Economic currents and land use: Coastal change during the construction of the eco-island carbon neutral demonstration zone in Chongming Island

This study investigates the dynamic relationship between economic currents and land use changes on Chongming Island, China, during the period from 2000 to 2020, coinciding with its transformation into an Ecological Island Carbon Neutral Demonstration (ECND) Zone. Employing remote sensing and Geographic Information Systems (GIS), our research not only identifies significant spatiotemporal changes, such as an 8.72% increase in constructed land and an 11.79% decline in water areas, but also delves into the nuanced shifts in forested and grassland areas. These findings prompt a critical exploration of the intricate balance between economic growth and ecological preservation within the context of urbanization. Our research resonates with interdisciplinary studies and policy objectives, emphasizing the imperative of sustainable urban development that respects the island's ecological equilibrium. Amidst the challenges posed by rapid urbanization, the oscillations in forested and grassland areas underscore the vital importance of strategic land use planning and habitat restoration. This quantitative analysis not only contributes to Chongming Island's evolution as an ECND Zone but also provides a valuable model for estuarine islands worldwide grappling with similar issues. As Chongming Island continues its journey towards ecological sustainability, our study stands as a quantitative guide for informed decision-making in sustainable land management and preservation, shedding light on the intricate interplay between economic currents and land use changes in this unique context

Analysing trade-offs and synergies between SDGs for urban development, food security and poverty alleviation in rapidly changing peri-urban areas: a tool to support inclusive urban planning

Transitional peri-urban contexts are frontiers for sustainable development where land-use change involves negotiation and contestation between diverse interest groups. Multiple, complex trade-offs between outcomes emerge which have both negative and positive impacts on progress towards achieving Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). These trade-offs are often overlooked in policy and planning processes which depend on top-down expert perspectives and rely on course grain aggregate data which does not reflect complex peri-urban dynamics or the rapid pace of change. Tools are required to address this gap, integrate data from diverse perspectives and inform more inclusive planning processes. In this paper, we draw on a reinterpretation of empirical data concerned with land-use change and multiple dimensions of food security from the city of Wuhan in China to illustrate some of the complex trade-offs between SDG goals that tend to be overlooked with current planning approaches. We then describe the development of an interactive web-based tool that implements deep learning methods for fine-grained land-use classification of high-resolution remote sensing imagery and integrates this with a flexible method for rapid trade-off analysis of land-use change scenarios. The development and potential use of the tool are illustrated using data from the Wuhan case study example. This tool has the potential to support participatory planning processes by providing a platform for multiple stakeholders to explore the implications of planning decisions and land-use policies. Used alongside other planning, engagement and ecosystem service mapping tools it can help to reveal invisible trade-offs and foreground the perspectives of diverse stakeholders. This is vital for building approaches which recognise how trade-offs between the achievement of SDGs can be influenced by development interventions

FROM GARDEN CITY TO SPONGE CITY: URBAN GREEN INFRASTRUCTURE POLICY DEVELOPMENT

With rapid urbanization, environmental problems like green space shortage and urban flooding become prevalent. Identifying effective policymaking and implementation is critical in order to solve these problems. This dissertation addresses four theoretical topics in the context of urban green infrastructure: policy entrepreneur, institutional response to club goods, quasi-public-private partnership, and policy goal ambiguity. Each is exemplified by a causal case study. Data were collected through participant observation, field trips, semi-structured interviews, and crowdsourcing. Chapter 1 takes a longitudinal perspective and examines the dual role of policy entrepreneur and policy implementer in reaching the final policy goal of mandating vertical greening in the law in Shanghai (1992-2016). Usually, policy implementer and policy entrepreneur are two distinct identities and studied separately. This paper provides an unusual counterexample, exploring how the two intertwined identities may influence the entrepreneurial strategies and further influence the incremental policymaking process. Chapter 2 illustrates how government involvement may facilitate club-good development by investigating the nascent for-profit shopping mall roof garden (SMRG) development. SMRGs, established by developers to provide an amenity to mall customers, are in nature club goods. Although the government appreciates SMRGs given their positive externalities (e.g., recreation, stormwater mitigation), existing public policies fail to respond to SMRGs’ cross-sector nature, leaving significant financial, legitimacy, and oversight gaps unattended. The research suggests that government involvement can better facilitate club-goods’ sustainable development by creating an enabling institutional environment, which includes optimized policy design and coordinated cross-department collaboration. Chapter 3 focuses on the rarely studied phenomenon of the Quasi-Public Private Partnership (QPPP) in non-liberal societies. This work offers a general definition of Quasi-PPPs and identifies factors that influence the PPP to QPPP transition. In the case of eco-environmental service provision, the PPP-QPPP transition occurred in two stages. First, the eco-environmental service partnerships, initially established as PPPs, became inoperable with inexperienced partners and unsupportive markets. Second, with financial bailouts from the government, the private partner became a subordinated partner in a consortium between private partners and State-Owned Enterprises, and PPPs transitioned to QPPPs. In a non-liberal society, when the three critical PPP assumptions are violated (competent partners, supportive market, and horizontal partner structure), PPPs are more likely to transition to QPPPs. Chapter 4 examines how policy goal ambiguity influences policy implementation outcomes, exemplified by the Sponge City Program (SCP) implementation. SCP is a centrally-initiated program, requiring mainly the use of green instead of gray infrastructure to manage urban stormwater. When implemented top-down, three cross-level, layered goals of sustainability, stormwater management, and resident satisfaction became incoherent and vague in terms of priority and measurement. The research demonstrates that in a program with multiple policy goals, the goal priority ambiguity allows implementers the discretion to decide the order of goals to manage interest conflicts. Moreover, the goal measurement ambiguity allows implementers to decide the degree of their commitment to each goal, and to interpret the desired performance of a goal. Such ambiguity-caused discretions drastically inhibit the achievement of the sustainability policy goal

Research on the Building Energy Saving Development Planning Workout Pattern

Based on the national situation and combined with status of building energy consumption, building energy saving development planning is the most effective measure to deal with the building energy consumption problem in China. Given the building energy saving development planning problem, proposals are given in terms of the planning patterns, planning flow and the organization, which would be of practical value to the implementation of building efficiency planning in China at current stage

Ocean Energy in Belgium - 2019

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Research on Landscape Design of Building Information Model in Ecological Restoration Projects of Cities along the Yangtze River

The urban landscape pattern, process and function have three-dimensional characteristics, and the three-dimensional analysis of urban landscape elements is one of the important trends in the development of urban landscape research. However, the current research on the visualization of urban landscape in three dimensions and the application of related models still needs to strengthen. Based on the research of the ecological restoration process, this paper combines the current situation of urban landscape construction along the Yangtze River in China and deduces the development trend of urban landscape planning. Based on Building information model (BIM), this article combines Revit software to design landscape construction drawings, and summarizes the specific design process and the current unsolvable problems. As an experimental building information model (BIM) software construction drawing design attempt, this article explores the urban ecological water conservancy landscape planning and design path, and demonstrates it in combination with specific cases. Therefore, this paper conducts modeling based on three-dimensional virtual landscape, which conducts virtual landscape design and provides technical ideas for the development of this technology

Decision support tool for spatial planning and decision making; Technical support. Consultant report on the joint project mission held in SE Asia from 13th to 24th April 2007

Together with delegations of the World Bank and FAO, who carried out a project supervision mission, the consultant Gerrit Carsjens and FAO-LEAD officer Pierre Gerber carried out a technical support mission to Vietnam, Thailand and Guangdong from April 13 to 24 2007. In each country the mission comprised: 1. A workshop with invited experts on the possibilities and needs of a spatial Decision Support Tool (DST) in the form of a GIS computer model. 2. Expert consultations about potential collaborations. Important conclusions from the workshops can be summarized as follows: there is a keen interest for a spatial DST in all the countries. However it will have to take into account the needs of users at national as well as the more local level. The DST should be a tool to support strategic planning and decision making at national level as well as decision making on the allocation of livestock farms at the local level

Stakeholder engagement in sustainable housing refurbishment in the UK

The UK government is committed to effectively implement a viable sustainable agenda in the social housing sector. To this end housing associations and local authorities are being encouraged to improve the environmental performance of their new and existing homes. Whilst much attention has been focused on new housing (e.g. the Code for Sustainable Homes) little effort has been focussed on improving the 3.9 (approx) million homes maintained and managed by the public sector (in England), which, given the low rate of new build and demolition (<1% in England), will represent approximately 70% of the public housing stock in 2050. Thus, if UK is to achieve sustainable public housing the major effort will have to focus on the existing stock. However, interpreting the sustainability agenda for an existing housing portfolio is not a straight foreword activity. In addition to finding a ‘technical’ solution, landlords also haveto address the socio-economic issues that balance quality of expectations of tenants with the economic realities of funding social housing refurbishment. This paper will report the findings of a qualitative study (participatory approach) that examined the processes by which a large public landlord sought to develop a long-term sustainable housing strategy. Through a series of individual meetings and group workshops the research team identified: committed leadership; attitudes towards technology; social awareness; and collective understanding of the sustainability agenda as key issues that the organisation needed to address in developing a robust and defendable refurbishment strategy. The paper concludes that the challenges faced by the landlord in improving the sustainability of their existing stock are not primarily technical, but socio-economic. Further, while the economic challenges: initial capital cost; lack of funding; and pay-back periods can be overcome, if the political will exists, by fiscal measures; the social challenges: health & wellbeing; poverty; security; space needs; behaviour change; education; and trust; are much more complex in nature and will require a coordinated approach from all the stakeholders involved in the wider community if they are to be effectively addressed. The key challenge to public housing landlords is to develop mechanisms that can identify and interpret the complex nature of the social sustainability agenda in a way that reflects local aspirations (although the authors believe the factors will exist in all social housing communities, their relative importance is likely to vary between communities) whilst addressing Government agendas

Research collaboration between China and Denmark for development of systemic approaches to agro-ecological pest management without pesticides with focus on vegetable, fruit and berry crops. Proceedings and recommendations from two network workshops

This report is the result of a network project which was established to discuss the potential for collaboration on development of systemic approaches to pest management without pesticides between Chinese and Danish researchers. The focus is on systemic approaches rather than input substitution of synthetic chemicals with agents of natural origin, however, the latter is considered as an integrated tool for the development and design of systemic approaches. The discussions were, furthermore, limited to management of invertebrate pests as well as diseases, while other pests such as weeds have not been included in the discussions. The discussions took place at two workshops and were based on presentations of research from the two countries and field visits in China and Denmark. After the first workshop that took place in China, it was agreed that Chinese and Danish researchers in this particular field had mutual interests and priorities and that there was a potential for creating collaboration that could yield results beneficial for the agricultural/horticultural sectors in both countries. It was also agreed that in spite of the many differences between variation in climate and ecosystems, as well as in farming systems and their organization in China and Denmark, there were many similarities in the production of high-value crops in the two countries, such as vegetables, fruit and berries and, therefore, an obvious focus for joint research efforts. It was also agreed that joint research efforts could aim at specific crops as well as aiming at the development of specific research approaches. Based on the observations and the agreements of the first workshop, the second workshop, which took place in Denmark, focused more specifically on the development of a research framework with specified research questions/topics. Two groups were formed – one working with vegetables and one with fruit and berries working in parallel – both looking into what kind of research is needed for development of systemic approaches to pesticide-free pest management should include both well-known practices and new practices. Although the discussions in the two groups took separate routes and unfolded and described the research topics in each their way, there was a clear consistency between the outputs of the work of the two groups. Each had identified three main research themes that more or less followed the same line and has been merged into three specific recommendations on themes for collaboration, namely: 1) ‘Research to provide the biological foundation and understanding of mechanisms and interactions for development of non-chemical solutions and to improve efficiency of new and existing control methods for severe pest problems’. 2) Research in ‘How best to integrate multifunctional plants (and crops) and use diversification to create a more healthy and productive farming system which is resilient to pests?’ 3) Research in ‘How to design and integrate pest management in eco-functional cropping systems at field and farm/landscape level?