Student: Tasha Addington-Ferris
Graduation date: May 2018
Type: Concentration (single major)
Date approved: November 2015
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Summary
I will critique the concept of sustainability as it is found in coastal urban centers, particularly regarding how perceived ecological sustainability effects and is effected by economic development and social disparities. Urban planning has come to rely on an approach that emphasizes balance between economic, social, and ecological development (Goodling et al. 2015). This has resulted in a prescribed list of sustainable options for implementation (2015). Recently, the introduction of resiliency theory into the practice of sustainability has begun to shift the discussions between urban planners and city governances (Sellberg 2015). Using examples of coastal urban centers located around the Pacific Rim, I will study urban planning that relies upon the traditional sense of sustainability as a groundwork, and how the fundamentals of this groundwork have and continue to change along with the introduction of resilience.
Sustainability, particularly in the context of urban planning, can be a dangerous word because it exists only as an ideal, rather than as a practical or physical process (Stables, 2013). Despite the broad nature of the word, the practice of what Sellberg et al. calls, “mainstream methods” of sustainability continues to be a limiting factor in most development systems (2015). Sustainability itself suggests a lack of change, which can be both impractical and undesirable in urban contexts. This stagnancy can also be counter-productive in the context of urban planning because the development part of “sustainable development” suggests change and growth (Stables 2013). Sustainable planning suggests a long-term design and infrastructure that will eventually cap the growth of cities. Resilience thinking, as proposed by Benson and Craig, could potentially be used as a tool in urban planning to create short-term infrastructure that allows for innovation and the inevitable change that occurs in any environment (2014).
Resiliency would allow urban centers to not only provide pre-emptive ecological protection, but to also “respond, recover, and reorganize” as a social and economic unit (Brown et al. 2012). Rather than systems that are created to never fail (“fail-safe”), resilient systems are created to be flexible under pressure, while maintaining the core of the system (“safe-to-fail”)(Redman and Miller 2015). Urban centers form the backbone of the world’s economic system, are densely populated, and therefore are hugely important to the human population (McGranahan 2003). As such, the design in these centers should be one that represents the pinnacle of sustainable-resilient thinking. Instead, current sustainability approaches are utilizing classic environmental thought such as “think global, act local,” which has proven to be out of date and unsuccessful (2003). The turbulence in what is considered the “right” way of implementing environmentalism into cities has complicated the way in which urban ecological protection can and should be governed (Bulkeley 2010).
The development of coastal cities, particularly located around the Pacific Rim, is reliant on geography and pathways of communication and transportation between them (Boschken 2013). Subduction zones around the Pacific Ocean have been the cause of giant earthquakes and tsunamis in many areas of the rim, and volcanos are found in what is commonly referred to as the Ring of Fire (Satake and Atwater 2007). The volcano, earthquake, and tsunami trifecta results in major vulnerability and unique city planning in cities found in this region. Already the presence of such natural disasters has produced technology and systems to alert cities to the onslaught of earthquakes and tsunamis. They are also perfect candidates to implement the concept of resiliency; vulnerability to disaster means there is a greater need for cities to be able to bend and change when subjected to such forces, while still holding their fundamental function (Redman and Miller 2015).
While all Pacific Rim countries share the reality of the Ring of Fire and the dangers of shifting tectonic plates, they do not have the same resources, cultures, or histories. Core, northern countries such as the US and Japan deal with the results of tectonic plates and subduction zones with extremely different resources than what is available to semi- and peripheral southern countries like Indonesia and Chile (Satake and Atwater 2007). The dangers of natural disasters are integral to city planning in all four of these countries, and each design is tailored to the specific dangers that each country is likely to be dealing with. On top of the geological differences, each country has a different balance of internal and external resource use, as well as a variety of combinations between trade, transportation, and communication access. Country-specific traits are possible influences on the design and implementation of urban planning, as well as concepts of sustainability and development that drive design in today’s market.
Benson, Melinda H., and Robin K. Craig. 2014. “The End of Sustainability.” Society & Natural Resources 27 (7): 777–82.
Boschken, Herman L. 2013. “Global Cities Are Coastal Cities Too: Paradox in Sustainability?” Urban Studies 50 (9): 1760–78.
Brown, Anna, Ashvin Dayal, and Cristina Rumbaitis Del Rio. 2012. “From Practice to Theory: Emerging Lessons from Asia for Building Urban Climate Change Resilience.” Environment and Urbanization 24 (2): 531–56.
Bulkeley, Harriet. 2010. “Cities and the Governing of Climate Change.” Annual Review of Environment and Resources 35 (1): 229–53.
Goodling, Erin, Jamaal Green, and Nathan McClintock. 2015. “Uneven Development of the Sustainabile City: Shifting Capital in Portland, Oregon.” Urban Geography 36 (4): 504–27.
McGranahan, Gordon, and David Satterthwaite. 2003. “URBAN CENTERS: An Assessment of Sustainability.” Annual Review of Environment and Resources 28 (1): 243–74.
Redman, Charles L., and Thaddeus R. Miller. 2015. “The Technosphere and Earth Stewardship.” In Earth Stewardship, edited by Ricardo Rozzi, F. Stuart Chapin III, J. Baird Callicott, S. T. A. Pickett, Mary E. Power, Juan J. Armesto, and Roy H. May Jr, 269–79. Ecology and Ethics 2. Springer International Publishing. http://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-319-12133-8_17.
Satake, Kenji, and Brian F. Atwater. 2007. “Long-Term Perspectives on Giant Earthquakes and Tsunamis at Subduction Zones.” Annual Review of Earth and Planetary Sciences 35 (1): 349–74.
Sellberg, My M., Cathy Wilkinson, and Garry D. Peterson. 2015. “Resilience Assessment: A Useful Approach to Navigate Urban Sustainability Challenges.” Ecology & Society 20 (1): 563–86.
Stables, Andrew. 2013. “The Unsustainability Imperative? Problems with ‘Sustainability’ and ‘Sustainable Development’ as Regulative Ideals.” Environmental Education Research 19 (2): 177–86.
Questions
- Descriptive: What are the elements of urban planning specific to coastal cities? In what way is sustainable theory used in urban planning? What is resiliency and how does it differ from or add to sustainability? What are current earthquake and tsunami responses shared between Pacific Rim coastal cities?
- Explanatory: How and by whom is sustainable criteria developed and put in place? In what way does economic and social organization in cities constrain the way that sustainability is developed and applied? Why is resiliency not used more in current urban systems? How does the existence of the Ring of Fire and subduction zones around the pacific shape urban planning approaches along the Pacific Rim?
- Evaluative: Is sustainability more or less successful when developed separately from economic and social development? Can resiliency interact with economic and social disparities more than sustainability or do they hold similar problems in implementation? Should resiliency and sustainability approaches differ between core and periphery coastal cities? Should earthquake and tsunami related city planning differ between core and periphery coastal cities?
- Instrumental: How can cities shift away from the current approaches to sustainability (e.g. TGAL)? How can an economic or social approach to sustainability in urban planning help to re-negotiate the way that ecological protection is addressed in cities? How can resiliency be implemented in current systems that do not have the foundation for it? How can resiliency be introduced to earthquake and tsunami warning and response systems in Pacific Rim countries?
Concentration courses
- SOAN 282 (Pacific Rim Cities, 4 credits), Spring 2016. Regionally situating Pacific Rim cities regarding urban planning, urbanization, and social disparities.
- ENVS 350 (Environmental Theory, 4 credits), Spring 2016. Exploring how theory applies to finding environmental solutions and problems, including environmental knowledge. Will be used in concentration to analyze the use of sustainability and resiliency as environmental theories.
- ENVS 499 (Independent Study, 2 credits) Spring 2017. Research relating to sustainability and resiliency in either Portland or Seattle or research surrounding study abroad in Sapporo, Japan during Fall 2017.
- PHIL 215 (Philosophy and the Environment) Spring 2017. Urban planning, in particular, deals with the intersection of human and non-human systems. This class will help understand the moral/ethical problems that arrive from such interactions.
- ENVS 311 (Unnatural Disasters) Spring 2017. Studying how different systems (including human) interact before, during, and after disasters. What is a disaster? Emergency preparedness/understanding disasters can be key to urban planning.
Arts and humanities courses
- HIST 261 (Global Environmental History, 4 credits). Pre-approved A&H course; no justification required.
- JAPN 202 (Intermediate Japanese II, 4 credits). Language study in order to use Japan study abroad programs as context for situating concentration topic or providing contextual information for other concentration related research. Class includes cultural components of Japan, as well as rhetoric history of the language, leading to more in-depth discussions of how culture and geography can affect the spread and communication of urban planning.