A new growth area in urban agriculture?

Brooklyn warehouse-based Aquaponics-greenhouse

1. The urban sustainability index focuses on trying to grow an urban population in the most productive was while using resources as efficiently as possible. It aims directly on emerging/urban cities to measure their performance using five categories; basic needs, resource efficiency, environmental cleanliness, built environment, and commitment to future sustainability.
2. One component is the built environment which includes urban density, and mass-transit usage. If we can make the public transit more affordable and efficient, people will avoid taking their cars and in return will reduce greenhouse gases. Either war, the public will choose which option if more efficient to get from point a to b, disregarding the environment. Environmental cleanliness is another component and includes air/industrial pollution and waste management. This is achievable if we can reduce the volume of resource consumption. It’s all about using trash and turning it into something new and usable again. Basic needs is important because it’s the basic needs that we have to have to survive and for a urban population. This includes shelter, health, water supply, and education. Most people will have access to these needs and can show you’re living in an urban population.

Please bring your copy of “New models for sustainable growth in emerging-market cities” for Tuesday’s class.

1. Describe what the urban sustainability index proposes to do.
The urban sustainability index proposes to measure the performance of the cities using five categories. These five categories are how well they meet the need of the people, the efficiency with resources, the cleanliness of the environment, built environment , and last but not least the commitment to the sustainability in and for the future.

1. 2. Describe three components of this index and comment on your views if you agree or disagree if it is achievable .
   One of the components of this index is basic needs. This entails the access of safe fresh water , sufficient amount of living space, adequate health care, and an education are fundamental needs for the urban population. These are all accessible to the people one way or another. They are basic needs of any lifestyle. In addition, resources efficiency is important. The city’s efficiency of water and energy and the effective recycling of the waste has to be cohesive with the quality of life of the people. This is important, because you must make the best and the most of all the resources you have and use by maximizing them. Lastly, another component of the index is environmental cleanliness. With environmental cleanliness it is about limiting the harmful pollutants to the city . This is extremely important because pollution affects the environment . It affects global warming and climate change. By limiting this you can protect the health of the environment and ecosystem , which can help limit extinctions. I believe all of these steps are possible by small changes.

1. Urban sustainability index is a measurement of how a city efficiently use their resources to meet the needs of their citizens and at the same time preserve much of the natural environment to reduce pollution. The index has 5 categories to judge a city’s urban sustainability.

1. Meeting the basic needs for their citizens such as water, food and shelter.
2. Allocation of their resources in water, how waste recycling is processed, and the GDP of their city.
3. Environmental standards to reduce air and water pollution.
4. How buildings and mass transportation is built around each other.
5. Continuing on future sustainability.

I believe this is possible to implement into society if pollution and global warming was taken seriously. Large corporations aren’t doing enough to deal with the damage done by industrialization. Also the government need to reallocate their resources to manage the pollution rather than funding militaristic purposes.

1.  The urban sustainability index aims to collate significant indicators of sustainable development that, taken together, can be used by emerging cities and nations to measure the sustainability of their rapid growth and to inform policy decisions and urban initiatives that will lead to a healthier and more efficient future.
2. Basically what I found most interesting/potentially problematic in this article was the lack of mention of gentrification and other manifestations of economic inequality.  “Greening” a city is obviously great, increasing green spaces and public transportation and renewing previously industrial areas are all admirable initiatives, but what of the populations that will find themselves displaced from these transformed neighborhoods?  The gentrification process is painfully visible in New York, Brooklyn in particular, and I imagine that a similar process must take place in cities across the world.  When an area is cleaned up and made more appealing to live in, it seems inevitable that poorer populations will gradually be pushed further and further away from these renewed areas as people with more spending power seek out these newly attractive living spaces.  For an urban sustainability index to be truly effective in measuring the healthy growth/development of a city, it seems to me that the process of gentrification must be addressed somehow.  The authors of this article do list access to housing as an indicator, filed under the ‘basic needs’ category, but if I’m not mistaken, nowhere in the article do they mention the affordability of said housing.  Perhaps they do account for this or at least considered it in the development of their USI, but I think it warrants explicit mention in such a document.  All too often we overlook the issue of environmental injustice in our quest towards sustainability and environmental protection.  In a city such as New York, it may just be too late to effectively remediate the damage done by gentrification, as so many populations have already been or will soon be displaced from homes and neighborhoods that they have occupied for generations.  Also really how do you halt such a seemingly inevitable process?  But emerging cities may be able to learn from our mistakes, to better plan and account for the tendency for poorer populations to be pushed out of renewed areas.  Yes, cities in still-developing countries have the opportunity to build much greener and more sustainable cities, but also, equally important, they have the opportunity to build more equitable cities than those we see in America today.

Urban sustainability index is designed as a new metric, which aims to measure how well a particular city is implementing sustainable practices in different areas of urban living.

Calculating urban sustainability index includes 5 categories, among which are:

1. Basic needs, that includes access to drinkable eater, healthcare, education, etc.
2. Resource efficiency, affected by power and water consumption, as well as percentage of waste recycled.
3. Commitment to future sustainability, which include creation of green jobs and investments in green energy.

Overall, I think that creating of single measure for sustainability index is achievable if and only if all interested markets provide timely data, on which a successful regression analysis can be performed in order to determine which factors affects performance.

1 Describe what the urban sustainability index proposes to do:

Emerging markets are pursuing sustainable development in which economic growth increases without hurting the environment or other valuable resources. The urban sustainability index sets up a framework to evaluate if the solutions implemented are effective. They are divided into five categories: how well they are meeting their citizens’ basic needs, resource efficiency, environmental cleanliness, built environment, and commitment to future sustainability.

2 Describe three components of this index and comment on whether you view this as achievable:

a. Basic Needs is access to safe water, sufficient living space, adequate health care, and education are fundamental priorities for urban populations.

b. Resource Efficiency is a city’s efficiency in such areas as the use of water and energy and the effective recycling of waste directly correlates to the quality of life of its citizens.

c. Built environment is equitable access to green space, public transportation, and dense, efficient buildings makes communities more livable and efficient.

The three components are achievable if we cooperate as a community with our governments to have sensible policies that save our environment. Basic needs are fundamentally every human beings right and we should have access to such things as safe water.

The assigned reading for April 5 under “links to weekly readings.” Read the assigned article and post your responses to the two questions by 5 PM Monday April 4.