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Assessing Sustainability in Real Urban Systems: The Greater Cincinnati Metropolitan Area in Ohio
Citation:
Gonzalez-Mejia, A. M., T. N. Eason, H. Cabezas, AND M. T. Suidan. Assessing Sustainability in Real Urban Systems: The Greater Cincinnati Metropolitan Area in Ohio. ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY. ACS Publications, Washington, DC, 46(17):9620-9629, (2012).
Impact/Purpose:
This paper presents a method of assessing the economic and social aspects of real urban systems over time using Fisher Information. As a test case, a rigorous study of the Metropolitan Statistical Area of Cincinnati, its suburbs, and City is performed to demonstrate this method and to address limitations in data such as their quantity, quality and a technique of reconciling diverse units.
Description:
The goal of this research article is to present a practical and general methodology for a sustainability assessment in real urban systems. The method is based on the computation and interpretation of Fisher Information (FI) as a sustainability metric using time series for 29 social and 11 economic variables describing the Cincinnati Metropolitan Statistical Area (MSA), its Suburbs (SUBS), and City of Cincinnati (CITY) itself, from 1970 to 2009. By applying this novel approach, non-intuitive characteristics among these forty (40) variables were identified as potential drivers of sustainability in the systems under study (i.e., MSA, SUBS, and CITY). Further, the methods demonstrated in this work afford the ability to identify sustainable tendencies reflected as periods of stability and change that otherwise are very difficult to determine, particularly, for time varying multidimensional systems. Results indicate, that the systems dynamic started to change about 2000 for the economic characteristics, and from about 1995 for the social variables. This has led to a less sustainable period for the three systems under study most likely attributed to a deceleration in the growth rate of income, as well as the stabilization of housing occupancy at the end of the evaluation period.
