Using Urban Metabolism to Establish Sustainable City Indicators
Date Issued
2014
Date
2014
Author(s)
Liu, Chan-Chia
Abstract
In 1987, World Commission on Environment and Development (WCED) define sustainable development as meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs. Agenda 21 emphases on sustainable development must comply with the country’s political and economic situation and environmental condition to adjust, namely concept of think globally, act locally.
Cities play an important role in sustainable development. In Our Common Future point out that about 50% population will live in urban area in 21 century. According to UN statistics, only 29% of the population lived in cities and more than one million people, called megacities, only in New York and Tokyo. In 2010, the world’s population up to 7 billion .Cities population has grown to 3.5 billion, about 50% of total population (UN, 2009). The highest urban population growth rate in Asia and Africa (Satterthwaite etc., 2010). Cities were places with low production, high consumption and high waste. Due to the increase in cities population, cities use enormous recourses and energy. Therefore, when it comes to sustainable development, the use of recourses and energy in cities was a central issue.
Sustainable development indicator is a tool to provide a direct or indirect measure of detailed description in Specific subject of the degree of sustainability in the future. Following this context, cities develop their own sustainable city indicators. But current sustainable city indicators with following problems: (1) Indicator oversimplification and too much, lack of representativeness and comparability. (2) Lack of energy and resources supply indicators. (3) Cannot assess or quantify city’s waste of energy and resources. (4) Rarely consider the carrying capacity and load capacity of the city. (5) Lack of urban metabolism. Urban metabolism is a systemic way to assess the state of energy and material in city. Constructing the sustainable city metabolic indicators, can make up the shortage of existing indicators. Using material flow as a tool to calculate the indicators, it can be a way to evaluate the sustainable city.
Sustainable development define as that in consideration of the carrying capacity and maintaining a specific function and operation of the city ensuring stable supply, improving efficiency of using, reducing waste of material and energy, and prospering and recycling of waste. Base on the definition, the sustainable city metabolic indicator must comply with the principles of follow three: (1) Consider the energy and materials availability, adequacy and security. (2) Improve the efficiency of the use of energy and materials, and reduce waste. (3) Consider the carrying and processing capacity. The urban can be seen into three parts: supply, consumption and waste, and establish sustainable city metabolic indicators in three dimensions. Do empirical research of Taipei’s food and water, and give advice of management strategy and sustainable city metabolic indicators development.
Subjects
永續都市
都市代謝
永續都市代謝指標
SDGs
Type
thesis
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