Chapter 12: Urban architecture for well-being: a design canvas for inclusive green cities

Landscape and urban planners, designers, as well as architects, can take up inclusive planning and design processes that acknowledge human needs and dignity, and foster participation in shared decision-making. Underpinning these processes are values of empathy, placation, accessibility, and identity essential to imagining and creating inclusive green cities. This chapter provides a deeper understanding of the different dimensions of an inclusive green city and how social equity is an integral part of any design effort. We begin by exploring our vision and the values necessary for green urban design. A framework for three aspects of equity – recognitional equity, procedural equity, and distributional equity – is presented with selected case studies that serve as evolving good practices for equitable green urban design. From this framework and resulting values, we built on a value-inclusive design canvas and present design principles that planners, designers and architects can adopt as their own

Social innovation – A future pathway for Blue growth?

The European Union has launched the Blue growth concept as a strategy for stimulating economic growth in European seas. It is accompanying the core principles of the Green growth paradigm that seek to stimulate smart, sustainable and inclusive growth of economic activities. Focusing on Blue growth, this article examines its adequacy to enable social innovation as a strategy for the use and management of marine resources. Social innovation is interpreted as the changing behaviour of a group of actors joined in a network, leading to new and improved ways of collaborative action within the group and beyond. Social innovation can contribute to changing behaviour across different institutional settings, across markets and public sectors, and to enhancing bottom-up responsible inventiveness towards integration of social, economic and environmental objectives. Based on case-study research it is concluded that, to secure long-term sustainable development over short-term benefits, a social innovation perspective in the maritime domain will depend on cooperation, inclusiveness and trust

Mobilising investors for Blue Growth

The European Union's Blue Growth Strategy is a long term strategy to support sustainable growth in the marine and maritime sectors, aiming to contribute to innovation and economic growth (European Commission, 2012). The EU sees the financial sector as a key partner to bring about transition to sustainable consumption and production. However, knowledge about investment behavior, experience with working with these investors, and ways to engage investors in the Blue Growth sectors is lacking. This paper examines this knowledge gap. It characterizes investors and identifies investor behavior, investors' motives, and conditions and criteria relevant for investors to invest in Blue Growth sectors. The presented results are derived from a literature study on investors and investment behavior, an electronic survey and in-depth interviews. Stereotypical images of private equity bankers or wealthy individuals do not do justice to the diversity of investors involved in the Blue Growth sectors. These sectors are still in development and various risks reduce the willingness to invest. Risk mitigation should be seen as a shared responsibility of entrepreneurs, investors and governments. Government support must go further than financial support for research and development or technological demonstration projects. Proven technologies get stuck in the Valley of Death as investors alone are not willing to take the risk associated with upscaling of promising technologies. Tied in a reciprocal relationship, governments need to attract private investors—their capital, knowledge, and networks—to further grow of the Blue Growth sectors while investors need stable, predictable, and effective government support schemes to mitigate their financial risks

Participatory Design of Multi-Use Platforms at Sea

European oceans are subject to rapid development. New activities such as aquaculture and ocean energy have gained importance. This triggers interest in “multi-use platforms at sea” (MUPS), i.e., areas at sea in which different activities are combined. MUPS are complex features with regards to technology, governance, and financial, socioeconomic, and environmental aspects. To identify realistic and sustainable solutions and designs for MUPS, the MERMAID project applied a participatory design process (PDP) involving a range of stakeholders representing companies, authorities, researchers, and NGOs. This paper evaluates if and how the participatory design process contributed to the design of multi-use platforms. It is based on interviews with the managers of the case study sites and a questionnaire administered to all stakeholders participating in the PDP workshops. Analyzing the four case studies, we conclude that the participatory design process has had a valuable contribution to the development of the four different designs of MUPS, even though the preconditions for carrying out a participatory design process differed between sites. In all four cases, the process has been beneficial in generating new and shared knowledge. It brought new design issues to the table and increased knowledge and understanding among the different stakeholders

Chapter 2: The symbiotic city as the sum of beneficial relationships between people and nature

This chapter guides the reader towards ‘symbiotic thinking’ in the future design of cities. Symbiotic cities are dynamic urban landscapes of beneficial relationships between people and nature. Urban actors can work on these beneficial relationships with nature in many different forms. Assumptions of the symbiotic city are therefore optimism, ecocentrism, inclusion, nature based thinking and the importance of embedded networks. The chapter sets out a three-pronged framework with which to understand the symbiotic city. It differentiates between the foundation, the networks and the symbiotic human practices that build the future symbiotic city. The foundation of the city, composed of biotic and abiotic entities such as soil, water and living organisms, needs to re-enter the networks and human practices of the city to meet the definition of the symbiotic city

Chapter 13: Being a voice of nature in urban transformations

The transformation process needed to achieve the symbiotic city requires a whole subset of transformative changes in cities. These range from re-embedding cities in the biotic and abiotic foundations of water, soil and organisms to building new institutional, technical, circular and socio-ecological networks in the city. Examples of these transformative practices have been described in the previous chapters with case studies in which people express different voices of nature. First, they point to the importance of the agency of urban actors, i.e. their ability to change existing urban practices in symbiotic ones. Second, they stress the importance of new networks, including governance arrangements that favour nature-based thinking. Third, economics needs to be re-embedded into society and ecology, resulting in new economic narratives that embrace nature. Finally, the inclusion of all people and their expressions of the values of nature as well as their heterogeneous knowledge is central to enforcing the transformations. Grouped in six categories of citizens, businesses, NGOs, corporates, municipalities and knowledge organisations, actors can work together on the transformation to make the symbiotic city happen. In this chapter we introduce these actors and we address the challenges that every type of actor can work on starting from tomorrow, from strategic, to tactical, to operational and reflexive activities that can be performed to become a voice of nature in urban transformations

Food Connects Washington DC in 2050—A Vision for Urban Food Systems as the Centerpieces of a Circular Economy

This article presents a vision for an urban food system in Washington DC in 2050 that serves as the centerpiece of a circular economy for the capital region of the United States. Food serves as the connecting link for an inclusive, adaptive, and resilient urban economy embedded in the region. This food economy values natural resources, cultural diversity, and commitment to nature-based innovations. The vision is the result of a three-pronged methodology of: (1) community engagement; (2) a thoughtful, process-focused transformation; and (3) the scaling up of existing urban food initiatives. We argue that small, hyperlocal, neighborhood-based initiatives can become crucial game changers and catalysts of change for entire neighborhoods, cities, and regions. Therefore, we propose a design-based approach to advance our 2050 vision of a circular food system. Our design-based approach consists of three building blocks: (A) systems thinking; (B) the ability to manage wins and tradeoffs; and (C) transitional leadership and cooperation. We explain these building blocks and the way in which they are incorporated in the 2050 vision of Washington DC. We further argue that the food economy is an ideal sector to embark on such a design-based approach due to its systemic nature, its critical position as an indispensable economic sector, and the complex connections it brings to multiple other sectors of the economy. An urban food system can therefore offer the ideal starting point for a transition towards a circular economy