The role that cities play in enhancing biodiversity conservation is increasingly recognized. However, since locations for conservation within metropolitan areas are often spatially restricted, and management for biodiversity may conflict with interventions on behalf of other desirable objectives, it is important that the outcomes of urban conservation projects are carefully monitored. Such monitoring is relatively rare. In this study we explored the value of employing soundscape analysis to provide a holistic evaluation of biotic communities at urban sites undergoing different forms of vegetation management. Using readily affordable audio recorders, we evaluated soundscapes in replicated areas within a 481-hectare urban park in Chicago, Illinois. Areas within the park are managed to achieve multiple objectives including both recreational use and nature conservation. We found that relatively small areas within the park that had been subjected primarily to restorative vegetation management supported different acoustic environments with higher avian activity and more prevalent biophonic sound than was the case in managed lawn spaces. The use of a variety of acoustic indices supplemented the analysis of these soundscapes, and whereas all indices affirmed seasonal differences, the Acoustic Complexity Index (ACI) was more helpful than the other indices we employed in discriminating between management practices. We conclude that vegetation management employed even at a small spatial scale in an urban environment can enhance faunal diversity, and that these results can be evaluated using inexpensive sound monitoring equipment. ➢Relatively small areas (<1 hectare) that are under restorative management within a large urban park supported a richer acoustic environment with both higher avian activity and a greater diversity of animal sounds than managed lawn spaces. We show that such areas have low 'biophonic absence,' a term we use to highlight the diminished soundscapes of areas managed as traditional lawns. ➢ Inexpensive recording equipment can be used to detect differences in the quality of soundscapes in managed areas. The use of a variety of acoustic indices applied to these recordings were valuable in the analysis of urban soundscapes. Although all indices we used verified seasonal differences in sites, the Acoustic Complexity Index (ACI) was more helpful than the other indices we employed in discriminating between management practices. ➢ Vegetation management employed even at a small scale in urban environments can enhance faunal diversity.

AbstractCities across the globe are striving to produce viable solutions to pressing urban sustainability and resilience problems. Despite aspirations, municipal governments often need additional support in terms of knowledge, capacity, or resources to achieve transformations. Partnerships between cities and universities are one mechanism for co-producing knowledge and achieving sustained progress on complex challenges. When properly structured and effectively managed, city-university partnerships (CUPs) are purported to increase transformative capacity in city administrations and support actions which accelerate urban transformations; but these outcomes are not always achieved. As CUPs grow in numbers, there is a pressing need to identify which principles and practices facilitate transformation. Therefore, we used iterative reflective focus group sessions to develop in-depth case studies of five sustainability and resilience CUPs across three countries. The CUPs were cross-compared to explore the partnership dynamics and management practices that aid progress towards transformative goals. Observations were then related to transformative capacity typologies, and mapped to the newly described project-partnership cycle – which is useful for the management of transformative partnerships.

AbstractRecent large-scale societal disruptions, from the COVID-19 pandemic to intensifying wildfires and weather events, reveal the importance of transforming governance systems so they can address complex, transboundary, and rapidly evolving crises. Yet current knowledge of the decision-making dynamics that yield transformative governance remains scant. Studies typically focus on the aggregate outputs of government decisions, while overlooking their micro-level underpinnings. This is a key oversight because drivers of policy change, such as learning or competition, are prosecuted by people rather than organizations. We respond to this knowledge gap by introducing a new analytical lens for understanding policymaking, aimed at uncovering how characteristics of decision-makers and the structure of their relationships affect their likelihood of effectuating transformative policy responses. This perspective emphasizes the need for a more dynamic and relational view on urban governance in the context of transformation.

AbstractDespite a growing understanding of the importance of knowledge co-production for just and sustainable urban transformations, early career green infrastructure experts typically lack opportunities to practice transdisciplinary knowledge co-production approaches within their normal training and professional development. However, using online collaboration technologies combined with peer- and problem-based learning can help address this gap by putting early career green infrastructure experts in charge of organizing their own knowledge co-production activities. Using the case study of an online symposia series focused on social-ecological-technological systems approaches to holistic green infrastructure implementation, we discuss how critical pedagogical designs help create favorable conditions for transdisciplinary knowledge co-production. Our work suggests that the early career position offers a unique standpoint from which to better understand the limitations of current institutional structures of expertise, with a view towards their transformation through collective action.

AbstractEntrepreneurship has emerged as a key element for experimentation and niche innovation in sustainability transitions. Yet, its contributions beyond this initial stage and the multi-pronged role that entrepreneurs can play in transformation processes remain elusive. In response, we conceptualize and empirically illustrate how entrepreneurs can contribute to innovations within firms and to city-wide processes of change. With insights from small- and medium-sized enterprises in European and North American cities, we develop a framework encompassing eight intervention types through which entrepreneurs shape urban sustainability transformations. We propose avenues for future research to better understand the distributed role of entrepreneurship and how it can contribute to shaping and accelerating change toward sustainability across integrated levels of urban transformations.

AbstractCity governments and urban universities are well-positioned to play critical roles in advancing urban sustainability transformations. However, in partnering, cities and universities often focus efforts on discrete sustainability-related projects, neglecting the development of long-term relationships and deep, inter-organizational ties that can allow for collaboration on lasting and transformational change. Yet, at both cities and universities there are often individuals who are deeply interested in developing better partnerships that contribute to the sustainability and livability of their communities. This research develops and tests an evidence-based and facilitated process to guide sustainability researchers and municipal practitioners in the development of transformational City-university partnerships for sustainability. The Audacious Partnerships Process was tested by four City-university partnerships including Arizona State University and the City of Tempe, Dublin City University and the City of Dublin, King’s College London and the City of Westminster and the National Autonomous University of Mexico and Mexico City. The Audacious Partnerships Process as well as results from post-surveys and interviews following implementation are elaborated. We conclude with key lessons for modifying and implementing the process to contribute to transformative partnership development.

AbstractRegional economies are characterized by networks of interactions between individual elements and are thus quintessential complex systems. Analyzing the relatedness of various aspects of regional economies, such as exports, industries, occupations, and technologies, using methods from complexity science is becoming commonplace. However, current work has focused nearly exclusively on regional economic complexity of more urbanized regions within countries, if not entire countries themselves. Smaller urban areas are typically over-looked and rural regions are almost entirely absent from the dialog. This paper seeks to fill this gap by examining smaller urban areas and rural regions from a complexity economics perspective. Analyzing cross-sectional data provides initial insights into the transformation of regional economic connectedness from rural to urban regions. Using a previously developed metric of economic connectivity based the on co-occurrence of economic activities, called tightness, we examine the skills space and industry space of metropolitan, micropolitan, and rural regions in the United States. We find that the least and the most urbanized regions have the highest tightness, and that this is partially due to the share of specialty skills in a “socio-cognitive” lobe of skills space. However, we also find that the composition of skills in the least and most urbanized regions differs markedly. Findings suggest that planners seeking to increase the share of socio-cognitive skills in the local workforce may be constrained by population size, and that regions of moderate population size may be required to first grow industries that require less cognitive skills.Science Highlights• Regional economic tightness and regional economic output are positively correlated, even when controlling for regional population.• Skills tightness is greatest in the least populous and most populous regions while industry tightness is greatest in the most populous regions.• Higher skills tightness is driven partially by the share of socio-cognitive skills in the regional workforce.• The most rural and most urban counties have the highest share of specialty skills in the socio-cognitive lobe of skills space.Policy and Practice Recommendations• Both skills and industrial tightness should be fostered to increase regional per capita output.• Growing jobs that utilize socio-cognitive skills may increase skills tightness and thus regional productivity.• Moderately-urbanized areas typically have a lower share of workers with socio-cognitive skills, and may experience more difficulty growing knowledge-intensive industries.

Urban populations globally are expected to increase by approximately 2.5 billion by 2050. Much of this growth is taking place in African cities, where about 40% of Africans live in urban areas with populations of less than 250,000. In many of these cities, rapid urban growth has outpaced economic and social development, resulting in high levels of urban poverty and widespread food insecurity. As one response strategy, urban households may leverage their linkages with rural areas and other towns or cities to supplement their food consumption, for example through food remittances or food purchases from remote retailers. While this strategy has been found to occur among inhabitants of large cities where existing research on urban food systems and urban food linkages with other areas has focused, the dynamics in smaller cities are likely different. In this paper, we draw on data from 837 surveys collected in 2021 to investigate household food sourcing strategies across 14 urban areas in Zambia with populations less than 100,000. We find that rural-urban food linkages are dominated by grains while urban-urban food linkages are predominantly composed of higher value foods. Our data further suggest that urban area characteristics explain more of the variability in food sourcing behaviors than household level characteristics, and that urban food purchasing preferences in secondary urban areas are sensitive to the food retail landscape available to households. These relationships highlight the disparate role that rural and urban linkages play across cities of different sizes. They suggest a need for food-related policies to consider diverse urban food systems among smaller cities. • Households in African secondary urban areas have food linkages with rural areas and other urban areas • Rural-urban food linkages are dominated by grains, while urban-urban food linkages comprise more higher value foods • City-level characteristics explain more of the variability in food sourcing behaviors than household-level characteristics

The unfolding COVID-19 pandemic, and the unprecedented social and economic costs it has inflicted, provide an important opportunity to scrutinize the interplay between the resilience of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) and the resilience of the communities they are embedded in. In this article, we articulate the specific ways that SMEs play a crucial, and underappreciated role in building resilience to human and natural hazards, and provide new opportunities to accelerate the adoption of sustainability practices through the configuration of ‘enabling ecosystems’ geared towards promoting sustainability in the private sector. We argue that capacity-building and experimentation are not only required within companies, but also throughout this emerging supportive ecosystem of policies, resources (i.e. finance, materials, skills), governance actors, and intermediaries to adequately focus investment, technical capabilities and innovation. Ultimately, we call for a new transdisciplinary action research agenda that centers on SMEs as pivotal actors and amplifiers of community resilience; while recognizing that these firms are themselves in need of support to secure their own capacity to respond to, and transform in light of, crises. This research program calls for recognizing and applying the lessons that the pandemic presents to the urgent need for accelerated climate action. This will be enabled by developing more targeted approaches to collaborative capacity-building activities in SMEs that feed into experimentation and allow for the accelerated adoption of deliberate and strategic resilient business practices and models.

Platform urbanism has emerged in recent years as an area of research into the ways in which digital platforms are increasingly central to the governance, economy, experience, and understanding of the city. In the paper, we argue that platform urbanism is an evolution of the smart city, constituted by novel, digitally-enabled socio-technical assemblages that enable new forms of social, economic and political intermediation. We offer a typological framework for a better conceptualization of platform urbanism and its complex socio-economic relationships. We further outline several directions for future research on platform urbanism, specifically: a.) the need to critically investigate new power geometries of corporate, legal and regulatory alignments; b.) how platform urbanism may be expressed in, and affect, cities in the Global South; c.) how it may need to be critically engaged with in regard to its development in response to emergent events such as the Covid-19 pandemic; and d.) how it may shape visions of the current and future city.

The Urban Living Lab (ULL) approach has the potential to create enabling environments for social learning and to be a successful arena for innovative local collaboration in knowledge co-creation and experimentation in the context of research and practice in sustainability transitions. Nevertheless, complex issues such as the urban Food-Water-Energy (FWE) Nexus present a challenge to the realization of such ULL, especially regarding their inclusiveness. We present ULL as a frame for a local knowledge co-creation and participation approach based on the project "Creating Interfaces - Building capacity for integrated governance at the Food-Water-Energy-nexus in cities on the water". This project aims at making FWE Nexus linkages better understandable to the stakeholders (citizens and associations, city government, science, businesses), and to facilitate cooperation and knowledge exchange among them. This paper focuses on and discusses inclusiveness as a key aspect and challenge of ULLs and on what literature and our experiences in this regard suggest for the advancement of the concept of ULL towards ULL 2.0. These findings often also relate to framing transdisciplinary research in a wider sense.

This article interprets emerging scholarship on rental housing platforms—particularly the most well-known and used short- and long-term rental housing platforms—and considers how the technological processes connecting both short-term and long-term rentals to the platform economy are transforming cities. It discusses potential policy approaches to more equitably distribute benefits and mitigate harms. We argue that information technology is not value-neutral. While rental housing platforms may empower data analysts and certain market participants, the same cannot be said for all users or society at large. First, user-generated online data frequently reproduce the systematic biases found in traditional sources of housing information. Evidence is growing that the information broadcasting potential of rental housing platforms may increase rather than mitigate sociospatial inequality. Second, technology platforms curate and shape information according to their creators’ own financial and political interests. The question of which data—and people—are hidden or marginalized on these platforms is just as important as the question of which data are available. Finally, important differences in benefits and drawbacks exist between short-term and long-term rental housing platforms, but are underexplored in the literature: this article unpacks these differences and proposes policy recommendations.

Cities around the world continue to grapple with safety, security and the role for law enforcement in reducing gun crime. Recent calls for alternatives to militarized policing in cities and addressing racism in urban crime policies and practices gives new urgency to explore community-led strategies. Advance Peace is a program that aims to reduce urban gun violence using formerly incarcerated community members as street outreach mentors and violence interrupters. Yet, few urban policy makers know of Advance Peace and how it is distinct from other community-based urban gun violence interruption programs, often called focused deterrence. In this paper, we describe the innovative approach used by Advance Peace, what distinguishes it from other municipal gun violence reduction strategies, and examine the elements of its unique, public health informed program called the Peacemaker Fellowship®. The Peacemaker Fellowship enrolls the small number of the most violent and hard to reach members of a community at the center of gun violence in an intensive 18-month program of trauma-informed, healing-centered, anti-racist mentorship, education, social services, and life opportunities. We suggest that cities around the world seeking transformations in their approach to public safety, including addressing structural racism and centering community expertise, explore the unique features of the Advance Peace approach.

Much scholarship has revealed the interrelationships of urbanization and financialization of cities in the past half century. However, these twin processes are modulating with the advent and application of digital platforms towards the production and experience of urban life. This paper demonstrates how the datafication process of platform urbanism and smart city projects is deeply intertwined with processes of financialization and urbanization. Though materially distinct, these processes converge over a shared purpose to instigate and accelerate the circulation of value in capitalist urban production. This paper examines the urban character of digital economic circulation and the increasingly financialized datafication of urban infrastructures. In foregrounding the circulation of value, datafication both conditions and is conditioned by financialization and urbanization.

Climate-driven changes in coastal flood risk have enormous consequences for coastal cities. These risks intersect with unequal patterns of environmental hazards exacerbating differential vulnerability of climate related flooding. Here we analyze differential vulnerability of coastal flooding in New York City, USA, as an environmental justice issue caused by shifts in flood risk due to increasing floodplain extents. These extents are represented by updates to the 100-year floodplain by the Federal Emergency Management Agency, and urban changes in land use, land value, and socio-economic characteristics of flood exposed populations. We focus on six local community districts containing disproportionately vulnerable communities. Across our study areas, we observed increases in the floodplain’s extent by 45.7%, total exposed population by 10.5%, and population living in vulnerable communities by 7.5%. Overall flood risk increases regardless of increases in the updated floodplain extent, as do floodplain property values. However, variability is high between community districts; in some cases, increases in exposure coincide with decreases in vulnerability due to shifts in racial demographics and increases in income (i.e. potential floodplain gentrification), while others experienced increases in exposure and vulnerability (i.e. double jeopardy). These findings highlight that the dominant drivers of coastal flood risk in NYC are ongoing real estate development and continued increases in sea level rise and storm severity, both of which have explicit implications for flood vulnerability. We describe the social processes governing development in the flood zone, namely zoning, resilience planning, and the determination of potential flooding severity and related insurance rates. We also discuss how these social drivers of risk intersect with social dimensions of vulnerability due to racist housing markets, and the distributions of public housing and toxic chemical hazards. We conclude with a framework for the analysis of contextual and outcome-based vulnerability to coastal flood hazards, and provide policy recommendations to reduce risks over the medium to long term.

The imperative to massively and quickly scale sustainability transitions in urban areas globally stands in tension with the sustained commitments required of grounded coproduction efforts that seek to deliver locally credible, relevant, and legitimate pathways for place-specific transitions. Is it possible to develop policy guidance that meets the magnitude of the urban transitions challenge while still leveraging the benefits of coproduction? We suggest that coproducing urban transitions guidance around relevant types of cities, as compared to specific individual cities, offers a potential pathway for scaling the impact of such guidance. However, little work has been done to explicitly interrogate how concepts of credibility, relevance and legitimacy are implicated by relying on urban types in coproduction processes. In this frontiers discussion, we describe what greater emphasis on the use of types and proxies in urban transitions coproduction might entail. Elaborating the concept of ‘coproduction-by-proxy’, we articulate six key premises and draw on two real-world instances of science-policy dialogue to illustrate its operative features. This frontiers discussion aims to supply more structured language for framing debate about whether, and how best, to strategically construct and deploy urban types in coproduction processes for developing urban transitions guidance, with an emphasis on maximizing generalization and impact, while maintaining both technical and political credibility. The discussion argues that exploring the role (and limits) of urban types and proxies in coproduction processes is a key frontier for the iterative science and practice of urban transitions, with implications for advancing both overall urban systems knowledge and place-specific sustainability transitions.

The inauguration of Medellín, Colombia’s aerial cable car in 2004, is widely seen as a key turning point in reversing the city’s historical reputation for drug and gang-related crimes towards greater inclusiveness and public safety. Analyses of Medellín’s transformation have tended to focus on establishing the immediate positive outcomes achieved from the cable car and assessing persistent inequality and the fragile balance between enfranchisement and top-down institutional control. In this paper, we take these interpretations of Medellín’s transformation as our starting point and propose that a lasting legacy is to be found in the way the city plans for and works in disinvested areas. Our focus is on examining the elements that have made transformation possible in Medellín. We begin by exploring a set of framing conditions during the period of 1991 to 2000 (‘Before Line K’) and then outline the implementation of Metrocable and its shorter-term outcomes (‘Executing Line K’), before finally reflecting on the wider transformative impacts of this experience (‘Beyond Line K’). As key takeaways, we highlight the role of national policy, municipal finance, and community engagement in bringing a highly informal space into the reach of public institutions, thus providing insights for urban decision-makers looking to do the same.