Assessing Variations in River Networks Under Urbanization Across Metropolitan Plains Using a Multi-Metric Approach

Despite the rise to prominence of sustainable planning, the state of urgency and the pressure imposed by the extreme competition between metropolitan territories reduces sustainability to a market-oriented doctrine for deregulated urban development. The aim of this article is an exploration of the current Athenian urban crisis, by centring on sustainable urban development plans, territorial planning institutions, and urban policies. To this end, the phenomenon of urban crisis is explained as a derivative of the failure of sustainability reforms. By establishing a link between the institutional framework governing urban development and the success or failure of sustainability reforms, this article seeks to contribute to the discussion around the attainability, scope and impact of sustainable urban development plans. Through the hypothesis that as long as territorial planning is used as means towards speculative urban development, it will only be equivalent to that of a real estate facilitating mechanism, it is argued that the urban development model of Athens, as well as the role that institutions have in its shaping, is incompatible with any notion of sustainability. The main contribution of this article is to potentially help towards developing a critical reflection on how projects, plans, territories and sustainability should be approached.

Most micromobility research is conducted among users (their attitudes, behavior or travel trajectories). The findings are of significant value and utility in the creation of mobility patterns, shared micromobility offers, operating conditions, and the use of micromobility big data. The significance and efficacy of micromobility within Sustainable Urban Mobility Plans is often underestimated. Undoubtedly, the incorporation of micromobility into urban planning can lead to tangible environmental benefits, including a reduction in traffic congestion, greenhouse gas emissions, and improved air quality. Consequently, Sustainable Urban Mobility Plans and micromobility represent a significant research topic, given their importance for practitioners. This article aims to examine and identify the levels of possible integration pertaining to micromobility within Sustainable Urban Mobility Plans in the context of greening transport systems in cities. The following were identified with regard to levels of integration and future research directions: role of micromobility and Sustainable Urban Mobility Plans in climate change; types of micromobility in a sustainable environment; availability of data and information in the context of planning and promoting green mobility patterns (for researchers and practitioners); formal and legal requirements indicating the need to secure users (road safety of people and their personal data); integration of micromobility and public transportation as a good practice for a sustainable city trips. The initial examination of the literature revealed that this is a relatively narrow research area. Information about the integration between Sustainable Urban Mobility Plans and micromobility may be found in expert reports from various organizations, research funding institutions and city websites. The sources of information are outlined in the paper, as well as future research possibilities. Moreover, the outlined five levels of integration serve as a reminder of the necessity for an interdisciplinary approach to the successful implementation of micromobility as a key factor in Sustainable Urban Mobility Plans.

Teaching and Learning Guide for: Sustainable Development and Environmental Justice in African Cities

The purpose of the study. The purpose of this work is the exploration and generalization of scientific researches on walkability to determine its advantages as an element of public policy in human-centered cities. Over the past fifty years, the world community has actively discussed the issue of healthy and sustainable urban development planning, which has gained particular relevance with the recent World Health Organization publication of the “Healthy Cities: An Effective Approach to a Rapidly Changing World” concept (2020). One of the Healthy Cities approach goals is to promote healthy urban planning and design centered on human well-being (unlike prevalent in the past vehicle orientation), and the main component of such planning is pedestrianization or walkability. The systematic reviews and meta-analyses reporting method (PRISMA) were used in the review. The search was carried out in the bibliographic databases Elibrary, PubMed, MEDLINE, Scopus, Google Scholar. The study of the structure, types, and relationship between pedestrianization and the type of urban planning revealed the global advantages of creating walkable areas, such as maintaining the physical, mental and social health of citizens, increasing social capital, and improving the city’s ecological and economic atmosphere. Conclusion. Thus the promoting walkability was concluded to be a public policy as a relatively simple and highly effective way to benefit in the short, medium, and long term. This fact ultimately makes pedestrianization one of the most important tools for healthy urban planning and design.

In the conservation work or urban development terms, the most complicated process is to balance and distinguish personal requirements into group of interests or circulate public of interests for each individual. In Japan, the successful community participation process of “Machizukuri” or “Town making” has been widely accepted because of its activation of community planning achievement, especially in Kyoto. According to “Machizukuri” which refers to a collaboration of communities, Kyoto city and the business operators have followed the principle of the benefit of equivalence between peaceful living of local people and the appropriate income of business. The collaboration has kept Kyoto as a charming city where a diversity of historical image in an early era of Japan and the technological convenient facilities of the city are combined. For these reasons, the objective of this study aims to understand and expose the inner significance of Machizukuri, in order to integrate or generate several interests in the operation of community’s plan. This research has been reviewed and compared through the urban planning activities. The case-studies are separated into the tourist scenery area, living area and economic area within the three historical characteristic areas including Icinenzaka-Ninenzaka, Anekoji Dori and Pontocho. The results have shown the repetitive successful activities that mainly focus on personal interests, which gradually generate the meaningful consequences for the community’s future images. Thus, it is crucial to consider about personal benefits and it needs a greater attention from its community or sustainable urban development planning.

Sustainable development is a key component in urban studies. Earth Observation (EO) can play a valuable role in sustainable urban development and planning, since it represents a powerful data source with the potential to provide a number of relevant urban sustainability indicators. To this end, in this paper we propose a conceptual list of EO-based indicators capable of supporting urban planning and management. Three cities with different typologies, namely Basel, Switzerland; Tel Aviv, Israel; and Tyumen, Russia were selected as case studies. The EO-based indicators are defined to effectively record the physical properties of the urban environment in a diverse range of environmental sectors such as energy efficiency, air pollution and public health, water, transportation and vulnerability to hazards. The results assess the potential of EO to support the development of a set of urban environmental indicators towards sustainable urban planning and management.

Yangon Metropolitan Area, also known as the Greater Yangon, is Myanmar’s largest commercial center and home to the country’s former capital, Yangon City. This chapter traces the origin and examines the urban primacy of Yangon Region, the region where this metropolitan area is located. It also examines the recent (1989–2014) and potential future (2014–2030) urban land changes, i.e., changes from non-built-up to built-up lands, in the metropolitan area using geospatial tools and techniques. Finally, it discusses some of the possible key factors influencing the urban development of the area and the potential implications of its rapid population growth and urban land changes to its future sustainable urban development. The analysis showed compelling evidence for Yangon Region’s urban primacy over the other regions/states in the country based on population density and proportion of urban population. Over the past 25 years (1989–2014), the area of built-up lands in the study area has increased more than threefold. The geographic location and landscape characteristics of the metropolitan area and its population growth and status as the largest commercial center in the country and the home of the country’s former capital city are hypothesized to be among the key factors influencing the spatiotemporal patterns of urban land changes and the overall urban development of the area. The simulated urban land changes indicated that built-up lands would continue to expand in the future (2014–2030) under the influence of infill and sprawl development patterns. The intensifying pressure of urbanization due to rapid population growth and urban land changes poses many challenges that need to be considered in sustainable urban development and landscape planning.

Sustainable Urban Mobility Plans are developed in Europe rapidly. The future initiative is expected will change the image of European cities and will make transport systems efficacious, thus reducing congestion, decreasing air pollution, and offering alternative options for travelling. The impact of the measures being implemented needs to be monitored regularly to evaluate the effect of Sustainable Urban Mobility Plans, and progress in accomplishing the objectives and specific aims of Sustainable Urban Mobility Plans are assessed. Infrastructure measures often require considerable investment, and therefore, their rational use expected to create immense benefit to the public. This article analyses various European models for monitoring and evaluating Sustainable Urban Mobility Plans. The models are structured, proposing an assessment methodology for Sustainable Urban Mobility Plans. Assistance provided by the experts and the use of evaluation models for the analytic hierarchy process assists in identifying the significance of the monitoring indicators that allow assessing the priority orders and the importance of implementing mobility measures.

In Ethiopia, rapid urbanization has been transforming land-use regimes as cities regenerate and expand, incorporating peri-urban spaces and changing their physical and human landscapes. This study explores the challenges and opportunities of this transformation on peri-urban spaces in the Amhara National Regional State (ANRS) to inform future urban development planning and practice. It focuses on selected peri-urban areas in three metropolitan areas of ANRS —Bahir Dar, Dessie, and Gondar. It employs a phenomenological approach to interpreting data collected through focus group discussion, key-informant and in-depth interviews and observation. Its findings depict these peri-urban spaces rife with poor governance, tenure insecurity, livelihood crises, youth marginalization, and environmental pollution while opportunities were limited, unsustainable, and parochial. It concludes with remarks on the characteristic experiences of urban expansion and the need for effective involvement of stakeholders and residents to enable inclusive and sustainable urban development planning and implementation in peri-urban spaces.

The urban footprint is termed as the physical cover of the urban built-up. In the past several decades urbanization has been accelerated due to rural–urban migration, economic growth, globalization, etc., and it is observed that over half of the world’s population now living in cities. Mostly, the unintentional urbanization causes impermeable surface which triggers several environmental challenges such as trash disposal, groundwater scarcity, heat island effect, and so on which need to be managed to support urban sustainability. The main objective of this study is to map urban footprint of Kolkata metropolitan area using machine learning (ML) algorithms (e.g., SVM, Random Forest) and public domain dataset. Landsat TM satellite data, Night time light data, and census data were employed in this study. Satellite imagery was used for mapping Lulc and reclassifying the built-up area into rural and urban built up using socio-economic data like census data. The robustness of the ML algorithms was tested based on classification accuracy and transferability assessment. In Lulc analysis band and feature stacked images give the high accuracy than the normal image and PCA image in three ML algorithms. SVM-Linear gave the high accuracy comparatively to another ML algorithm. The building footprint of KMA was extracted from top three high accuracy LULC map of different ML algorithm. The built-up area of KMA was validated using the test sample and for the validation of test sample these test sample uses in GHSL images. This finding will aid in the categorization of rural and urban areas and gives the idea of urban extent in the Kolkata metropolitan area. This study will help urban planners, local governments, and policymakers for the urban policy improvement and sustainable urban development planning.

Developing and communicating knowledge about what will be sustainable and environmentally friendly solutions and stimulating planning processes that can generate more debate about what values and interests are really wanted to be promoted is vital in sustainable urban development planning. Adaptation to climate change refers to the process through which building adaptive capacity of the most vulnerable people is focused and exposure or sensitivity to climate impacts is reduced. Mainstreaming climate change adaptation refers to the process of integrating considerations of climate change adaptation into policy-making, budgeting, implementation and monitoring processes at national, sector and sub-national/regional levels. The purpose of the study was to assess the needs for mainstreaming climate change adaptation into urban land use planning and management and propose strategic actions for mainstreaming in Ambo town. Urban flooding, water stress/water shortage, urban heat island effect/increased urban heat, wind storms, and dust storms were identified as climate change related disaster risks in Ambo town. While it is commendable to appreciate the good start of urban greening and beautification by Ambo town administration and its municipality, the town administration has to take strategic actions of mainstreaming climate change adaptation into urban land use planning and management to promote sustainable urban development in the town and its surroundings.

Nowadays, more than 600 million people lived in coastal areas, outlooks forecast that they will be more than one billion by 2030. Cities occupy less than 2% of the world lands but are responsible for 70% of CO2 emissions. Coastal areas constitute the most exposed regions facing climate change impacts. This contribution aims at stimulating a reflection over the role that sustainable and resilient urban planning can have in fostering SDGs in coastal regions. Sustainable urban planning can constitute the trigger to reduce global impacts that cities generate on the environment as well as resilient urban planning can contribute to make cities more safe, efficient and equitable to cope with threats deriving from global scale. This contribution argues that the practice of urban planning should definitively embrace a holistic and multi-scale approach, moving from geography to design, from the integrated coastal zone management to the urban design.

Governance is assumed to be a core challenge for urban sustainability. Rather than a sectorial topic, urban sustainability is a cross cutting concern affecting – and being affected – by many different interests and strategic urban issues. For this reason, urban sustainable development is mainly about how strategic decisions are made in the city, who is involved in these decision-making processes and how accountability is rendered. In this article we propose a set of governance principles for programs on urban sustainability planning and management. They are derived from UNHABITAT experience in building capacities in cities around the world through two specialized programmes: Localizing Agenda 21 (LA21) and Sustainable Cities Programme (SCP).

Sustainable urban planning and development require reliable and timely land use/cover change information. The objective of this chapter was to analyze observed and simulated land use/cover changes between 1990 and 2030. Based on land use/cover maps for 1990, 2002, 2009, and 2014, built-up areas increased substantially, while non-built-up areas decreased over the study period. The land use/cover change analysis revealed significant built-up expansion for the “1990–2002” epoch. However, built-up expansion slowed down during the “2002–2009” and “2009–2014” epochs. The built-up growth pattern and the spatial/landscape metrics revealed that infill, extension, and leapfrog developments were occurring in the study area. Future land use/cover simulations (up to 2030) indicated that the current land use/cover change trends such as the increase in built-up areas and decrease in non-built-up areas would continue to persist unless sustainable urban development policies are implemented. The observed and simulated land use/cover changes provide a synoptic view of built-up expansion as well as a plausible future urban growth scenario for Harare Metropolitan Area. This could potentially assist decision-makers with general built-up change information, which can be used to guide strategic sustainable urban land use planning and development for Harare Metropolitan Area.

Metro Manila, the national capital region of the Philippines, is one of the megacities in Asia. This chapter traces its origin and examines its urban primacy. It also examines the recent (1993–2014) and potential future (2014–2030) urban land changes, i.e., changes from non-built-up to built-up lands, in Metro Manila and its surrounding areas using geospatial tools and techniques. Some of the possible key factors influencing the urban development of Metro Manila and the potential implications of its rapid population growth and urban land changes to its future sustainable urban development are discussed. The analysis showed compelling evidence for Metro Manila’s urban primacy over the other metropolitan areas and regions in the country based on population and gross domestic product. Over the past 21 years (1993–2014), the area of built-up lands has increased almost twofold, transforming the landscape of Metro Manila and its surrounding areas. The relatively small land area of Metro Manila, its geographic characteristics and population and economic growth, the concentration of key urban functions/services and opportunities in the area, and its accessibility are hypothesized to be among the key factors influencing the spatiotemporal patterns of urban land changes and the overall urban development of the region. The simulated urban land changes indicated that built-up lands would continue to expand in the future (2014–2030) under the influence of infill and sprawl development patterns. The intensifying pressure of urbanization due to rapid population growth and urban land changes poses many challenges that need to be considered in sustainable urban development and landscape planning.