Summary Shaping sustainable, equitable African cities requires strengthened investigations into the cities’ current resource flows, infrastructure systems, and future resource requirements. The field of urban metabolism (UM) offers multiple forms of analysis with which to map, analyse, and visualize urban resource profiles. Challenges in assessing UM in African cities include data scarcity at the city level, difficulty in tracking informal flows, lack of standardized methods, and the open nature of cities. However, such analyses are needed at the local level, given that city practitioners cannot rely purely on urban planning traditions of the global North or the typically broad studies about urban Africa, for supporting strategies toward sustainable urban development. This article aims to draw together the concepts of sustainable development and UM and explore their application in the African context. Further, the article estimated resource profiles for 120 African cities, including consumption of biomass, fossil fuels, electricity, construction materials, and water, as well as emissions of carbon dioxide. These resource profiles serve as a baseline from which to begin assessing the current and future resource intensity of these cities. It also provides insights into the cities’ relative resource impact, future consumption trends, and potential options for sustainability interventions.
Data sourcing challenges in African nations have led many African urban infrastructure developments to be implemented with minimal scientific backing to support their success. In some cases this may directly impact a city's ability to reach service delivery, economic growth and human development goals, let alone the city's ability to protect ecosystem services upon which it relies. As an attempt to fill this gap, this paper describes an exploratory process used to determine city-level demographic, economic and resource flow data for African nations. The approach makes use of scaling and clustering techniques to form acceptable and utilizable representations of selected African cities. Variables that may serve as the strongest predictors for resource consumption intensity in African nations and cities were explored, in particular, the aspects of the Koppen Climate Zones, estimates of average urban income and GDP, and the influence of urban primacy. It is expected that the approach examined will provide a step towards estimating and understanding African cities and their resource profiles. P. Currie et al. 1067 hives of activity [1] [2]. This has happened through two major urbanization waves. The first occurred between 1750 and 1950, in which the urban population increased from 15 million to 423 million [3]. The continents affected by the first wave were mainly Europe and North America. The second urbanization wave is occurring now and expects that an additional 2.4 billion people will be living in African and Asian cities by 2050 [4].Cities are concentrators of people and economic production, and therefore require large inputs of resources to fuel their development and growth. Common consensus suggests that cities currently produce roughly 80% of the global GDP and consume approximately 75% of global energy and materials. The concentration of resources forms large quantities of pollutants and wastes which, despite having originated in other global regions are typically exported into the local environment, threatening natural systems as well as the ecosystem services upon which the city relies [5]. Satterthwaite [6] argues that while cities may be blamed for about 80% of global carbon emissions, only about 35% are emitted within city boundaries. Rising consumption levels, not population growth, are identified as the real driver of climate change, and with that, understanding the differing consumption levels within cities is the key to understanding urbanization's role in climate change. Satterthwaite [6] remarks that cities may offer great opportunities to decouple greenhouse gas emissions from high-quality lifestyles, particularly in low-or middle-income countries. Ozbekhan's [7] problematique and Morin and Kern's [8] polycrisis are apt terms to describe the emergent issues of overpopulation, pollution, ecosystem degradation, biodiversity loss, scarcity of materials, social inequality, climate change and a loss of human connection to the natural world. As concentrators of the global polycrisis, cities are where th...
Non-technical summary There are significant challenges to retaining indigenous biodiversity and ecological infrastructure in African cities. These include a lack of formal protection and status for remnant ecologically functional patches rendering them open to ad hoc human settlement, which is in part linked to weak governance and management emerging from complex histories, and competing crisis-ridden demands. Persistent gaps in knowledge and practice mean that the social, economic, development and well-being benefits of ecological infrastructure are not understood or demonstrated. Addressing these challenges requires the adoption of multiple top-down government interventions and bottom-up community and neighbourhood actions. The development of detailed case studies that engage with knowledge generation and sharing at multiple scales through co-learning practices will also help create a much-needed deeper understanding of development options within this context.
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