The Covid-19 pandemic newly brings food resilience in cities to our attention and the need to question the desired degree of food self-sufficiency through urban agriculture. We argue in this essay that this development has widely taken place due to three blind spots in urban planning.
Trends of extreme-temperature episodes in cities are increasing (in frequency, magnitude and duration) due to regional climate change in interaction with urban effects. Urban morphologies and thermal properties of the materials used to build them are factors that influence.
Urban agriculture, while being a promising solution to increase food sovereignty in cities, can lead to an unprecedented discharge of nutrient and fertilizer-related emissions into the urban environment. Especially relevant are nitrogen (N) and phosphorus (P), due to their contribution to marine and freshwater eutrophication.
Optimizing urban resources through circular economy principles offers the opportunity to close loops and improve production systems, but an assessment of these systems through a combination of circularity and environmental tools is missing from the literature.
A lot of good science is being presented at AGU Fall Meetting 2020. Some of the presentations are focused in the COVID-19 pandemic. The URBAG group presented a poster presentation that wants to reflect upon lessons learned from the COVID-19 mitigation measures in terms of reduced mobility and its effect on urban air pollution.
Urban agriculture systems can significantly contribute towards mitigating the impacts of inefficient and complex food supply chains and increase urban food sovereignty. Moreover, improving these urban agriculture systems in terms of nutrient management can lead to a better environmental performance.
Welcome to URBAG's first newsletter. You are receiving this newsletter because you signed up through our website or you have collaborated with us and showed interest in the project. We plan to share twice a year the most relevant milestones of the URBAG project.
The effective integration of biodiversity, ecosystem functions and ecosystem services (ES) indicators into green infrastructure (GI) planning and conservation constitutes an important challenge for landscape and urban planners. In this study, we developed an operational framework for GI planning at the landscape scale in the Province of Barcelona.
Knowing the consumption patterns of the residents related to the occupation of the buildings and the family structure to which they belong. This study is part of central research of the Autonomous University of Barcelona with the collaboration of the city council of Badia del Vallès, which studies the urban metabolism of the municipality, being the typical housing estate built in the 70s.
This study evaluates the performance of urban schemes integrated in the Weather Research and Forecasting model (WRF) using Local Climate Zones (LCZ) as land use classification. We applied two multi-layer urban schemes: 1) Building Effect Parameterization (BEP) and 2) Building Energy Model coupled with BEP (BEP + BEM), over the Metropolitan Area of Barcelona (MAB) at 1km2 horizontal resolution for July 2016.
El seguiment de la qualitat de l’aire de l'Àrea Metropolitana de Barcelona (AMB) durant les setmanes de confinament i desconfinament ens ha mostrat com varia la contaminació atmosfèrica amb la mobilitat de la gent amb vehicles. S'ha pogut observar una reducció que va arribar fins a un 75% en molts casos com es pot apreciar comparant l'any 2019 i el 2020.
Urban development and the sprawl of transport infrastructures have disregarded the crucial function of metropolitan landscape in provisioning human well-being and biodiversity. This research aims to contribute to the challenges of Planning for Sustainability by proposing a Socioecological Integrated Analysis (SIA) to support the Land Use Master Plan in the Barcelona Metropolitan Area, to conciliate urban development with the performance of surrounding open spaces.