An orienting framework of municipal enablers in urban river governance

Urban streams are susceptible to stormwater and sewage inputs that can impact their ecological health and water quality. Microbial communities in streams play important functional roles, and their composition and metabolic potential can help assess ecological state and water quality. Although these environments are highly heterogenous, little is known about the influence of isolated perturbations, such as those resulting from rain events on urban stream microbiota. Here, we examined the microbial community composition and diversity in an urban stream during dry and wet weather conditions with both 16S rRNA gene sequencing across multiple years and shotgun metagenomics to more deeply analyze a single storm flow event. Metagenomics was used to assess population-level dynamics as well as shifts in the microbial community taxonomic profile and functional potential before and after a substantial rainfall. The results demonstrated general trends present in the stream under storm flow versus base flow conditions and also highlighted the influence of increased effluent flow following rain in shifting the stream microbial community from abundant freshwater taxa to those more associated with urban/anthropogenic settings. Shifts in the taxonomic composition were also linked to changes in functional gene content, particularly for transmembrane transport and organic substance biosynthesis. We also observed an increase in relative abundance of genes encoding degradation of organic pollutants and antibiotic resistance after rain. Overall, this study highlighted some differences in the microbial community of an urban stream under storm flow conditions and showed the impact of a storm flow event on the microbiome from an environmental and public health perspective.IMPORTANCE Urban streams in various parts of the world are facing increased anthropogenic pressure on their water quality, and storm flow events represent one such source of complex physical, chemical, and biological perturbations. Microorganisms are important components of these streams from both ecological and public health perspectives. Analysis of the effect of perturbations on the stream microbial community can help improve current knowledge on the impact such chronic disturbances can have on these water resources. This study examines microbial community dynamics during rain-induced storm flow conditions in an urban stream of the Chicago Area Waterway System. Additionally, using shotgun metagenomics we identified significant shifts in the microbial community composition and functional gene content following a high-rainfall event, with potential environment and public health implications. Previous work in this area has focused on specific genes/organisms or has not assessed immediate storm flow impact.

Critical scholars on power relations and climate change adaptation have highlighted the lack of community participation as a consequence of unbalanced power operations. Evidence about how unequal power relations and subject formation constrain public participation, however, is under-studied. In this paper, we utilised the intersection between community participation and the subjectivities lens to examine how a hierarchical political structure systematically operates to influence community engagement in adaptation and how and why local communities are included or excluded from adaptation as a result of subject-making, using Vietnam as a case study. Using 66 semi-structured interviews and ten focus group discussions involving policymakers, practitioners, local authorities, and communities, we examined how the key respondents stereotyped local roles and capacity in agricultural adaptation activities. Applying content analysis, we found that the general population in Vietnam is often framed as lacking knowledge and capacity to respond to climate impacts. Reflected through a traditional government-led model in two agricultural adaptation projects, the study showed that subtle but pervasive subjectivities and subject-making processes constrain community participation by affecting perceptions and, subsequently, actions of key stakeholders, undermining local roles and capacity in undertaking adaptation. These perpetuate the power imbalance between local communities and government entities. The findings contribute to the prevailing scholarship of climate change adaptation that, under an authoritarian regime, local capacity is undermined not only by powerholders but also by community members as they consent to government decisions.

. In 2019, the Fourth Plenary Session of the 19th Communist Party of China Central Committee emphasized the "acceleration of modernizing urban social governance," which has significant theoretical and practical implications. In 2020, the Fifth Plenary Session of the 19th Communist Party of China Central Committee further proposed requirements such as "strengthening and innovating urban social governance" and "improving the level of urban governance and strengthening risk prevention and control in mega-city governance," pointing out the direction for the next step of modernizing the urban governance system and governance capacity. Urban social governance is an important dimension of national governance and plays a pivotal role in the national governance system. This requires accurate analysis and clarification of the relationship between national governance and local governance, grassroots governance and social governance, urban governance and county-level social governance, and village governance, and promoting the organic combination of the "system of self-governance, governance based on moral principles, and governance by law," to truly achieve the orderly social operation of self-governance, governance based on moral principles, powerful governance by law, and orderly politics. The construction of the institutional framework and mechanism innovation of urban social governance requires the governance content and behavior to be located in appropriate spatial areas and governance units, to flexibly and conveniently form combinations and reconstructions of governance units of different levels, types, and subjects according to local conditions. To optimize the spatial scale of urban social governance, shift the governance focus downwards, and continuously consolidate the pivot and base of modernizing urban social governance, in order to better form a rural-urban integration social governance system with top-down linkage, horizontal interaction, facility connectivity, and data integration, and effectively give full play to the value and function of grassroots governance units to undertake the heavy responsibility of promoting the modernization of national governance.

Land conversion induced by urbanization leads to taxonomic and functional homogenization of a river macroinvertebrate metacommunity

Chapter 4 shifts the geographical focus to the urban edge of metropolitan centers, and from urban to rural land. It outlines the land battles between expansionist urban governments at the municipal and district levels and rural governments at the county and township levels. The struggle between urban and rural governments is set in the historical shift in which industrialism has largely given way to urbanism since the late 1990s. Drawing on the changing political discourse, urban governments have moved to incorporate scattered industrial estates formerly controlled by rural governments. As a result, the urban fringe becomes a primary site of capital accumulation, territorial expansion, and consolidation vital to urban governments' local state‐building projects. The urban government's logic of property‐based accumulation and territorial expansion builds on itself and finds expression in massive‐scale mega projects like “new cities” and “university cities” built on former village land in the outskirts of the city.

Urban river pollution is one of the most prominent environmental problems in Chinese cities that have been trying to prevent and control. The aim of this paper is to propose an urban river governance framework from the perspective of systematic governance. The point source pollution control is the premise of river regulation. Increased impervious surface in urban areas due to urbanization continuously increases the concentration of stormwater runoff pollutants. Many low-impact development facilities such as sunken lawn and rain gardens can also effectively reduce with non-point source pollution. Controlling the pollution source eliminates some pollutants in the river though it does not improve its own ecosystem. Since the self-purification ability of an unstable ecosystem is weak, the restoration of ecosystems is critical component of the water environment management. Urban river regulation should focus on sustainable management of river sources to meet the human needs, while ensuring the health and continuous development of river ecosystems, water ecology, water landscape and water culture.

Urban river ecological health assessment is an effective means to manage urban rivers, and combining principles of landscape ecology can provide new help for the ecological restoration of urban rivers and improving their ecosystem service value. From the perspective of important functions of ecosystems, based on typical sample site investigations of different river sections, questionnaire surveys, and remote sensing technology, a fuzzy comprehensive evaluation model based on the factor analysis method was used to construct an indicator system that can quantitatively reflect the ecological health of urban rivers. This comprehensive evaluation index system includes five major functions: social function, habitat and corridor function, water ecological function, water landscape function, and spatial enclosure function. The study identified key areas, key rivers, key river sections, and main indicator projects for the ecological restoration of the urban river landscape corridors in Zhengzhou. The study results also showed that the urban river landscape corridors in Zhengzhou have prominent problems in social function, water ecological function, and habitat and corridor function, and 62.1% of the river sections are currently in a sub-healthy state. The flood control function, eutrophication of water body, naturalization rate of revetment, and five other indicators in the old city district are significantly lower than those in the new city district, and the old city district should be the focus of the ecological restoration of urban river corridors. From the evaluation of the ecological health status of typical river sections, the Jinshui River and Xionger River have a larger number of river sections that urgently need restoration. This study provides a reference for the ecological restoration of urban rivers in Zhengzhou, a rapidly urbanizing region, and has reference significance for the construction of water landscapes in small and medium-sized cities with low levels of urbanization.

Geographies of COVID‐19

How urban infrastructure is funded, financed and governed is a central issue for states at the national, city-regional and city scales. Urban infrastructure is being financialised by financial and state actors and transformed into an asset in the international investment landscape. Local governments are being compelled by national state and financial institutions to be more entrepreneurial in their infrastructure funding and financing and to reorganise their governance arrangements. This article explains the socially and spatially uneven unfolding and implications of urban infrastructure financialisation and local government attempts to implement more entrepreneurial practices and governance forms. The empirical focus is the City Deals in the UK: a new form of urban governance and infrastructure investment based upon negotiated central–local government agreements on decentralised powers, responsibilities and resources. The continued authority of the highly centralised UK national state, its managerialist institutions and conservative/risk-averse administrative culture have constrained urban infrastructure financialisation and entrepreneurial urban governance in the UK City Deals. Situated in their particular spatial, temporal, political-economic and institutional settings, financialisation is understood as a socially and spatially variegated process and urban governance is interpreted as the articulation and mixing of new entrepreneurial and enduring managerialist forms.

“Ecological risk assessments and eco-toxicity analyses using chemical, biological, physiological responses, DNA damages and gene-level biomarkers in Zebrafish (Danio rerio) in an urban stream”

Human welfare depends on the health of nature. Decades of ill-conceived management practices caused a decline in the quality of human life, as well as in biological and cultural diversity. Simultaneously, they increased social and ecological risks. For instance, mismanagement of urban rivers jeopardizes their ecological health and ability to provide ecosystem services. While demands for responsible urban riverscape design that fulfill both human and ecosystem needs are increasing, explicit recommendations to achieve these ambitious goals are still lacking. We present a first attempt of a conceptualization of Human–River Encounter Sites for urban rivers that targets reconciliation between humans and nature within urban river corridors. It builds upon the River Culture Concept with literature reviews and experiences from river restoration projects. We identify six tenets that are important to develop guidelines for Human–River Encounter Sites: health, safety, functionality, accessibility, collaboration, and awareness. This paper presents how these tenets can collectively help to harmonize the needs of citizens and biota, and to mitigate the current urban river crisis. This contribution feeds the debate on sustainable socio-ecological management of urban rivers and provides guidelines for the implementation of future urban river restorations and management efforts.

Chapter 14 - Urban river governance

To document the process, outcome and effectiveness of a community-based intervention for dengue control. The primary intervention, focused on strengthening intersectoral coordination, was initiated by researchers in January 2000 in a pilot area in Playa municipality, Havana. In August 2002 health authorities extended the intervention to neighbouring areas, one of which was selected for evaluation. In August 2003 a complementary strategy, focused on community empowerment, was initiated in half of the pilot area. In our control area, routine dengue activities continued throughout the study period. Longitudinal process assessment was carried out using document analysis, interviews and group discussions. Random population surveys in 1999, 2002 and 2005 assessed levels of participation and behavioural changes. Entomological surveillance data from 1999 to 2005 were used to determine effectiveness. Mean scores for participation in the pilot area were 1.6, 3.4 and 4.4 at baseline, and 2 years after initiating intersectoral coordination and intersectoral coordination plus community empowerment interventions, respectively. While in the control area little behavioural change was observed over time, changes were considerable in the pilot and extension areas, with 80% of households involved in the community empowerment intervention showed adequate behavioural patterns. The pilot and extension areas attained comparable entomological effectiveness with significantly lower Breteau indices (BIs) than the control area. The pilot (sub-) area with the community empowerment intervention reached BIs below 0.1 that continued to be significantly lower than the one in the control area until the end of the study. The study showed a trend in the levels and quality of participation, behavioural change and effectiveness of Aedes control from the routine activities only over an intervention with intersectoral coordination to one that combined intersectoral coordination and community empowerment approach.

Sediments were collected from the upper, middle and lower reaches of both urban and rural rivers in a typical urbanization zone of the Pearl River delta. Six heavy metals (Cd, Cr, Cu, Ni, Pb and Zn) were analyzed in all sediment samples, and their spatial distribution, pollution levels, toxicity and ecological risk levels were evaluated to compare the characteristics of heavy metal pollution between the two rivers. Our results indicated that the total contents of the six metals in all samples exceeded the soil background value in Guangdong province. Based on the soil quality thresholds of the China SEPA, Cd levels at all sites exceeded class III criteria, and other metals exhibited pollution levels exceeding class II or III criteria at both river sites. According to the sediment quality guidelines of the US EPA, all samples were moderately to heavily polluted by Cr, Cu, Ni, Pb and Zn. Compared to rural river sites, urban river sites exhibited heavier pollution. Almost all sediment samples from both rivers exhibited moderate to serious toxicity to the environment, with higher contributions from Cr and Ni. A "hot area" of heavy metal pollution being observed in the upper and middle reaches of the urban river area, whereas a "hot spot" was identified at a specific site in the middle reach of the rural river. Contrary metal distribution patterns were also observed along typical sediment profiles from urban and rural rivers. However, the potential ecological risk indices of rural river sediments in this study were equal to those of urban river sediments, implying that the ecological health issues of the rivers in the undeveloped rural area should also be addressed. Sediment organic matter and grain size might be important factors influencing the distribution profiles of these heavy metals.

The rapid development of information technology has a significant impact on various fields of human life, including urban governance. In the context of urban governance, information technology can be used to improve efficiency, transparency, and community participation in the decision-making process that has an impact on the quality of life of city residents. The purpose of this research is to explain the role of information technology in improving urban governance because it is important in the context of increasingly complex urban development and requires appropriate and efficient decision-making. The focus of this research is qualitative. Methods for gathering information included paying close attention and taking detailed notes, with subsequent analysis including data reduction, visualisation, and inference. The study arrived at the conclusion that the role of information technology in improving urban governance is crucial and requires special attention from the government and relevant stakeholders. By improving access and quality of information technology services, enhancing digital literacy and information technology skills, increasing community participation in urban governance, and improving data security and privacy, the application of information technology in urban governance can become more effective and efficient in improving urban governance.