About
Roughly half of the global population lives in urban areas, a number that is projected to increase to 70% by 2050. These urban areas are central to our transition towards sustainability — while they stand to bear the brunt of the environmental crisis, they offer great opportunity to shift to more sustainable trajectories.
The Adapting Urban Environments theme pursues critical research on urban sustainability across scales – from the neighbourhoods and cities we live in, to the national policies and global networks that inform and influence decision-making. Questions include what sustainable cities look like, how and at what scale we can best measure the impacts and benefits they provide to both residents and the natural environment, and how things like “smart cities” and “big data” can contribute to urban sustainability.
This research is generating solutions that improve the monitoring, planning and governance of urban sustainability. This is critical in the light of the many constraints on cities’ development and looming uncertainties about the future climate and economy.
Theme co-Leads
Andrew Gonzalez
Biology
Kevin Manaugh
Geography, Bieler School of Environment
David Wachsmuth
Urban Planning
Research Projects
- Sus: An Urban Sustainability Explorer for Montreal
- Local Politics of Global Sustainability
- Sustainable Neighbourhoods
- Walkability in Indian Master-Planned Cities
- The Impacts of Urban Growth on Biodiversity and Ecosystems
- PRISM
- New Opportunities Fund
Curbcut: A platform for deep, dynamic, and intuitive exploration of urban sustainability
Urban governance, including decision making related to sustainability problems, must balance competing voices and visions over multiple spatial and temporal scales. Curbcut—an online platform for integrating sustainability data and enabling complex scenario modelling—addresses these challenges, transforming decision-making processes using a range of data sources integrated into meaningful relationships. Curbcut takes an interdisciplinary approach to urban sustainability by examining elements of the natural, built, and social environments and putting environmental and distributional justice as a key focus. The Curbcut team was recently awarded the Canadian Open Data Excellence Award by Geomatics Canada. Lead researchers: Kevin Manaugh, David Wachsmuth, Andrew Gonzalez.
- Geographic versus institutional drivers of nitrogen footprints: A comparison of two urban universities. Environmental Research Letters, 2020. See open access paper
- Research gaps in knowledge of the impact of urban growth on biodiversity. Nature Sustainability, 2020. See paper
- From Transportation Equity to Transportation Justice: Within, Through, and Beyond the State. Journal of Planning Literature, 35(4), 440–459. Read more.