Urban Studies and Planning Commons^™

Assessing The Sea-Level Rise Vulnerability In Coastal Communities: A Case Study In The Tampa Bay Region, Us, Xinyu Fu

USI Publications

Sea-level rise (SLR) has drawn unprecedented attention from coastal communities around the world. In fact, many are already being affected and, in response, SLR vulnerability assessments have increasingly emerged in the US as the local communities’ first attempt on the adaptation planning agenda. However, to date, little is known about these early planning endeavors in terms of how vulnerability is conceptualized and operationalized. By reviewing the current local SLR vulnerability assessments in the US, we find that most are only focusing on their biophysical exposure to SLR overlooking other important vulnerability factors including sensitivity and adaptative capacity. The limited number …

Perspectives On The 21st Century Urban University From Singapore – A Viewpoint Forum, Jean-Paul Addie, Michele Acuto, Kongchong Ho, Stephen Cairns, Hwee Pink Tan

USI Publications

In this Cities viewpoint forum, we argue that there is a need to rethink U.S./U.K.-centric approaches to the urban university in policy and practice. Gathering three critical commentaries by practitioners from within the Singaporean higher education system, the forum responds to the challenges of: (1) broadened expectation placed on higher education institutions; (2) the pressures and possibilities of global urbanization; and (3) the provocation to theorize the urban, and thus the urban university, from beyond the ‘Global North’. Following an introduction detailing the history and relevance of the Singaporean case, the three viewpoints seek to illustrate the various dimensions of …

Interdependent Infrastructure As Linked Social, Ecological, And Technological Systems (Setss) To Address Lock‐In And Enhance Resilience, Samuel A. Markolf, Mikhail Chester, Daniel Eisenberg, David M. Iwaniec, Cliff I. Davidson, Rae Zimmerman, Thaddeus Miller, Benjamin Ruddell, Heejun Chang

USI Publications

Traditional infrastructure adaptation to extreme weather events (and now climate change) has typically been techno‐centric and heavily grounded in robustness—the capacity to prevent or minimize disruptions via a risk‐based approach that emphasizes control, armoring, and strengthening (e.g., raising the height of levees). However, climate and nonclimate challenges facing infrastructure are not purely technological. Ecological and social systems also warrant consideration to manage issues of overconfidence, inflexibility, interdependence, and resource utilization—among others. As a result, techno‐centric adaptation strategies can result in unwanted tradeoffs, unintended consequences, and underaddressed vulnerabilities. Techno‐centric strategies that lock‐in today's infrastructure systems to vulnerable future design, management, and …

From The “Smart City” To The “Smart Metropolis”? Building Resilience In The Urban Periphery, Stefano De Falco, Margarita Angelidou, Jean-Paul Addie

USI Publications

The “smart city” has risen to global prominence over the past two decades as an urban planning and development strategy. As a broad but contested toolkit of technological services and policy interventions aimed at improving the efficacy and efficiency of urban systems, the “smart city” is subject to several pressing critiques. This paper acknowledges these concerns, but recognizes the potential of “urban intelligence” to enhance the resiliency of metropolitan areas. As such, we focus on an under-researched dimension of smart city urbanism: its application in peripheral urban areas. The paper introduces a threefold typology of: (a) geographic (spatial); (b) hard …

Carbon Offsets Out Of The Woods? Acceptability Of Domestic Vs. International Reforestation Programmes In The Lab, Andrea Barranzini, Nicolas Borzykowski, Stefano Carattini

CSLF Articles

Following the entry into force of the Paris Agreement in November 2016, governments around the world are now expected to turn their nationally determined contributions into concrete climate policies. Given the global public good nature of climate change mitigation and the important cross-country differences in marginal abatement costs, distributing mitigation efforts across countries could substantially lower the overall cost of implementing climate policy. However, abating emissions abroad instead of domestically may face important political and popular resistance. We ran a lab experiment with more than 300 participants and asked them to choose between a domestic and an international reforestation project. …

The Geography Of Vacant Housing And Neighborhood Health Disparities After The U.S. Foreclosure Crisis, Daniel Immergluck, Kyungsoon Wang

USI Publications

• Objectives: We examined the impact of long-term (6 months or more) vacant housing and various durations of vacancy on a variety of health outcomes at the neighborhood level across three types of U.S. metropolitan areas (metros): (1) those that have experienced consistently strong growth, (2) those that have undergone weak growth, and (3) those hit hardest by the foreclosure crisis.
• Methods: We used hierarchical linear modeling with long-term vacant housing data derived from the U.S. Postal Service as well as data for health outcomes obtained from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to examine the health effects of residents …

Renting The Dream: The Rise Of Single-Family Rentership In The Sunbelt Metropolis, Daniel Immergluck

USI Publications

In the aftermath of the foreclosure crisis, there has been a marked shift toward renting in the United States, with a large increase in households renting single-family homes. In the 50 largest metropolitan areas, the number of detached, single-family rental homes (SFRs) increased from

3.8 million to 5.8 million from 2006 to 2015. Single-family rentership rates increased in all 50 large metro areas, with the percentage of single- family units that are rented increasing from 11.3% to 16%. Notably, the nine metropolitan areas with the largest increases were all located in the Sunbelt. Given expected neighborhood sorting, it is important …

Urban(Izing) University Strategic Planning: An Analysis Of London And New York City, Jean-Paul Addie

USI Publications

hile there is a growing recognition of the mutually-beneficial relationships universities and cities can forge around local and regional development, urban and academic leaders have often struggled to harness the diverse capacities of universities as producers and analysts of urban space. This article addresses this challenge by examining the institutional and spatial strategies being prioritized by universities in the context of global urbanization. It details a Lefebvrian-influenced conceptual and methodological approach to evaluate the multifaceted, multi-scalar urban(izing) functions of ‘universities in urban society’. Comparatively assessing the organizational structures, spatial orientations, and ways of operating being pursued by universities in London …