es1 t1 session 6 - vcb urban metabolism
TRANSCRIPT
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8/2/2019 ES1 T1 Session 6 - VCB Urban Metabolism
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Development Planning Unit
MSc in Environment and Sustainable Development
City, Environment, Transformation
Vanesa Castan Broto21 November 2011
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Development Planning Unit
What are the main environmental challenges in the city
today?
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What are the main environmental challenges in the city
today? Limited land and
resources
Renewable
Non-renewable
Environmentalpollution
Vulnerability and risk Climate change
Conservation
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Urbanisation
and ruralurban flows
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City of flows
From the static tothe dynamic city
What are flows?
Movement in a stream To move in continual change with the
constituent particles, e.g. water
Circulation
Deriving from a source, flowing from
somewhere Continuity
Maintaining connections within itselements
Hanging loose and freely
Direction is not controlled Rising and abundance: river flows, land
flows with resources
Immersion in an activity, with continuousadjustments and feedback (from
psychology)
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Development Planning Unit
Defining urban metabolism (I)
Metabolism is the chemical processes that occur within a living
organism to maintain life
What is then urban metabolism?
Metaphorical approach Assimilating the city to a living organism which maintains life
Direct adoption of the term
Metabolism as a general process of maintaining organisation of livingand non-living things
Central concern of transformation
Spatial change/circulation (flow)
Profound transformations observable at the meta-scale
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Defining urban metabolism (II)
Transformation of resources (material) and energy
Established patterns prefigured in the DNA
Two types of processes in basic metabolism pathways
Breaking down of resources into energy (catabolic metabolism)and
bringing in energy to assemble new structures (anabolicmetabolism)
Metabolism determines adaptive capacity toenvironments/contingent situations
Metabolism processes are determined by thermodynamics laws-higher levels of organisation are possible by the exchange ofenergy and matter with their environment
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Metabolic rate / transformation
The key aspect of metabolism is its transformation
The metabolic rate should provide an estimation of transformation
The question is what is transformed and into what?
Is transformedResources
EnergyLabourTime
CreativityIdeasStatusPolicy
Government
Results from transformationExchange value
Economic growth/ ProfitEmployment
Services
OrderQuality of lifeWell-beingKnowledge
Art
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Three perspectives on Urban Metabolism
Functional analogy
Focus on the flows of materialin and out the city
Morphological analogy Focus on the structures that
facilitate the flows, the internalcomponents of the city
Political economy
Focus on the materialcomponent of socialorganisation and distribution
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Perspective 1: Functional analogy
The city is black-boxed as a single entity (organism or cell)
Focus on maintaining functionality of the city and its relations
Mapping flows
Input-output tracking of material and energy flows
Key aspect is circulation and waste reduction and reuse
Re-materialising the economy
Recognising the material basis of economic transactions
Energy and nutritional flows
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Urban metabolism of Paris Region (Sabine Barles)
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Ecological footprint
Appropriate carrying capacity
The ecological footprint (EF) provides an
aggregated indicator of natural resourceconsumption (energy and materials) inmuch the same way that economicindicators (such as Gross Domestic
Product or the Retail Prices Index) havebeen adopted as a way of representingdimensions of the financial economy
(Barret, Cherret and Birch)
Standardised area unit equivalent to a
world average productivehectare(abbreviated to global hectares or gha)
Crude measure but good communicationtool
It can help to comparing cities
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Comparing cities
Calcott and Bull, 2007,WWF
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Perspective 2: Morphological analogy
Critique of the city black-boxing: Moving from the elephant tothe mice
Moving from top-down to bottom-up analysis
What is the DNA of the city, is fundamental organisingprinciple?
Looking into the morphological structure of the city and therelationship between their components
Questions of allometry and relationships between size and shape,zoning, internal structures
City modelling
Additions of individuals- city aggregates
Relational approach?
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Studying cities morphology through modelling
Batty, 1999
D l Pl i U i
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Fractal cities: morphology and energy consumption
Batty 2009
D l t Pl i U it
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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZGwrPMm4yFs
D l t Pl i U it
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZGwrPMm4yFshttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZGwrPMm4yFshttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZGwrPMm4yFshttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZGwrPMm4yFs -
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Perspective 3: The Political Economy of the City
The city is produced through circulation and transformation
INFRASTRUCTURES as assemblages of material and culturalelements are key mediators of infrastructure
Our metabolic rate is dictated by the global [capitalist] economywhich determines the relations of production and consumption
The second contradiction of capitalism requires the transformationof nature (in addition to the transformation of labour) (OConnor)
Different metabolic rates, however, signal different forms of
organisation
Metabolism is closely related to distribution
Overall, metabolism depends on the situated production ofknowledge and thus, questions of knowledge uncertainty and
social justice should permeate the debate
D l t Pl i U it
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The political economy of urban metabolism in the global
South
Context of unprecedented rates of urbanisation
How is urbanisation linked with questions of environmental andsocial justice?
How is this urbanisation happening? What are the morphological patterns and metabolic rates and how
spatial and temporal differences relate to social and environmentaljustice issues
Technocratic -inspired views on the environment fail to
acknowledge the diversity of processes which shape the city
Splintering and differentiation
Islands of wealth in oceans of poverty
D l t Pl i U it
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Development Planning Unit
Thank you!