109R_How much sustainability substance is in urban visions? An analysis of visioning projects in urban planning (research summary)

Are you interested in how much sustainability substance is in urban visions?  Our summary today works with the article titled How much sustainability substance is in urban visions? An analysis of visioning projects in urban planning from 2015 by Beatrice John, Lauren Withycombe Keller, Armin Wiek, and Daniel J. Lang, published the Cities journal.  Since we are investigating the future of cities, I thought it would be interesting to see whether visionary urban planning can help with economic decline, social injustices and environmental degradation. This article presents recommendations for urban future visioning processes based on 9 global examples to integrate better sustainability substance. You can find the article through this link. Abstract: Cities are hubs of social interaction, trade, and innovation. Yet, they face sustainability challenges of economic decline, social injustices, and environmental degradation. Urban planning is a critical instrument to cope with these challenges. Visioning, the process of constructing desirable future states, can provide direction for sustainability-oriented planning and decision-making and is increasingly used in this capacity. However, there is ample evidence that urban visions are often not designed along a robust set of sustainability principles. We analyze nine explicitly sustainability-related urban visions from Sweden, Germany, Ireland, Canada, USA, and Australia with respect to their sustainability substance, i.e. in how far they, broadly and in detail, adhere to sustainability principles. Using rough set analysis, we identify a number of procedural components that enable or obstruct the inclusion of sustainability substance in urban visions. Results indicate that the sampled urban visions do not substantially and comprehensively include sustainability substance, instead narrowly focus on optimizing the built environment, for example. Furthermore, the sustainability substance of visioning processes benefits from stakeholder engagement that includes capacity building, whereas some other types of participation obstruct the inclusion of sustainability substance. The study concludes with recommendations for visioning processes to yield urban visions with sustainability substance inclusive of a diverse and integrated set of sustainability principles. You can find the transcript through this link. What wast the most interesting part for you? What questions did arise for you? Let me know on Twitter @WTF4Cities or on the wtf4cities.com website where the shownotes are also available. I hope this was an interesting episode for you and thanks for tuning in. Music by Lesfm from Pixabay