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Urban green spaces play a key role in the improvement of environmental quality, livability, and sustainability of towns and cities. The aim of this paper is to elicit the willingness of the population of Passo Fundo, a town in southern Brazil, to pay for improvements, maintenance, and conservation of a park situated in the Cidade Universitária (University Campus) subdivision. After the preliminary description of the current situation of the park, a scenario was defined for environmental valuation offered by proposed improvements according to different experts in urban and environmental planning. A total of 338 households in the urban area of Passo Fundo were surveyed through the application of a questionnaire and by the contingent valuation method. An economic value between R$964,560.00 (US$550,547.94) and R$2,531,970.00 (US$1,445,188.35) was obtained for the improvement, maintenance, and conservation of the park. Also, a relationship was observed between the socioeconomic characteristics of the population and willingness to pay. The analysis of economic viability for the investments in this park showed a positive net present value. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Environmental issues are considered increasingly more important in the field of industrial production, especially in the early stages of the planning processes: Eco-industrial parks seem to be effective planning models to reduce environmental impact and to increase firm competitiveness at the same time. By describing the Raibano industrial area planning process, this paper investigates the opportunities offered by strategic environmental assessment as an effective and suitable method in developing real eco-industrial parks. The assessment procedure, also supported by some prediction models, has been implemented by considering the environmental effects generated by the industrial park development and use on every environmental component, and the consequent precondition, mitigation, and remediation measures. The illustrated case shows that the application of environmental assessment principles to an early decision-making level enables the enhancement of some key features of eco-industrial parks, such as the high degree of project preplanning and design and the presence of site management and monitoring mechanisms during its implementation, thus guaranteeing enough flexibility to give birth to spontaneous cooperation and exchanges between the industrial activities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Urban forests, and especially suburban and rural forests near major metropolitan areas, provide important ecosystem services. Rich forest resources are an asset of Beijing, and the number of forest recreationists has increased rapidly since the 1980s. To control the environmental impact of recreational activities and satisfy people's diverse demands, a forest recreation opportunity spectrum (FROS) was designed for the suburban mountainous region of Beijing. FROS integrates social and environmental factors on the basis of on-site questionnaires and a 20-site field survey conducted in 2008 and 2009. Using the traditional recreation opportunity spectrum and water recreation opportunity spectrum as references, indicators for the three main criteria-biophysical, social, and management attributes-were chosen. These indicators classify forest recreational resources into five FROS classes, which range from suburban developed to suburban natural, rural developed, rural natural, and semiprimitive. The setting attributes, study findings, and management recommendations for each FROS class were analyzed, and the recreational opportunity classes were inventoried and mapped by GIS. According to the FROS, the distribution of different opportunities supplied in the suburban region of Beijing is not well matched with residents' demands. These findings are based on a survey of network questionnaires. This study shows that visitors pay attention to the convenience of transport in choosing a recreational destination. Directing use away from suburban areas and to rural areas requires improvements in the transportation system, especially public transport. The FROS framework encourages managers to search beyond their own agency for information and provides an interagency, collaborative perspective to gather and analyze existing resources. This framework might be extensible to other regions except for the suburban mountainous areas of Beijing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The transportation sector is the second largest source of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions in the United State. Developing underutilized urban industrial sites with certain characteristics (i.e., close proximity to transit, job and services, low remediation cost, and high density) can potentially reduce the transportation sector's impact on the environment by lowering vehicle kilometers traveled (VKT) and related GHG emissions. This study examines the effect of residential brownfield developments on VKT reduction and the resulting costs (including the cost of driving time, fuel, and external air pollution costs) and further compares the resulting costs with the initial one-time cleanup cost of brownfield sites. Sixteen brownfield and conventional development sites were analyzed in Baltimore, Chicago, Minneapolis, and Pittsburgh. Travel demand models were used to estimate VKT differences among the developments. Air pollution valuation data were used to estimate external environmental cost differences. On average, residential brownfield developments reduce VKT by 52% compared to conventional greenfield developments. Also on average, brownfield developments result in a time and fuel cost reduction of 60% and an external environmental cost saving of 66%. Comparing these cost savings with the initial one-time cleanup cost of brownfields, it is shown that development density and the cost of remediation significantly affect the number of years required for the VKT cost savings to offset the remediation cost. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

For people with disabilities, accessibility is a critical aspect of infrastructure that influences their health, quality of life, and ability to participate in community life. Currently, no standard methods exist for assessing a community's accessibility or for accumulating such data across communities. ASCE's report card on the status of America's infrastructure offers a framework for collecting and aggregating data on accessibility, and for using it to advocate for community improvement. In the present study, an assessment for estimating a community's accessibility was developed and pilot tested. The feasibility of the assessment method was tested by observing 297 randomly selected businesses in a city. Aggregated across nine access categories, the city scored 3.32 on a four-point scale, the equivalent of a grade of 'B' on ASCE's scale. However, 28 (10%) businesses met 'access failure' criteria-having at least one barrier that precluded access to a person using a wheelchair. On average, infrastructure maintained by private businesses was more accessible than the same observed elements maintained by the municipality. This approach could be expanded to include other elements of community accessibility-transportation, housing, and information-to develop report cards on community accessibility at the local and state levels. Data on accessibility collected systematically and longitudinally would benefit policy makers, planners, and disability advocates. Achieving and maintaining the infrastructure's accessibility would benefit everyone. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The writers examine the successful renovation of the former Kaufman Footwear manufacturing facility in downtown Kitchener, Ont. into residential lofts. The refurbishing of vacated facilities on private brownfield sites is a process involving many decision makers with distinct agendas, preferences, and options. The interaction of these decision makers can lead to a number of unique outcomes that are potentially positive or negative for each decision maker. These strategic interactions are analyzed using systems methodologies and tools, which illustrate how the amicable interaction of the various decision makers in a private brownfield conflict can cause them to come to a consensus which benefits all. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Energy systems planning models are useful for supporting decisions of urban energy systems planning and environmental management. The previous studies on energy systems modeling were too aggregated to reach insight into the interactive characteristics of energy-related activities at a community level, and thus were unable to address the unique environmental and economic features associated with community-scale energy management systems. In addition, they could hardly deal with multiple uncertainties expressed as interval values and probabilistic distributions. Therefore, the objective of this study is to develop an interval-parameter chance-constraint community-scale energy systems planning model (IPC-CEM) for supporting energy and environmental systems management under uncertainty. IPC-CEM will then be applied to the planning of a community-scale energy system to demonstrate its applicability. The results indicated that the developed model had advantages in reflecting complexities of various uncertainties as well as dealing with problems of urban infrastructure development and greenhouse gas-emission management within community-scale energy management systems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The writers created a new approach to evaluate environmental performance factors and measure the current or past environmental performances from various city and exurban by aggregation steps. Defined environmental resource indices concerning natural resources development, physical environments, population, economical, and social structures were complex and appeared related to location. The writers conducted a nationwide questionnaire survey to evaluate the entire environmental performance, and give conclusions to urge central and local officials how to detect their most urgent environmental issues. A case study in Taiwan illustrates the usefulness of this approach. This study contributes to the resource management by collecting and analyzing current and past environmental performance that provides a better understanding of the empirical cases toward environmental targets. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Continuously changing temperature trends within the urban regions are worth noticing. This paper investigates the influence of land use/ land cover (LU/LC) of an urban area on the air temperatures. Landsat 5 Thematic Mapper image of December 2000 of Nagpur city is used for the analysis. The calculated correlated coefficients depict a high degree of correlation between the digital number values of thermal band and the air temperatures, which is indicative of the surface temperatures (Ts) as the controlling parameter for the air temperature (Ta). The surface temperature and air temperature were correlated to different LU/LC class in the city. Ts are calculated from the Markham–Barker equation and Ta from the actual field records in each class. The analysis shows that the presence of a specific LU/LC class in the city may be related to the formation of surface heat island and canopy layer heat island within the urban area in Nagpur. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The concern over sustainable development gives rise to the importance of the environmental factors in evaluating an environment-sensitive project. In this regard, the widely adopted exercise which involves the environmental impact assessment (EIA) and the traditional cost–benefit analysis (CBA) in a sequential way may be flawed with a failure to calculate the resultant economic and environmental impacts in the same setting and at the same time. It is mainly because the EIA is qualitative in nature and hence the environmental impacts are hard and difficult to translate into monetary terms. In contrast, by monetizing the environmental impacts, the study shows that it is feasible to integrate the CBA with the environmental factors on an equal basis. The empirical base of the paper draws on the case of the Pinglin Interchange in Taiwan. In particular, the empirical results show that an integrated CBA may produce an entirely different conclusion from the one resulting from the common traditional EIA and CBA exercises. This is because the EIA focuses mainly on the quantity of pollution, but the latter depends on the socioeconomic context. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Several state Departments of Transportation (DOTs) and metropolitan planning organizations (MPOs) in the United States are considering environmental issues in the early stages of the transportation planning process, recognizing that there are benefits to be gained from better decisions, reduced public controversy, and shortened times to project implementation. This paper examines the current practice of such consideration, with special emphasis on best case examples. The study was conducted through a literature review, a survey of state DOTs and MPOs, and the identification of best case examples. The findings indicate the emergence, both in the literature and in practice, of more formal recognition of the need to consider environmental factors earlier in the planning process. State DOTs and MPOs agree that air quality, land use, socio-economic, environmental justice, and community cohesion impacts are of greatest concern today, and will be so in 10 years. Different approaches for considering environmental factors in planning include scenario analysis, environmental analysis of plans, environmental performance measures, consideration of equity issues, new data and analysis tools, and innovative institutional partnerships. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Where urban planning is used to promote environmental sustainability, it has traditionally focused on reducing emissions from housing and traffic. However, cities are increasingly being recognized as consumption centers of the global economy, as the origin of demand, and as the point of termination for complex economic supply chains. Based on results produced by a hybrid life-cycle assessment model, which attributed the end-to-end emissions of supply chains to end users, consumption that is not related to housing or ground transportation was found to account for 30% of regional greenhouse gas emissions on average. In highly urbanized areas, the figure was even higher, at 45%. Furthermore, a literature review indicated that most environmental assessment tools for local city-level and subcity-level urban planning are neither able to identify the environmental impacts of personal consumption nor the relationships between urban structures and personal consumption. Thus, this study concludes that there is an apparent gap between the needs and the means of the regional environmental management of urban areas. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]