Blockchain Papers

Johan Colding, Stephan Barthel, Robert Ljung, Felix Eriksson · 5 authors

Climate change and the coupled loss of ecosystem services pose major collective action problems in that all individuals would benefit from better cooperation to address these problems but conflicting interests and/or incomplete knowledge discourage joint action. Adopting an inductive and multi‐layered approach, drawing upon the authors’ previous research on urban commons, we here summarize key insights on environmentally oriented urban commons and elaborate on what role they have in instigating climate‐proofing activities in urban areas. We deal with three types of urban commons, i.e., “urban green commons,” “coworking spaces,” and “community climate commons.” We describe how allotment gardens, community gardens, and other types of urban green commons contribute to environmental learning that may boost understanding of environmental issues and which constitute important learning arenas for climate‐change mitigation and adaptation. We also deal with the newly emerging phenomenon of coworking spaces that share many essential institutional attributes of urban commons and which can work for climate‐change mitigation through the benefits provided by a sharing economy and through reduction of domestic transportation and commuting distance. Community climate commons represent commons where local communities can mobilize together to create shared low‐carbon assets and which hold the potential to empower certain segments and civil society groups so that they can have greater influence and ownership of the transformation of reaching net‐zero carbon goals. We conclude this article by identifying some critical determinants for the up‐scaling of environmentally oriented urban commons.

Wendy Y. Chen, Fox Z.Y. Hu

No abstract is available for this record.

Robert F. Young

Problem: Critics have problematized infrastructure for its inability to keep pace with the rising social and ecological impacts of urbanization. Researchers identify urban green infrastructure (GI), including urban forests, as an important strategy for providing public goods and increasing resiliency while reducing ecological footprints and social inequity in metropolitan areas; however, realizing these benefits through planning is still uncertain ground, as most contemporary urban GI endeavors in the United States are small, individual projects rather than integrated, community-wide efforts. This underinvestment has left planners with little experience in developing GI at a metropolitan scale. Purpose: We address this deficit in infrastructure planning by studying planning's role in advancing large-scale, urban tree-planting initiatives (TPI) in eight major U.S. cities and one metropolitan county. In this study, we explore stakeholder perspectives on successes and setbacks in TPI planting, stewardship, business, and outreach plans. From these perspectives, we identify possible best practices that can better inform future efforts to plan GI on a metropolitan scale. Methods: From a review of the literature, we identified ideal planning elements researchers and practitioners considered fundamental to well-planned, urban forestry-based GI programs. We interviewed key stakeholders (n = 86) in eight major cities and one metropolitan county (New York, Los Angeles, Houston, Baltimore, Seattle, Denver, Albuquerque, Sacramento, and Salt Lake County), using multiple-choice and open-ended questions to explore their perceptions of TPI successes, failures, and opportunities for improvement. We used this data to compare TPI planning and implementation with ideal urban forestry and GI planning elements, to identify TPI best practices, and to locate TPI program elements such as business and stewardship planning in relation to traditional infrastructure. We discuss these findings in light of opportunities to bring GI into the mainstream of metropolitan infrastructure planning. Results and conclusions: We found that cities employed a spectrum of planning strategies to advance TPI, ranging from highly institutionalized, data-driven initiatives to decentralized, grassroots efforts. Participants viewed TPI as bringing GI to the mainstream; however, uncertainties in funding and long-term stewardship belie this perspective. Lacking access to traditional infrastructure financing, several TPI used creative development and contracting strategies to maintain program funding and momentum, while others stagnated. Additionally, programs lost momentum when mayors who launched TPI were not reelected. Successful underfunded initiatives focused on community-level engagement. However, institutionalized, diverse funding structures and robust, agency-level commitment to maintaining and expanding urban forests were considered most effective in advancing urban forestry-based GI. Overall geographic distribution of TPI, and the relatively sophisticated financial and institutional approaches achieved by New York and Seattle, provide insight into possible national strategies to advance metropolitan-scale GI. Similarly, Los Angeles's and Baltimore's use of focused corporate sponsorship and community engagement to advance underfunded programs could inform international GI efforts. Takeaway for practice: Through large-scale TPI, planners are beginning to engage in planning metropolitan-scale GI as a conscious strategy to address urban ecological issues and deliver public goods. Initiatives benefit from being launched early in an administration's term. Further, detailed, data-driven planting plans, combined with diversified funding sources and the institutionalization of tree-acquisition in the capital budget, can enable TPI to establish a) long-term contracts, b) control over supply chains, and c) stability in recessionary times. Contracting with grassroots and advocacy organizations to perform education and fieldwork can provide means for underfunded programs to maintain momentum toward meeting TPI goals; however, accessing traditional infrastructure financing mechanisms and institutionalizing stewardship plans are fundamental to long-term expansion and maintenance of investments in metropolitan GI. Research support: None.