Environmental and Economic Impacts of Material Used in Future Urban Development Overview
Environmental and economic impacts of urban growth and the increased concentration of economic activity in urban areas pose significant social challenges. This project aims to support the sustainable development of urban areas. An interdisciplinary group of 10 researchers from 8 academic units were brought together to develop tools analyzing interactions among the following factors: social decision making; (re)development; sustainability metrics; land, energy and material use; water demand and quality; and air quality. The research aims to create:
- Understanding of stocks and flows of resources within the urban system
- Understanding of how urban systems self-organize and self-evolve
- Cyber infrastructure to simulate, predict, and visualize the properties of urban systems based on decisions made within the urban area
- A platform to inform decision makers so that they can make sustainable choices
- Opportunities and materials on trans-disciplinary education for sustainable urban engineering, design and management
There are five components to the wider project:
- Expansion of material flow and life cycle analysis to include commercial and surface transportation system. This will lead to a more comprehensive quantification of resources requirement (e.g. water, energy, materials) and the environmental impacts.
- Development of hedonic property value models for evaluation of environmental impacts of material use, and social decision models for the optimal regulation of materials use. Integration of hedonic models with land use models.
- Calibration of the meta-model to enhance consistency among model components, and perform a sensitivity analysis to determine the greatest sources of error in the modeling framework’s description of the urban system.
- Evaluation of the impacts of some example decision mechanisms and incentives on the environmental, economic, and demographic composition of the region.
- Communication with local stakeholders and the policy community as an integral part of the research process. This dialogue will take place at strategic intervals in the design process and assure that results are available as the appropriate decision-support tools to allow informed decision making by these groups.
The ecoSERVICES GROUP (Perrings, Larson) is responsible for component #2.