Search

The COVID-19 pandemic has accelerated the adoption of surveillance technologies in cities around the world The new surveillance systems are unfolding at unprecedented speed and scale in response to the fears of COVID-19, yet with little discussion about long-term consequences or implications The authors approach the drivers and procedures for COVID-19 surveillance, addressing a particular focus to close-circuit television (CCTV) and tracking apps This paper describes the technologies, how they are used, what they are capable of, the reasons why one should be concerned, and how citizens may respond No commentary should downplay the seriousness of the current pandemic crisis, but one must consider the immediate and longer-term threats of insinuated enhanced surveillance, and look to how surveillance could be managed in a more cooperative social future © 2021 IGI Global All rights reserved

William Whyte originally hypothesized that the presence of people in a public space would attract more people. Contemporary planners now refer to “sticky streets” as places where pedestrians are compelled to linger and enjoy vibrant public life. We test the hypothesis that adding users to a public space will attract more people using an experimental design with confederates to add pedestrian movement and staying activity in a residential street for 45 randomly selected hours. We observed staying behavior by gender with and without our intervention. We find that the addition of public users reduced the total number of people staying in our study area, especially among women. We find that women’s right to the city may be constrained by the mere presence of other individuals, even in safe spaces and during daylight hours. Our findings suggest that Whyte’s claim is not universal, but depends on the conditions of a particular site.

A major challenge in the development of new cycling infrastructure is the design of intersections that are safe, appropriately used, and inclusive. In this paper we study how cyclists interact with...

Facilitators must make important decisions when preparing for consultation workshops. One critical choice pertains to how much structure should be incorporated in a workshop and imposed on group discussions. Highly structured consultations may ensure efficiency and help produce specific outputs. However, too much structure may limit group discussion, creativity, or be ill received by participants. To examine the impacts of structure in a workshop consultation, we conducted a field experiment that compares structured and unstructured facilitation approaches in a workshop on participatory environmental monitoring. We randomized participants (n = 34) into two parallel sessions where they completed the same tasks of idea generation and prioritization but with contrasting facilitation approaches. We collected pre and post surveys to compare satisfaction between groups across a range of variables. We find that structured facilitation with small group discussions provide a modest yet consistent improvement over the unstructured facilitation approach. We also find that women and men had very different perceptions about the level of women’s participation in the session. Experimental research designs are feasible for learning about facilitation methods and testing best practices in public participation and consultations.

Calm and quiet green spaces provide health benefits for urban residents. Yet as cities become more densely populated, increasing public users to green spaces may reduce or moderate these benefits. We examine how increased pedestrian density in a green street changes self-reported wellbeing. We use a between subject experimental design that added public users as confederates in randomly selected periods over three weeks. We collect data on mood and affective response from pedestrians moving through the green street (n = 504), with and without our public user treatment in randomly selected periods. Mood and affective response are improved when experiencing the green street with fewer people. We find that an increased number of public users in the green space has a negative effect on mood, especially among women. We provide experimental evidence that self-reported wellbeing in urban green spaces depends on social context, and that there are gender inequities associated with changes in affective response. Although we only measure immediate impacts, our results imply that the health benefits of green spaces may be limited by the total number of users. This research contributes additional evidence that greener cities are also healthier cities, but that the benefits may not be equally shared between women and men and will depend on the social context of use.

Costa Rica is a global ecotourism destination, yet tourism growth has contributed to conflicts over water use. Given the potential for tourism revenue to address important environmental cha...

Experimental methods remain largely underused by planning researchers and professionals. By adopting experimental research designs, urban scholars and practitioners can develop research pro...

The global COVID-19 pandemic is affecting people’s work-life balance across the world. For academics, confinement policies enacted by most countries have implied a sudden switch to home-work, a tra...

The transformational potential of Agenda 2030 lies in the synergies to be found among the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). The SDGs were designed to be interdependent, requiring enhanced policy coherence for sustainable development, and forests have a prominent role to play in their success. To support SDGs integration and highlight challenges to, and opportunities for, policy coherence among sectors that affect forests, we identify three policy clusters that are each defined by a set of closely related SDGs: ecosystem services and livelihoods; the green economy; and rights, justice, equality and inclusion. We illustrate how enhanced policy coherence within each cluster can support integrated approaches that both benefit from, and provide support for, forests.

Recent land cover analysis reveals significant forest recovery around the world, suggesting that some countries may be in a forest transition. However remotely sensed imagery does not reveal the driving causes of forest recovery, which may be due to active reforestation efforts or natural successional processes (passive reforestation). We aimed to distinguish these two processes in the priority temperate forests surrounding the Monarch Butterfly Biosphere Reserve (342 773 ha) in central Mexico. We combine an analysis of remotely sensed imagery with field interviews (n=43) to examine the mechanisms and drivers of observed forest recovery. Our analysis of the satellite imagery revealed a net increase of 3 798 ha of forest between 1986 and 2012, yet the rate of recovery is slowing. Our interview data revealed that the vast majority of the recovered forests are the result of natural regrowth (passive reforestation), and most of this regrowth is observed on degraded forests. We estimate that between 58 and 429 ha have been recovered from active reforestation efforts in the 1986-2012 period. We find that reduced logging and grazing pressures are important drivers of forest recovery, while agricultural abandonment may be less influential than often believed. Our results suggest that reforestation investments might be wisely spent supporting and maintaining the natural resilience of forests rather than on costly reforestation programs.

As global cities grapple with the increasing challenge of gentrification and displacement, research in public health and urban geography has presented growing evidence about the negative impacts of those unequal urban changes on the health of historically marginalized groups. Yet, to date comprehensive research about the variety of health impacts and their pathways beyond single case sites and through an international comparative approach of different gentrification drivers and manifestations remains scarce. In this paper, we analyze qualitative data on the pathways by which gentrification impacts the health of historically marginalized residents in 14 cities in Europe and North America. We build on 77 interviews with key neighborhood stakeholders. Data analysis indicates four main concurrent processes: Threats to housing and financial security; Socio-cultural displacement; Loss of services and amenities through institutional gentrification; and Increased risks of criminal behavior and compromised public safety. Gentrification is experienced as a chain of physical and emotional community and individual traumas – an overall shock for historically marginalized groups – because of permanent pressures of insecurity, loss, state of displaceability, and the associated exacerbation of socio-environmental disadvantages.

A recent review by Jacques Du Toit, Nelius Boshoff, and Niclesse Mariette finds that planners rarely use experimental research designs. This commentary examines why experimentation is rare in planning and discusses the legitimate challenges involved with conducting experiments in a planning context. In doing so, we aim to foster a discussion on the feasibility of conducting experimental research in our field. While not all planning policies are amenable to experimentation, we see untapped potential in many areas of planning, especially on questions of public engagement. Collectively we hope that planners can begin to identify more instances in which experimental research is possible.

We adopt a theory-based approach to synthesize research on the effectiveness of payments for environmental services in achieving environmental objectives and socio-economic co-benefits in varying contexts. Our theory of change builds on established conceptual models of impact pathways and highlights the role of (1) contextual dimensions (e.g., political, institutional, and socio-economic conditions, spatial heterogeneity in environmental service values and provision costs, and interactions with pre-existing policies), and (2) scheme design (e.g., payment type and level, contract length, targeting, and differentiation of payments) in determining environmental and socio-economic outcomes. To shed light on the overall effectiveness of payment schemes, and its determinants, we review counterfactual-based empirical evaluations, comparative analyses of case-studies, and meta-analyses. Our review suggests that program effectiveness often lags behind the expectations of early theorists. However, we also find that theory has advanced sufficiently to identify common reasons for why payment schemes fail or succeed. Moreover, payment schemes are often rolled out along with other policy instruments in so-called policy mixes. Advances in theory and evaluation research are needed to improve our understanding of how such policy mixes interact with the targeted social-ecological systems. © 2017

Large crowds in parks can be a problem for park managers and visitors. However, perceptions of crowding are difficult to measure due to coping mechanisms deployed by park visitors. Furthermore, perceptions of crowding should not be measured in isolation, but rather as part of a suite of conditions that comprise the visitors’ outdoor experience. We used a dichotomous choice experiment with visual images and eight attributes to estimate park users’ utilities associated with their visitor experience in Garibaldi Provincial Park in British Columbia, Canada. Our visual method allowed us to control for background view and compare user preferences on hiking trails with preferences at final destinations. We find that utilities are more sensitive to crowding at viewpoints than to other aspects of the outdoor experience. Thus, visitor satisfaction and crowding perceptions are more likely to be defined by where visitors have these encounters rather than the total number of encounters.

This research aims to learn if gentrification processes and neighbourhood change might be manifested in observable patterns of public life. Through the systematic observation of pedestrian movement, staying behaviour and other indicators, the study provides a diagnostic of the current conditions in four sites in the Poblenou neighbourhood of Barcelona: the Rambla of Poblenou, Pere IV at Trullàs, Mar Bella beach, and the Superilla. The research team observed public life from 8:00-24:00 hrs during a week in June 2018. The studydoes not find clear evidence of gentrification processes but there are systematic differences across sites. The Rambla performs best overall, with the highest level of pedestrian traffic, afternoon staying behaviour and gender balance. Three of the four sites are gendered spaces, in which men have a disproportionate use of public space. Describing the current patterns of public life may inform urban design interventions and serve as a baseline for long-term studies that aim to measure neighbourhood change.

Compliance with the Water Framework Directive (WFD) of the European Union requires water managers to establish environmental flow regimes (EFR) in rivers across the continent. Few water agencies have examined the economic and social welfare impacts of implementing environmental flow requirements. We present the approach used by the Catalan Water Agency to calculate an EFR and estimate the economic implications of its implementation in the Ter River (Catalonia, NE Spain), altered by weirs for hydro-electric production. We analyze various implementation strategies and their associated economic costs and benefits, concluding that the restoration of environmental flows in the Ter River has reasonable costs and is likely to be a socially desirable policy with economic benefits exceeding costs. This paper provides an example of how a water agency can generate policy-relevant information on the social welfare impacts of implementing environmental flow policies as mandated by the WFD.

An important part of conservation practice is the empirical evaluation of program and policy impacts. Understanding why conservation programs succeed or fail is essential for designing cost-effective initiatives and for improving the livelihoods of natural resource users. The evidence we seek can be generated with modern impact evaluation designs. Such designs measure causal effects of specific interventions by comparing outcomes with the interventions to outcomes in credible counterfactual scenarios. Good designs also identify the conditions under which the causal effect arises. Despite a critical need for empirical evidence, conservation science has been slow to adopt these impact evaluation designs. We identify reasons for the slow rate of adoption and provide suggestions for mainstreaming impact evaluation in nature conservation.

There have been few efforts to evaluate whether the positive land use changes induced by conservation interventions such as Payments for Environmental Services (PES) persist once the interventions end. Since gains achieved by conservation interventions may be lost upon termination of the program, even apparently successful interventions may not result in longterm conservation benefits, a problem known as that of permanence. This paper examines the permanence of land use changes induced by a short-term PES program implemented between 2003 and 2008 in Matiguas-Rio Blanco, Nicaragua. This PES program had been found to have a positive and highly significant impact on land use, and particularly on the adoption of silvopastoral practices. To assess the long-term permanence of these changes, participants were re-surveyed in 2012, four years after the last payment was made. We find that the land use changes that had been induced by PES were broadly sustained in intervening years, with minor differences across specific practices and sub-groups of participants. The patterns of change in the period after the PES program was completed help us understand the reasons for the program's success, and rule out alternative explanations for the program's success. Our results suggest that, at least in the case of productive land uses such as silvopastoral practices, PES programs can be effective at encouraging land owners to adopt environmentally beneficial land use practices and that the benefit will persist after payments cease.

Research on ecosystem services has focused mostly on natural areas or remote places, with less attention given to urban ecosystem services and their relationship with technological change. However, recent work by urban ecologists and urban designers has more closely examined and appreciated the opportunities associated with integrating natural and built infrastructures. Nevertheless, a perception remains in the literature on ecosystem services that technology may easily and irreversibly substitute for services previously obtained from ecosystems, especially when the superiority of the engineered system motivated replacement in the first place. We emphasize that the expected tradeoff between natural and manufactured capital is false. Rather, as argued in other contexts, the adoption of new technologies is complementary to ecosystem management. The complementarity of ecosystem services and technology is illustrated with a case study in Barcelona, Spain where the installation of sophisticated water treatment technology increased the value of the ecosystem services found there. Interestingly, the complementarity between natural and built infrastructures may remain even for the very ecosystems that are affected by the technological change. This finding suggests that we can expect the value of ecosystem services to co-evolve with new technologies. Technological innovation can generate new opportunities to harness value from ecosystems, and the engineered structures found in cities may generate more reliance on ecosystem processes, not less.

Utility managers must design rate structures that meet multiple objectives: full cost recovery, fairness, economic efficiency, and resource conservation. To reach these multiple goals, the design of an optimal rate structure would ideally include detailed information on cost of service, demand elasticity, and preferences of the customer base within each utility. However this information is often unavailable, especially when analyzing utilities at regional or national scales. In this absence, the comparison or benchmarking of rate structures across utilities may reveal insights regarding the features, management, or performance of one utility relative to another. We review the metrics and methods available to water utility managers for comparing rate structures with publicly available information. By presenting the full range of metrics available to utility managers, we aim to facilitate the comparison of water rate structures, and ensure that the analysts can select the metric that best fits their needs. To illustrate how these metrics may help generate insight, we use them to compare the rate structures of five municipalities in Canada. Despite the contextual differences, we find that the rates tend to converge at a single metric, the Canadian standard of 25[Formula: see text]m3/month, suggesting that there is a “looking over the shoulder effect” in which managers are probably cognizant of the metrics used to compare them to others. We suggest that the design or re-design of rate structures can be informed by the metrics that compare rates across utilities, despite the limitations of working with only publicly available information.

Ecosystem services would be incorporated into decision making more often if researchers were to focus more on the demand for these services rather than the supply. This implies examining the economic, decision making and technological context of the end-user before trying to attribute economic values to well known biological processes. This paper provides an example of how this research approach for ecosystems services could unfold. In the Llobregat River in northeastern Spain, higher stream temperatures require water treatment managers to switch on costly water treatment equipment especially during warm months. This creates an opportunity to align the economic interests of downstream water users with the environmental goals of river managers. A restored riparian forest or an increase in stream flow could reduce the need for this expensive equipment by reducing stream temperatures below critical thresholds. We used the Stream Network Temperature Model (SNTEMP) to test the impact of increasing shading and discharge on stream temperature at the intake of the drinking water treatment plant. The value of the stream temperature ecosystem services provided by existing forests is €79,000 per year for the water treatment facility, while additional riparian forest restoration along the Llobregat River could generate economic savings for water treatment managers in the range of €57,000–€156,000 per year. Stream restoration at higher elevations would yield greater benefits than restoration in the lower reaches. Moderate increases in stream discharge (25%) could generate savings of €40,000 per year.

With the potential expansion of forest conservation programs spurred by climate-change agree- ments, there is a need to measure the extent to which such programs achieve their intended results. Conven- tional methods for evaluating conservation impact tend to be biased because they do not compare like areas or account for spatial relations. We assessed the effect of a conservation initiative that combined designa- tion of protected areas with payments for environmental services to conserve over wintering habitat for the monarch butterfly (Danaus plexippus) in Mexico. To do so, we used a spatial-matching estimator that matches covariates among polygons and their neighbors. We measured avoided forest loss (avoided disturbance and deforestation) by comparing forest cover on protected and unprotected lands that were similar in terms of accessibility, governance, and forest type. Whereas conventional estimates of avoided forest loss suggest that conservation initiatives did not protect forest cover, we found evidence that the conservation measures are preserving forest cover. We found that the conservation measures protected between 200 ha and 710 ha (3-16%) of forest that is high-quality habitat for monarch butterflies, but had a smaller effect on total forest cover, preserving between 0 ha and 200 ha (0-2.5%) of forest with canopy cover >70%. We suggest that future estimates of avoided forest loss be analyzed spatially to account for how forest loss occurs across the landscape. Given the forthcoming demand from donors and carbon financiers for estimates of avoided forest loss, we anticipate our methods and results will contribute to future studies that estimate the outcome of conservation efforts.

Countries in dry climates need to fi nd more effi cient water management practices to meet growing water demand. Traditional command-and-control water policies are associated with ineffi ciencies and have motivated the exploration of market based approaches, includ- ing water trading. Water trading has its intellectual origin with the theory of Pareto optimal- ity and the Coase theorem, which asserts that resources will be allocated effi ciently given well defi ned property rights and no transaction costs. This research reviews the case for water trading and fi nds that, in the Spanish context, institutional innovations and reforms are needed to address externalities in the water market and lower transaction costs before water trading can become viable. Policies based purely on market incentives are unlikely to produce desirable results. The challenge for Spanish policy-makers will be to create the appropriate mix of market incentives and institutional conditions that will promote an effi cient distribution of water resources. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment.

SUMMARYPaying landowners to conserve forests is a promising new strategy to protect biodiversity and ecosystem services. However to succeed with this approach, programme managers need reliable monitoring data to make informed payment decisions. This includes withholding payment from landowners who do not meet conservation objectives. The monitoring method used for the Monarch Butterfly Conservation Fund compared aerial photographs and conducted field sampling to identify forest changes. The comparison of aerial photographs showed that 161 hectares of forest were degraded in the central core zone of the Monarch Butterfly Biosphere Reserve in Mexico between 2001 and 2003. As a result, payment was withheld from one of 13 landowners. Analysis of high resolution (0.6 m) digital aerial photographs did not detect finer scale changes, despite obtaining an average pixel resolution 1000 times greater than Landsat satellite imagery. This suggests that current payment for ecosystem services programmes are underestimating environmental change and overpaying non-compliant participants. In addition, selecting a decision rule to enforce payment conditionality raised new questions about how much ecosystem degradation should be permitted before withholding payment. Sound decisions about withholding payment cannot be developed until the marginal value of ecosystem services is better understood. Until then, payment thresholds can be based on specific policy objectives.

Understanding the causes of environmental degradation can lead to more effective forest management. Often, the discussion about the causes of deforestation confuses issues across spatial and temporal scales. Such is the case in the Monarch Butterfly Biosphere Reserve (MBBR) in Mexico where various hypotheses compete to explain the deforestation observed there. This paper analyzes these hypotheses using the analytical approaches developed by the literature on environmental degradation and biodiversity loss. This paper first distinguishes between proximate factors and underlying socioeconomic forces. It then reviews recent deforestation studies to evaluate the relative impact of each proximate factor observed in the MBBR. Illegal logging stands out as the factor with the most empirical support. In contrast, agricultural clearing, while frequently cited as major driver of forest loss, has much less empirical backing. These conclusions update the deforestation diagnosis for this protected area and suggest that more attention should be directed at understanding the illicit timber trade. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Unidad de excelencia María de Maeztu MdM-2015-0552 The PLOS ONE Collection "Measuring forest conservation effectiveness" brings together a series of studies that evaluate the effectiveness of tropical forest conservation policies and programs with the goal of measuring conservation success and associated co-benefits. This overview piece describes the geographic and methodological scope of these studies, as well as the policy instruments covered in the Collection as of June 2016. Focusing on forest cover change, we systematically compare the conservation effects estimated by the studies and discuss them in the light of previous findings in the literature. Nine studies estimated that annual conservation impacts on forest cover were below one percent, with two exceptions in Mexico and Indonesia. Differences in effect sizes are not only driven by the choice of conservation measures. One key lesson from the studies is the need to move beyond the current scientific focus of estimating average effects of undifferentiated conservation programs. The specific elements of the program design and the implementation context are equally important factors for understanding the effectiveness of conservation programs. Particularly critical will be a better understanding of the causal mechanisms through which conservation programs have impacts. To achieve this understanding we need advances in both theory and methods.

We assess the additional forest cover protected by 13 rural communities located in the southern state of Chiapas, Mexico, as a result of the economic incentives received through the country's national program of payments for biodiversity conservation. We use spatially explicit data at the intra-community level to define a credible counterfactual of conservation outcomes. We use covariate-matching specifications associated with spatially explicit variables and difference-in-difference estimators to determine the treatment effect. We estimate that the additional conservation represents between 12 and 14.7 percent of forest area enrolled in the program in comparison to control areas. Despite this high degree of additionality, we also observe lack of compliance in some plots participating in the PES program. This lack of compliance casts doubt on the ability of payments alone to guarantee long-term additionality in context of high deforestation rates, even with an augmented program budget or extension of participation to communities not yet enrolled.

Seriously engaging with the needs, hardships, and aspirations of future generations is an emotional experience as much as an intellectual endeavor. In this essay we describe a guided visualization exercise used to overcome the emotional barriers that often prevent us from dealing effectively with intergenerational decisions. The meditation and dreaming technique was applied to a diverse group of researchers who engaged in a visualized encounter with future generations. Following the exercise, we concluded that a serious analysis of intergenerational conflict requires us to confront our own mortality. Also, somewhat surprisingly to workshop participants, our desire to become stewards of the planet was driven by our fear of death as well as our egoist yearning for immortality. We posit that imagining the unknown with visioning practices might increase our emotional resilience, and hence improve our ability to confront the burdens of intergenerational responsibility.

The Llobregat River represents a paradigmatic example of an impaired river subject to emerging global change impacts. This chapter provides an introduction to the main geomorphological, geological, climatic, and biological features of the river basin, as well as an overview on the hydrological alterations and the intense management of water resources in the basin. The Llobregat hydrology has experienced a significant runoff reduction during the last decades. This decrease is related to climatic drift but also to the increasing forest land cover that has promoted a 25% reduction of the streamflow. The chapter also describes the human uses of the Llobregat River waters from a historical perspective, with particular emphasis on the difficulties that an intrinsically unpredictable river like Llobregat posed to the different human uses along history. The historical development makes emphasis on the industrial activities affecting water resources during the twentieth century. The chapter includes a detailed analysis of the present situation on water extractions, discharges, and diversions that define the Llobregat River Basin as a deeply impaired ecosystem, especially in the most downstream reaches.

With the potential expansion of forest conservation programs spurred by climate-change agreements, there is a need to measure the extent to which such programs achieve their intended results. Conventional methods for evaluating conservation impact tend to be biased because they do not compare like areas or account for spatial relations. We assessed the effect of a conservation initiative that combined designation of protected areas with payments for environmental services to conserve over wintering habitat for the monarch butterfly (Danaus plexippus) in Mexico. To do so, we used a spatial-matching estimator that matches covariates among polygons and their neighbors. We measured avoided forest loss (avoided disturbance and deforestation) by comparing forest cover on protected and unprotected lands that were similar in terms of accessibility, governance, and forest type. Whereas conventional estimates of avoided forest loss suggest that conservation initiatives did not protect forest cover, we found evidence that the conservation measures are preserving forest cover. We found that the conservation measures protected between 200 ha and 710 ha (3-16%) of forest that is high-quality habitat for monarch butterflies, but had a smaller effect on total forest cover, preserving between 0 ha and 200 ha (0-2.5%) of forest with canopy cover70%. We suggest that future estimates of avoided forest loss be analyzed spatially to account for how forest loss occurs across the landscape. Given the forthcoming demand from donors and carbon financiers for estimates of avoided forest loss, we anticipate our methods and results will contribute to future studies that estimate the outcome of conservation efforts.

Restrictions on the use of public space and physical distancing have been key policy measures to reduce the transmission of COVID-19 and protect public health. At the time of writing, one half of the world’s population has been asked to stay home and avoid many public places. What will be the long term impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on public space once the restrictions have been lifted? The depth and extent of transformation is unclear, especially as it relates to the future design, use and perceptions of public space. This article aims to highlight emerging questions at the interface of COVID-19 and city design. It is possible that the COVID-19 crisis may fundamentally change our relationship with public space. In the ensuing months and years, it will be critical to study and measure these changes in order to inform urban planning and design in a post-COVID world.