theoretical framework designed to guide environmental health improvement efforts. I-ACT identifies four interacting drivers of change that influence an environmental health aim: (1) Information systems; (2) public Awareness; (3) leadership and Coordination; and, (4) Tools. Actors can use I-ACT to clarify roles and identify strategies to impact their aim. Here, we apply the I-ACT framework to a ubiquitous environmental hazard, noise pollution, comparing three Western countries: the United States, the Netherlands, and the United Kingdom. Our approach statutorily defines each country’s designated aims, qualitatively evaluates its information systems, awareness, coordination, and tools, and assesses the role of these drivers in achieving the aims. While the Netherlands and the United Kingdom demonstrated robust activity for some drivers, the United States showed limited activity and achievement. There appeared to be an association between achievement of aims and demonstrated elements of each driver, providing support for the utility of I-ACT.
36-5749
Choice model. Environmental policy. Households.
This study employs a unique household-level data-set to investigate the effectiveness of various waste separation policies under consideration of local socioeconomic contexts. Our results confirm previous findings that most demographic factors are generally not statistically significant. The findings suggest that waste separation knowledge, social capital, free provision of sortable containers and community collecting recyclables are positively associated with household involvement in waste separation. More importantly, while an increase in the garbage fee motivates non-sorting households to separate their waste into two categories of recyclables and non-recyclables, it also crowds out households’ preexisting motivations for sorting waste into three or more categories. The introduction of a garbage fee indeed substitutes rather than complements free provision of sortable containers and community collection of recyclables. Apart from actively fostering the creation of social capital, local authorities should, therefore, comprehensively design a compatible policy mix to adjust and optimize current management schemes for enhancing waste management practices.
36-5750
Decision support. Environmental management. Environmental policy.
Due to growing environmental challenges, the demand for effective management through pro-environmental policy measures is increasing. The effectiveness is, however, largely determined by the degree to which the policy measures are supported by the actors affected by them. A consistent finding in the literature is that ideology (or subjective positioning on the left–right dimension) affects environmental policy support, with left-leaning individuals being more pro-environmental. A major caveat with previous research is that it seldom makes a distinction between different kinds of policies. Therefore, we are concerned with investigating how different ideological positions affect attitudes towards different forms of environmental protection. Using unique survey data, we show that ideology is related to conceptions about the fairness and effectiveness of different policy tools, which in turn steer preferences. In that sense, this paper makes the discussion on the effects of ideological position on pro-environmental policy support more nuanced.
36-5751
Adaptation. Adaptive management. Environmental management. Governance. Local networks. Management networks.
What supports the adaptive capacity of watershed governance? Using document review, interviews, and network diagrams, we analyze how structural attributes of a governance network emerged and co-evolved with changes in biophysical conditions in a case study of a small watershed in northeast Ohio. Results indicate that the network governance structure that emerged evolved to become a hybrid of two different structural forms that diversified stakeholder engagement, generated social capital, improved social learning, and stimulated change in management practices, all of which have enhanced adaptive capacity. A significant challenge to adaptive capacity arises, however, as network governance has come to rely significantly on a centralized organization to broker relationships for information and other resources.
36-5752
City planning. Equity. Metropolitan areas.
Beaches are a unique type of recreation setting, offering a variety of water- and land-based opportunities that can meet residents’ diverse and complex recreation needs. Providing and improving equitable access to recreation amenities such as beaches have been recognized as essential responsibilities of public leisure agencies. This study assessed the degree of equity inherent in the distribution of public beaches in the Detroit metropolitan area; to account for spatial effects, phenomena rarely considered in prior equity analyses, geographically weighted regression was employed. Considerable local variations in the relationships between level of access to public beaches and population density, proportion of elderly population and educational attainment were identified. Such findings can help parks and recreation agencies better understand local patterns of equity, an important first step in facilitating the formulation of more efficient and effective planning and policy approaches.
36-5753
Agricultural science. Environmental policy. Europe. European integration.
Access to the EU leads to a process of policy convergence in which member states’ institutions and policy cultures become increasingly adapted to align with an EU governance system. Especially in EU environmental policy, knowledge and expertise are key aspects of the institutions and policy cultures that are adapted in this process, which ideally results in the alignment of EU policy and administrative arrangements of member states. This paper offers a historical analysis of the Nitrates Directive’s implementation in Poland and shows how increasing convergence of Polish institutions and cultures of expertise with EU policy occurred in response to the directive’s requirements. The results highlight that (1) knowledge and expertise are central to policy convergence processes and that (2) institutions and cultures of expertise are entwined in ‘infrastructures of expertise’. The paper concludes with a call for more consideration of the science–policy interface in policy convergence processes related to Europeanisation.
36-5754
Environmental modeling. Environmental planning. Ground water.
This article examines the relationship between water right priority and value of use for rights defined by prior appropriation, and tests whether this relationship is different for rights that have been transferred from their original locations to new locations, versus those that have not. We develop an empirical model using data for agricultural irrigation water rights and show that for transferred water rights, more senior (higher-priority) rights are reallocated from lower-to higher-valued agricultural uses. For water rights that remained unchanged, we find that priority order and potential profitability, as indicated by land characteristics, are not well aligned.
36-5755
Climate policy. Environmental policy. Environmental protection.
The servicising approach in vineyard protection is considered a valid alternative to achieve decoupling between the economic and environmental performance of viticulture. In this paper, a policy package is designed to promote the uptake of a servicised model of vineyard protection in an area of smallholding viticulture. In doing so, a specific methodology based on a step by step protocol has been followed that aims to come up with a package that is effective, implementable and socially as well as politically acceptable. The paper concludes on the importance of combining several policy instruments in a policy package to realise the political objective. The proposed viable policy package includes incentives that support the companies’ shift towards offering crop protection solutions, further development of IPM solutions and instruments that encourage farmers to reduce the use of pesticides and collectively hire crop protection services.
36-5756
Environmental planning. Environmental protection. Governmental legitimacy. Information and communication technology.
In the Russian Arctic, nature protection is important to preserve valuable ecosystems and indigenous lifestyles against the rapidly expanding oil and gas activities. In this regard, zoning legitimately balances influential stakeholders versus weak ones, and can leverage stakeholders to exercise their rights. This study explores how various stakeholders employ zoning in the Numto Nature Park in the oil-rich Russian Khanty-Mansi Autonomous Okrug–Yugra to advance their interests and how they use scientific information to achieve this. Through stakeholder interviews, analysis of electronic media and literature review, we conclude that a participatory and science-based zoning exercise stimulates the necessary deliberation. However, legal ambiguity, deficient law implementation and informal practices limit the zoning’s potential to balance stakeholders’ interests. All the stakeholders calculatingly used scientific information to legitimize their own ambitions, activities and claims. Hence, zoning and the underlying information claims should be interpreted as both a resource and a battleground in nature-use conflicts.
36-5757
Ecosystem. Green areas. Green space planning.
This article considers legal models for creating new commons as a community resource (‘green space’) in English law. It presents a strategy for creating ‘new’ commons to ‘re-purpose’ land for public recreation and to (re)-connect people and nature. This will require the creation of common rights – a species of private property right – over private land, to facilitate its registration as common land with open public recreational access. The article considers the types of private property right appropriate and necessary to achieve this overriding purpose, and considers the narratives of locality and identity which this model for ‘new commons’ could engender. Victorian philanthropists such as Sir Robert Hunter and Octavia Hill led a defensive response to the ‘old’ enclosure movement. Establishing ‘new commons’ would, by contrast, start to address some of the concerns raised by the ‘new’ enclosure movement, by offering a vision for a model of urban common that can provide spaces for human interaction, interdependence and cooperation from which no one is excluded. This would also contribute to addressing key modern public policy objectives for reconnecting people and nature, and contribute to the development of cultural ecosystem services of the kind envisaged by the UK National Ecosystem Assessment and the Biodiversity 2020 strategy for England.
36-5758
Climate change. Climate policy. Environmental policy. Europe. Mass transportation.
Different policy approaches and responses to common environmental challenges, such as climate change, exist between countries, and sometimes even within countries. This situation arises because public policy-makers are not only driven by concerns of theoretical purity but are also influenced by a range of social, political, economic, cultural and administrative matters when selecting techniques or instruments to achieve specific policy goals. This article examines whether the diversity of stated policy instruments to tackle climate change mitigation in the transport sector can be explained according to national policy preferences in a European context. It also investigates whether the mix of national climate change policy instruments for transport exhibits temporal stability, even after national changes in political power. To do so, the article reviews a series of national policy documents that address climate change in the transport sector in four European countries with contrasting administrative traditions – France, Germany, Sweden and the United Kingdom.
36-5759
Collaboration. Collaborative planning. Efficiency. Environmental management. Governance. Management. Natural resource development.
While collaborative governance has many benefits for environmental planning and management, those benefits are not politically feasible if they impact on process efficiency. This study assesses collaboration’s effect on the duration of water permitting processes, specifically the United States’ Federal Energy Regulatory Commission’s hydropower relicensing process. Collaboration was measured using a survey of participants in 24 recent hydropower relicensing processes. A Cox proportional hazards model with mixed effects assessed the relationship between collaboration, regulatory framework, hydropower facility characteristics, and relicensing process duration. Collaboration was not associated with time to license. Instead, process duration depended on the regulatory framework (especially the switch to the Integrated Licensing Process and presence of endangered species) and facility characteristics (generating capacity and facility type). The results suggest that agencies should consider engaging collaboratively during planning and permitting, given that collaboration’s benefits to decision quality do not incur a cost on overall process time.
36-5760
Australia. Carbon dioxide. Climate. Climate change. Climate policy. Governance. Innovation. Mitigation.
This paper seeks to better understand the possible paradox of frontrunners in experimental climate governance. This paradox refers to the situation where frontrunners are required to push boundaries in terms of developing governance innovations and to experiment with these, but where, at the same time, a too strong focus on frontrunners may result in a situation where lessons from these experiments and the innovations developed do not resonate with the majority. In such a situation, an innovation may not be capable of being scaled up or of being transferred to another context. This paper draws lessons from a series of nine experimental and innovative governance instruments for low-carbon building development and transformation in Australia. It points out that for these instruments the frontrunners paradox provides a partial explanation as to why they have not yet been able to scale up from a small group of industry leaders to the large majority.
32-2 ENVIRONMENTAL MODELING
36-5761
Environmental planning. Environmental policy. Environmental quality.
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) often requires expertise from environmental assessors, hydrologists, economists, and others to analyze the benefits of regional and national policy decisions related to changes in water quality. This led the EPA to develop two models to form an integrated assessment model: HAWQS is a web-based water quantity and quality modeling system, and BenSPLASH is a modeling platform for quantifying the economic benefits of changes in water quality. This paper discusses the development of the component models and applies HAWQS and BenSPLASH to a case study in the Republican River basin.
36-5762
Archaeology. Ecotourism. Europe.
The paper discusses conditions and format of a cluster model to support the management of a potential creative tourism destination in a setting where regional cross-sectoral collaboration is lacking. Creative tourism development requires a flexible framework and a healthy collaboration environment, more so when associated with resources shared by several stakeholders. This article focuses on the tourism potential of archaeological knowledge discovered during the environmental impact assessment of the Alqueva dam (Alentejo, Portugal). Interviews were conducted with 38 regional actors in the tourism and heritage sectors, as well as the dam developers and the companies responsible for archaeological interventions. Findings indicate that the lack of specific local policy addressing archaeological heritage hampers its potential use for tourism development, which is further aggravated by the absence of stakeholder communication and cooperation. A conceptual cluster model for the management of creative tourism destinations based on heritage resources and other local resources is proposed.
36-5763
Conservation planning. Cost-benefit analysis. Models.
Many biophysical models exhibit epistasis (interdependence), where a conservation action impacts the effectiveness of another elsewhere. At the same time, ranking conservation actions according to the independent benefit-to-cost ratios is cost-efficient when epistasis is absent. We use benefit-to-cost rankings as starting points for an evolutionary algorithm employing an epistatic biophysical model. We model a variety of conservation actions to assess trade-offs for sediment reduction and wildlife conservation in the study watershed. We find that despite the presence of epistasis, the weighted benefit-to-cost ratio-derived solutions perform remarkably well in the decision space, but effects in objective space need the model evaluation.
36-5764
Adaptive behavior. Behavior. Citizen participation. Community participation. Environmental management. Green areas. Infrastructure.
Voluntary residential green infrastructure (GI) stormwater management retrofit programs can help cities comply with environmental regulations while also improving quality of life. Previous research has identified influential factors in residents’ willingness to adopt GI, but few have simultaneously studied the spatial and temporal dynamics of GI. I use a six-year record of participation in a voluntary residential GI program in Washington DC to explore how neighborhood characteristics and social influence affect GI adoption over time. Statistical regression and Monte Carlo permutation resampling techniques are used to explain the spatial-temporal patterns of growth of the program. I demonstrate empirical evidence that participation location is increasingly determined by the locations of previous participants. These findings suggest that past participants will increasingly influence spatial clustering of GI in the city.
36-5765
Economic modeling. Environmental management. Management.
We develop the first spatially integrated economic-hydrologic model of the western Lake Erie basin explicitly linking economic models of farmers’ field-level best management practice (BMP) adoption choices with the Soil and Water Assessment Tool to evaluate nutrient management policy cost-effectiveness. We quantify trade-offs among phosphorus reduction policies and find that a hybrid policy coupling a fertilizer tax with cost-share payments for subsurface placement is the most cost-effective and can achieve the policy goal of 40% reduction in nutrient loadings. We also find economic adoption models alone can overstate the potential for BMPs to reduce nutrient loadings by ignoring biophysical complexities.
36-5766
Environmental impact analysis. Environmental planning. Natural environment.
In response to shoreline erosion and potentially more severe storm damage due to climate change and sea level rise, armouring of shorelines using traditional hard structures is likely to increase. An emerging alternative to seawalls and other hard structures is to create ‘living shorelines’ where natural habitats are incorporated into a resilient shoreline stabilization design. Research has shown that functional, multiuse living shorelines provide options for reducing erosion rates and sustaining shoreline stability while supporting intertidal and nearshore habitat. Drawing upon the scientific literature, shoreline management best practices, and the results from an expert opinion survey, we propose a spatial decision framework for multiclass suitability analysis of generic shoreline stabilization options with a focus on the unique challenges and opportunities of South Florida. The results have been incorporated into a web application that can facilitate decision-making in support of nature-based stabilization infrastructure.
36-5767
Behavior. Ecological planning. Environmental governance. Governance. Human behavior. Natural environment.
Existing frameworks for analysing interactions between social and natural systems (e.g. Social-Ecological Systems framework, Ecosystem Services concept) do not sufficiently consider and operationalize the dynamic interactions between people’s values, attitudes and understandings of the human-nature relationship at both individual and collective levels. We highlight the relevance of individual and collective understandings of the human-nature relationship as influencing factors for environmental behaviour, which may be reflected in natural resource management conflicts, and review the diversity of existing social-cultural concepts, frameworks and associated research methods. Particular emphasis is given to the context-sensitivity of social-cultural concepts in decision-making. These aspects are translated into a conceptual model aiming not to replace but to expand and enhance existing frameworks. Integrating this model into existing frameworks provides a tool for the exploration of how social-cultural concepts of nature interact with existing contexts to influence governance of social-ecological systems.
36-5768
Air quality. Commercial real estate. Desertification. Ground water. Hedonics. Models.
Many lakes around the world exhibit acute environmental stress due to water transfers, persistent droughts, and polluted runoff. In addition, falling water levels worsen air quality by exposing desiccated shores. To our knowledge, however, no published hedonic study has analyzed the costs of deteriorating water quality jointly with the air quality impacts of falling water levels for a large inland water body. We conduct such an analysis for the Salton Sea, the largest lake in California. Our spatial autoregressive models estimated on single-family properties located within 10 miles (16.1 km) of the Sea show that a 1 km reduction in distance to the Sea results in a $595 decrease in the price of a single-family residence. In addition, a 1% increase in annual particulate matter concentration reduces the value of the average family residence by $1,140. These results highlight the vulnerability of poor rural communities to deteriorating environmental conditions.
32-3 ENVIRONMENTAL PLANNING
36-5769
Environmental pollution. Information and communication technology. Information technology. Information technology and communication. Innovation.
Information communication technology (ICT) and environmental innovation (EI) are relevant waves of the ongoing technological revolution. We study the complementarity in innovation adoption to test the research hypothesis that the higher the diffusion and intensity of usage of ICT and EI, the higher a firm’s productivity performance might be. However, it is not certain that the use of different innovations stemming from different innovation paths generates higher productivity. To test our hypothesis, we use original survey data concerning manufacturing firms in Northeast Italy including detailed information on both ICT and EI. Empirical evidence shows that there are still wide margins to improve the integration between EI and ICT in order to exploit their potential benefits on productivity. The awareness of specific synergies seems to mainly characterise the heavy polluting firms that are subject to more stringent environmental constraints, while some trade-offs tend to emerge for the remaining firms.
36-5770
Actor-network theory. Alternative fuel vehicles. Electricity. Interviews. Management networks.
The use of electric-powered vehicles (EV) is experiencing a boom in some countries. Much research has been conducted on the technology per se; however, there is a research gap regarding institutional spatial planning practice concerning EVs. Here, an empirical analysis was made of planners’ interpretations of opportunities and obstacles to integration of EVs in southern Sweden. The results revealed a lack of interplay between local and regional administrations and showed that the agenda is run by individual bureaucrats rather than being based on official strategies. Moreover, there appears to be a lack of horizontal interplay within some organisations, while new arenas are being formed by actors within and outside government. The reason for formation of such external EV networks may be a single actor not being able to push the issue forward alone, due to a fragmented organisation, or a lack of clear external task formulation at central government level.
36-5771
Community participation. Environmental planning. Environmental policy. Innovation.
A growing body of literature concerns innovation persistence, but does not deal with environmental innovation, which is an important topic in the context of global warming. In this paper, we contribute to this literature by testing whether environmental innovators are persistent. Our empirical approach rests on the use of the Community Innovation Survey (CIS) 2008 and CIS 2010 data for firms from Luxembourg. Due to the lack of harmonisation, we are obliged to carry out a consistent statistical retreatment related to the data. Our probit models show that environmental technological innovators are persistent. The phenomenon of environmental innovation persistence is also positively affected by regulation and voluntary measures.
36-5772
Citizen participation. Community participation. Environmental management. Europe. Management networks.
Several studies attempt to explain how collaborative environmental governance processes operate, but the question of why collaboration relationships form has received much less attention. Motivated by this need, this paper provides insights to the broad question: why does collaborative river basin management in France depend so heavily on partnerships made up around a few actors? Accordingly, our analytical framework develops a transaction cost explanation for the extent to which participatory procedures help stakeholders to identify partners and initiate collaboration, and for the causal link between the attributes of these stakeholders and their partnerships. The p2 model is implemented to investigate partnership networks of the key actors that govern the management of the Gironde estuary, the study case. The results provide evidence that environmental institutions bring together heterogeneous actors who might not be ready for collaboration, thereby actors’ perceived power similarity; their geographical proximity and co-presence in formal fora limit transaction costs.
36-5773
Cities. Environmental design. Environmental management. Environmental policy. Environmental value. Management.
New stormwater management approaches that integrate water management with urban planning and design increasingly encompass social objectives. However, the principles and concepts upon which they are based do not provide sufficient guidance and analysis on how water is perceived as a sociological factor. The objective of the paper is to develop a Sociological Framework for evaluating and guiding the incorporation of sociological dimensions into water sensitive design programmes and projects, and demonstrate the applicability of the framework through the evaluation of the Bedok Reservoir project under Singapore’s ABC Waters Programme. The framework covers the domains of awareness and behaviour, social cohesion, and interactions. The framework can assist researchers and policy-makers in better understanding and integrating sociological dimensions in water sensitive design.
36-5774
Air quality. Air quality management. China. Econometrics. Ground transportation systems.
Earlier studies that evaluated the impact of vehicular emissions on urban air quality often reached mixed conclusions, providing little guidance to city planners seeking solutions to the ever-growing problem of air pollution. In this paper, we combine the strengths of earlier studies with hourly-level data to reexamine the causal relationship between traffic congestion and ambient air quality in Beijing. We find that around 33% to 57% of ambient air pollution in Beijing can be attributed to vehicular emissions. However, this average figure is masked by nonlinearity, suggesting that policy makers should focus their efforts on alleviating areas with heaviest congestion to improve air quality.
36-5775
Accountability. Boundaries. Ecological relationships. Government accountability. Natural resource development.
Collaboration is a growing trend in agency-led natural resource management in the USA, carrying the promise of defusing conflict and incorporating a broader range of stakeholder ideas. However, concerns exist that confrontational or litigious groups may use collaborative forums to their organization’s own advantage. We conducted case studies on three collaboratives to understand how these efforts have influenced the behavior of environmental groups who were previously at odds with the managing agency, the US Forest Service. Results suggest that trust between boundary spanners from historically adversarial groups can support a realignment of the accountabilities they feel. As rational, affinitive, and procedural trust developed, boundary spanners began to advocate, within their home organizations, for the collaborative’s goals. Key activities driving these realignments included the development of fair and transparent procedures governing the collaborative group, structured interaction designed to build consensus, and planned informal interactions that revealed shared values among collaborative participants.
36-5776
Environmental management. Environmental planning. Management.
Environmental Management and Audit Scheme (EMAS) is the most important public standard for an Environmental Management System. In the last few years, the number of certified organisations has been decreasing. Scholars have largely debated the drivers, barriers and benefits, but the recent decrease in EMAS registrations has not been sufficiently studied, leaving unsolved questions for scholars, practitioners and policy-makers. This paper aims to address this literature gap by (i) analysing the trends of other voluntary certification schemes in order to understand whether the decrease is a peculiarity of EMAS; (ii) investigating the reasons why formerly registered organisations have abandoned EMAS and why ISO14001 certified organisations do not adopt EMAS. The paper reports results of 17 interviews highlighting the lack of financial and human resources, the lack of market and stakeholder recognition, and the unclear added value of EMAS as reasons for the decrease of EMAS.
36-5777
Citizen participation. Community participation. Democracy. Democratic governance. Environmental economics. Environmental planning. Environmental policy.
In the 6th (2011–15) and 7th (2016–20) Five Year Plans (FYP), Bangladesh’s policy makers have set ambitious national environmental targets and goals to move the country towards more a sustainable economy and society. The goals were dictated by the economic, social and political interests of the political elites. This has resulted in limited stakeholder participation in environmental policy formulation. The 6th FYP aimed at achieving Millennium Development Goal (MDG) 7: ‘Ensure Environmental Sustainability’. It failed due to shortcomings in local implementation and due to a lack of community participation. The 7th FYP is based on the newly adopted Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) 13, 14, 15. The obvious paradox within Bangladesh’s environmental planning is the big gap between central government’s policy making and community participation and local government involvement. This paper examines environmental policy formulation, implementation and monitoring in the last two FYPs in Bangladesh. Contemporary deliberative democratic theory provides important theoretical and applied insights that are often unexamined in the environmental planning literature. A theoretical framework is developed to analyse to what degree environmental planning arrangements incorporated deliberative elements and how they contribute to decision-making. A case study of the environmental planning process tests its effectiveness in explaining observed outcomes. Elsewhere, deliberative democratic approaches have been central to the success of the environmental planning process. The central government’s failure to apply this approach produced a policy gap. Plan targets cannot be met unless local participation is ensured through the deliberative framework.
36-5778
City residents. Environment. Environmental pollution. Management.
Increasing volumes of solid waste, implicated in environmental pollution and health problems, are central to the current environmental crisis. In two randomized field experiments, we demonstrate that convenience dramatically boosts recycling and composting rates in multi-family dwellings and university residences. When compost bins were placed on each floor in a multi-family residence, instead of on the ground floor, composting rates increased by 70%, diverting 27 kilograms of compost from the landfill per unit per year. When recycling stations were placed just meters from suites in student residences, instead of in the basement, recycling increased by 147% (container), and 137% (paper), and composting increased by 139%, diverting 23, 22, and 14 kilograms of containers, paper, and compost, respectively, from the landfill per person per year. Simply making recycling and composting convenient can significantly increase waste diversion, and as such this single intervention has important implications for waste management and environmental policy.
36-5779
Case studies. Environmental planning. Municipal governments. Municipalities.
This paper presents a study of two Swedish municipalities’ engagement in biogas development. To analyse the drivers of such biogas development, the conceptual framing incorporates two perspectives on local biogas policy: first, policy drivers as connected to environmental goals and, second, policy as a matter of green place branding. The results indicate that biogas engagement serves as a self-governing activity with the fulfilment of environmental goals as a driver; furthermore, it is a way of expressing the mission of municipalities as “engines” of environmental policy. In one studied municipality, biogas engagement has an important symbolic value for green identity, meaning that green place branding is a driver. Still, interviewed actors from both municipalities lack clear long-term visions of biogas. Further studies of biofuel production should critically investigate visions of the future among central and local governments and evaluate the implications of municipalities as biofuel producers.
36-5780
Conservation. Conservation planning. Entrepreneurialism. Entrepreneurs. Military.
British colonial military heritage structures in Hong Kong are in a state of ruin and government neglect. Urgent attention is required in the form of active management to avoid the loss of valuable heritage resources and the negative impact on the landscape and environment. This paper explores two possible alternatives – user participation and social entrepreneur participation – to achieve innovative solutions to rent dissipation of these structures situated in isolated areas within protected-area boundaries, with a focus on a specific case. Emphasis is placed on fostering public participation, involving the allocation of some property rights. Elinor Ostrom’s diagnostic approach to common-pool resource problems is applied to both solutions to determine the conditions necessary to achieve the objectives. The discussions are informed by social entrepreneurship principles and a version of the Coase Theorem, the latter coinciding with Ostrom’s view regarding the role of property rights in achieving sustainable outcomes.
36-5781
Developmental density. Environmental assessment. Environmental planning. Green areas.
Implementing urban densification projects in planning practice while simultaneously providing sufficient green spaces has proven to be challenging. Consequently, there is an increasing need for practical approaches to urban green space management in the on-going densification of cities. Therefore, this study was designed to give a better understanding of current green space management practice in two municipalities in Stockholm, Sweden, undergoing densification. The challenges identified through interviews with municipal planners were related to site-specific conditions for densification projects, conflicting interests between involved and affected actors, green quality management issues, and limited use of impact assessment tools. In the municipalities, innovative approaches were adopted in efforts to minimize the above challenges, such as collaboration between the developers and planners, or participatory workshops with the local citizens. This paper explores these challenges and approaches, and makes further recommendations for improving green space management practice.
36-5782
Assessment. Environmental assessment. Evaluation. Local environmental planning. Local governance.
Brownfield programs in the USA now use bottom–up approaches where the principle agent is no longer federal but local government. Although the approaches by federal government to manage national priority sites are well established, clear approaches for local brownfields and to engage nearby communities are difficult to find. This study sought to determine whether the current approaches adopted by local municipalities are effective and identify the challenges experienced to develop guidelines tailored to meet the needs of local projects. The results revealed that the effectiveness of local brownfield programs is often challenged by the existing normative assessment procedure utilized by the federal government. Experts’ interviews provided evidence that legislation set up to eliminate contamination is actually hurting efforts to reuse lightly polluted local sites. The challenges were associated with outreach activities, particularly those involving reluctant property owners and developers. Community residents had only a minimal opportunity to participate in decision-making.
36-5783
Canada. Choice model. Environmental management. Environmental protection. Forest management systems. National parks.
Large crowds in parks can be a problem for park managers and visitors. However, perceptions of crowding are difficult to measure due to coping mechanisms deployed by park visitors. Furthermore, perceptions of crowding should not be measured in isolation, but rather as part of a suite of conditions that comprise the visitors’ outdoor experience. We used a dichotomous choice experiment with visual images and eight attributes to estimate park users’ utilities associated with their visitor experience in Garibaldi Provincial Park in British Columbia, Canada. Our visual method allowed us to control for background view and compare user preferences on hiking trails with preferences at final destinations. We find that utilities are more sensitive to crowding at viewpoints than to other aspects of the outdoor experience. Thus, visitor satisfaction and crowding perceptions are more likely to be defined by where visitors have these encounters rather than the total number of encounters.
36-5784
Agricultural sector. Agriculture. Housing tenure. Land claim settlements.
In Burkina Faso, land is managed through customary tenure, which discourages land rentals and sales. Yet it permits land transactions through an institution called borrowing. This study investigates whether the borrowed status of land affects the seasonal crop and input choices as well as longer-term, productivity-enhancing investments made on it. Analysis using nationally representative, plot-level data from the Enquête Permanente Agricole suggests that borrowed land is more intensively farmed in terms of cropping and inputs. We find no evidence of borrowed lands having fewer erosion-preventing investments or of being fallowed less than nonborrowed (inherited) land.
36-5785
Adaptation. Climate change. Climate policy. Hazards. Land use. Natural hazards.
Adapting to the impacts of human-caused climate change is a critical challenge facing cities worldwide. But, local climate adaptation planning is in its infancy. Early on, cities must decide whether to take a narrow-scope approach focused solely on reducing risks from climate impacts or to take a broad-scope approach embedding adaptation planning within wider ranging community concerns. They also must decide whether or not to formally involve their planning agency in adaptation planning. We used content analysis methods to assess a national sample of United States municipal plans. We find that cities with plans with a narrow-scope approach, focused on reducing risks, perform better in terms of plan integration and including more land use policies that can steer development out of hazardous areas. Formal involvement of planning agencies in adaptation planning processes is associated with more plan integration, but not necessarily inclusion of more land use policies.
36-5786
Choice model. Ecosystem. Ecosystem conservation. Ecotourism. Forest planning. Forest regions. Heterogeneity.
Developing nature-based tourism in private lands calls for new mechanisms to consolidate the interests of the tourism industry, visitors, and landowners. This choice experiment study elaborates on the heterogeneity of visitors’ preferences and willingness to pay (WTP) for enhanced forest amenities and ecosystem services. The survey, targeting domestic and foreign tourists visiting the Ruka-Kuusamo area in Finland, considered four attributes: landscape quality, outdoor routes, forest biodiversity, and carbon sequestration. For observed heterogeneity, the visitors were grouped by their attitudes towards forest management. Unobserved heterogeneity in visitors’ choice behaviour and WTP was examined with the latent class model. While most visitors had environmentally friendly attitudes and were willing to pay, especially for enhanced landscape quality and biodiversity, considerable heterogeneity was revealed in terms of three segments with distinctive attitudes, choice behaviour and WTP. The variation in WTP has important implications for the design of a scheme of payments for environmental management.
36-5787
Convergence. Environmental management. Environmental policy. Information and communication technology.
This work tests for the presence of convergence in the main municipal solid waste disposal choices across EU countries over the years 1995–2010. We believe this is a relevant exercise, considering that in the last two decades the waste sector has experienced a profound transformation at the European level. In this context, ß and s tests of convergence can tell us more about the distribution of these different rival choices of waste disposal, by assessing on the one hand the presence of convergence and, on the other hand, the role played by environmental policy and green technological change in driving convergence. Our regression results suggest that conditional beta convergence is substantial for both recycling and incineration. For the case of recycling, this convergence is faster for countries characterised by a technological endowment in recycling technologies and stringent waste policies. Finally, heterogeneity across countries (sigma convergence) appears to decrease over time.
36-5788
Capital. Capital assets. Collective action. Environmental management.
Rural-amenity migration is changing the social and ecological compositions of landscapes globally. The in-migration of new landholders is contributing to significant biophysical changes to rural landscapes, as well as the weakening of collective awareness, knowledge and skills needed to manage natural resources. This is leading to the proliferation of environmental harm. This paper focuses on invasive plants as one such harm, detailing how collective action is developed and challenged in a rural landscape undergoing increasing property turnover and diversifying management priorities. Focusing on the role of a Landcare group, located in southern New South Wales, Australia, I explore how social capital – with a particular focus on trust and social norms – is mobilised to recruit newly arrived residents and maintain commitment among landholders to manage invasive plants. This research provides insights into how policy can better steer management interventions, particularly how to develop and maintain collective action in diversifying rural landscapes.
36-5789
Development. Environmental modeling. Environmental planning. Innovation.
Although the antecedents of environmental innovation and open innovation strategies have been well-studied separately, the relationship between a firm’s openness and environmental technological innovation still remains an interesting topic to research, especially in terms of the various modes of openness on the one hand and the product–process distinction on the other. This study relies on data from the French Community Innovation Survey to differentiate the association of three dimensions of open inbound innovation search strategies – acquiring, sharing, and information sourcing – with environmental product (ecoproduct) and process (ecoprocess) innovations. Inbound innovation, attained through the acquisition of machinery, equipment, and software, is more likely to be associated with ecoprocess than ecoproduct innovations; external R&D only drives ecoproducts. Inbound sharing through R&D cooperation seems associated with the introduction of both ecoproducts and ecoprocesses. For inbound innovation sourcing, external market sources of information are positively associated with firms’ involvement in all types of environmental innovation.
36-5790
Agricultural policy. Agriculture. Ecological planning. Ecology.
The ecological value of some fine-scale landscape elements tends to be overlooked when they are found in highly human-influenced landscapes, such as peri-urban agricultural ones. These landscapes usually fall beyond the scope of the defined categories of landscape protection, and are thus mapped as areas of little or no ecological interest in the context of extensive analysis. In this paper, we present a method for assessing and visualizing the existing nodes in the field pattern of a peri-urban agricultural landscape. Nodes are identified from the field pattern and characterized according to the presence of relevant features and land uses from the viewpoint of their ecological functions. The method is applied in the Vega del Guadalfeo (south of Spain). Our results show an innovative map of the Vega which may be interpreted as its eco-structure; a model based on nodes to represent the ecological value of the peri-urban agricultural landscape.
36-5791
Affordability. Culture. Displacement. Ecological planning. Ecology.
Despite arguments justifying the need to consider how cultural ecosystem services are coproduced by humans and nature, there are currently few approaches for explaining the relationships between humans and ecosystems through embodied scientific realism. This realism recognises that human–environment connections are not solely produced in the mind, but through relations between mind, body, culture and environment through time. Using affordance theory as our guide, we compare and contrast embodied approaches to common understandings of the co-production of cultural ecosystem services across three assumptions: (1) perspective on cognition; (2) the position of socio-cultural processes and (3) typologies used to understand and value human–environment relationships. To support a deeper understanding of co-production, we encourage a shift towards embodied ecosystems for assessing the dynamic relations between mind, body, culture and environment. We discuss some of the advantages and limitations of this approach and conclude with directions for future research.
36-5792
Border regions. Borders. Environment. Environmental planning. Environmental policy.
In this study, we look at the evolution of a cooperative water regime in the delta of the Rhine catchment. In a Dutch–German case study, we focus on cross-border cooperation on the local and regional scale, describing and analyzing how a remarkably resilient and robust transboundary water regime has evolved over the course of 50 years. Context-, interest- and knowledge-based explanations contribute important insights into the evolution of the Deltarhine regime, and it is shown that the legal, institutional and socio-economic context shapes and constrains regional cross-border cooperation. Surprisingly in this regard, we find that European water directives have not yet played a decisive, catalyzing role for policy harmonization across borders. Finally, we show that key individuals play a crucial role in regime formation and development. We suggest that the presence of entrepreneurs and leaders adds explanatory power to current conceptual frameworks in international river basin management, thus meriting further research.
36-5793
Citizen participation. Community participation. Ecological relationships. Natural environment.
What is the role of civic recreation – recreation-based volunteering – in the human–nature relationship? Through a mixed-method research design, this article investigates what motivates outdoor recreationists, what predicts higher levels of volunteer engagement, and the outcomes volunteers report. Importantly, civic recreation volunteers are motivated by similar reasons to other volunteers. Findings reveal six dimensions of volunteer motivation: civic engagement, environmental values, identity/enduring involvement, social/career networking, personal learning, and obligation. Individuals were most motivated by civic engagement and environmental values. Results from a multiple regression analysis indicated individuals who were motivated by identity/enduring involvement were more likely to have a higher level of volunteer engagement, whereas individuals motivated out of obligation had the lowest volunteer engagement. Finally, individuals report developing a stronger connection to nature, enhanced self-efficacy, self-enhancement, social connections, improved management, and increased civic engagement. These results suggest civic recreation has the potential to create advocates for the environment.
36-5794
City planning. Ecosystem. Ecosystem conservation. Environment. Environmental modeling.
This paper evaluates the role of land-use planning, especially open space systems, in mainstreaming biodiversity and ecosystem services (BES) at the urban level. Whilst there is increasing interest in BES mainstreaming to balance environmental protection with socio-economic development, there is also concern that BES thinking deflects attention from underlying social justice questions. Through the case study of Durban, South Africa – often held as an exemplar in BES mainstreaming – we argue open space systems can offer a pathway to BES mainstreaming that is both scientifically effective and socially just. Yet what makes this possible in Durban, we argue, is (1) a robust scientific evidence base deployed reflexively and sensitively; (2) a move towards explicit emphasis on providing benefits of BES to the most vulnerable people; and (3) supportive policy frameworks plus the presence of biodiversity managers able to navigate the political as well as scientific landscape.
36-5795
Ecological networks. Ecological planning. Gardens. Governance. Innovation.
Green spaces are an integral part of a vibrant urban landscape. In this paper, we discuss the potential for social innovations to transform urban green space and cities. By introducing the concept of socio-ecological practices and applying it to the analysis of urban and guerrilla gardening in the cities of Groningen and London, we examine links between behavioural drivers, social innovation and green space governance. Based on document analysis, in-depth interviews and observation of gardens, we bring about an understanding of the motivations behind involvement in socio-ecological practices as an interface between people and their cities. We show how underlying motivations, including values and self-efficacy, offer insight on current place-keeping transformations and, by doing so, contribute to fostering sustainable, long-term governance dynamics. It emerges from this research that socio-ecological practices have the potential to generate socially innovative physical, social and policy transformations within the governance of urban green space.
36-5796
Collective action. Environmental planning. Environmental quality. Natural resource development.
Despite the prominent ecological and economic roles played by local water bodies, jurisdictions routinely fail to take action to protect water resources. To combat this failure to act, mandates can intervene in the land-development process by requiring the creation of a plan. This study compares two watersheds – one watershed planning under Maryland’s mandate and one watershed planning without a mandate in North Carolina. Using established plan quality content analysis methods, (1) the quality of plans and (2) the impact of a mandate on the quality of plans are explored with respect to water resource protection. Low overall plan quality scores reveal that policies and practices aimed at protecting water resources are not consistently incorporated into plans at the jurisdictional or watershed level. The findings also suggest, but cannot conclude, that a planning mandate without specific guidance on water resource protection may be an insufficient condition for higher quality plans.
36-5797
Buildings. Forest planning. Forest regions. Housing. Mortality.
Urban forest ecosystems are complex and vulnerable social–ecological systems. The relationship between urban forests and housing is particularly variable and uncertain. We examine the influence of building renovation and rental housing on public trees at the parcel and street-section scale in a residential neighbourhood in Toronto, Canada. We use empirical data describing multiple tree inventories and government open data describing building permit applications to test for effects on urban forest structure, tree mortality, and tree planting. We found that the presence and number of building permits significantly predicted mortality at both scales, while planting was positively correlated with building permits at the street-section scale only. Multi-unit parcels had significantly lower rates of planting than single-unit parcels and multi-unit housing was positively correlated with mortality at the street-section scale. These findings suggest that where concentrated changes in housing stock are occurring, substantial losses of trees and associated ecosystem services are possible.
36-5798
Action theory. Air quality management. Institutional change. Learning.
Learning is considered as a promising mechanism to cope with rapid environmental change. The implications of learning for natural resource management (NRM) have not been explored in-depth and the evidence on the topic is scattered across multiple sources. We provide a qualitative review of types of learning outcomes and consider their manifestations in NRM across selected empirical literature. We conducted a systematic search of the peer-reviewed literature (N = 1,223) and a qualitative meta-synthesis of included articles, with an explicit focus on learning outcomes and NRM changes (N = 53). Besides social learning, we found several learning concepts used, including policy and transformative learning, and multiple links between learning and NRM reported. We observe that the development of skills, together with a system approach involving multi-level capacities, is decisive for implications of learning for NRM. Future reviews could systematically compare how primary research applies different learning concepts and discusses links between learning and NRM changes.
36-5799
Corporate responsibility. Corporations. Decision making. Environmental impact analysis.
With the growing importance of environmental sustainability in the corporate sector, businesses are compelled to progress from assessing and benchmarking their environmental impact to making decisions on how to prioritize impact reduction alternatives. Most often, business decisions are driven by financial metrics, but with sustainability improvements becoming a business goal, it is also important to assess metrics from environmental and social spheres; nevertheless, practically and systematically performing such an assessment is challenging. We present an application of a multi-criteria decision analysis (MCDA) method that addresses the aforementioned challenges in a corporate setting. Our case study company – one of the largest inland marine freight carriers in the United States – promotes a business culture focused on financially viable, yet socially and environmentally responsible solutions. Thus, we combine life cycle analysis (LCA), financial calculation methods, and corporate surveys to quantify environmental, economic, and social performance measures, respectively. Multiattribute utility theory is integrated with analytic hierarchy processes (AHPs) and fuzzy analysis to create a carefully designed framework for corporations with diverse groups of stakeholders. With company leadership, implementation is feasible and successful at prioritizing alternatives among diverse stakeholders. The process provides a platform for negotiation and promotes discussions on decision drivers. The use of MCDA methodologies promoted the inclusion of a suite of metrics that aligned with the company’s sense of social and environmental responsibility, generating an in-depth analysis of the alternatives that factored in other things besides economics. Return-on-investments (ROI) calculations, the typical approach used in the corporate setting, would have required significantly less time and effort from the company, but the results of our MCDA application indicated that inclusion of triple bottom line metrics delve deeper into stakeholder preferences. Thus, our case study company gained a holistic view of the candidate alternatives, in addition to creating a platform for structured discussions about company goals and priorities.
36-5800
Analysis. Desertification. Environmental management.
Scenario planning is an effective approach for examining possible futures by exploring the implications and consequences of different policy responses to landscape stressors. We present here a case study that explores plausible futures of urban growth in Southern Nevada, USA that illustrates how scenario analysis can be used to inform region-wide resource management by spatially modeling drivers of change, resource impacts, and potential policy responses. Using a suite of energy, water and biodiversity impact models, we assess the outcomes of the various futures on priority resources, resulting in a clear basis of comparison between alternative policies and their potential outcomes. This case study demonstrates the utility of scenario modeling for natural resource management by exploring crucial policy decisions that might be made in the near-term that could have lasting and sometimes conflicting influences on regional resources over the long term.
36-5801
Biotechnology industry. City economies. Environmental quality. Manufacturing. Manufacturing sectors.
While regulations have advanced product take-back in some markets, challenges to increasing product reuse and remanufacturing remain. Most research to date has focused on original equipment manufacturers taking back and remanufacturing their products, which is often problematic. The present study demonstrates that there are emerging opportunities for small companies with innovative business models to enter the market and advance product end-of-life (EoL) management. The paper examines the biotechnology industry – a growing sector with high spending on lab equipment and relatively short lifespans of research and development instruments. Building on previous research and analysis of industry practices and emerging drivers for product reuse and remanufacturing, the authors propose a framework for sustainable EoL management that includes five managerial drivers: financial benefits, space, ease/convenience, information, and sustainability goals. The paper concludes with discussion of the lessons learned and practical implications for managers in charge of purchasing or disposing of surplus equipment.
36-5802
Collaboration. Collaborative planning. Environmental governance. Governance. Local networks.
The ability to collaborate and to share information about ecosystem dynamics and successful management practices is increasingly important in terms of addressing the constant changes and uncertainties that prevent the formulation of activities that promote natural resource sustainability. This is particularly true in very recent institutions of natural resource management that have very few sources of traditional knowledge, e.g., the Calakmul municipality. The southern Mexican municipality of Calakmul was established relatively recently and is a biodiversity hotspot, although 46% of its human population live in extreme poverty. To address the challenges implied by this social-ecological system, successful collaboration between stakeholders requires development of capacities to make joint decisions. Social networks have been identified as channels of transmission of knowledge, which is vital to achieve solutions to management problems. The aim of this paper is to identify the different types of organizations with a stake in the natural resource management of Calakmul municipality and to evaluate the network structure of the inter-organizational collaboration in order to understand how adaptive co-management is either being facilitated or obstructed. The structural characteristics of the Calakmul collaboration networks, such as heterogeneity of knowledge sources, can bring some advantages, but they mainly confer disadvantages because of the low interaction density between organizations and the low capability for achieving collaborative action. The example of Calakmul demonstrates how social network structure can influence the number of opportunities for collective learning and indicates how these could be modified in order to improve adaptive co-management.
36-5803
Community participation. Environmental governance. Environmental quality. Europe. Human settlements. Infrastructure. Innovation.
About 55% of Nairobi’s population lives in informal settlements, which lie beyond the reach of municipal water and sewerage networks. As a coping mechanism, deprived communities in Nairobi’s large informal settlements are increasingly devising new strategies, technologies, institutional frameworks and servicing models to satisfy their water needs, in the face of neglect by the state, private sector and conventional market suppliers. Through the lens of Alternative Model of Local Innovation, this paper interrogates the viability of community-led infrastructure provision exemplified by the bio-centre model as an alternative servicing model that also claims to promote bottom-linked governance and inclusive urban development policies. It examines whether such a model may contribute to the bridging of socio-spatial differences within and across informal settlements.
36-5804
Environmental management. Environmental planning. Environmental quality. Green areas.
The purpose of this research is to gain an empirical understanding of airline passengers’ green switching intentions. A conceptual research model is used as a framework to examine the relationships among the experiential quality dimensions, green perceived value, green corporate image, green experiential satisfaction, green corporate reputation, green experiential loyalty and green switching intentions for the airline industry. The data used in this paper were based on a sample of 615 passengers who experienced the eco-friendly services of China Airlines, indicating that the proposed model fitted the data. The study’s result will assist airline management to develop and implement market-orientated service strategies to increase the experiential quality dimensions, green perceived value, green corporate image, green experiential satisfaction, green corporate reputation and green experiential loyalty in order to decrease passengers’ green switching intentions.
36-5805
Economic analysis. Ecosystem. Ecosystem conservation. Environmental planning. Financial services. Infrastructure.
Sustainable urban water infrastructure planning is vital for all cities in developing countries, where rapid urbanization has exacerbated the increasingly burdened environment. Water sustainability is a prerequisite for economic growth, social equity, and living quality in urban areas. This paper documents the current challenges and summarizes the solutions adopted in water infrastructure planning and management. Then, case studies of how multilateral financial institutions have promoted sustainable water infrastructure planning through economic appraisal and the novel approaches adopted for sustainable water infrastructure planning and asset management, are presented for the three cities of Jiaozhou, Cixi, and Fangchenggang. Conclusions are made based on the comparison and analysis of the experiences drawn from the case studies of how economic analysis could help promote sustainable water infrastructure planning and management. It is illustrated that economic analysis that considers ecosystem services supply should be employed more in water infrastructure planning, operation, and management in China.
36-5806
City residents. Hedonics. Models. Multilevel models. National parks.
This study aimed to unpack the dynamic proximity effects of a park on residential values in the urban regeneration context: first by the development phase of the park, and second, by specific characteristics of the residential units. The study site is the Dream Forest in Seoul, South Korea, and the study period is from 2006 to 2015. The two-fold multilevel regression analysis suggests that the Dream Forest began exerting proximity effects from the time of site acquisition by the city, which peaked at a 3.7% price increment per 100-meter distance to the park from a prototypical housing unit, soon after the public announcement of the park procurement plan. During construction, inauguration and stabilization, the effect has remained at around 3.0%. The analysis also suggests that the proximity effect applies unevenly to housing units: apartment type or older housing units are more sensitive to the externality effects than their counterparts – multifamily type or newer housing units.
32-4 RISK MANAGEMENT/IMPACT ASSESSMENT
36-5807
Adaptation. Adaptation strategies. Climate change. Climate policy. Environmental governance. Infrastructure. Land use changes.
There is now an emerging sense of the scope and nature of response that can be implemented at building and neighbourhood scales to help adapt cities and urban areas to the changing climate. In comparison, the role of larger natural and semi-natural landscapes that surround and permeate cities is less well understood. Addressing this knowledge gap, this paper outlines two case studies that describe and map the flood risk management functions offered by green infrastructure landscapes situated within the Urban Mersey Basin in North West England. The case studies establish that areas potentially exposed to flooding can be located at some distance, and within different jurisdictions, from upstream areas where the flood hazard may be generated and could be moderated via functions provided by green infrastructure landscapes. This raises planning and governance challenges connected to supporting and enhancing flood risk management functions provided by green infrastructure landscapes.
36-5808
Flooding. Floods. Housing. Housing markets.
The impact of flood events on flood risk perception has important implications for policy. Applying a novel dataset featuring the flooding extents from a severe event in Colorado, we disentangle inundated properties from “near misses,” defined as structures not directly flooded but located inside the 100-year floodplain. Using a triple-difference hedonic framework, we show that inundated properties inside the floodplain underwent a decrease in price after the flood, while near misses saw a relative price increase. We speculate that inundated properties are perceived as being riskier and near misses relatively less risky, suggesting the possible influence of the availability heuristic or Bayesian learning.
36-5809
Design factors. Environmental indicators. Environmental policy. Flooding. Floods. Hazards. Indicators.
Indicator-based approaches to hazard vulnerability analysis are designed to produce policy-relevant information, but are limited in their ability to incorporate indicators that reflect the complex nature and contextual influence of institutional factors on vulnerability. This study focuses on local government policy and practice as an institutional factor and draws on a survey of municipal practitioners to inform indicators that reflect it. Rather than assess relative vulnerability, the study takes an original approach to construct an index that identifies similarities and differences in forms of capital that influence vulnerability across communities. The index is demonstrated through a case study of 50 coastal communities in British Columbia, Canada. The study uses local practitioner knowledge to inform indicators of institutional capital that influence vulnerability to coastal flood hazards, investigates associations between key indicators, and illustrates that incorporating meaningful indicators of institutional capital can enable contextual analysis of how local policy factors affect vulnerability.
36-5810
Carbon dioxide. Consumption. Input-output analysis. Natural resource development.
While a small set of economic activities generates most of the direct environmental burdens, the complexity of connections within an economic system requires consideration of the effects caused by the interdependences between its different agents. To date, however, the input–output (I–O) subsystems literature has been limited to uncovering the intersectoral linkages of direct and indirect environmental impacts within an economy and the connections between sectors and private consumption have thus not attracted much attention. This paper proposes an I–O subsystems model that endogenously incorporates not only production sectors but also household consumption to capture the entire channel of environmental impacts. The empirical application focuses on carbon dioxide equivalent (CO2-eq.) emissions and water use associated with production sectors and households defined in the I–O table for a Spanish region, Extremadura. The results highlight the key role of the effects induced by private consumption on the environmental burdens of services.
36-5811
Conservation. Ecosystem conservation. Environmental regulation.
This paper analyses regulatory responses to rapid intensification of the use of drones/remotely piloted aircraft (RPA) in the context of wildlife protection. Benefits and disadvantages of the technology to wildlife are examined, before three key limitations in policy and law are identified: failure to address wildlife disturbance in RPA regulation; reliance upon insufficiently comprehensive existing wildlife protection legislation to manage disturbance effects; and limited species-specific research on disturbance. A New Zealand case study further reveals an inconsistent regulatory approach struggling to keep pace with innovation, inadequate regulatory capture of environmental effects due to exemption as “aircraft”, and no recognition that specific geographical locations, such as coastal areas, distinguished by recreational pressures and high numbers of threatened species require special consideration. Recommendations include acknowledging the impact on wildlife in policy, gap analysis of legal arrangements for protection from disturbance (including airspace), and adoption of minimum approach distances to threatened species.
36-5812
Ecological planning. Ecology. Economic planning. Ecosystem. Ecosystem conservation. Green areas.
A city’s spatial footprint is covered by extensive impervious building roofs and paved surfaces, which contribute to greater storm-water runoff, more surface pollutants, and less carbon sequestration, hence, worse ecosystem services. This research conducts an empirical study on the ecological and economic impacts of a citywide adoption of green roofs and permeable pavements in Corvallis, OR. The effects on ecosystem services of using green roofs and pervious pavements for a low impact development are modelled using Integrated Value of Ecosystem Services Trade-offs and compared to those from the City’s current conventional development without green roofs and pervious pavements. The differences are analysed for ecological impact by storm-water yield, storm-water purification, and carbon sequestration and economic impact by a cost-benefit comparison. The results indicate that low impact development, especially intensive green roofs on commercial/industrial buildings and permeable pavements for parking lots, plays a significant role, even with a higher initial implementation cost, for long-term urban sustainability.
32-5 ENVIRONMENTAL QUALITY/POLLUTION
36-5813
Central Europe. Environmental policy. Environmental quality. Europe.
Separate waste collection in Italy comes under the responsibility of local authorities, provinces, while national laws set quantitative targets to be achieved over time. Overall, just a few provinces have reached the thresholds set by the latest law (Legislative Decree 152/2006) and some territorial differentiation has been detected. The aim of this paper is twofold: to verify the effectiveness of Legislative Decree 152/2006 in promoting higher levels of separate collection and to test whether institutional quality (considering the following indicators: voice and accountability, regulatory quality, rule of law and corruption) affects provinces’ efficiency in the separate collection process. For this purpose, we implement the stochastic frontier analysis (SFA). Results suggest that the effectiveness of Legislative Decree 152/2006 has been affected by provinces’ institutional quality. In particular, the presence of institutional constraints did not allow the most virtuous provinces to achieve the targets set by law.
36-5814
Environmental modeling. Environmental policy. Environmental pollution. Environmental quality.
This paper utilizes a 70% drop in ambient water quality monitoring to show that point sources increase their pollutant discharges in the posttreatment period. Our sample examines 264 major municipal plants in Pennsylvania, South Carolina, and Virginia from 1990 to 2010. Results show that plants in the treatment group increase the relative quantity and concentration discharges of biological oxygen demand between 18% and 39% in contrast to the control group. Estimated coefficients are large in magnitude given prior evidence on the inflexibility of water pollution abatement levels relative to discharge limits.
36-5815
Air pollution. Civic welfare. Environmental pollution. Hedonics. Housing. Housing markets.
The purpose of this study is to quantify the marginal willingness to pay (MWTP) for clean air in China. We provide the first estimate of MWTP for clean air by implementing a hedonic method using housing price and air quality data from Shanghai. Our estimates imply that air pollution has a significant and negative impact on housing price. We also find that the willingness to pay for better air quality varies significantly across different income groups. This paper helps to deepen our understanding of the economic impacts of air pollution in emerging Asian metropolises where residents are suffering from the most severe respiratory health problems.
36-5816
Ecotourism. Environmental management. Environmental quality.
Recreational beaches are strategic ecosystems for tourism and should be used in a sustainable manner. We studied three beaches in the municipality of Guaymas (NW Mexico), in order to assess their beach quality and identify key management issues. The evaluation was based on the perceptions of users concerning: (1) the user profile; (2) the recreational habits of users; and (3) the biophysical characteristics, infrastructure, services, and cleanliness of each beach. The results showed that the beaches were of different quality. The key management issues identified were the need to design and apply specific management programs for each beach, specifically in regards to improving infrastructure and services, and obtaining certification as a sustainable beach. The evaluation of the beaches as perceived by users suggests that it would be useful to assess beach quality in order to support management goals and be applicable to other beaches, both nationally and internationally.
36-5817
Air pollution. Assessment. Environmental assessment. Environmental pollution. Environmental quality.
We develop an integrated assessment model for spatially simulating water quality and social welfare from linked ecosystem services that extends prior modeling by incorporating a broader suite of pollutants than conventionally measured factors like phosphorus and nitrogen. Beyond demonstrating the feasibility of such a model, we provide guidance on the impact of omitting or holding constant relevant pollutants and their effect on estimates of water quality and willingness to pay. Applying the model to Narragansett Bay, we find that recent wastewater treatment upgrades and a legacy network of dams are providing millions in annual value to adjacent residents.
36-5818
Asia. Carbon dioxide. Environmental policy.
The roles and responsibilities of cities in CO2 mitigation have drawn increasing attention in recent years. To facilitate optimal design of effective mitigation policies, it is important for city authorities to understand the magnitudes and sources of their CO2 emissions, and their relative shares of emissions at a higher spatial level. Although several studies estimate CO2 emissions at the city level, the robustness of these estimates and their linkage to emissions at a higher level remains unclear. This kind of localized information on emissions is important for coordination of climate policies at different spatial scales. The study aims to fill a gap in understanding by building a systematic bottom-up approach for estimating urban CO2 emissions and offering a consistency check with IPCC top–down estimates. Using Taiwan as a case study, we display the geographic distribution of CO2 emissions. The significance and implications of the downscaling CO2 emissions are indicated accordingly.
36-5819
Agricultural sector. Agriculture. Ecosystem. Ecosystem conservation. Environmental pollution.
This paper describes our efforts to integrate economic and biophysical models to evaluate the effects agri-environmental policies have on the value of freshwater ecosystem services. We are developing an integrated assessment model (IAM) that links changes in phosphorus-related management practices on farm fields to changes in the value of key freshwater ecosystem services, including biological condition, water clarity, species-specific fish biomasses, and beach algae. Our IAM approach enables examination of the effects of policies and conservation programs on ecosystem services and values. Results will help policy makers allocate conservation dollars to improve water quality, enhance ecosystem services, and promote more sustainable agricultural production.
36-5820
Environmental policy. Environmental quality. Land economics.
Improvements in local surface water quality in the Mississippi River Basin (MRB) can contribute to the regional environmental goals of reducing hypoxia in the Gulf of Mexico. To inform estimates of the benefits of water quality policy, we use a choice experiment survey in a typical subwatershed of the MRB to estimate willingness to pay for local environmental improvements and helping to reduce hypoxia far downstream. We find that residents place large values on reduced local algal blooms, improved local fish populations and diversity, and meeting local commitments to help with the regional environmental problem.
36-5821
Air pollution. Collaborative planning. Environmental pollution. Environmental regulation. Land use regulation.
Flexibility and collaboration are a common prescription for complex, transboundary problems such as nonpoint source (NPS) water pollution. This paper examines the case of the United States Coastal Nonpoint Pollution Control Program (CNPCP), under which all 28 coastal states must develop comprehensive NPS management programs. The CNPCP allows states to satisfy requirements using voluntary, non-regulatory measures, and grants considerable flexibility in terms of institutional coordination and public participation. Thus, it is unclear whether compliance – which is incentivized with Federal funds – should be associated with improved environmental outcomes. Using a remotely sensed land cover census of 800 coastal counties from 1996 to 2010, this paper tests whether compliant programs – and particular participation and coordination mechanisms – are associated with different rates of forest and wetlands conversion. Approved states are associated with decreased rates of forest and wetlands conversion, but minimal differences are found with respect to specific participation and coordination strategies.
36-5822
Ecotourism. Environmental management. Europe. Municipal governments. Municipalities. National parks.
The study examines the relationship between nature management and land use planning in order to balance nature protection and tourism development within and outside national park borders. Applying theory about local networks and social learning, we highlight how responsible actors coordinate in order to strike a balance between protection and tourism. Based on this study of a Norwegian coastal national park, we state that competent key individuals are crucial preconditions for fulfilling the management and planning objectives in a wider regional context. In our case study, such personnel within the national park management and municipal land use planning system serve as bridge builders between nature protection and tourism. However, we argue that the existing management system is very vulnerable, and an important implication of our study is that the present local network should be more firmly institutionalized in order to become sufficiently robust and resistant to changes.
36-5823
Carbon dioxide. Economic performance. Environmental economics. Health and well-being.
Our paper explores the effect of economic performance variables on the carbon intensity of human well-being (CIWB) for 13 countries in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region over the period (1995–2013). We use a time-series cross-sectional Prais–Winsten regression model with panel-corrected standard errors (PCSEs). We find that economic performance has a statistically significant positive influence on CIWB over the period in question; thus, economic performance harms the environment, but the final effect deviates to a constant level after a while. This finding is not encouraging from the economic sustainability point of view. On the contrary, we find that total health expenditure has a statistically significant negative impact on CIWB by increasing life expectancy, which means less stress on the environment.
36-5824
Air pollution. Air quality. Construction. Emissions. Environmental assessment. Environmental impact analysis.
The construction industry involves heavy machine usage which contributes a large amount of air pollutant emissions, including greenhouse gases (GHG), particulate matter, and diesel exhaust. These emissions cause serious environmental issues and climate change. This paper provides a systematic review of the existing research efforts and challenges on measuring air pollutant emissions and assessing the environmental impact from the construction industry. The advantages and disadvantages of various methodologies used in measuring emissions and assessing the environmental impacts of construction are compared. The existing air dispersion models used in the construction field are also reviewed. The results from the review help to identify cost-effective environmental planning and management processes. Consequently, future trends towards improving existing emission assessments and management processes are put forward, and a new framework is proposed for the effective assessment and management of air emissions and environmental impacts from the construction industry.
32-6 CATASTROPHES/DISASTERS/EMERGENCIES
36-5825
Africa. Flooding. Floods. Informal sector.
Assemblage thinking has emerged over the last two decades as an important theoretical framework to interrogate emerging complex socio-material phenomenon in cities. This paper deploys the assemblage lens to unpack the vulnerability of informal communities to flood hazards in an African city. Focusing on Agbogbloshie and Old Fadama, the largest informal settlements in Accra, Ghana, this paper employs multiple methods including archival analysis, institutional surveys, focus group discussions, and mini-workshops to study the processes of exposure and vulnerability to flood hazards in these two communities. We find that being vulnerable to flood hazards in these informal settlements emerges from historically contingent, co-constitutive processes and actants: the city officials’ modernist imaginaries and socio-cultural identities of residents in informal settlements; the social material conditions experienced by residents in these settlements; and the translocal learning networks of government and non-government actors that simultaneously (re)produce oppressive urban planning policies and grassroots resistance to these policies. The paper concludes with a call to urban planners and allied built environment practitioners to understand flood vulnerability as both a process and product of these complex interactions.
36-5826
Adaptation. Africa. Collective-risk situations. Disaster. Natural disasters. Natural hazards.
The impacts of natural disasters on communities living in hazard prone areas are wide ranging and complex. In Mwanza, steep slopes, rocky hills and river valleys are inhabited by society’s poorest people. These areas are prone to natural disasters. Residents have accumulated coping mechanisms for disaster risks and impact reduction. We combine spatial data, household surveys and data from focus groups to identify and rank areas based on their exposure to major disasters. We also examine household and communal mitigation efforts in relation to these disasters. Most areas of the city are exposed to at least one of the natural disasters studied. Pre- and post-disaster risk reduction measures are influenced by the site of homesteads and the socioeconomic situation of households. Current resilience measures are skewed towards the development of physical infrastructure. The challenge of reducing disaster risks in Mwanza involves recognizing the role of non-infrastructure based factors that promote urban resilience to natural disasters.
36-5827
Building performance. Buildings. Flooding. Floods.
Frequent floods have led to loss of lives and destruction of property in both coastal and landlocked cities across the globe, particularly where floodplains have been developed without recourse to space standards. This paper investigated the contributions of contravention of building codes to flooding in flood-prone areas in the Lagos metropolis. Global Positioning Systems (GPSs) were used to determine the location and elevation above sea level of 1,025 buildings situated in 211 streets that were prone to flooding. The distance of buildings from drainage channels/the lagoon was determined in ArcGIS 10.2 environment. Findings revealed that building code contravention contributed significantly to flooding (r = 0.926). About 63.5% and 63.3% of sampled buildings contravened building-plot ratio and statutory setbacks from drainage channels/the lagoon, respectively. Proactive urban planning, strict enforcement of building codes and development control regulations are required to reduce flooding and its consequences in cities of developing nations where flooding has become an annual occurrence.
32-7 SUSTAINABILITY
36-5828
City residents. Conservation. Decision support. Ecosystem conservation. Europe. Governmental legitimacy. Implementation.
Legitimacy of environmental management and policies is an important topic in environmental research. Based on the notion of ‘regimes of justification’, we aim to analyse the dynamics in argumentations used to legitimize and de-legitimize Dutch nature conservation practices. Contrary to prior studies, we demonstrate how actors in two locations where environmental disputes arose showed little willingness to switch between arguments in order to reach a compromise. Instead, some actors constructed incompatibilities between arguments in order to delegitimize competing actors. Especially in the visioning phase, institutional actors emphasized technical efficiency, planning and global environmentalism, and arguments related to emotional accounts, inspiration and locality were de-legitimized. In the discussion, we argue that it is not the formal or informal inclusion of the actors in the process, but the construction of the legitimacy of their arguments that determines the inclusiveness and outcome of the process.
36-5829
Citizen participation. Climate. Climate change. Climate policy. Geographic information systems.
Climate change may result in reduced water supply from the Alps – an important water resource for Europe. This paper presents a multilingual platform that combines spatial and multi-criteria decision-support tools to facilitate stakeholder collaboration in the analysis of water management adaptation options. The platform has an interactive map interface that allows participants to select a location of their interest within the Alpine Arc. By utilising the decision-support tool, stakeholders can identify suitable adaptation solutions for different geographical units, according to their experience and preference. The platform was used to involve experts across Alpine borders, domains and decision-making levels, as well as a group of university students. The experts favoured the planning instruments for saving water, while the students inclined towards the measures that would improve water conservation. The initial results confirmed the suitability of the platform for future involvement of decision-makers in spatio-temporal analyses of adaptation pathways in the Alps.
36-5830
Conservation. Conservation planning. Environment. Environmental management. Environmental planning.
A major source of pollution in agricultural landscapes is surface runoff and non-point source pollution generated from agricultural production practices. In-stream, stream bank and riparian conservation/management practices can be implemented to reduce sediment loading solely or in conjunction with upland practices. Survey results from producers in the Fort Cobb Reservoir watershed, a highly erosive watershed in southwest Oklahoma with a history of state and federal conservation programs, provide information required for improving understanding of operators’ likelihood of adoption. Two models of soil and water conservation were estimated, a logit model of likelihood of enrollment and a Poisson model of the total number of practices adopted. Results reinforced previous findings that attitudes, gender and education influence conservation program enrollment. Farming experience, gender and attitudes towards conservation increased the total number of practices adopted.
36-5831
Environment. Environmental management. Environmental research. Local environmental planning.
This article presents a systematic literature review of 109 articles (1992–2015) dealing with Local Agenda 21 processes worldwide. It analyzes two essential elements of Local Agenda 21: (1) the holistic approach of the sustainable development concept and (2) the main driving forces behind such processes. It shows that, although at the beginning, sustainability was seen as a natural extension of environmental policy work, it has been perceived over recent years as a guiding principle applied to issues of environment, economic development, and social welfare, and Local Agenda 21 is perceived as a coherent approach to sustainability planning. In addition, Local Government Strategy is the main typology followed, although it suffers from important limitations. Future studies could focus on local sustainability process outcomes. Further quantitative studies would be welcome, given the qualitative case study dominance in the field. We conclude with a research agenda to tackle theoretical, methodological, and empirical lacunae.
36-5832
Conservation. Conservation planning. Environmental quality.
Most studies of water quality trading analyze its cost-effectiveness in isolation from existing policies like conservation subsidy programs that pay farmers to use conservation practices. We investigate the interaction between trading and conservation subsidy programs using an integrated assessment model that combines farmer behavioral responses with a biophysical water quality model. Current subsidy program enrollees with comparative advantage in nitrogen abatement will sort into the trading program, worsening adverse selection. Actual increases in abatement from trading depend on incentivizing additional conservation practice acreage without inducing the conversion of vegetative cover to cropland.
36-5833
Behavior. Consumerism. Consumption.
Brazil is a vast country and there are several scientific studies reporting sustainable behavior in its different regions. Since methodologies used in these studies differ from one another, it is hard to compare them. This paper aims to identify whether differences in sustainable behavior occur in different Brazilian regions and what differences can be identified. Through a web survey, we analyzed data from 1,489 participants, from four different regions. We identified two factors (behavior and search for information), and analyzed the differences through multivariate analysis of variance. The Northeast region had a higher score for “search for information”, while Southern regions performed better on “behavior.” The Midwest region had the worst performance for both factors. The reasons for such differences may be greatly influenced by the social/cultural context of each region. The results also show that consumers still do not use their power of choice to pressure companies to become more sustainable.
36-5834
City planning. Collaborative planning. Collaborative policy making. Environmental governance. Governance.
Local climate and energy issues provide fertile ground for collaboration in pursuit of shared goals, yet coordination problems can stymie their achievement. Collaborative networks enable integration of local sustainability initiatives across regions and are one mechanism available to mitigate coordination problems and expand the access of resources to local governments. Building on the Institutional Collective Action framework, we examine the scope of the collaborative networks formed by US cities around issues of climate and energy sustainability. Drawing data from the integrated city sustainability database, our analysis finds that the number of partners a city collaborates with on climate and energy issues is influenced by city administrative capacity and community stakeholder support; on average, cities with greater capacity and more interest group support engage a larger number of partners. These findings have theoretical and practical implications for understanding the use of collaborative networks to resolve coordination and cooperation problems.
36-5835
Environmental planning. Growth. Growth patterns. Land use planning. Local governance. Local government. Management.
Given many potential obstacles, what types of strategic plans and measures for climate protection and/or energy sustainability are more likely than others to be adopted by cities? What are the key internal and external obstacles to adopting and implementing these plans and measures? Based on data obtained from a survey conducted from 2010 to 2011 and other sources, this paper develops a framework derived from political contracting theory and strategic orientation literature to examine how public management obstacles, socio-economic factors, and political factors influence a city’s likelihood of having strategic energy sustainability plans and measures in place. Moreover, this paper finds that many California cities remain reluctant to require residents and businesses to comply with more challenging sustainability measures, such as smart-growth land-use practices, and that those cities with a strategic energy sustainability plan already in place tend to be more willing to adopt smart-growth land-use measures.
36-5836
Ecological planning. Ecology. Environmental policy. Geography. Innovation.
The special issue addresses the role of sustainability-oriented innovation and inventions as a relevant factor in the transition of our economies towards a greener, low carbon, and circular economy. It focuses on the EU, an area which has set stringent waste and climate change policies over the past decades. Though sustainable innovation and green knowledge issues have been developed over the past two decades since seminal papers appeared, some compelling research avenues still exist at the frontier. This issue attempts to close some knowledge gaps through different channels that broaden the perspective on eco-innovations towards a green knowledge type of setting, where technology, human capital, social capital are all relevant.
36-5837
Citizen participation. Community participation. Environment. Environmental management.
River managers are aware that river restoration entails addressing and effectively solving wicked social-ecological problems. Contemporary river corridor management is characterized by a variety of actors with different perspectives and interests, and by complex institutional settings and legal landscapes. Additionally, at the intersection between litho-, hydro-, and biological fields, new research suggests that river restoration should reactivate matter and energy fluxes, re-establish spatial connections with the floodplains, and enhance aquatic and terrestrial habitats without exacerbating flood risk. First, we outline a general structure of participatory river corridor management that addresses the following key requirements: (1) unambiguous, participatory spatial delineation of the river corridor; (2) comprehensive assessment of the river corridor’s hydro-geomorphological, ecological, socio-economic and cultural processes; (3) transparency and consistency of the decision-making process; as well as (4) a coherent envisioning process. Subsequently, we present an overview of two river corridor management processes, conducted in South Tyrol, Italy. Specifically, we analysed the Etsch/Adige River corridor between Laas/Lasa and Glurns/Glorenza in the Upper Vinschgau/Venosta valley characterized by intense agricultural land use and the densely populated Eisack/Isarco River corridor in Brixen/Bressanone. Based on structured interviews with project managers, we highlight strengths and shortcomings of the proposed participatory management and envisage procedural improvements.
36-5838
Biodiversity. Conservation. Conservation planning. Environmental knowledge. Forest planning. Forest regions. Health care. Knowledge.
Ethnobotanical knowledge plays a significant role in plant diversity conservation and the curing of various ailments in remote rural areas of the Indian Himalayan Region (IHR). A total of 53 plant species from 27 families have been documented from the Byans valley and are used traditionally for the treatment of various diseases. Valley inhabitants have maintained a symbiotic relationship between natural resources and their cultural belief system by developing sacred forests/groves which conserve the region’s plant diversity pool. Information on sacred natural sites and traditional beliefs was documented in order to understand the environmental and conservationist implications of these rules and practices. The study provides comprehensive information about eroding traditional knowledge and biodiversity conservation practices. This study could be a pilot to strengthen the conservation practices and sustainable utilization of frequently used bioresources by understanding the traditional knowledge system and conservation ethics of tribal communities in the Himalayan region.
36-5839
Climate. Climate change. Climate policy. Development. Government.
This paper clarifies the competing discourses of sustainability and climate change and examines the manifestation of these discourses in local government planning. Despite the increasingly significant role of sustainability and climate change response in urban governance, it is unclear whether local governments are constructing different discourses that may result in conflicting approaches to policy-making. Using a governmentality approach, this paper dissects the contents of 15 Canadian local governments’ sustainability plans. The findings show that there are synergies and tensions between discourses of sustainability and climate change. Both share discursive space and shape local governance rationalities, though climate change response logics are not necessarily highlighted even where the action could result in greenhouse gas (GHG) emission reductions. In some cases, existing GHG intensive practices are being rebranded as ‘sustainable’. This suggests a tension between discourses of sustainability and climate change that may complicate attempts to address climate change through local sustainability planning.
34. Transportation and Communication
34-2 TRANSPORTATION MODELING
36-5840
Cost-benefit analysis. Cost-effectiveness. Mass transportation. Models.
Travel cost models using the wage rate to value time make the implicit assumption that the value of time is equalized throughout the year. We develop a seasonal travel cost model that allows the value of time to vary by season. We estimate the model using data from a survey of recreational anglers in the Gulf of Mexico. We find that people’s value of time is 55% larger on average in the summer compared to other times of year and find substantial differences in derived welfare estimates if a time-constant value of time measure is used instead.
34-3 TRANSPORTATION PLANNING
36-5841
Ground transportation systems. Mass transportation. Models.
Barriers to an inclusive planning process include institutional context shaped by organizational structures, interactions between professionals outside of their disciplines, and practices. We seek to understand the extent planners and modelers privilege certain types of data and knowledge in practice. The article presents a US case study of Dallas-Fort Worth, Texas, drawing from analyses of planning documents, interviews with transportation planners, modelers, and residents. We focus on the privileges given to knowledge derived from transport prediction models within an existing institutional context – over more grounded and specific experiential knowledge. We find that breaking down institutional barriers, specifically those tied to legitimacy, is a precursor to inclusion. Furthermore, tools and techniques selected in the planning process are as equally important as the participants invited to the table.
34-9 PEDESTRIANS/BICYCLES
36-5842
Ecotourism. Ground transportation systems. Models.
Puri, one of the most sacred sites for Hindus in India, is visited by millions of tourists every year. This paper evaluates the travel experience of pedestrians in Puri. A total of 500 respondents were asked to rate different microscale factors on a five-point Likert scale (1 = very poor and 5 = very good). Received data were analysed using structural equation modelling, which formed four latent constructs such as accessibility, safety, comfort and aesthetics. The results show that pedestrians in Puri are most dissatisfied with the factors related to the comfort construct, followed by accessibility, safety and aesthetics, respectively.
35. Architecture and Urban Design
35-1 URBAN DESIGN
36-5843
City planning. Land use. Land use planning.
This paper examines the urban morphology of Ahmedabad, a large and rapidly growing Indian city, to determine land utilization efficiency. It provides a nuanced understanding of land consumption patterns in public and private domains, and how sub-optimal land development patterns emerge. Urban form parameters analysed include public streets, building footprints, and public and private open spaces. The results show that land utilization is sub-optimal, with less land available under public domain and more land consumed as private open spaces (especially as margins and setbacks) leading to excessive fragmentation. Indian cities should rationalize their development regulations to improve land utilization outcomes.
36-5844
City planning. Intervention. Intervention programs. National urbanization.
This paper focuses on a case of the gradual corporatisation of temporary interventions in San Francisco, California. Here, the creation of ad hoc programmes for proposing, advancing and maintaining provisional public spaces in the city has challenged the essence of previously recognised bottom-up practices, contributing to hidden forms of spatial and social exclusion. The analysis of this case is an opportunity for critical reflection on the controversies and contradictions generated by the upscaling of what started as a way to claim rights over spaces and to raise the possibility of non-traditional forms of producing and maintaining the public space.
36-5845
City planning. Design. Ecosystem. Ecosystem conservation. Natural environment.
This research is a response to a call for concern over a human–nature disconnect due to urban form that ignores, rather than embraces, nature and natural processes. Connectedness to nature contributes to well-being and is a precursor for environmentally responsible behavior. Integrating nature into urban landscapes might facilitate human–nature reconnection. This paper presents the results of an exploratory qualitative case study undertaken in Portland, Oregon in which I conducted 42 semi-structured interviews with community members. The results suggest that in order to address a human connection to nature at least two aspects of urban retrofit should be considered: (1) incorporate multiple scales and types of nature for multiple experiences; and (2) provide opportunities for hands on work in nature and personal control of space. As we retrofit both shrinking and growing cities in this era of uncertainty and change, this research offers insight into the creation of livable, nature-full cities.
36-5846
Design. Diverse neighborhoods. Diversification. Diversity. Economic recession.
This research explores how the lack of diversity in newly constructed, mass produced, cookie-cutter type neighbourhoods affected trajectories in response to the Great Recession. Results suggest that design characteristics influenced home sales prices over time and post-Recession, but not when initially sold. Homes in more resilient neighbourhoods have greater façade variation, access to nearby amenities, and open spaces than the non-resilient, but much less proximity to transit. The building in, i.e. what developers are providing and what municipalities are approving, of diversity in design of homes and neighbourhoods through better zoning codes contributed to positive outcomes and increased neighbourhood resilience.
36-5847
Cities. Ground transportation systems. Integrated urban planning.
Cities need to become more liveable. Urban transport systems have great importance in achieving this goal. Currently, cities are dominated by individual motorized transport with associated problems of air pollution, congestion, noise and traffic injuries. This paper argues that the redistribution of space is key in achieving modal split change and the greening of urban environments. It holds that taking road space from cars is justified from social, health, environmental and economic viewpoints. Yet, any change in urban transport cultures has to consider the automobile, which has instrumental as well as symbolic and affective functions. City planners are advised never to argue against the car, and to frame change in ways that reduces resistance by drivers and automotive lobbies.
36-5848
Arts. Citizen perceptions. Landscape perception.
This paper extends emerging research on the role of the arts in placemaking by introducing readers to the theories of Hannah Arendt. Specifically, it outlines the value of an Arendtian phenomenological framework for conceiving why, how and in what ways ‘inclusion’ could and should operate in placemaking. The paper first presents an outline of Arendt’s phenomenological approach. An exploratory case study of arts activities in a rural Irish town is then employed to illustrate the explanatory potential of this approach. The paper closes by reflecting on how an Arendtian approach suggests important lessons for placemaking research and practice.
36-5849
City planning. Design. Land use.
The purpose of this case study was to explore the relationship between land use and sound sources and how to characterize urban environments in this respect. To this end, binaural recordings and 360° videos were used in a listening experiment, where 20 university students assessed the dominance of sound sources coupled with the appropriateness of land use variables and variables of social and recreational activities. Principal Components Analysis showed that the activity-based environment can be explained by two main components related to the degree of manmade features and the density of people. These components are closely associated with sounds.
36-5850
Health. Health and well-being. Health care.
Social distancing measures during COVID-19 have altered the use of space. With the closure of places of work, learning, leisure, consumption, and more, the pandemic has limited our territories and public life. Yet, residents living in mid- to low-density places are experiencing their neighbourhoods differently. They are repurposing residential streets, sidewalks, parking lots, and other spaces and transforming neighbourhood space for active living, play, and sociability. In many neighbourhoods, social distancing is generating a new sociable space. Can we build on our ingenuity to reclaim neighbourhood spaces for public life, and the physical and psychological health of our communities?
36-5851
Gardens. Informal sector. Integrated urban planning. Landscape.
The present article follows the inception and the development of an unauthorized community garden that emerged out of a re-appropriated composting site in a municipal park in Montreal, Canada. The article identifies the principal reasons and mechanisms that account for how the guerrilla garden was able to remain in a high-profile location for a period of time. The article explores the intertwined combination of the guerrilla garden and the spaces it affected vis-à-vis landscape urbanism and its pursuit of a new urban development paradigm.
36-5852
Integrated urban planning. Interurban comparison. Landscape design. Natural environment.
Urban rivers across Europe have a long history of anthropogenic intervention and active use that make up a key part of our cultural landscapes. This article focuses on the morphological transformation processes of urban rivers in Europe. It approaches the topic through a review of the function, meaning and identity of rivers within the urban context. This is illustrated here using the case study of the urban sections of the rivers Chelmer and Can in Chelmsford, Essex, tracing the formation and transformation of their urban character and identifying the determinants of the development of Chelmsford’s urban form over time.
36-5853
Built environment. Displacement. Indigenous people.
This paper examines how the design and programming of the built environment of settler cities have contributed to the invisibility of Indigenous peoples and minimizing their cultural influence. It seeks to address gaps in the academic literature on Indigenous placemaking and urban design. Indigenous placemaking has the capacity to create positive symbolic capital associated with Indigenous peoples, empowering urban inhabitants in their cultural representation, and advancing the project of truth and reconciliation. To transcend beyond tokenism, Indigenous cultures projected in built form should not be subordinated by settler mainstream decision-making frameworks.
36-5854
Asset-based community development. Communication. Cultural practices. Displacement. Ethnic minorities. Maps.
This paper illustrates a design activism project that led to a co-designed ‘anti-displacement map’ and ‘walking tour’ in Chicago’s Chinatown. The work argues that one way to deploy urban design projects that consider the fears of displacement in gentrifying neighbourhoods is to integrate what aspects of the neighbourhood existing community actors value and promote advocacy for a future that these participants envision. The project accomplished these goals through ‘communication asset mapping’, an application centring on communicative spaces that are of value to existing communities and help to create the capacity for positive social change in the built environment.
36-5855
China. Community development. Gated communities.
The Chinese government has recently issued a directive that calls for an end to gated communities. The aim is to halt the construction of new gated communities, and gradually open existing gated communities to the public. This paper examines the challenges of implementing the new directive in Shanghai, where more than 80% of residential communities are gated. The study reveals five types of challenges: (1) site redesign; (2) urban governance; (3) social frictions; (4) legal status; and (5) financial burden. While redesign is a more straightforward, albeit onerous, task, smoothing governance, social, legal, and financial tensions is a greater challenge.
35-4 HISTORY AND DESIGN
36-5856
Arts. City planning. Diverse neighborhoods.
In 1956 Lincoln Center became the centrepiece of a large urban renewal project in New York City. In its original design, this cultural complex resembled a fortress, being disconnected from the surrounding neighbourhood and offering people few reasons to spend time in its spacious outdoor public space. In the 2000s, its site plan was changed, making it a more inviting place. This paper presents the history of Lincoln Center and reveals similarities with the design trajectories of five other cultural or governmental complexes in the U.S. Information is taken from archival sources, interviews with administrators from Lincoln Center, and observations.
35-5 DESIGN METHODS
36-5857
Citizen involvement. Citizen participation. Mapping techniques. Maps.
The use of design guidelines in development control continues to be popular, especially when regulators seek to limit the scope of discretionary latitude. However, the question of how a guidelines framework can be designed to suit the time-constrained and deliberative nature of review hearings remains unaddressed. Using evidence from Portland, this study concludes that boards and staff work around these difficulties by using guidelines in combination, and in so doing almost always undermine their intent. The paper suggests how predefined roadmaps to articulate and combine guideline use can make the process wieldier.
36-5858
City planning. Ground transportation systems. Livelihoods.
To improve neighbourhood liveability and urban sustainability, Barcelona is seeking to re-organize its urban structure into superblocks, designed to discourage cut-through traffic and promote multiple uses of street space. Despite its potential, this approach is not without its limits, that should be properly taken into account. The implementation of the Supermanzana model in the Poblenou neighbourhood is explored in this paper to analyse its potentialities and constraints. Temporal synchronization between the urban level and the neighbourhood level turns out to be particularly important to reduce conflicts and criticalities.
36-5859
Cities. Europe. Ground transportation systems.
After a decade marked by the renewal of grand European high-speed railway stations, today, a second wave of station renewal is at hand. This paper argues the importance of the train station in the historical development of smaller cities. Based on comparative research of recent best practices, the contemporary urban design challenges of smaller and medium-sized stations are explored. The paper concludes that the station is no longer shaped as a monolithic, architectural cathedral, as for the grand stations, but interweaves the world of the passer-by with that of the local inhabitant as a system of public infrastructure and facilities.
35-8 UNIVERSAL DESIGN
36-5860
City planning. Design. Gardens. Japan.
Tools for soundscape design have tended to focus on noise-exposed situations like urban parks and squares. Less attention has been given to multisensory interaction, movement, and other phenomenological aspects. This paper addresses the gap by studying the Japanese garden tradition, where such issues have been given high priority. The paper is the second of two reporting on autoethnographic field studies carried out in 88 Japanese gardens. Ten new Soundscape Actions are introduced and discussed in relation to previous research. Conclusively, the paper addresses the potential for future applications and developments of the tool.
36-5861
Arts. City planning. Europe.
The practice of busking and street music performance is becoming key to the identity of cities. However, although the spatial configuration and acoustics of historic city centres are interrelated, few rigorous studies have been undertaken on this area. The paper presents the results of a quantitative and comparative analysis of the space syntax configuration and on-site sound recordings in four main open environments within the inner core of Barcelona. The aim of this work is to highlight the conflict points between outdoor acoustics and movement flows in order to inform future designs and management of those public spaces.
36-5862
City planning. Design review. Environment. Environmental management. Environmental planning.
The impact of traffic noise can be prevented by suitable planning measures. This study analyses the relationship between urban geometry and traffic noise, recognizing that the arrangement of buildings and streets greatly influences urban noise. The study was carried out in Braga, a medium-sized Portuguese city, by selecting locations with different urban geometries. At each site, the equivalent continuous sound level was measured. Furthermore, the urban geometry was evaluated by using the sky view factor, a parameter which shows the degree of sky obstructed by buildings. Results show an inverse proportionality between noise and the sky view factor. The highest noise levels were found in areas with a low sky view factor. The results also indicate that the sky view factor is a parameter which can potentially be used in research on urban noise.
36-5863
Cities. Design. Empirical research.
Sound has been relatively underrepresented in urban design considerations, especially the positive aspects of sound. Yet, a vast body of academic literature on urban soundscape could inform professionals. We report on workshops with iterative improvements, designed to bring soundscape research to practice. The two workshops were conducted as part of the Sounds in the City partnership, in collaboration with the City of Montreal. Different workshop formats are compared, and recommendations are furnished both in terms of promoting awareness of the role of urban sound and with the intent of informing similar knowledge mobilization activities for researchers in related environmental fields.
36-5864
Air pollution. City planning. Design.
Parks provide a range of ecosystem services and make major contributions to urban life. Improved environmental quality was observed in urban parks as pollutants and noise disperse. Numerical models were used to assess the role of various design elements in air pollution and noise attenuation in parks. The walls reduced pollutants and sound noticeably in its shadow. Dense conifers can trap pollutants in park borders and lower concentrations in interiors, but less efficient in noise reduction. A study of a design for a small urban park suggests principles for achieving lower user exposure to pollution and healthier park environment.
36. Environmenal Psychology/Environment, Behavior, and Society
36-1 ENVIRONMENTAL PERCEPTION/COGNITION
36-5865
Citizen perceptions. Climate. Climate change. Climate policy.
This paper analyses how new information shapes public perception of a controversially discussed technology over time. The test case analysed in this paper is solar radiation management (SRM), a potentially risky, environmental engineering technology, which aims to fight climate change by the injection of sulphate aerosols into the stratosphere. Using panel survey data, we show that most respondents initially show strong negative emotions towards SRM and reject the technology. However, public perception is not stable over time as emotions cool off and acceptance increases. The increase in acceptance is greater, the longer the cooling-off period between two surveys. Furthermore, we show that the cooling-off effect is more pronounced for more impulsive respondents.
36-5866
Citizen perceptions. City planning. Diverse neighborhoods.
This study analyses neighbourhood change, its impact on the character of Soho, and to what extent perceptions of change match objective reality. Focusing on three streets (Berwick, Old Compton and Wardour Streets), the research (2008–2018) compares objective evidence of ground floor uses with the perceptions of people living and working in Soho. There was a close match between perceptions and objective measures of change on 4 out of 7 indicators: type of use, business name, locality and business ethnicity. The paper discusses these changes in terms of commercial gentrification that threatens Soho’s character.
36-5867
Adaptation. Adaptation strategies. Climate change. Climate policy.
Climate change is affecting fishing communities across Bangladesh. While work has been undertaken to investigate the nature of these impacts, understanding how fishers perceive climate change at a local level, especially within developing countries, is crucial. This paper presents the results of a three-year study of the contextual determinants and dimensions of artisanal fishing community perceptions about climate change in coastal Bangladesh. Results of this study indicate that geographic characteristics, socio-economic status, worldviews, tradition, observations and disaster experiences are important determinants for shaping fishers’ perceptions about climate change. Fishers also demonstrate a long-standing tradition of risk adaptation strategies, but do not link them to climate change. We argue that these perceptions provide ideas for how to form appropriate climate responses at local levels not only in Bangladesh but other developing countries.
36-5868
Citizen participation. Community participation. Environmental value. Geographic information systems. Green areas. Green space planning. Landscape.
It is important for landscape planners and managers to understand how urban residents value and interact with green open spaces. However, the effect of spatial scale on values and perceptions of green open spaces has, to date, received little attention. This study explored the influence of spatial scale using Public Participation GIS (PPGIS) methods in the Lower Hunter region of Australia. By asking respondents to assign markers denoting various values and preferences to green spaces displayed on maps of their suburb and municipality, the influence of scale was assessed experimentally. A greater abundance and diversity of value markers were consistently assigned at the suburb scale, yet this pattern was more pronounced for some values (e.g. physical activity) than others (e.g. nature, cultural significance). The strength of this relationship was related to socio-demographic variables such as education and income. These results have implications for understanding human–environment relationships and the use of PPGIS techniques to inform environmental planning.
36-5869
Capital. Ecotourism. Environmental nongovernmental organizations. Environmental theory. Equality. Government.
Based on the elements of social exchange and organizational justice theories, a conceptual model and associated hypotheses were formulated to examine the relationship among community residents and their perceptions of governmental fairness (i.e., distributive, procedural, interpersonal, and informational dimensions), social capital (i.e., cognitive and structural dimensions), and support for government and environmental development. Data were collected from 496 residents in four Korean cities: Busan, Gyeongju, Pohang, and Ulsan. Empirical testing resulted in support for multiple hypotheses. More specifically, cognitive social capital was significantly influenced by distributive, interpersonal, and informational fairness. Structural social capital was significantly affected by distributive and informational fairness. Subsequently, two dimensions of social capital positively influenced two types of support. Overall, the results suggest that the interplay of governmental fairness and social capital is important in influencing residents’ support for government and environmental development.
36-5870
Environmental management. Environmental planning. Natural environment.
In contrast to the reality of global industrialisation, research on individual understandings of the human–nature relationship shows low acceptance of the concept of human Mastery over nature. In qualitative interviews (n = 25) we investigated how actors from river landscape management in Austria perceive this paradox. Results indicate that actors who in their professional life act in the sense of Mastery over nature often interpret their role as Stewardship. Other reasons were seen in discrepancies between (1) private and the professional life, (2) people’s vision and reality, and (3) self-reflection and reflection through others. Also social desirability bias and insufficient wording of narratives can affect results significantly. We suggest further exploration of influencing drivers in such surveys and development of tools for group-based reflection of human–nature relationships within planning and governance processes.
36-5871
Behavior. Change. Environmental attitudes. Mental health. Natural environment.
As ecological concerns become pressing, attempts to address these remain limited to enforcing laws, while alternative ways of encouraging workplace pro-environmental behaviors (WPEBs), such as cultivating mindfulness, remain unexplored. Informed by theories of PEBs from OB-IO literature, we offer propositions detailing the role that practicing mindfulness plays in (directly and indirectly) enhancing managerial propensity to engage in WPEBs. Our paper contributes to extant literature: (1) on theories of PEBs, by showing that some of the same theories that apply to the private domain also hold for commercial organizations; (2) relating mindfulness to PEBs, by expanding the exploration from personal and consumer domains to managerial contexts; and (3) on interventions to enhance WPEBs, by exposing the underlying mechanism of ‘how’ practicing mindfulness enhances managerial engagement in WPEBs. We call for companies to offer more mindfulness-based training programs to employees, since such initiatives complement laws and other interventions in supporting WPEBs.
36-5872
Citizen participation. Citizen perceptions. Community participation. Conservation. Environmental management. Environmental protection.
Protected areas cannot be considered as elements isolated from the human groups that inhabit them. Consideration of the social factor is fundamental to guarantee the success of any management model. In this sense, analyzing the perception of people who live in protected areas can be a key tool for the formulation of proposals for improving the existing models. This article explores perceptions of local residents in the Sierra Nevada Protected Area in Southern Spain and identifies the socio-demographic factors that affect these perceptions. The main objective is to generate relevant data for the protected area management team. The recommendations we can offer entail a review of the communication plan and participatory strategy considering social differences in perceptions of the local population.
36-3 ENVIRONMENTAL ATTITUDE/AWARENESS/VALUES
36-5873
Attitude. China. Conservation. Conservation planning. Farmland preservation. Knowledge.
We analyzed the relationship between the conservation behavior of farmers and their environmental attitude and knowledge, whilst controlling for exogenous socio-economic factors. We employed the structural equation model with cross-sectional data from 442 farmers from the Guanzhong Plain of China. Results showed that local farmers generally possessed a positive environmental attitude and undertook considerable conservation action. Conservation behavior was directly affected by environmental attitude and indirectly by environmental knowledge (via attitude). Social networks, farm size, land rights, age and incentives were significant exogenous explanatory variables. Thus, understanding the importance of socio-behavioral characteristics, including the environmental attitude and knowledge of farmers, is important for the development of farmland conservation policies. Specifically, farmers in this area were found to significantly depend on each other for information on farmland conservation practices. Thus, role model farmer discussions, dissemination of environmentally friendly techniques via social networks and the rewarding of environmentally friendly behavior among farmers should be used to encourage ongoing restoration endeavors, and thereby help mitigate environmental degradation.
36-5874
Attitude. Environmental attitudes. Environmental protection. Human activity. Human behavior. Land protection.
The acceptance and support by those who live in and around the largest remaining wilderness of Europe is very important for the success of a planned network of designated wilderness areas that should preserve the area’s wilderness values. A standardised questionnaire was administered in person to 322 local residents. A cluster analysis revealed two human–nature relationship types: traditional nature users and progressive nature friends, which differ significantly in their feelings towards wilderness and attitude towards protected areas. The generally positive attitudes towards wilderness and the neutral attitudes towards the existing protected areas are a good starting point for communication about, and establishment of, the wilderness areas. As a quarter of the local population is not aware that they are living in a protected area, they should be informed during information events in the localities about the exact location of the planned wilderness zones and the potential consequences for them.
36-5875
Design. Environment. Environmental attitudes.
Electronic waste (e-waste) is a growing problem, causing concerns for many countries. Consumer electronics often feature substantial e-waste, yet little is known about the materials used or physical designs applied that might ensure the appropriate management of e-waste. This paper examines user-driven innovation in ‘green’ electronics, based on a 2015 survey of Taiwanese residents. The conjoint analysis, conducted with digital cameras, reveals consumers’ perceptions of innovative designs for seven component materials: battery, shell, monitor, filters, modeling, flash, and sensor. The results suggest that users can be encouraged to participate in the design of energy-related products that satisfy their needs. Rethinking the design of certain attributes in electronics can help reduce the need for toxic materials, improve energy consumption, reduce landfill space, and mitigate ecological pollution.
36-5876
Agriculture. Citizenship. Climate. Climate change. Climate policy. Environmental responsibility. Europe.
This article explores the potential for farmers to become climate citizens. Drawing on in-depth interviews, we analyse how Norwegian farmers relate to climate change in their everyday farming practises. After discussing the concepts of environmental and ecological citizenship, we propose the climate citizen approach to meet the challenges that climate change poses to agriculture. Until now, Norwegian farmers’ response to climate change has been limited. Major changes in farming practises seem unlikely without incentives from the state. A climate citizen approach can help balance a response to institutional regulations and policies with the individual moral obligation to take personal and non-reciprocal responsibility for the planet. In order to influence how farmers might incorporate climate change awareness into their everyday practises, policy makers should take existing norms and values in the agricultural community into account and adopt clear and manageable instruments to reward farmers for taking adaptive measures.
36-5877
Behavior. Environment. Environmental attitudes. Environmental planning. Motivation.
This study aims to develop a predictive model of consumer behaviour in the context of environmental purchases. Each of three environmental behaviours consisting of 250 respondents was collected in Australia using a short-term longitudinal survey. This research is novel in several ways. First, the article investigates the influence of self-determination on the relationship between the two normative components of attitude and behavioural intentions, which represent the integration of the Theory of Planned Behaviour and the Self-Determination Theory, to provide a nuanced understanding of the effects of intrinsically based motivation and extrinsically based motivation on behavioural intentions. Second, our work highlights the important role that planning plays in the translation of behavioural intentions into behaviour. The results show that the behaviour of consumers who report high levels of self-determination is strongly predicted by personal norms. Meanwhile, planning is a significant mediator of the effect of consumers’ intentions on performing a given behaviour.
36-5878
Conservation. Conservation planning. Conservation practices. Ethnicity. Immigration. Natural environment.
Contemporary societies are rapidly changing demographically and culturally. This raises new challenges regarding support for and engagement in nature conservation. Our paper discusses differences and similarities between young adult non-immigrants and immigrants in how they understand and value nature, based on group interviews and a survey conducted among young adults of Turkish, Chinese and non-immigrant Dutch backgrounds. We show that how people perceive nature differs between ethnic groups, even though the immigrants included spent (most of) their youth in the Netherlands. Non-immigrants used most strict boundaries to qualify green areas as nature, while especially Chinese immigrants expressed a more inclusive idea of nature. Turkish immigrants articulated most often ecocentric and religious reasons to conserve nature, while Chinese immigrants stood out as mentioning most often anthropocentric reasons. Traditional cultural representations of nature partly seemed to echo in people’s perceptions of nature. Support for nature conservation was high among the respondents; however, this hardly translated into engagement in nature conservation.
36-5879
Activism. Biodiversity. Community psychology. Motivation. Natural environment.
Biodiversity loss is a widely debated world problem, with huge economic, social, and environmentally negative consequences. Despite the relevance of this issue, the psychological determinants of committed action towards nature and biodiversity have rarely been investigated. This study aims at identifying a comprehensive social-psychological profile of activists committed to biodiversity protection and at understanding what determinants best predict their activism. A questionnaire investigating relevant social-psychological constructs identified in the literature on environmental activism was administered to 183 outstanding leaders (vs. non-leaders) in biodiversity protection across seven EU countries. Leaders (vs. non-leaders) in biodiversity protection showed, among other constructs, higher scores on environmental values, attitudes, identity, perceived control, a feeling of union and spirituality with nature, and willingness to sacrifice for their cause. Results are discussed within the theoretical framework of a motivation model of committed action for nature and biodiversity protection. Applications of the results are also proposed.
36-5880
Behavior. Conservation. Conservation planning. Environment. Metropolitan areas.
This paper aims to uncover the key behavioral influences behind two of Singapore’s most successful water management strategies: (1) their high public acceptance rate of reclaimed water (marketed as ‘NEWater’), and (2) the adoption of targeted domestic water conservation behaviors. We used the Theory of Planned Behavior framework to construct a household survey that was mailed to a national sample (n = 218) obtained from the Singapore Department of Statistics. Our descriptive and path analysis results indicate that 74% of Singaporeans generally approve of NEWater, and that a positive attitude toward this municipal water technology was the most significant variable in predicting respondents’ level of approval. In terms of water conservation, the most widely adopted behaviors were fixing water leaks promptly (80.8%) and monitoring water bills (80.3%). We discuss how knowledge of these key behavioral influencers can make behavior change campaigns more effective both in Singapore and other countries.
36-5881
Biodiversity. History. Natural environment.
The public justification for nature conservation currently rests on two pillars: hedonic (instrumental) values, and moral values. Yet, these representations appear to do little motivational work in practice; biodiversity continues to decline, and biodiversity policies face a wide implementation gap. In seven EU countries, we studied why people act for nature beyond professional obligations. We explore the motivations of 105 committed actors for nature in detail using life-history interviews, and trace these back to their childhood. Results show that the key concept for understanding committed action for nature is meaningfulness. People act for nature because nature is meaningful to them, connected to a life that makes sense and a difference in the world. These eudemonic values (expressing the meaningful life) constitute a crucial third pillar in the justification of nature conservation. Important policy implications are explored, e.g. with respect to public discourse and the encounter with nature in childhood.
36-5882
Agricultural systems. Agriculture. Environmental attitudes. Environmental management. Farmers. Farming. Management.
US Midwestern farmers are direct actors in managing nitrogen fertilizers and key to remediating water quality problems in agricultural landscapes. As farmers’ relationships with nature offer insights into their decisions and conservation practices, surveys and interviews with farmers in two Illinois watersheds explored their human–nature relationship perspectives and linkages to conservation practices. While domineering “Master” perspectives theorized as a cause of human-induced environmental problems were found, farmers spoke of obligations to the land and closeness to nature, emphasizing ecologically oriented partnership and stewardship ideals as motivating their conservation efforts. However, production-oriented pressures of the agricultural industry and livelihood and humanitarian considerations complicated farmers’ human–nature relationships and limited their efforts to act upon personal perspectives. Multiple, confounded human–nature relationships are influenced by factors beyond local landscapes with implications for natural resource decision-making, conservation practices, and environmental outcomes.
36-4 SOCIO-SPATIAL FACTORS
36-5883
Citizen perceptions. Crime. Green space planning. Landscape perception.
Combining insights from the urban design and criminological literature, this paper explores the degree to which conviviality, feeling welcome, and feeling at home are related to peoples’ experiences of safety. A questionnaire was distributed on four squares in the city of Utrecht, the Netherlands. While participants valued the positive qualities of the squares differently, feeling safe was connected to a wider, positive evaluation of the quality of space and especially to feeling at home. By investing primarily in public spaces that are ‘homely’ or ‘domesticated’, a ‘supplemental safety’ might therefore be nurtured. This poses important insights for safety management.
36-5884
City planning. Geographic information systems. Media. Media communication.
This research examines the predictability of geo-tagged Twitter data via space syntax integration measurement using geographic information system (GIS). Mobile networking mediums are an emergent part of everyday life in the city. In light of this, research on cities needs to take into account these new data sources. The study was conducted in two Cypriot cities, Famagusta and Kyrenia, and the result shows the significance of local accessibility in predicting Twitter data in both cases. The outcome also suggests the critical importance of investigating the outliers in the dataset because they might clarify hidden potentials of urban spaces.
36-5 LIFESTYLE
36-5885
Ecological planning. Human activity. Human behavior. Landscape. Natural environment.
Cultural landscapes and their social–ecological values are threatened by changing lifestyles, policies and land-use practices, making their appropriate management a key sustainability challenge. Drawing on five years of interdisciplinary research in Transylvania, we conceptualise the notion of a ‘landscape interface’ – the intersection between the ecological and social subsystems, which through time, shapes and is shaped by the local value system. The landscape interface is a source of system continuity and stability. In Transylvania, many locals still act according to the value system associated with a disappearing landscape interface, a phenomenon we term a ‘value change debt.’ We argue that the erosion of the old value system, together with the weakening of the landscape interface, threatens sustainability – whereas reconnecting social–ecological feedback and thus strengthening the landscape interface could foster sustainability. The new conceptual perspective proposed here could foster greater understanding of cultural landscapes, including the social dimension of human–environment interactions.