Publication informationCities, 32 : S21-S28, Supplement 1Publisher Elsevier
Link to online versionhttp://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0264275113 00036X Item record/more information http://hdl.handle.net/10197/4326
Publisher's statementThis is the author's version of a work that was accepted for publication in Cities. Changes resulting from the publishing process, such as peer review, editing, corrections, structural formatting, and other quality control mechanisms may not be reflected in this document. Changes may have been made to this work since it was submitted for publication.
Transitioning to resilience and sustainability in urban communities
AbstractThe challenges of rapid urban growth and societal change will require mechanisms for efficient transitioning to an embedded resilience. This has become central to the exploration of methods for achieving truly sustainable urban growth. However, while transitioning and resilience are useful descriptors, they can be abstract or conflicting ideals and their meanings obscured by a lack of concrete examples, both being barriers to many planning objectives. In this paper, we hold a lens over key issues in transitioning to resilience in urban areas by outlining emerging challenges that may offer directions towards operationalising how cities might transition to a more resilient future, while ensuring that communities are at the center of the process.The emerging and challenging areas -geospatial ICT, green infrastructure planning, novel design using collaborative responses, climate planning, limiting urban sprawl and short-circuit economic approaches -are explored as viable facets for devising and sustaining urban transition strategies. We conclude with a discussion on the need for developing a synergistic approach in practice to facilitate transition.
Spatial data infrastructures, which are Internet-based mechanisms for the coordinated production, discovery, and use of geospatial information in the digital environment, have diffused worldwide in the last two decades. Currently, there are about one hundred spatial data infrastructures at the national level and many other at supra-and sub-national levels. These contemporary spatial data infrastructures operate with two main assumptions: formal organizations are the producers and suppliers of geospatial information; users are the passive recipients of information. The recent phenomenon of volunteered geographic information departs from these assumptions. In this paper, we argue that reconceptualizing the user of a spatial data infrastructure can accommodate this new phenomenon. Such a reconceptualization creates a middle ground between spatial data infrastructure and volunteered geographic information, which has important implications for future research.
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