HR: 09:30h
AN: GC11B-07    [Abstracts]
TI: Setting Goals for Urban Scale Climate Governance
AU: * Rosenthal, J K
EM: jr438@columbia.edu
AF: Columbia University Urban Planning Program, Graduate School of Architecture, Planning & Preservation Avery Hall, 4th floor, New York, NY 10027, United States
AU: Brunner, E
EM: eb2304@columbia.edu
AB: The impacts of climate change on temperate urban areas may include the increase in frequency and intensity of damaging extreme weather events, such as heat waves, hurricanes, heavy rainfall or drought, and coastal flooding and erosion, and potential adverse impacts on infrastructure, energy systems, and public health. Warmer average summertime temperatures are also associated with environmental and public health liabilities, such as decreased air quality and increased peak electrical demand. Simultaneously, a strong global trend towards urbanization of poverty exists, with increased challenges for local governments to protect and sustain the well-being of growing cities and populations currently stressed by poverty, health and economic inequities. In the context of these trends, research at the city scale has sought to understand the social and economic impacts of climate change and variability and to evaluate strategies in the built environment that might serve as adaptive and mitigative responses to climate change. We review the goals and outcomes of several municipal climate protection programs, generally categorized as approaches based on technological innovation (e.g., new materials); changes in behavior and public education (e.g., neighborhood watch programs and cooling centers); improvements in urban design (e.g., zoning for mixed land-use; the use of water, vegetation and plazas to reduce the urban heat island effect); and efforts to incentivize the use of non-fossil-fuel based energy sources. Urban initiatives in European and American cities are assessed within the context of the global collective efforts enacted by the Kyoto Protocol and United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. Our concern is to understand the active networked role of urban managers in climate policies and programs in relation to supranational objectives and non-state actors.
DE: 1630 Impacts of global change (1225)
SC: Global Environmental Change [GC]
MN: 2007 Fall Meeting