Search Results (7)

Urban heat stress is becoming increasingly urgent, yet it remains understudied within the broader intersection of climate change and spatial justice. While urban climate scholarship has largely focused on climatic impacts such as flooding, rising sea levels, and prolonged droughts, the socio-spatial lens of urban heat in marginalised and low-income urban communities has received limited attention. This article, grounded in a systematic review of the global literature, foregrounds the mechanisms through which heat functions as a site of socio-environmental injustice. We argue that fragmented urban morphologies, entrenched spatial inequalities, and uneven adaptation strategies collectively produce and sustain heat vulnerability. The article identifies three interrelated conceptual framings that elucidate the production and persistence of heat inequity: transitional injustice, green climate gentrification, and intersectional adaptation praxis. These lenses reveal how heat risk is differentially distributed, governed, and experienced with broader discourses of urban marginalisation, environmental dispossession, and epistemic exclusion. We contend that advancing climate justice in the context of urban heat requires moving beyond technocratic and elite-oriented adaptation, toward multi-scalar planning paradigms that recognise embodied vulnerability, structural inequality, and the socio-political ecologies of thermal exposure. By theorising urban heat through the lens of climate justice, this article contributes to a more expansive and critical understanding of urban climate risk, one that situates heat inequity within the broader structures of power, governance, and spatial exclusion shaping contemporary urban environments. Full article

This research focuses on the proposal of a corridor design that allows social and ecological integration in the context of a city with emerging potential as a tourist destination in Chinchero, Cusco. Key challenges addressed include lack of infrastructure to manage growing tourism demand, fragmentation of social identity, displacement of the local population due to gentrification processes, uncontrolled urban sprawl, and inappropriate exploitation of natural, cultural, and agricultural lands. To address these issues, a comprehensive diagnosis was carried out covering various urban-environmental dimensions, such as topography, road infrastructure, archeology, climate, and biodiversity. In this process, digital tools such as Blender, AutoCAD, Photoshop, and Affinity Designer were used. As a result of the analysis, an urban green corridor is proposed consisting of seven sectors covering the shores of the Piuray lagoon, the city center, and its archeological area, through the creation of socially active public spaces equipped with cultural, sports, and recreational facilities. The city of Chinchero, with its growing importance as a tourist destination, presents the opportunity and the need to develop a controlled urban development axis that promotes the connection between environmental, cultural, archeological, social, and tourism aspects. This objective is materialized in the form of a green corridor that seeks to promote social integration and a sense of territorial belonging. Full article

Green regeneration has become one of the most powerful strategies for improving the quality of life in cities, supporting climate change adaptation, and reducing the carbon footprints of cities. While it is the ambition of most green regeneration projects to create benefits for residents and users, reality shows that green regeneration also reinforces existing or even shapes new ‘green inequalities’. These can result from green gentrification and displacement, procedural injustices, and exclusion from participation or barriers to the access and use of newly created urban green spaces. Set against this background, the paper uses a conflict analysis perspective to look at the inequalities and injustices that evolve within the context of green regeneration. Applying social conflict theory, it seeks to understand (1) why and how green regeneration may lead to inequality and justice conflicts and (2) how conflict analysis helps to understand the nature and implications of green regeneration conflicts in more depth. As for its empirical foundation, the paper reanalyses empirical evidence that was examined in earlier projects on a residential area in the city of Leipzig, Germany. Full article

Climate urbanism is an emerging field of action that aims to adapt to or mitigate the impacts of climate change on cities. These interventions are often framed by narratives of climate collapse, implying that there is not enough time to engage citizens in participatory planning processes. Some scholars have argued that this may also enable the realization of urban interventions that would otherwise be difficult to implement under ordinary circumstances. At the same time, research has demonstrated that mitigation and adaptation policies and projects may result in the displacement of vulnerable populations. To avoid this scenario, city governments must ensure vulnerability assessments, transparency, and accountability to all affected communities throughout the design process, and examination of projects proposed by residents and developed by the city authorities. Based on interviews, fieldwork observation, and secondary analysis of open-source documents, this article examines the complexity of appropriate urban climate planning through a comparative analysis. Taking the East Side Coastal Resiliency (ESCR) Project in New York as an exemplary case study, we analyze multiple perspectives, expertise, and rights involved in climate urbanism in global cities under the neoliberal present. We conclude that democratic city planning for climate change cannot be separated from questions of climate justice, which concerns democratic decision making and the impact of interventions on local communities and ecosystems. Full article

During the last decade, increasing attention has been paid to the emerging concept of Positive Energy Districts (PED) with the aim of pushing the transition to clean energy, but further research efforts are needed to identify design approaches optimized from the point of view of sustainable development. In this context, this literature review is placed, with a specific focus on environmental sustainability within innovative and eco-sustainable districts. The findings show that some sustainability aspects such as sustainable food, urban heat islands mitigation and co-impacts, e.g., green gentrification, are not adequately assessed, while fragmented thinking limits the potential of circularity. In this regard, targeted strategies should be developed. On the other hand, the Key Performance Indicators framework needs some integrations. In this direction, indicators were suggested, among those defined in the Sustainable Development Agenda, the main European standards and initiatives and the relevant literature experiences. Future outlooks should be directed towards: the harmonization of the Life Cycle Assessment in PEDs with reference to modeling assumptions and analysis of multiple impacts; the development of dynamic environmental analyses taking into account the long-term uncertainty due to climate change, data availability and energy decarbonization; the combination of Life Cycle Assessment and Key Performance Indicators based techniques, from a holistic thinking perspective, for a comprehensive design environment and the analysis of the contribution of energy flexibility approaches on the environmental impact of a project. Full article

Urbanization and climate change have generated ever-increased pressure to the ecosystem, bringing critical resilience challenges to densely congested cities. The resulted displaced and encroached habitat in need of recuperation demands a comprehensive overhaul to the customary urban planning practices; further, the deteriorating public health state of urban residents calls for strategies in dealing with green deprivation and gentrification issues. Frequently, urban greening strategies are envisaged at a macro-scale on a dedicated horizontal track of land, rendering local implementation in a densely built neighborhood a challenged undertaking. Communities lacking green and land resources could promote vertical greening to enable and enhance social and psychological well-being. This study ascertains that vertical greenery closest to the inhabitants could be allocated on a building facade. It can contribute to a more sustainable ecology. The article presents the systemic design approach to urban vertical greening thinking and its role in well-being provision. We propose an interdisciplinary multicriteria contextual-based scalable framework to assess vertical green infrastructure; the prototype requires an innovative approach to balance architecture, human needs, and the local environment. The vertical greening application provides an alternative paradigm in the design implementation for urban green. We proposed the locality and place to be incorporated into the vertical greening design framework. The research concludes the three-tiered consideration framework resulted: (1) in line with the human-habitat ecosystem, the local environment-social dimension is explored; (2) the well-being criteria encourage the design practice’s support for localized driven community vitality; (3) the design paradigm requires integration with the increasing demand for green space as well as taking into account the impact of severe climate; and (4) the framework should achieve the strengthening of health and well-being of the community. Full article

Cities are key actors in the fight against climate change since they are major sources of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions while at the same time they experience the negative impact of this phenomenon. Mitigating and adapting to climate change requires fundamental changes in urbanism and city automobile traffic. Superblocks, a grid of blocks and basic roads forming a polygon, approximately 400 by 400 m, are one of the instruments for such changes. These type of city Superblocks represent a new model of mobility that restructures the typical urban road network, thereby substantially reducing automobile traffic, and accordingly GHG emissions, while increasing green space in the city and improving the health and quality of life of its inhabitants. Furthermore, the Superblocks do not require investment in hard infrastructures, nor do they involve demolishing buildings or undertaking massive development; they are in fact very low-tech urbanism. The city of Barcelona has been implementing Superblocks as one of the measures to combat climate change with very positive results. The paper analyzes the concept of the Superblock and its relation with climate change in cities. Along these lines, it analyzes the pioneer experience of Barcelona in the development and implementation of the Superblocks, as a radical plan aimed at taking back the streets from cars. The role of political power and institutional leadership has been key in societal acceptance and the achievement of tangible results. But there are also obstacles and drawbacks in the development of these types of Superblocks, such as the necessity to redesign the collective transport network so that car traffic can truly be reduced in cities, the possible negative influence on traffic going in and out of the city, the lack of visible advantages if they are not implemented in the entire city, the risk of gentrification in the areas with Superblocks, public opposition, and opposition from certain sectors of the business community. Full article