Enabling ecosystem services at the neighborhood scale while allowing for urban regrowth: the case of Halle, Germany

This article was supported by the German Research Foundation (DFG) and the Open Access Publication Fund of Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin.Cities that begin to regrow after a long period of decline and land abandonment are under pressure to provide comfortable housing conditions in preferred neighborhoods for their residents. On the other hand, these cities should preserve interim green spaces that result from decline because these spaces are a real treasure for densifying cities. Using the case of the city of Halle in post-socialist Eastern Germany, we explore four land use alternatives for neighborhood development close to what might happen: (1) urban densification, (2) spacious housing, (3) the green city, and (4) the edible city. We seek to discover opportunities for regrowth and sustainable land use development by applying the ecosystem services and green points frameworks to a set of land use transition rules. Land use change has been defined for strategic development areas according to the Master Plan and complementary visions of land change. The results of the study provide highly interesting insights into how both regrowth and greening can be enabled in densifying neighborhoods and what types of green are most effective in providing carbon storage and summer heat regulation. Moreover, gardens, as central elements of the edible city concept, were found to be flexible in implementation in very differently dynamic neighborhoods by providing multi-functional spaces for ecosystem services such as climate regulation, local food production, daily recreation, and nature experience. Results demonstrate that ecosystem services benefit flows increase only in districts where real estate pressure is low. In districts with growing population numbers, green spaces are reduced. This may result in increased injustice in green space availability seeing as we have modeled a recreational space per capita of < 9 m² in the Southern Suburb, whereas an increase to almost 70 m² was simulated in the shrinking, prefabricated Newtown. Most importantly, modeling the narratives of the Master Plan in a spatially explicit way demonstrates unused potential for greening in Halle. Thus, we conclude that urban planning should make regular use of such land use alternative to look for hidden combined visions of green and growth in a formerly shrinking city.Peer Reviewe

Improving On-farm Water Management - A Never-ending Challenge

Most on-farm water management (OFWM) problems are not new.They have been a threat to agriculture in many countries around the globe in the last few decades. However, these problems have now grown larger and there is increasing public demand for the development and management of land and water to be ecologically sustainable as well as economic.As there is a close interrelationship between land use and water resources, farmers need to be aware of this interrelationship and adjust their OFWM e.orts in order to address the issues.In their management e.orts, they need to consider both the on-site and the o.-site e.ects. This paper highlights holistic approaches in water management as being indispensable in the future.Present and future water-utilisation problems can only be solved on the basis of an intersectoral participatory approach to water management conducted at the level of the respective catchment area.In the context of this approach, farmers need to realise that they are part of an integral whole. The paper also lists a range of present and future challenges facing farmers, extensionists, researchers, etc.in relation to OFWM e.orts.Among the challenges are: the e.ects of the increasing competition for freshwater resources; the increasing in.uence of non-agricultural factors on farmers’ land use decisions; the fragmentation of the labour process and its e.ects on farming skills; the information requirements of farmers; the participatory dissemination of information on OFWM; the process of changing permanently the agrarian structure; and the establishment of criteria of good and bad OFWM

Compact or spread? A quantitative spatial model of urban areas in Europe since

Changes in urban residential density represent an important issue in terms of land consumption, the conservation of ecosystems, air quality and related human health problems, as well as the consequential challenges for urban and regional planning. It is the decline of residential densities, in particular, that has often been used as the very definition of sprawl, describing a phenomenon that has been extensively studied in the United States and in Western Europe. Whilst these studies provide valuable insights into urbanization processes, only a handful of them have reflected the uneven dynamics of simultaneous urban growth and shrinkage, using residential density changes as a key indicator to uncover the underlying dynamics. This paper introduces a contrasting analysis of recent developments in both de- and re-concentration, defined as decreasing or increasing residential densities, respectively. Using a large sample of European cities, it detects differences in density changes between successional population growth/decline. The paper shows that dedensification, found in some large cities globally, is not a universal phenomenon in growing urban areas; neither the increasing disproportion between a declining demand for and an increasing supply of residential areas nor actual concentration processes in cities were found. Thus, the paper provides a new, very detailed perspective on (de)densification in both shrinking and growing cities and how they specifically contribute to current land take in Europe.Peer Reviewe

Mapping mental barriers that prevent the use of neighborhood green spaces

This article was supported by the German Research Foundation (DFG) and the Open Access Publication Fund of Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin.In comparison to the study of green space use, the study of its non-use or rejection is greatly understudied. Neighborhood managers and members of local gardening initiatives of Halle-Newtown, Germany, state that residents ignore local green-blue infrastructure (GBI) for recreational use. Halle-Newtown is a former showcase, large prefabricated socialist housing estate that is now facing an increase of households deprived in multiple ways. We are interested in the question of why people of Halle-Newtown refuse to use local GBI. In order to uncover potential barriers to the enjoyment of the ecosystem service benefits of local GBI, we have chosen the method of mental mapping to explore place attachment in Halle-Newtown. In summer 2018, about 100 residents of Halle-Newtown described the places they prefer when relaxing from a stressful and hot summer day. The results were surprising. Local GBI, be it created in socialist times or recently, was completely absent from their mental maps. Instead, people would overcome longer distances and cover higher costs to reach central green spaces. Tacit knowledge, namely the untold general rejection of the entire neighborhood by the residents, was found to be the deeper reason behind non-use of GBI and missing place attachment. The results uncovered that both neighborhood neglect and the multi-scalar character of urban recreational ideas/behavior are factors that help us to understand non-use of urban GBI, two key insights for urban planning.Peer Reviewe

Modelling Cross-Document Interdependencies in Medieval Charters of the St. Katharinenspital in Regensburg

To overcome the limitations of structural XML mark-up, graph-based data models and graph databases, as well as event-based ontologies like CIDOC-CRM (FORTH-ICS 2018) have been considered for the creation of digital editions. We apply the graph-based approach to model charter regests and extend it with the CIDOC-CRM ontology, as it allows us to integrate information from different sources into a flexible data model. By implementing the ontology within the Neo4j graph database (Neo4j 2018) we create a sustainable data source that allows explorative search queries and finally, the integration of the database in various technical systems. Our use case are the charters from the St. Katharinenspital, a former medieval hospital in Regensburg, Germany. By analysing charter abstracts with natural language processing (NLP) methods and using additional data sources related to the charters, we generate additional metadata. The extracted information allows the modelling of cross-document interdependencies of charter regests and their related entities. Building upon this, we develop an exploratory web application that allows to investigate a graph-based digital edition. Thereby, each entity is displayed in its unique context, i.e., it is shown together with its related entities (next neighbours) in the graph. We use this to enhance the result lists of a full-text search, and to generate entity-specific detail pages

Mediating Sustainability and Liveability—Turning Points of Green Space Supply in European Cities

Urban growth in and around European cities affects multiple aspects of the environment including green spaces. On the one hand, many cities struggle with environmental problems, overcrowding and overuse resulting from high population densities. On the other hand, high densities result in better access to public green spaces, effective public transport, or less demand for resources. Consequently, finding a balance between density and high liveability in a green and sustainable urban environment is a major challenge for urban planning. Although many studies report and discuss the provision of green spaces in European cities, they fail to relate green space provision to the potential demand by urban dwellers, and to the extent differences can be detected between types of green. Against this background, this paper develops a systematic understanding of green space supply and its relation to the residential density of cities. In so doing, it detects turning points of green space supply in 905 European cities. The results show that green space supply is sensitive to the type of green space, population size and location of cities. Particularly the relation between residential density and the supply with urban green spaces covering parks, public gardens or cemeteries, indicate turning points: at certain residential densities the urban green space supply is decreasing. At a certain residential density, the urban green space supply is highest and cities have a high potential to optimize the balance between sustainability and liveability. However, there is no single optimal residential density. Rather, turning points are different between cities of different density and location in Europe and between different types of neighborhoods within cities. Therefore, different optimum values need to be defined sensitive to these characteristics. For most of the European cities, a decrease of population or built-area cannot be expected in the future. In this situation, the approach to identifying the turning points for green space supply as presented in this paper can be used as a comparative method. This informs green space policies for defining acceptable densities of urban development and corresponding standards for the provision of urban green space

The major Thiobacillus ferrooxidans outer membrane protein forms low conductance ion channels in planar lipid bilayers

AbstractA protein isolated and purified from the outer membrane of the acidophilic, chemolithotrophic bacterium, Thiobacillus ferrooxidans with an oligomeric molecular weight of 90 000 Da (p9O) was incorporated into phosphatidylethanolamine planar lipid bilayers. The protein formed slightly anionic channels in KCl solutions, with a conductance of 25 pS in 100 mM KCl. The current—voltage relationship was linear between ±6O mV, and the conductance was a saturating function of the salt concentration. These channels fluctuated from a single open to closed state at low potentials, but present flickering activity at higher potentials

Reurbanisation in Postsocialist Europe - A Comparative View of Eastern Germany, Poland, and the Czech Republic

Since the 1990s, reurbanisation has become an increasingly frequent trajectory for urban development. Many formerly shrinking cities have been able to stabilise their population or even see new growth. Especially prominent in regions like Germany and the UK, but also observed across the whole continent, a lively debate on reurbanisation has developed as a reality of today’s, and a potential trajectory for tomorrow’s, cities in Europe. Postsocialist Europe has not so far been central in the reurbanisation debate, either empirically or theoretically. Subsequently, the postsocialist experience is missing in the discourse and the existing body of evidence. There is, however, some evidence that Czech and Polish cities are also seeing signs of new inner-city growth and a trend towards core city stabilisation. Against this background, the paper scrutinises the issues of reurbanisation and new growth after the shrinking of postsocialist cities. The paper uses the approach of a contrastive comparison between cities in eastern Germany, where reurbanisation has developed as the predominant trajectory for many large cities, and for cities in Poland and the Czech Republic, where this trend is considerably less prominent. It analyses the development of reurbanisation in these cities and their urban regions over the last few decades, its characteristics and the determinants triggering or impeding it. The paper includes data on a national scale as well as from relevant case studies of cities and their urban regions. It argues, among other things, that there is no "postsocialist model" with regard to influencing factors for reurbanisation. Eastern Germany, due to its specific postsocialist situation and transformation trajectory, can be viewed as an "outlier" or "hybrid" which exhibits characteristics typical of postsocialist and western welfare contexts and which is seeing especially dynamic reurbanisation after a phase of extreme shrinkage. Although there are clear signs of inner-city reurbanisation in Polish and Czech cities as well, it seems relatively unlikely that this process will reach the same high levels as in East German cities within the coming years