Modern cities modelled as "super-cells" rather than multicellular organisms: Implications for industry, goods and services

The structure and "metabolism" (movement and conversion of goods and energy) of urban areas has caused cities to be identified as "super-organisms", placed between ecosystems and the biosphere, in the hierarchy of living systems. Yet most such analogies are weak, and render the super-organism model ineffective for sustainable development of cities. Via a cluster analysis of 15 shared traits of the hierarchical living system, we found that industrialized cities are more similar to eukaryotic cells than to multicellular organisms; enclosed systems, such as factories and greenhouses, paralleling organelles in eukaryotic cells. We further developed a "super-cell" industrialized city model: a "eukarcity" with citynucleus (urban area) as a regulating centre, and organaras (enclosed systems, which provide the majority of goods and services) as the functional components, and cityplasm (natural ecosystems and farmlands) as the matrix. This model may improve the vitality and sustainability of cities through planning and management.

Engaging stakeholders in the assessment of NBS effectiveness in flood risk reduction: A participatory System Dynamics Model for benefits and co-benefits evaluation

There is an imperative worldwide need to identify effective approaches to deal with water-related risks, and mainly with increasingly frequent floods, as well as with severe droughts. Particularly, policy and decision-makers are trying to identify systemic strategies that, going beyond the mere risk reduction, should be capable to deal simultaneously with multiple challenges (such as climate resilience, health and well-being, quality of life), thus providing additional benefits. In this direction, the contribution of Nature Based Solutions (NBS) is relevant, although their wider implementation is still hampered by several barriers, such as the uncertainty and lack of information on their long-term behavior and the difficulty of quantitatively valuing their multidimensional impacts. The activities described in the present paper, carried out within the EU funded project NAIAD, mainly aim at developing a participatory System Dynamic Model capable to quantitatively assess the effectiveness of NBS to deal with flood risks, while producing a multiplicity of co-benefits. The adoption of a participatory approach supported both to increase the available knowledge and the awareness about the potential of NBS and hybrid measures (e.g. a combination of NBS and socio-institutional ones). Specific reference is made to one of the demos of the NAIAD project, namely the Glinščica river case study (Slovenia).

The Impacts of Transportation Infrastructure on Sustainable Development: Emerging Trends and Challenges

Transportation infrastructure has an enormous impact on sustainable development. To identify multiple impacts of transportation infrastructure and show emerging trends and challenges, this paper presents a scientometric review based on 2543 published articles from 2000 to 2017 through co-author, co-occurring and co-citation analysis. In addition, the hierarchy of key concepts was analyzed to show emerging research objects, methods and levels according to the clustering information, which includes title, keyword and abstract. The results expressed by visual graphs compared high-impact authors, collaborative relationships among institutions in developed and developing countries. In addition, representative research issues related to the economy, society and environment were identified such as cost overrun, spatial economy, prioritizing structure, local development and land value. Additionally, two future directions, integrated research of various effects and structure analysis of transportation network, are recommended. The findings of this study provide researchers and practitioners with an in-depth understanding of transportation infrastructure’s impacts on sustainable development by visual expression.

Status of and Perspectives on River Restoration in Europe: 310,000 Euros per Hectare of Restored River

The purpose of the present research was to analyze the available data on river restoration projects in Europe. As the framework of our study, we conducted a structured international survey. We asked selected entities and experts from among those responsible for river restoration in European countries about the details and costs of European Union river restoration projects. We examined 119 river restoration projects that were implemented in Europe between 1989 and 2016; during the collection of data, some of the projects were still ongoing. Based upon the collected data we observed that the number of river restoration projects has been increasing since 1989, which expresses society’s growing interest in improving the quality of aquatic environments. We revealed that 56% of these European river restoration projects have been implemented by dedicated entities and stakeholders, not as part of any structured, larger-scale river restoration policy. This indicates that most European countries do not have integrated plans for river restoration. Our analysis showed that 52% of the projects analyzed have been designed and implemented without the participation of local stakeholders. It also showed that the budgets for river restoration projects did not differ significantly across various time horizons from 1989 to 2016. In our study, the average cost of restoring 1 ha of an European river was 310,000 euros (EUR). Considering these projects’ permanent assets and including their amortization, we calculated the average unit price of a river restoration’s value in terms of ecosystem meta-service to be 7757 EUR·ha−1·year−1.