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•Nature-based solutions (NBS) can mitigate some urban challenges (UC), but not all.•We study the role of ecosystem services (ES) supplied by NBS in addressing UC.•Some ES classes ...depend on shared factors, being commended to assess ES on bundles.•Several groups of causal relationships between UC, ES and NBS were identified.•This review confirms the NBS potential to supply multiple ecosystem services (ES).
Nature-based Solutions (NBS) are increasingly promoted to support sustainable and resilient urban planning. However, design and planning urban NBS targeted at the needs of the local context require knowledge about the causal relationships between NBS, ecosystem services (ES) and urban challenges (UC) This paper aims at contributing to this knowledge, by systematically identifying nexuses (i.e. qualitative links) between UC, ES and NBS, and describing plausible causal relationships. A conceptual UC-ES-NBS criteria framework was built, and used to guide a two-step systematic literature review on current UC and on the supply of ES by urban NBS. This was followed by a non-systematic literature review, which complemented the previous one by unveiling knowledge gaps on the biophysical and social processes and attributes on which specific ES classes depend. The non-systematic review was also used to identify additional NBS. The UC review identified 18 UC and 58 sub-challenges, and illustrated which UC were more studied, according to the type of literature and environmental and socio-economic attributes of urban contexts. The ES review led to the development of an urban NBS classification, and supported the identification of UC-ES and ES-NBS nexuses, which were analysed and classified into four groups of causal relationship. For the nexuses identified as direct plausible causal relationship, the main processes and attributes on which the supply of specific ES depend were pointed out. Relationships between UC, ES, NBS, processes, and attributes were represented in the form of network diagrams. Our results can be used to support urban policies aimed at mainstreaming NBS and as a basis to further understand UC-ES-NBS relationships.
In recent years many initiatives have been developed under the Smart City label in a bid to provide a response to challenges facing cities today. The concept has evolved from a sector-based approach ...to a more comprehensive view that places governance and stakeholders' involvement at the core of strategies. However, Smart City implementation requires lowering the scale from the strategy to the project level. Therefore, the ability of Smart City initiatives to provide an integrated and systematic answer to urban challenges is constantly being called into question. Stakeholder involvement in both the projects and the city strategy is key to developing a governance framework that allows an integrated and comprehensive understanding. This can only be done if Smart City strategies take the stakeholders' opinion into account and seek a compromise between their views and the implementation of the strategy.
Multiple attempts have been made to analyse Smart Cities, but tools are needed to understand their complexity and reflect the stakeholders' role in developing Smart City initiatives and their capacity to face urban challenges. This paper pursues two objectives: (A) to develop a conceptual model capable of displaying an overview of (a) the stakeholders taking part in the initiative in relation to (b) the projects developed and (c) the challenges they face; and (B) to use this model to synthesise the opinion of different stakeholders involved in Smart City initiatives and compare their attitudes to the key projects implemented in a corresponding SC strategy. The methodology combines project analysis with surveys and interviews with different groups of key stakeholders (governments, private companies, universities and research centres, and civil society) through text analysis. The conceptual model is developed through discussions with different European stakeholders and is applied to the case of the Vienna Smart City strategy.
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•An integrated conceptual model is proposed for Smart Cities.•The model highlights the importance of governance and stakeholders.•It provides an understanding of the complexity of Smart City projects and dimensions.•The proposal places the focus on urban challenges and global trends.•An application methodology is developed, comparing Smart City Strategy implementation with stakeholders’ discourses.•The model is applied to the case of the Vienna Smart City Strategy.•Guidelines are proposed to narrow the gap between the strategy and the stakeholders’ opinions.
This study investigates ground subsidence in Maceió, the capital of Alagoas, Brazil, utilizing Sentinel-1 Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) data from November 2019 to December 2023. Ground subsidence ...poses significant risks to urban infrastructure and requires comprehensive monitoring and mitigation strategies. We employed the Interferometric Wide Swath (IW) mode of Sentinel-1A, acquiring high-resolution data in descending orbit with VV polarization. Through interferometric processing, including co-registration, phase unwrapping, and coherence estimation, we produced detailed subsidence maps for key neighborhoods such as Bebedouro, Farol, Mutange, Pinheiro, and Bom Parto. Our results reveal that subsidence in Maceió is highly variable across different neighborhoods, with cumulative subsidence reaching up to 3.83 meters in the most affected areas. The Bebedouro neighborhood, for instance, experienced subsidence up to 0.33 meters over an area of 41.85 hectares, while Farol saw significant ground movement impacting 59.49 hectares. The analysis indicates that high-density urban areas are particularly susceptible to subsidence, correlating with increased structural damage and flood vulnerability. The study underscores the importance of integrating geotechnical, urban planning, and environmental management strategies to address subsidence. We recommend the implementation of adaptive urban planning measures and enhanced monitoring techniques using satellite data to mitigate the impact of subsidence on infrastructure and communities. These findings provide a critical foundation for developing resilient urban environments in coastal cities prone to geological and anthropogenic subsidence.
This paper argues for a specific urban planning perspective on smart governance that we call “smart urban governance,” which represents a move away from the technocratic way of governing cities often ...found in smart cities. A framework on smart urban governance is proposed on the basis of three intertwined key components, namely spatial, institutional, and technological components. To test the applicability of the framework, we conducted an international questionnaire survey on smart city projects. We then identified and discursively analyzed two smart city projects—Smart Nation Singapore and Helsinki Smart City—to illustrate how this framework works in practice. The questionnaire survey revealed that smart urban governance varies remarkably: As urban issues differ in different contexts, the governance modes and relevant ICT functionalities applied also differ considerably. Moreover, the case analysis indicates that a focus on substantive urban challenges helps to define appropriate modes of governance and develop dedicated technologies that can contribute to solving specific smart city challenges. The analyses of both cases highlight the importance of context (cultural, political, economic, etc.) in analyzing interactions between the components. In this, smart urban governance promotes a sociotechnical way of governing cities in the “smart” era by starting with the urban issue at stake, promoting demand-driven governance modes, and shaping technological intelligence more socially, given the specific context.
In this paper, I outline an innovative remote participatory video (PV) methodology that makes use of participants’ smartphones. It was developed as an alternative to co-production research and can be ...employed when face-to-face contact is impossible or undesirable. Because of the COVID-19 pandemic, face-to-face research interactions have been disrupted or become impossible. Yet it is vital to reach those who are most affected by emergencies and to include their voices. The research reported here was a collaboration between women in Medellín, Colombia, and a team of filmmakers and researchers. We developed an innovative remote PV methodology using participants’ smartphones, researching how women from poorer neighbourhoods were affected by the pandemic in their everyday lives. Here, I reflect on the strengths and weaknesses of the remote PV methodology, arguing that it offers new avenues for participants to take control of the filming and editing process, and builds technical skills and capacities that have value beyond the timeframe of the project. I conclude that the remote PV method has great potential as a stand-alone method, moving the landscape of co-production research away from a requirement for geographical co-presence and potentially shifting power and ownership towards local co-researchers and participants.
Urban spatial expansion is the result of urbanization's control over the geographical space and it represents the process of land conversion to urban uses. The new trends of spatial expansion, ...especially in developing countries, are pregnant with numerous social, economic and environmental challenges, and forcasting the spatial expansion challenges is one of the useful methods for finding a sustainable spatial development strategy.The current research is a type of applied-developmental research that was carried out using a qualitative-quantitative method. In the qualitative part of Delphi group decision-making method, the opinion of experts regarding the identification, summarization and comparison of two indicators has been done, and in the quantitative part, the data has been analyzed using Interpretive Structural Modeling (ISM) in Micmac software.The findings of the research show that for internal migrations, population imbalance in the territory, instability of the settlement system, weak legal control, distribution of injustice, foreign migrations, social instability, poverty, destruction of the rural way of life, marginalization, increase in crime rate and Delinquency, poor social control, critical burden of the population, abnormal housing and the decline in the quality of life have the greatest influence and will play a role as the first level of challenging factors in the future of the metropolitan area of Tehran.The results of examining the challenges of the metropolitan area of Tehran show that among the components examined in the metropolitan area of Tehran, the highest level of influence and is related to the migration component with an influence of 107.5, and this component is the most challenging factor in the future of the metropolitan area of Tehran. will work, and the lowest power of influence and influence is related to the component of annexation, integration and depopulation of villages (with influence power of 67.8).
Chinhoyi in Zimbabwe is used as a case study to explore the potential of secondary cities in addressing urban challenges. This study is significant considering that while African cities are rapidly ...urbanizing, narratives in African urbanism focus more on large cities and metros. Adopting a qualitative research approach, data for this study were collected from interviews with 15 key informants and a review of policies and development plans. The study reveals that, albeit challenges bedeviling Chinhoyi, there is potential for sustained growth through maximizing local opportunities, including industrial capability, supporting the informal sector, promoting mixed-use development, and empowering the local authority.
There is much enthusiasm about smart city development, but the actual implementation of smart projects creates a need for specific methodologies to assess smart city projects. This paper proposes a ...holistic framework for assessing and interrelating smart city projects and urban challenges in a specific region and for evaluating the projects' potential to generate effects. A generalized Smart City Projects Assessment Matrix (SCPAM) is proposed as a tool and applied to the South and East Mediterranean Region at both the regional and project levels. The tool is validated through its application to five case studies. Guidelines for project implementation in the area are extracted.
•We estimate 8 indicators indicating the impacts of urban agriculture at a city scale.•Urban agriculture impacts are sensitive to the type of urban garden.•There are trade-offs among social and ...environmental benefits of urban agriculture.•The model we introduce provides quantifiable evidence to reduce those trade-offs.
In the first decades of the 21st century, urban agriculture has gained attention for its role in enhancing food security, particularly in developing nations. Additionally, it is commonly assumed that urban agriculture also has positive implications for other aspects of urban sustainability, such as mitigating runoff and creating job opportunities. However, the extent of these contributions has not been extensively quantified. This study aims to address this gap by presenting a stochastic model that quantifies the contributions of urban agriculture to urban sustainability, using Sant Feliu de Llobregat, a Mediterranean city, as a case study. We assessed eight indicators, including accessibility to green areas, food self-reliance, green surface area per capita, job creation, NO2 sequestration, runoff mitigation, urban heat island effect, and volunteer participation. These indicators were estimated across twelve different simulated scenarios using 1000 Monte Carlo simulations for each scenario, to account for uncertainties. The findings revealed that the contributions of urban agriculture are not straightforward, as they are influenced by factors such as garden typology and location. Although urban agriculture typically originates as a grassroots movement, it often receives administrative support. Therefore, strategic planning can be employed to maximize the contributions of urban agriculture to urban sustainability and minimize trade-offs between social and environmental benefits.
Urban agriculture is gaining attraction to become one of the pillars of the urban ecological transition and to
increase food security in an urbanized planet. However, there is a lack of systematic ...quantification of the
benefits provided by urban agriculture solutions. In this paper, we present an R package to estimate several
indicators related to benefits of urban agriculture. The goal is to provide a tool for researchers and practitioners
interested in the impacts of urban agriculture. The ediblecity package provides functions to calculate 8
indicators: urban heat island, runoff prevention, green areas accessibility, NO
2
sequestration, jobs created in
commercial gardens, volunteers involved in community gardens, green per capita and, finally, food production.
Moreover, the package also provides a function to generate scenarios with different implementations of urban
agriculture. We illustrate the use of the package by comparing three scenarios in a neighborhood of Girona
(Spain), which is included in the package as an example dataset. There, we compare scenarios with an
increasing amount of urban agriculture solutions. The ediblecity package is open-source software. This
allows other R developers to contribute to the package, providing new functionalities or improving the existing
ones.
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