About this Research Topic
According to the World Urbanization Prospects (2018), 9.9 billion people will inhabit urban areas by the year 2050, up from 7.8 billion in 2020. This rising pace of contemporary urbanization creates three uncertainties: firstly, the concerns associated with haphazard urban growth and its associated socio-economic inequality, secondly, the social cost of climate change on the communities’ Quality of Life (QoL) and lastly, uncertainties associated with sustainable socio-technical transitions. Based on these uncertainties, policymakers and urban practitioners attempt to bring sustainable solutions for enhancing the livable dimensions of the overall urban way of life. Sustainability has long been a dimension of urbanism, which denotes the relationship between the communities and their interaction with their urban environment. Sustainable Urbanism, a human-scaled urban design approach, emphasizes the impact of urbanization on climate change and risk to the extent possible to reinvigorate cities and sustainably prepare them for long-term resilience.
One major highlight of sustainable urbanism is to promote the applicability of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) especially goals no. 11 and 13. SDGs have become a major urban policy approach to evaluate global cities' overall QoL based on several dimensions, including climate change. Urbanization and the consequences of climate change are uncertainly interacting. Based on various literature, the major climate change impacts on global cities are global warming, flood and drought situations, impacts on human health, and overall impact on the city-level infrastructure. The theories and practices of sustainable urbanism have also been shaped by this objective. Over the years, this has led to many frameworks, concepts, and planning principles. These principles offer suggestions on the way to initiate sustainable cities and societies across the globe.
Contemporary urbanization is rapid in pace in the global south in terms of food security and public amenities like electricity, water, and sanitation to city financing and city branding. The pace of contemporary urbanization in the global south makes capacity and formal urban planning systems inadequate in terms of various climate change impacts.
With this background, we seek to explore a new paradigm of sustainable urbanism to address climate change impacts from the global south perspective. This Research Topic considers the challenges that most cities face in the Global South in the view of climate change and environmental degradation on migration and cities, land degradation and desertification, changes in water availability, and socio-economic crisis. This calls for renewed attention to the daily socio-economic and socio-political struggles of the global south cities.
In this regard, five sub-themes have been identified for manuscript submission:
1. Impact of Extreme Weather Events (EWE) on QoL: Climate change-related impacts are exacerbating the frequency and intensity of EWE. These EWEs are capable of long-lasting disruption to the urban system causing massive degradation in the urban QoL. It would be interesting to explore different topics related to, but not limited to tools, methodologies, and case studies to understand the impact of EWE on QoL in urban areas.
2. Climate change governance: Adaptation and mitigation strategies are important to tackle the impact of climate change-related hazards. Most of the time, local bodies and urban authorities are responsible to implement mitigation and adaptation strategies. Therefore, it would be interesting to explore topics related to but not limited to different tools for efficient decision-making towards achieving SDG-driven agendas; various governance frameworks at local, national, and global scales for climate change mitigation and adaptation; diversity and inclusion in terms of under-represented regions; various models of climate change negotiations; the role of drivers and actors, etc.
3. Climate Change and Environmental Sustainability: Climate change mitigation can be addressed in two possible ways, either by reducing carbon emissions or by producing renewable energies. This sub-theme caters to different paradigms, and existing policies related to reduction in carbon emission, clean and green energy access, and promotion of environmental sustainability.
4. Climate Change impacts and socioeconomic Sustainability: Sustainability policies are heavily biased towards exploring environmental quotient; however, socioeconomic attributes of any community can impact the climatic outcome and environmental sustainability to a great extent. Therefore, this sub-theme can explore topics but are not limited to socio-economic pathways for climate change mitigation and adaptation, socio-technical transitions to achieve sustainability, as well as nature-based solutions for socio-economic cases.
5. Climate justice and equity: Climate justice aims to explore the context of vulnerable populations disproportionately affected by the impact of climate change. This section will accept submissions on issues pertaining to inequality in resource and infrastructure to combat climate change, increased social vulnerabilities related to climate change, and interdisciplinary approaches to ensure climate justice.
One major highlight of sustainable urbanism is to promote the applicability of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) especially goals no. 11 and 13. SDGs have become a major urban policy approach to evaluate global cities' overall QoL based on several dimensions, including climate change. Urbanization and the consequences of climate change are uncertainly interacting. Based on various literature, the major climate change impacts on global cities are global warming, flood and drought situations, impacts on human health, and overall impact on the city-level infrastructure. The theories and practices of sustainable urbanism have also been shaped by this objective. Over the years, this has led to many frameworks, concepts, and planning principles. These principles offer suggestions on the way to initiate sustainable cities and societies across the globe.
Contemporary urbanization is rapid in pace in the global south in terms of food security and public amenities like electricity, water, and sanitation to city financing and city branding. The pace of contemporary urbanization in the global south makes capacity and formal urban planning systems inadequate in terms of various climate change impacts.
With this background, we seek to explore a new paradigm of sustainable urbanism to address climate change impacts from the global south perspective. This Research Topic considers the challenges that most cities face in the Global South in the view of climate change and environmental degradation on migration and cities, land degradation and desertification, changes in water availability, and socio-economic crisis. This calls for renewed attention to the daily socio-economic and socio-political struggles of the global south cities.
In this regard, five sub-themes have been identified for manuscript submission:
1. Impact of Extreme Weather Events (EWE) on QoL: Climate change-related impacts are exacerbating the frequency and intensity of EWE. These EWEs are capable of long-lasting disruption to the urban system causing massive degradation in the urban QoL. It would be interesting to explore different topics related to, but not limited to tools, methodologies, and case studies to understand the impact of EWE on QoL in urban areas.
2. Climate change governance: Adaptation and mitigation strategies are important to tackle the impact of climate change-related hazards. Most of the time, local bodies and urban authorities are responsible to implement mitigation and adaptation strategies. Therefore, it would be interesting to explore topics related to but not limited to different tools for efficient decision-making towards achieving SDG-driven agendas; various governance frameworks at local, national, and global scales for climate change mitigation and adaptation; diversity and inclusion in terms of under-represented regions; various models of climate change negotiations; the role of drivers and actors, etc.
3. Climate Change and Environmental Sustainability: Climate change mitigation can be addressed in two possible ways, either by reducing carbon emissions or by producing renewable energies. This sub-theme caters to different paradigms, and existing policies related to reduction in carbon emission, clean and green energy access, and promotion of environmental sustainability.
4. Climate Change impacts and socioeconomic Sustainability: Sustainability policies are heavily biased towards exploring environmental quotient; however, socioeconomic attributes of any community can impact the climatic outcome and environmental sustainability to a great extent. Therefore, this sub-theme can explore topics but are not limited to socio-economic pathways for climate change mitigation and adaptation, socio-technical transitions to achieve sustainability, as well as nature-based solutions for socio-economic cases.
5. Climate justice and equity: Climate justice aims to explore the context of vulnerable populations disproportionately affected by the impact of climate change. This section will accept submissions on issues pertaining to inequality in resource and infrastructure to combat climate change, increased social vulnerabilities related to climate change, and interdisciplinary approaches to ensure climate justice.
Keywords: sustainable urbanism, climate change, urban dynamics, global south
Important Note: All contributions to this Research Topic must be within the scope of the section and journal to which they are submitted, as defined in their mission statements. Frontiers reserves the right to guide an out-of-scope manuscript to a more suitable section or journal at any stage of peer review.
