ECO-URB (256317)

  https://cordis.europa.eu/project/id/256317

  FP7 (2007-2013)

  Analysing Urban Metabolism and Ecological Footprint - A Multi-Scale Approach to Urban Sustainability Accounting and its Policy Implications

  Marie Curie Action: "Reintegration Grants" (FP7-PEOPLE-2009-RG)

  public policies  ·  sustainability sciences  ·  ecosystems

  2010-04-01 Start Date (YY-MM-DD)

  2014-03-31 End Date (YY-MM-DD)

  € 100,000 Total Cost

  Description

Today, at the beginning of the 21st century, the majority of the world’s population are living in urban areas, generating significant pressure on the supporting ecosystems. As the available means (i.e., financial and political) to change urban activities, design and lifestyle are limited, it is imperative to identify those sectors and activities with the potential to contribute the most to minimising the urban environmental load and increasing sustainability. Two approaches that are being used to quantify and assess urban sustainability are “urban metabolism” and “ecological footprint analysis”. However, these approaches need to be further developed to better reflect the complexity and unique characteristics of specific urban areas and activities. In the proposed research, I will develop a multi-scale analysis of the urban metabolism and footprint. By combining the above two approaches, I will identify the specific urban activities that contribute the most to urban throughput and will illustrate the gap to sustainability. By uniquely combining top-down (i.e., using secondary data sources) and bottom-up (i.e., surveys and focus groups) data gathering methods, this project will breakdown the studied urban activities into their specific components at the household to the city scales. By combining quantitative and qualitative approaches this research will be able to examine existing and suggested measures (e.g., policies, technologies) and to inform decision makers as to the required directions. This interdisciplinary research will combine data from the social and natural sciences with engineering. It is expected to contribute to the emerging fields of environmental accounting and sustainability sciences as well as to urban and regional planning and public policy. It has the potential to serve as a basis for other urban sustainability studies in Europe and for future collaboration and mutual fertilization with other researchers in the ERA.

  Complicit Organisations

1 Israeli organisation participates in ECO-URB.