WORKSHOP SESSION Title of the session: Urban Metabolism and Local Economic Development Date & Time: 14/10, 14:30h- 15:30h Room: Principessa Felicita

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1 WORKSHOP SESSION Title of the session: Urban Metabolism and Local Economic Development Date & Time: 14/10, 14:30h- 15:30h Room: Principessa Felicita Organizers: UNESCO CHAIR 1. Concept Note of the Panel/Workshop: Metabolism is an input/output mechanism. It describe the energy turnover or input/output connected to the conversion of matter and energy, an intrinsic feature in the reproduction of any organism. Metabolism it is used also to refer to the regulatory processes that govern this complex interchange between organisms and their environment. If we admit that cities are consumption growth machines we are thrust to define them as complex systems of urban metabolism. It refers to the metabolic processes by which cities transform incoming raw materials, biomass, energy, and water into physical structures, built environment, technical devices, food, waste (Decker et al., 2000) which support a huge amount of reproductive activities performed by their inhabitants. It is also define as the total sum of the technical and socioeconomic processes that occur in cities, resulting in growth, production of energy, and elimination of waste (Kennedy 2007). Someone else might define metabolism as a set of processes taking place in the urban system involving transformation of matter and energy and the transportation of these quantities in such a way that the systems work as an organized entity. 2. Objective of the session: This panels aim to present to the Forum participant methodologies for urban metabolism accountability and to debate urban metabolic indicators. More specifically it aims to present: urban metbolism as a platform for data collection from human settlements tools for regulating urban metabolic process as far as

2 how social agents and decision makers can intervene to modify the urban metabolism processes 3. Key points of discussion: Key point of discussion will be: Political Ecology, Urbanisation (urban environment, urban management) Efficient emissions mitigation (reduction of the greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions) Comprehensive systemic approach Urban energy requirements 4. List of invited speakers/moderator: Bin Chen, State Key Joint Laboratory of Environmental Simulation and Pollution Control, School of Environment, Beijing Normal University, Beijing , China; Eric Swingedouw, School of Environment, Education and Development, University of Manchester Manchester; Jukka Heinonen, University of Iceland, Faculty of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Hjarðarhaga 2-6, 107 Reykjavík, Iceland.

3 5. List of Background Documents: CV Erik Swyngedouw is Professor of Geography at Manchester University. His research interests include political-ecology, hydro-social conflict, urban governance and urban movements, democracy and political power, and the politics of globalisation. His was previously professor of geography at Oxford University and held the Vincent Wright Visiting Professorship at Science Po, Paris, He was ambassador of the first European Union Citizen s Initiative on The Right to Water. Professor Swyngedouw is a recognized leading international expert in environment-society relationships, with an emphasis on socio-environmental conflict, water politics, political economic crisis and urban political movements. He is author of Social Power and the Urbanization of Water (Oxford University Press, 2004). He also co-edited In the Nature of Cities (Routlede, 20006). He recently co-edited (with Japhy Willson) The Post-Political and its Discontents: Spectres of Radical Politics Today (Edinburg University Press, 2014). His new book with MIT-Press, Liquid Power, focuses on water and social power in 20th century Spain and was published in April Abstract CIRCULATIONS AND METABOLISMS: (HYBRID) NATURES AND (CYBORG) CITIES The first objective of the presentation is to foreground the tropes of circulation and metabolism as possible entries to theorise and analyse socio-natural things. While a host of fashionable metaphors, such as collectives, networks, imbroglios, associations, hybrids, cyborgs, have been proposed in recent years as entries into the understanding and excavation of urban socio-natures or techno-natures, this presentation maintains that circulation and metabolism, situated within a historical-materialist perspective, might offer a view of the production of nature that is more sensitive to change, process, conflict, and flow, while transcending the modernist binarisation of the world into a social sphere on the one hand and a natural sphere on the other. The second, related objective, is to mobilise metabolism and circulation as socio-ecologial processes that permit framing questions of the urban environment, in ways that are radically political. Thirdly, we wish to propose a framework for analysis that permits viewing the modern city as a process of

4 fusing the social and the natural together to produce a distinct Cyborg urbanisation. The paper concludes by considering how politicising metabolism opens up the theoretical and practical possibility for creating the (urban) environments we wish to inhabit. CV Bin Chen is professor of ecological thermodynamics in the School of Environment at Beijing Normal University. He obtained B.E. degree in electrical engineering from Zhejiang University, and Ph.D. degree in environmental science from Peking University. Dr. Chen has published over 200 peer-reviewed papers in prestigious international journals such as Environmental Science & Technology, Ecological Economics, Ecological Indicators, Ecological Modeling, Renewable & Sustainable Energy Reviews and Applied Energy. He also served or is serving as Editor-in-Chief of Energy, Ecology and Environment, subject editor of Applied Energy, Ecosystem Health and Sustainability, associate editor of Frontiers of Earth Science, and an editorial board member of Ecological Modelling, Journal of Environmental Management, Journal of Cleaner Production, Journal of Hydrodynamics and Ecological Informatics. He was also among the organizers and keynote speakers for various international conferences. Abstract ECOLOGICAL MODELING OF URBAN METABOLISM Urbanization is a strong and extensive driver that causes environmental pollution and climate change from local to global scale. Modelling cities as ecosystems has been initiated by a wide range of scientists as a key to addressing challenging problems concomitant with urbanization. In this paper, urban ecosystem metabolism (UEM) is defined in an inter-disciplinary context to acquire a broad perception of urban ecological properties and their interactions with global change. Furthermore, state-of-the-art models of urban ecosystems are reviewed, categorized as top-down models (including materials/energy-oriented models and structure-oriented models), bottom-up models (including land use-oriented models and infrastructureoriented models), or hybrid models thereof. Based on the review of UEM studies, a future framework for explicit UEM is proposed based the integration of UEM approaches of different scales, guiding more rational urban management and efficient emissions mitigation.

5 Materials/energy models Top-down models Structure models Ecology Energy Integrated UEM Sustainability, Eco-health, Ecosystem services Macro-planning Environment Explicit Urban Management under Global Change Micro-dynamics Land use models Bottom-up models Infrastructure models Figure 1. Integrated framework for future UEM in a global change context

6 CV Dr. Jukka Heinonen works as an Associate Professor at the University of Iceland, Faculty of Civil and Environmental Engineering. His focus area is sustainability in the built environment. He also holds an Adjunct Professor position at Aalto University in Finland. His main fields of research are urban carbon footprinting and low-carbon human settlements. His consumption-based assessment technique for urban greenhouse gas assessments is well recognized in academic communities around the world. As examples of his international academic activity, he is a Management Committee member of EU COST Action Smart energy regions, he has held visiting scholar positions in UC Berkeley in consecutive years in , been a guest editor for Environmental Research Letters and a reviewer for the IPCC Fifth Assessment Report. Abstract REDUCING TH CLIMATE CHANGE IMPACT FROM HUMN SETTLEMENTS We currently face an urgent need to reduce the greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions we are causing. The newest projections say that the sea level is to rise at least six meters even if the two degrees warming target would be met and potentially much more if not. The vast majority of the anthropogenic GHGs are driven by the demand of materials and energy in cities and other human settlements. As a consequence, a lot of research has taken place to understand the drivers of the emissions and to find ways to reduce them. The prevailing thought arising from this research is that higher density is an efficient driver for emissions reductions due to reduced driving and residential energy use. However, these studies are mainly based on sectoral analyses of just either one or these two sectors. They thus fail to capture the feature of our settlements and lifestyles being tied together to a very complex system, where a change in one consumption category is reflected in others, and the actual change in the GHGs often totally something else than seen in a one-sector analysis. Looking at transport patterns, there is strong evidence that if just flying was included into transport analyses, the result would likely be that the reduction of GHGs from driving in denser settlements are compensated or even exceeded with GHGs from increased flying. Regarding residential energy consumption, in multi-story buildings in denser settlements there are a lot of common spaces and their energy requirements are often not

7 taken into account when comparisons of energy requirements are made. And more importantly, living in a dense settlement vs. outside the densest areas is also a trade-off between own living space and easy access to all kinds of service spaces, which is clearly reflected in the lifestyles and the carbon footprints of the residents of different types of areas. As a consequence, it is a very complex task to define which features of a settlement would effectively reduce the GHGs caused by the residents, but only with a comprehensive systemic approach these can be reliably searched for. Logo of the Co-Organizing Partner