ASSESSING THE ECOLOGICAL DIMENSION OF URBAN SUSTAINABILITY

Aleksandar Pešić, Bojan Labović, Dragan Vujović

Abstract


Since the assessment of the urban ecological sustainability should not reflect only objectively measurable conditions of the natural environment but also the subjectively understood sense of sustainability from a local community’s own point of view, understanding how residents perceive urban ecological sustainability is equally important as using existing objective environmental sustainability quantifications. Therefore, our empirical research, presented in this paper, is based on the assessment method that accurately measures the subjective attitudes of residents and enables the comparison of ecological sustainability of different urban settlements. A sample of 890 urban residents (453 females and 435 males) from seven cities in Central Serbia were surveyed using a self-administered questionnaire that measure all the items on a five-point Likert scale. Data was collected through a combination of randomized street and online polling during January and February 2020, as well as during June and July 2020. The Kruskal-Wallis H test as a rank-based nonparametric test is used for data analysis. The results of the study showed that there was no significant difference in answers regarding gender, however, there was a statistically significant difference when observing the level of education. Additionally, there were statistically significant differences in answers among the citizens of different urban communities sampled.


Keywords


Ecological sustainability, Local community, Quantification, Subjective attitudes, Empirical research.

Full Text:

PDF (Serbian)

References


Alberti, M. (2008), Advances in Urban Ecology: Integrating Humans and Ecological Processes in Urban Ecosystems, Springer Science+Business Media, LLC.

Alberti M. (1996), Measuring Urban Sustainability, Environmental Impact Assessment Review, 16, 381-424.

Ali-Toudert, F., Ji, L. (2017), Modeling and Measuring Urban Sustainability in Multi-Criteria Based Systems - A Challenging Issue, Ecological Indicators, 73, 597-611.

Arias-Arevalo, P., Gomez-Baggethun, E., Martín-Lopez, B., Perez-Rincon, M. (2018), Widening the Evaluative Space for Ecosystem Services: A Taxonomy of Plural Values and Valuation Methods, Environmental Values, 27, 29–53.

Barrico, L., Azul, A.M., Morais, M.C., Coutinho, A.P., Freitas, H., Castro, P. (2012), Biodiversity in Urban Ecosystems: Plants and Macromycetes as Indicators for Conservation Planning in the City of Coimbra (Portugal), Landscape and Urban Planning, 106, 88–102.

Bentivegna, V., Brandon, P.S., Lombardi, P. (2003), Evaluation of the Built Environment for Sustainability, Taylor & Francis

Brandon, P.S., Lombardi, P. (2010), Evaluating Sustainable Development in the Built Environment, John Willey & Sons

Elmqvist, T., Andersson, E., Frantzeskaki, N., McPhearson, T., Olsson, P., Gaffney, O., Takeuchi, K., Folke, C. (2019), Sustainability and Resilience for Transformation in the Urban Century. Nature Sustainabilty, 2(4), 267–273.

Gibson, R.B. (2017), Sustainability Assessment: Applications and Opportunities, Routledge.

Harris, J. M. (2000), Basic Principles of Sustainable Development, Global Development and Environment Institute, Working Paper 00-04, Tufts University

Hiremath, R.B., Balachandra, P., Kumar, B., Bansode, S.S., Muralie, J. (2013), Indicator Based Urban Sustainability – A Review, Energy for Sustainable Development, 17(6), 555-563.

Huang, S-L., Yen, C-T., Budd, W., Chen, L-L. (2009), A Sensitivity Model (SM) Approach to Analyze Urban Development in Taiwan Based on Sustainability Indicators, Environmental Impact Assessment Review, 29(2), 116–125.

Huang, L., Wu, J., Yan, L. (2015), Defining and Measuring Urban Sustainability: A Review of Indicators, Landscape Ecology, 30(7), 1175-1193.

Huang, L., Yan, L., Wu, J. (2016), Assessing Urban Sustainability of Chinese Megacities: 35 Years After the Economic Reform and Open-Door Policy, Landscape and Urban Planning, 145, 57-70.

James, P. (2014), Urban Sustainability in Theory and Practice: Circles of Sustainability, Routledge.

Kahn, M. E. (2006), Green Cities: Urban Growth and the Environment. Washington, DC: Brookings Institution Press.

Kemp, R., Martens, P. (2007), Sustainable Development: How to Manage Something That is Subjective and Never Can be Achieved ?, Sustainability: Science, Practice and Policy, 3(2), 5-14.

Leach, J.M., Braithwaite, P., Lee, S., Bouch, C., Hunt, D., Rogers, C. (2016), Measuring Urban Sustainability and Liveability Performance: The City Analysis Methodology, International Journal of Complexity in Applied Science and Technology, 1(1), 86-106.

Lehtonen, M. (2004), The Environmental-Social Interface of Sustainable Development: Capabilities, Social Capital, Institutions, Ecological Economics, 49(2), 199–214.

Leslie, H.M., Basurto, X., Nenadovic, M. et al. (2015), Operationalizing the Social-Ecological Systems Framework to Assess Sustainability, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 112(19), 5979–5984.

Lin, J., Li, Y., Wang, W., Cui, S., Wei, X. (2010), An Eco-Efficiency-Based Urban Sustainability Assessment Method and its Application, International Journal of Sustainable Development & World Ecology, 17(4), 355-361.

Magee, L., Scerri, A., James, P. (2012), Measuring Social Sustainability: A Community-Centered Approach, Applied Research Quality Life, 7, 239-261.

McManus, P. (2012), Measuring Urban Sustainability: The Potential and Pitfalls of City Rankings, Australian Geographer, 43(4), 411-424.

Mistry, J., Berardi, A., Tschirhart, C., Bignante, E., Haynes, L., Benjamin, R., Albert, G., Xavier, R., Robertson, B., Davis, O., Jafferally, D., De Ville, G. (2016), Community Owned Solutions: Identifying Local Best Practices for Socialecological Sustainability, Society, 21(2), 42.

Moussiopoulos, N., Achillas, C., Vlachokostas, C., Spyridi, D., Konstantinos, N. (2010), Environmental, Social and Economic Information Management for the Evaluation of Sustainability in Urban Areas: A System of Indicators for Thessaloniki, Greece, Cities, 27, 377-384.

Munier, N. (2011), Methodology to Select a Set of Urban Sustainability Indicators to Measure the State of the City, and Performance Assessment, Ecological Indicators, 11(5), 1020-1026.

Peng, Y., Lai, Y., Li, X., Zhang, X. (2015), An Alternative Model for Measuring the Sustainability of Urban Regeneration: The Way Forward, Journal of Cleaner Production, 109(16), 76-83.

Pickett, S.T.A., Boone, C.G., McGrath, B.P., Cadenasso, M.L., Childers, D.L., Ogden, L.A., McHale, M., Grove, J.M. (2013), Ecological Science and Transformation to the Sustainable City, Cities, 32, S10–S20.

Rees, W.E. (2003), Understanding Urban Ecosystems: An Ecological Economics Perspective, (Chapter 8). In: Berkowitz, A., Nilon, C., Howleg, K. (Eds.), Understanding Urban Ecosystems. Springer-Verlag, 115-136.

Scerri, A., James, P. (2010), Accounting for Sustainability: Combining Qualitative and Quantitative Research in Developing Indicators of Sustainability, International Journal of Social Research Methodology, 13(1), 41-53.

Schlor, H., Fischer, W., Hake, J-F. (2013), Methods of Measuring Sustainable Development of the German Energy Sector, Applied Energy, 101, 172–181.

Svendsen, E.S., Campbell, L.K. (2008), Urban Ecological Stewardship: Understanding the Structure, Function and Network of Community-Based Land Management, Cities and the Environment, 1(4), 1-31.

Swan, C.M., Pickett, S.T.A., Szlavecz, K., Warren, P., Willey, K.T. (2011), Biodiversity and Community Composition in Urban Ecosystems: Coupled Human, Spatial and Metacommunity Processes. In: Niemila, J. (Ed.), Urban Ecology: Patterns, Processes, and Applications, Oxford University Press, 179-186.

Turcu, C. (2013), Re-thinking Sustainability Indicators: Local Perspectives of Urban Sustainability, Journal of Environmental Planning and Management, 56(5), 695–71.

Wass, T., Huge, J., Block, T., Wright, T., Benitez-Capistros, F., Verbruggen, A. (2014), Sustainability Assessment and Indicators: Tools in a Decision-Making Strategy for Sustainable Development, Sustainability, 6, 5512-5534.

Yigitcanlar, T., Dur, F., Dizdaroglu, D. (2015), Towards Prosperous Sustainable Cities: A Multiscalar Urban Sustainability Assessment Approach, Habitat International, 45, 36-46.

Zhang, L., Xu, Y., Yeh, C.H., Liu, Y., Zhou, D. (2016), City Sustainability Evaluation Using Multi-Criteria Decision Making with Objective Weights of Interdependent Criteria, Journal of Cleaner Production, 131(10), 491-499.


Refbacks

  • There are currently no refbacks.