TY  - JOUR
A1  - Bansard, Jennifer S.
A1  - Hickmann, Thomas
A1  - Kern, Kristine
T1  - Pathways to urban sustainability
BT  - How science can contribute to sustainable development in cities
JF  - GAIA - Ecological Perspectives for Science and Society
N2  - Recent years have seen a considerable broadening of the ambitions in urban sustainability policy-making. With its Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 11 Making cities and human settlements inclusive, safe, resilient and sustainable, the 2030 Agenda stresses the critical role of cities in achieving sustainable development. In the context of SDG17 on partnerships, emphasis is also placed on the role of researchers and other scientific actors as change agents in the sustainability transformation. Against this backdrop, this article sheds light on different pathways through which science can contribute to urban sustainability. In particular, we discern four forms of science-policy-society interactions as key vectors: 1. sharing knowledge and providing scientific input to urban sustainability policy-making; 2. implementing transformative research projects; 3. contributing to local capacity building; and 4. self-governing towards sustainability. The pathways of influence are illustrated with empirical examples, and their interlinkages and limitations are discussed. We contend that there are numerous opportunities for actors from the field of sustainability science to engage with political and societal actors to enhance sustainable development at the local level.
KW  - cities
KW  - science-policy interactions
KW  - SDG 11
KW  - sustainable development
KW  - urban sustainability
Y1  - 2019
U6  - https://doi.org/10.14512/gaia.28.2.9
SN  - 0940-5550
VL  - 28
IS  - 2
SP  - 112
EP  - 118
PB  - Oekom Verlag
CY  - München
ER  - 
TY  - JOUR
A1  - Rybski, Diego
A1  - Reusser, Dominik Edwin
A1  - Winz, Anna-Lena
A1  - Fichtner, Christina
A1  - Sterzel, Till
A1  - Kropp, Jürgen
T1  - Cities as nuclei of sustainability?
JF  - Environment and Planning B: Urban Analytics and City Science
N2  - We have assembled CO2 emission figures from collections of urban GHG emission estimates published in peer-reviewed journals or reports from research institutes and non-governmental organizations. Analyzing the scaling with population size, we find that the exponent is development dependent with a transition from super- to sub-linear scaling. From the climate change mitigation point of view, the results suggest that urbanization is desirable in developed countries. Further, we compare this analysis with a second scaling relation, namely the fundamental allometry between city population and area, and propose that density might be a decisive quantity too. Last, we derive the theoretical country-wide urban emissions by integration and obtain a dependence on the size of the largest city.
KW  - Scaling
KW  - cities
KW  - climate change
KW  - development process
KW  - allometry
Y1  - 2017
U6  - https://doi.org/10.1177/0265813516638340
SN  - 2399-8083
SN  - 2399-8091
VL  - 44
IS  - 3
SP  - 425
EP  - 440
PB  - Sage Publ.
CY  - London
ER  -