Citation:

Argoti, A., K. Gleeson, D. Campbell, H. Walker, S. Balogh, R. Boumans, H. Cabezas, AND A. Dewey. Urban Sustainability Assessment and Management. European Roundtable on Sustainable Consumption and Production (ERSCP) Society Meeting, Graz, AUSTRIA, September 08 - 10, 2021.

Impact/Purpose:

Cities must face and solve great challenges if they are to meet the long-term goals of prosperity and sustainability. Resource limitation of energy and materials, chronic pollution by chemical wastes, and the growing challenges to share wealth and opportunity fairly are all magnified in cities. Progress toward meeting chosen goals can be quantified using metrics, which capture the performance of complex urban systems from a range of perspectives and with varying degrees of specificity. Heberling and Hopton (2010) demonstrated that simultaneous evaluation of a suite of diverse metrics has the potential to yield more nuanced and comprehensive information about how urban areas respond to internally driven policies and externally forced conditions. Our preliminary findings will be presented at an international conference.

Description:

An analysis was conducted of the Chicago metropolitan region using the following integrated metrics: Fisher Information, Green Net Metropolitan Product, Net Energy, Ecological Footprint, Human Well Being Index, and Emergy. Data were aggregated as they were available, over a multi-decadal period, from a wide range of open sources for Chicago and its surrounding counties, collectively referred to as the Chicago Metropolitan Statistical Area (MSA) and the States of Illinois and Indiana that together constitute the larger system for the Chicago MSA. Trends observed for the Chicago MSA were placed in the context of larger national patterns by quantifying the biophysical and economic bases for growth at the larger regional and national scales. Calculation of these metrics involves accounting for natural, built, and human assets and liabilities, leading to a more complete balance sheet with which to evaluate policy tradeoffs and identify options that are cost effective, socially acceptable, and environmentally sound. Each of the integrative metrics provides a different perspective on the condition of the Chicago MSA: • Fisher Information (FI) uses ratios of derivatives for many variables to generate signals about when a system has gone through a period of rapid change. A spike in FI indicates that the system is undergoing a state change from one equilibrium state to another. • The Green Net Metropolitan Product is a green accounting method that measures long-term economic wellbeing in each metropolitan area. It adjusts traditional income accounts by incorporating components directly affecting human health, such as air pollutants, and scarcity rent resulting from depletion of natural resources, such as groundwater. • Net Energy, or more precisely the Energy Returned on Investment (EROI) of energy, can also capture growth dynamics. Systems with higher EROI can outcompete systems with lower EROI or enter into complex exchanges with lower EROI regions. • The Ecological Footprint (EF) quantifies the consumption needs of a given region’s population in terms of land per capita. A regional ecological balance can be estimated by comparing the demand side, i.e., the EF, (land needed for producing food, materials and energy, for building construction as well as for absorbing wastes) with the supply side, or biocapacity, in terms of the productivity of its ecological assets (cropland, forests, fishing grounds, etc.) and translated into common land units (usually global hectares). • The Human Well Being Index (HWBI) is one of many methods that uses indices responsive to changes in the provisioning of ecosystem services, social conditions and economic drivers. Variations in the indices are quantified spatially and temporally, which can serve as a starting point for conversations about observed patterns of change, possible causes, and whether trends suggest improvement or decline in different components of Human Well Being. • Emergy accounting is the most comprehensive and challenging to compute. It assesses the magnitude and relative quality of all energy inputs that sustain a system with its population at a given standard of living, in common terms, i.e., activities of the economy, society and the environment are expressed in comparable terms, i.e., as emergy – amount of energy used in the creation of a product or service, measured in solar energy equivalents (solar emjoules (sej)). A detailed discussion of each metric, evaluated for greater Chicago, is followed by related supplemental studies. In the first, a spatially explicit simulation model was tested for its ability to reproduce the calculated metrics. In the second, flows of water through the city, and counter-current flows of money needed to upgrade water, wastewater and stormwater infrastructure were analyzed using systems models. The third, includ

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