| 1. |
- Colding, Johan, 1958-, et al.
(författare)
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Applying a Systems Perspective on the Notion of the Smart City
- 2020
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Ingår i: Smart Cities. - : MDPI AG. - 2624-6511. ; 3:2
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- This paper focuses on the need for a widened definition of the notion of technology within the smart city discourse, with a particular focus on the “built environment”. The first part of the paper describes how current tendencies in urban design and architecture are inclined to prioritize high tech-solutions at the expense of low-tech functionalities and omits that information and communication technology (ICT) contrasts the art of building cities as an adaptable and habitually smart technology in itself. It continues with an elaboration on the need for expanding the limits of system boundaries for a better understanding of the energy and material telecouplings that are linked to ICT solutions and account for some perils inherent in smart technologies, such as rebound effects and the difficulty of measuring the environmental impacts of ICT solutions on a city level. The second part of the paper highlights how low-tech technologies and nature-based solutions can make cities smarter, representing a new technology portfolio in national and international policies for safeguarding biodiversity and the delivery of a range of ecosystem services, promoting the necessary climate-change adaption that cities need to prioritize to confer resilience.
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| 2. |
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| 3. |
- Colding, Johan, 1958-, et al.
(författare)
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Frontiers in Social-Ecological Urbanism
- 2022
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Ingår i: Land. - : MDPI AG. - 2073-445X. ; 11:6, s. 929-
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- This paper describes a new approach in urban ecological design, referred to as social- ecological urbanism (SEU). It draws from research in resilience thinking and space syntax in the analysis of relationships between urban processes and urban form at the microlevel of cities, where social and ecological services are directly experienced by urban dwellers. The paper elaborates on three types of media for urban designers to intervene in urban systems, including urban form, institutions, and discourse, that together function as a significant enabler of urban change. The paper ends by presenting four future research frontiers with a potential to advance the field of social-ecological urbanism: (1) urban density and critical biodiversity thresholds, (2) human and non-human movement in urban space, (3) the retrofitting of urban design, and (4) reversing the trend of urban ecological illiteracy through affordance designs that connect people with nature and with each other.
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| 4. |
- Colding, Johan, et al.
(författare)
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Supporting bottom-up human agency for adapting to climate change
- 2020
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Ingår i: One Earth. - : CellPress. - 2590-3330 .- 2590-3322. ; 3:4, s. 392-395
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- The metric focus of sustainability thinking is at risk of downplaying the role of climate-change adaptation as a strategy complementary to climate-change mitigation. The upcoming 26th session of the Conference of the Parties (COP26) needs to explore how adaptation based on human agency could contribute to dealing with climate change.
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| 5. |
- Giusti, Matteo, et al.
(författare)
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The regenerative compatibility: a synergy between healthy ecosystems, environmental attitudes, and restorative experiences
- 2020
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Ingår i: PLOS ONE. - : PLoS. - 1932-6203. ; 15:1
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Urban nature is and will be the most common provider of nature interactions for humankind. The restorative benefits of nature exposure are renown and creating human habitats that simultaneously support people’s wellbeing and ecological sustainability is an urgent priority. In this study, we investigate how the relationship between environmental attitudes and healthy ecosystems influences restorative experiences combining a place-based online survey with geographical data on ecosystem health in Stockholm (Sweden). Using spatial regression, we predict the 544 restorative experiences (from 325 respondents), with people’s environmental attitudes, natural land covers, ecosystem health, and the statistical interactions among these variables as predictors. Our results show that restorative experiences can happen anywhere in the urban landscape, but when they occur in natural environments, the combined levels of biodiversity and ecological connectivity are better predicting factor than the mere presence of nature. That is, healthy ecosystems seem to be more important than just any nature for restorative experiences. Moreover, the statistical interaction between one’s environmental attitudes and natural environments predict almost all restorative experiences better than when these variables are independent predictors. This suggests that there is synergistic compatibility between environmental attitudes and healthy ecosystems that triggers restorative processes. We call this synergy regenerative compatibility. Regenerative compatibility is an unexploited potential that emerges when people’s attitudes and ecosystems are aligned in sustainability. We consider regenerative compatibility a valuable leverage point to transform towards ecologically sustainable and healthy urban systems. To this end, we encourage multifaceted policy interventions that regenerate human-nature relationships holistically rather than implement atomistic solutions.
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| 6. |
- Linder, Noah, et al.
(författare)
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Pro-environmental habits : An underexplored research agenda in sustainability science
- 2022
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Ingår i: Ambio. - : Springer Science and Business Media LLC. - 0044-7447 .- 1654-7209. ; 51:3, s. 546-556
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Habits are the fundamental basis for many of our daily actions and can be powerful barriers to behavioural change. Still, habits are not included in most narratives, theories, and interventions applied to sustainable behaviour. One reason societies struggle to reach policy goals and people fail to change towards more pro-environmental lifestyles might be that many behaviours are now bound by strong habits that override knowledge and intentions to act. In this perspective article, we provide three arguments for why pro-environmental habits are a needed research agenda in sustainability science: (1) habit theory highlights how behaviour is heavily reliant on automatic processes, (2) the environmental context sets boundary conditions for behaviour, shape habits, and cues action responses, and (3) our habits and past behaviour shape our values and self-identity. These arguments highlight the transformative potential of looking at sustainable behaviours through a habit lens. We believe a research agenda on pro-environmental habits could generate a more holistic understanding of sustainable behaviours and complement today's dominating approaches which emphasize reasoned decisions and intrinsic motivations such as values, norms, and intentions to understand and predict pro-environmental behaviour. We highlight evident knowledge gaps and practical benefits of considering habit theory to promote pro-environmental behaviours, and how habit architecture could be utilized as a strong leverage point when designing, modifying, and building urban environments.
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| 7. |
- Samuelsson, Karl, Doktorand
(författare)
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Making space for resilient urban well-being
- 2021
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- This thesis addresses the need for urban landscapes that provide resilient contributions to inhabitants’ well-being while also limiting impacts on the Earth system. It aims to (1) advance a nuanced understanding of how urban environments relate to urban dwellers’ well-being, and (2) formulate guidelines for planning that supports urban dwellers’ well-being and align with global sustainability. The thesis consists of five empirical studies of Swedish and Danish urban landscapes in which day-to-day experiences and mental disorders were studied as different components of well-being. A variety of spatial and statistical analysis methods were leveraged, including public participation geographic information systems, remote sensing, deep learning, accessibility analysis, and spatial regression.Results convey that urban environments relate to well-being in substantial ways, but these map poorly onto the simplistic urban-nature or urban-rural dichotomies that dominate current discourse. Support of well-being instead seems to depend on spatial conditions comprised of the street network’s topological configuration, the population distribution, and the accessibility of natural settings. Since the 1990s, contrasts have intensified between stressful urban cores that are increasingly full of people and peripheral areas that are “left behind” and high-risk in terms of mental illness. Results show that urban neighbourhoods could contribute to well-being through fulfilment of three guidelines: (1) a balance of residential and daytime populations, (2) no extreme concentration of movement, and (3) accessible natural settings. Strategies in accordance with the guidelines can increase so-called topodiversity, which refers to variation in spatial conditions across an urban landscape that permits support of well-being through different pathways. Increasing topodiversity in both central and peripheral areas
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| 8. |
- Samuelsson, Karl, Doktorand, et al.
(författare)
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Residential environments across Denmark have become both denser and greener over 20 years
- 2021
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Ingår i: Environmental Research Letters. - : IOP. - 1748-9326. ; 16:1
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Despite much attention in the literature, knowledge about the dynamics surrounding urban densification and urban greening is still in dire need for architects, urban planners and scientists that strive to design, develop, and regenerate sustainable and resilient urban environments. Here, we investigate countrywide patterns of changes in residential density and residential nature at high spatial resolution over a time period of >20 years (1995-2016), combining a dataset of address-level population data covering all of Denmark (>2 million address points) with satellite image-derived Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) data. Our results show that many residential environments across Denmark have witnessed simultaneous densification and greening since the mid-1990s. In fact, the most common change within 500 metre neighbourhoods around individual address points is of joint increases in population and NDVI (28%), followed by increasing NDVI with stable population figures (21%). In contrast, only 8% of neighbourhoods around address points have seen a decline in either population or NDVI. Results were similar in low- middle- and high-density environments, suggesting that trends were driven by climate change but also to some degree enabled by urban planning policies that seek to increase rather than decrease nature in the cities.
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| 9. |
- Samuelsson, Karl, Doktorand
(författare)
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Spatial analyses of people's experiences in urban landscapes
- 2019
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Licentiatavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- Limiting cities’ negative impact for global sustainability suggests compact city development. However, extensive and accessible urban nature is important for urban dwellers’ wellbeing. Aligning efforts to make cities locally and globally sustainable means resolving this conflict.This thesis applies spatial analysis of urban dwellers’ regularly occurring experiences, as these are important wellbeing indicators, looking specifically at Stockholm, Sweden. The aim is to contribute to a nuanced understanding of urban environments’ influence on urban dwellers’ experiences. Paper I investigates how accessibility to various environment features impact the probability that people have positive or negative experiences. Paper II applies resilience principles to investigate what experiences exist together in neighbourhoods.The environment have considerable influence on people’s experiences. Some common indicators in urban planning display weak relationships with experiential outcome, while other less common ones have larger effects. Neighbourhood compositions of experiences display consistent patterns, both spatially across Stockholm and with respect to resilience principles. Many neighbourhoods harbour diverse positive experiences, while a few are dominated by negative ones.The results suggest that human-environment relations should be given more consideration in urban discourse and urban planning. A relational approach could improve urban dweller’s experiences, and positively influence their wellbeing. For urban planning to be able to handle the complexity of such an approach, I suggest that resilience principles can be heuristics for an urban development that does not compromise people’s experiences. The methodological framework developed here can be applied in other cities, as it can identify specific places for transformation, but also increase knowledge of the interplay between urban environments and people’s experiences across different contexts.
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| 10. |
- Samuelsson, Karl, Doktorand
(författare)
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The Topodiverse City: Urban Form for Subjective Well-Being
- 2021
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Ingår i: Frontiers in Built Environment. - : Frontiers. - 2297-3362. ; 7
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Research is now better than ever able to unveil how urban inhabitants’ movement, behavior and experiences relate to the urban forms in which they take place. Consequently, urban form might increasingly be able to function as a focal point for different strands of research that focus on sustainable urban life, and as a link between research and planning practice through the development of empirically informed design principles. Drawing on literature from urban morphology, complex systems analysis, environmental psychology, and neuroscience, I provide a wide-angle view of how urban form relates to subjective well-being through movement, social and economic activity, experiences and psychological restoration. I propose three principles for urban form that could promote subjective well-being while also mitigating the environmental impact of cities in industrialized societies. The principles revolve around so-called topodiversity, meaning variation across an urban area in spatial conditions that allows subjective well-being to be promoted through several different pathways. The principles together suggest an urban form that I call the topodiverse city. The topodiverse city displays a polycentric structure and is more spatially contained than the sprawling city, yet not as compact as the dense city. I also propose indicators to measure the principles using mostly openly available data and analysis methods, to further research on how urban form can enable urban subjective well-being with low environmental impact.
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