Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

The Urex Guide To Scenarios, Lelani Mannetti, Marta Berbés-Blázquez, Elizabeth Cook, David M. Iwaniec, Nancy B. Grimm, Robert Lloyd, Timon Mcphearson, Tischa A. Muñoz-Erickson

Sustainable Futures Lab Publications

This Scenario Planning Guide outlines how the Urban Resilience to Extremes Sustainability Research Network (UREx SRN) supports ongoing efforts in its nine network cities in conducting participatory workshops. The Scenarios Working Group team, together with students, researchers, and collaborators across the network, have synthesized the co-produced visions from Workshop I. City-leads, practitioners, network participants, and participating institutions are encouraged to use the quantitative and qualitative outputs to further develop resilient, equitable, and sustainable transition pathways to help bring about their envisioned futures.

The primer begins with a brief description of the UREx SRN, before introducing the innovative framework applied to …

Beyond Bouncing Back? Comparing And Contesting Urban Resilience Frames In Us And Latin American Contexts, Tischa A. Muñoz-Erickson, Sara Meerow, Robert Hobbins, Elizabeth Cook, David M. Iwaniec, Marta Berbés-Blázquez, Nancy B. Grimm, Allain Barnett, Jan Cordero, Ghandeok Gim, Thaddeus Miller, Fernando Tandazo-Bustamante, Agustín Robles

Sustainable Futures Lab Publications

Urban resilience has gained considerable popularity in planning and policy to address cities’ capacity to cope with climate change. While many studies discuss the different ways that academics define resilience, little attention has been given to how resilience is conceptualized across different urban contexts and among the actors that engage in building resilience ‘on the ground’. Given the implications that resilience frames can have for the solutions that are pursued (and who benefits from them), it is important to examine how transformative definitions of urban resilience are in practice. In this paper, we use data from a survey of nine …

Connectivity: Insights From The U.S. Long Term Ecological Research Network, David M. Iwaniec, Michael Gooseff, Katharine Suding, David Samuel Johnson, Daniel C. Reed, Debra Peters, Byron Adams, John E. Barrett, Brandon Bestelmeyer, Max C.N. Castorani, Elizabeth M. Cook, Melissa J. Davidson, Peter F. Groffman, Niall Hanan, Laura Huenneke, Pieter T.J. Johnson, Diane Mcknight, Robert J. Miller, Gregory Okin, Daniel Preston, Andrew Rassweiler, Chris Ray, Osvaldo Sala, Robert L. Schooley, Timothy Seastedt, Marko Spasojevic, Enrique R. Vivoni

Sustainable Futures Lab Publications

Ecosystems across the United States are changing in complex and surprising ways. Ongoing demand for critical ecosystem services requires an understanding of the populations and communities in these ecosystems in the future. This paper represents a synthesis effort of the U.S. National Science Foundation-funded Long-Term Ecological Research (LTER) network addressing the core research area of “populations and communities.” The objective of this effort was to show the importance of long-term data collection and experiments for addressing the hardest questions in scientific ecology that have significant implications for environmental policy and management. Each LTER site developed at least one compelling case …

Social, Ecological, And Technological Strategies For Climate Adaptation, Yeowon Kim, Lelani Mannetti, David M. Iwaniec, Nancy B. Grimm, Marta Berbés-Blázquez, Samuel A. Markolf

Sustainable Futures Lab Publications

Resilient cities are able to persist, grow, and even transform while keeping their essential identities in the face of external forces like climate change, which threatens lives, livelihoods, and the structures and processes of the urban environment (United Nations Office for Disaster Risk Reduction, How to make cities more resilient: a handbook for local government leaders. Switzerland, Geneva, 2017). Scenario development is a novel approach to visioning resilient futures for cities. As an instrument for synthesizing data and envisioning urban futures, scenarios combine diverse datasets such as biophysical models, stakeholder perspectives, and demographic information (Carpenter et al. Ecol Soc …

Setting The Stage For Co-Production, Elizabeth Cook, Marta Berbés-Blázquez, Lelani Mannetti, Nancy B. Grimm, David M. Iwaniec, Tischa A. Muñoz-Erickson

Sustainable Futures Lab Publications

Participatory scenario visioning aims to expose, integrate, and reconcile perspectives and expectations about a sustainable, resilient future from a variety of actors and stakeholders. This chapter considers the settings in which transdisciplinary participatory visioning takes place, highlighting lessons learned from the Urban Resilience to Extremes Sustainability Research Network (UREx SRN). It reflects on the benefits of engaging in the co-production process and the challenges that must be considered amid this process.

A Vision For Resilient Urban Futures, Timon Mcphearson, David M. Iwaniec, Zoé A. Hamstead, Marta Berbés-Blázquez, Elizabeth M. Cook, Tischa A. Muñoz-Erickson, Lelani Mannetti, Nancy B. Grimm

Sustainable Futures Lab Publications

A fundamental systems approach is essential to advancing our understanding of how to address critical challenges caused by the intersection of urbanization and climate change. The social–ecological–technological systems (SETS) conceptual framework brings forward a systems perspective that considers the reality of cities as complex systems and provides a baseline for developing a science of, and practice for, cities. Given the urgency of issues we collectively face to improve livability, justice, sustainability, and resilience in cities, bringing a systems approach to resilience planning and policymaking is critical, as is development of positive visions and scenarios that can provide more realistic and …

Positive Futures, David M. Iwaniec, Marta Berbés-Blázquez, Elizabeth Cook, Nancy B. Grimm, Lelani Mannetti, Timon Mcphearson, Tischa A. Muñoz-Erickson

Sustainable Futures Lab Publications

We describe the rationale and framework for developing scenarios of positive urban futures. The scenario framework is conducted in participatory workshop settings and composed of three distinct scenario approaches that are used to (1) explore potential outcomes of existing planning goals (strategic scenarios), (2) articulate visions that address pressing resilience challenges (adaptive scenarios), and (3) envision radical departures from the status quo in the pursuit of sustainability and equity (transformative scenarios). A series of creative and analytical processes are used to engage the community in imagining, articulating, and scrutinizing visions and pathways of positive futures. The approach offers an alternative …

Anticipatory Resilience Bringing Back The Future Into Urban Planning And Knowledge Systems, Tischa A. Muñoz-Erickson, Kaethe Selkirk, Robert Hobbins, Clark Miller, Mathieu Feagan, David M. Iwaniec, Thaddeus Miller, Elizabeth M. Cook

Sustainable Futures Lab Publications

Anticipatory thinking is a critical component in urban planning practices and knowledge systems in an era of unpredictability and conflicting expectations of the future. This chapter introduces “anticipatory resilience” as a futures-oriented knowledge system that intentionally addresses uncertain climate conditions and explores alternative, desirable future states. It suggests a portfolio of tools suitable for building long-term foresight capacity in urban planning. Examples of knowledge systems interventions are presented to explore the trade-offs, constraints, possibilities, and desires of diverse future scenarios co-generated in settings with people that hold different perspectives, knowledge, and expectations.

Assessing Future Resilience, Equity, And Sustainability In Scenario Planning, Marta Berbés-Blázquez, Nancy B. Grimm, Elizabeth M. Cook, David M. Iwaniec, Tischa A. Muñoz-Erickson, Vivian Hobbins, Darin Wahl

Sustainable Futures Lab Publications

In the absence of strong international agreements, many municipal governments are leading efforts to build resilience to climate change in general and to extreme weather events in particular. However, it is notoriously difficult to guide and activate processes of change in complex adaptive systems such as cities. Participatory scenario planning with city professionals and members of civil society provides an opportunity to coproduce positive visions of the future. Yet, not all visions are created equal. In this chapter, we introduce the Resilience, Equity, and Sustainability Qualitative (RESQ) assessment tool that we have applied to compare positive scenario visions for cities …

Assessment Of Urban Flood Vulnerability Using Thesocial-Ecological-Technological Systems Framework In Six Us Cities, Heejun Chang, Arun Pallathadka, Jason Sauer, Nancy B. Grimm, Rae Zimmerman, Chingwen Cheng, David M. Iwaniec, Yeowon Kim, Robert Lloyd, Timon Mcphearson, Bernice Rosenzweig, Tiffany Troxler, Claire Welty, Ryan Brenner, Pablo Herreros-Cantis

Sustainable Futures Lab Publications

As urban populations continue to grow through the 21 st century, more people are projected to be at risk of exposure to climate change-induced extreme events. To investigate the complexity of urban floods, this study applied an interlinked social-ecological-technological systems (SETS) vulnerability framework by developing an urban flood vulnerability index for six US cities. Indicators were selected to reflect and illustrate exposure, sensitivity, and adaptive capacity to flooding for each of the three domains of SETS. We quantified 18 indicators and normalized them by the cities’ 500-yr floodplain area at the census block group level. Clusters of flood vulnerable areas …

Translating A Global Emission-Reduction Framework For Subnational Climate Action: A Case Study From The State Of Georgia, Marilyn A. Brown, Blair Beasley, Fikret Atalay, Kim Cobb, Puneet Dwivedi, Jeffrey Hubbs, David M. Iwaniec, Sudhagar Mani, Daniel Matisoff, Jacqueline Mohan, Jeffrey Mullen, Michael Oxman, Daniel Rochberg, Michael Rodgers, Marshall Shepherd, Richard Simmons, Laura Taylor, L. Beril Toktay

Sustainable Futures Lab Publications

Subnational entities are recognizing the need to systematically examine options for reducing their carbon footprints. However, few robust and comprehensive analyses are available that lay out how US states and regions can most effectively contribute. This paper describes an approach developed for Georgia—a state in the southeastern United States called “Drawdown Georgia”, our research involves (1) understanding Georgia’s baseline carbon footprint and trends, (2) identifying the universe of Georgia-specific carbon-reduction solutions that could be impactful by 2030, (3) estimating the greenhouse gas reduction potential of these high-impact 2030 solutions for Georgia, and (4) estimating associated costs and benefits while also …

A Framework For Resilient Urban Futures, David M. Iwaniec, Nancy B. Grimm, Timon Mcphearson, Marta Berbés-Blázquez, Elizabeth M. Cook, Tischa A. Muñoz-Erickson

Sustainable Futures Lab Publications

Resilient urban futures provides a social–ecological–technological systems (SETS) perspective on promoting and understanding resilience. This chapter introduces the concepts, research, and practice of urban resilience from the Urban Resilience to Extremes Sustainability Research Network (UREx SRN). It describes conceptual and methodological approaches to address how cities experience extreme weather events, adapt to climate resilience challenges, and can transform toward sustainable and equitable futures