Thinking through heterogeneous infrastructure configurations

Studies of infrastructure have demonstrated broad differences between Northern and Southern cities, and deconstructed urban theory derived from experiences of the networked urban regions of the Global North. This includes critiques of the universalisation of the historically–culturally produced normative ideal of universal, uniform infrastructure. In this commentary, we first introduce the notion of ‘heterogeneous infrastructure configurations’ (HICs) which resonates with existing scholarship on Southern urbanism. Second, we argue that thinking through HICs helps us to move beyond technological and performative accounts of actually existing infrastructures to provide an analytical lens through which to compare different configurations. Our approach enables a clearer analysis of infrastructural artefacts not as individual objects but as parts of geographically spread socio-technological configurations: configurations which might involve many different kinds of technologies, relations, capacities and operations, entailing different risks and power relationships. We use examples from ongoing research on sanitation and waste in Kampala, Uganda – a city in which service delivery is characterised by multiplicity, overlap, disruption and inequality – to demonstrate the kinds of research questions that emerge when thinking through the notion of HICs

Resilience Management for Healthy Cities in a Changing Climate

Cities are experiencing multiple impacts from global environmental change, and the degree to which they will need to cope with and adapt to these challenges will continue to increase. We argue that a ‘complex systems and resilience management’ view may significantly help guide future urban development through innovative integration of, for example, grey, blue and green infrastructure embedded in flexible institutions (both formal and informal) for multi-functionality and improved health. For instance, the urban heat island effect will further increase city-centre temperatures during projected more frequent and intense heat waves. The elderly and people with chronic cardiovascular and respiratory diseases are particularly vulnerable to heat. Integrating vegetation and especially trees in the urban infrastructure helps reduce temperatures by shading and evapotranspiration. Great complexity and uncertainty of urban social-ecological systems are behind this heatwave-health nexus, and they need to be addressed in a more comprehensive manner. We argue that a systems perspective can lead to innovative designs of new urban infrastructure and the redesign of existing structures. Particularly to promoting the integration of grey, green and blue infrastructure in urban planning through institutional innovation and structural reorganization of knowledge-action systems may significantly enhance prospects for improved urban health and greater resilience under various scenarios of climate change.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Habitat Composition and Connectivity Predicts Bat Presence and Activity at Foraging Sites in a Large UK Conurbation

Background: Urbanization is characterized by high levels of sealed land-cover, and small, geometrically complex, fragmented land-use patches. The extent and density of urbanized land-use is increasing, with implications for habitat quality, connectivity and city ecology. Little is known about densification thresholds for urban ecosystem function, and the response of mammals, nocturnal and cryptic taxa are poorly studied in this respect. Bats (Chiroptera) are sensitive to changing urban form at a species, guild and community level, so are ideal model organisms for analyses of this nature. Methodology/Principal Findings: We surveyed bats around urban ponds in the West Midlands conurbation, United Kingdom (UK). Sites were stratified between five urban land classes, representing a gradient of built land-cover at the 1 km 2 scale. Models for bat presence and activity were developed using land-cover and land-use data from multiple radii around each pond. Structural connectivity of tree networks was used as an indicator of the functional connectivity between habitats. All species were sensitive to measures of urban density. Some were also sensitive to landscape composition and structural connectivity at different spatial scales. These results represent new findings for an urban area. The activity of Pipistrellus pipistrellus (Schreber 1774) exhibited a non-linear relationship with the area of built land-cover, being much reduced beyond the threshold of,60 % built surface. The presence of tree networks appears to mitigate the negative effects of urbanization for this species

Weaving protective stories: connective practices to articulate holistic values in the Stockholm National Urban Park

With rapid worldwide urbanization it is urgent that we understand processes leading to the protection of urban green areas and ecosystems. Although natural reserves are often seen as preserving ‘higher valued’ rather than ‘lower valued’ nature, it is more adequate to describe them as outcomes of selective social articulation processes. This is illustrated in the Stockholm National Urban Park. Despite strong exploitation pressure, a diverse urban movement of civil society organizations has managed to provide narratives able to explain and legitimize the need for protection—a ‘protective story’. On the basis of qualitative data and building on theories of value articulation, social movements, and actor-networks, we show how activists, by interlacing artefacts and discourses from cultural history and conservation biology, managed to simultaneously link spatially separated green areas previously seen as disconnected, while also articulating the interrelatedness between the cultural and the natural history of the area. This connective practice constructed holistic values articulating a unified park, which heavily influenced the official framing of the park’s values and which now help to explain the success of the movement. In contrast to historically top-down-led designation of natural reserves, we argue that the involvement of civil society in protecting nature (and culture) is on the rise. This nonetheless begs the question of who can participate in these value-creating processes, and we also strive to uncover constraining and facilitating factors for popular participation. Four such factors are suggested: (i) the number and type of artefacts linked to an area; (ii) the capabilities and numbers of activists involved; (iii) the access to social arenas; and (iv) the social network position of actors.