Governing urban accessibility: moving beyond transport and mobility

Access to people, goods, ideas and services is the basis of economic development in cities. The better this access, the greater the economic benefits through economies of scale, agglomeration effects and networking advantages. The way in which cities facilitate accessibility also impacts directly on other key aspects of human development, social inclusion and well-being. Accessibility is created through a complex interplay of urban form and transport systems. Thus, governing urban accessibility requires moving beyond conventional urban transport considerations linked to mobility and movement. Such a re-framing implies a far greater recognition of urban form characteristics like land use, distribution of densities and urban design, in addition to transport characteristics like infrastructures, service levels and travel speeds. A new interface between these characteristics has emerged as a result of shared mobility systems, putting additional pressure on city governments to act as system integrators. Based on a literature review, empirical insights from a global survey and the case-study cities of London, NYC and Berlin, this paper explores the institutional capacities of shifting from governing urban transport to urban accessibility. The evidence shows that there are entrenched misalignments which may impact negatively on the capacity to pair planning and policies essential for delivering better accessibility. Furthermore, it is clear that “hierarchies” and “networks” are not mutually exclusive when it comes to integrated governance of accessibility. The findings also suggest that cities may be better equipped to integrate shared mobility and consider mobility as a service than to pursue more wide-ranging metropolitan accessibility policies

The development of commercial local area resource and emissions modelling-navigating towards new perspectives and applications

Meeting near future UK greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions targets will require all parts of the UK economy to contribute, and in particular significant changes in business practices are required at the local level. From review it was found that there is a lack of detailed business accounting and reporting of GHG emissions at the local level, especially concerning supply chain impacts and small and medium sized enterprises. This paper presents a framework model to generate detailed benchmark estimates of GHGs (both on site and supply chain related) for individual businesses and all businesses of a sector within an area. The model makes use of available economic and environmental data, and, with similar datasets existing in other parts of the world, such models may be used elsewhere. The framework model is applied to an empirical case study. Estimates from such a framework can be used in a step-by-step approach to move businesses and local areas towards improved accounting, reporting and sustainability (including procurement). The model makes use of two different accounting perspectives: the production perspective (on site GHGs) and the provision perspective (supply chain GHGs attributable to purchased inputs of a business or sectors production). The new provision perspective and its consequences are explored and explained. Crown Copyright © 2012 Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved

Challenges of tourism in a low-carbon economy.

This article reviews the interrelationships of tourism and climate change from a mitigation perspective. Tourism is an increasingly important part of the global economy that is dependent on the annual movement of billions of travelers, often over large distances. The current contribution of the tourism sector to global climate change is reliably established at approximately 5% of CO2 emissions, though national tourism economies can be considerably more carbon-intense. Great uncertainty remains regarding tourism's future emission trajectories. However, in all scenarios, tourism is anticipated to grow substantially and to account for an increasingly large share of global greenhouse gas emissions, particularly if other sectors manage to achieve absolute emission reductions. The emission reduction challenges facing tourism in a low-carbon economy are analyzed and current industry, government, and consumer responses critically examined. The article ends with a discussion of the implications of business-as-usual emissions trajectories versus the +2 degrees C climate policy target for future tourism development