PIRE: Promoting Urban Sustainability in the Arctic

摘要北极帝国：促进北极城市可持续发展随着北极冰层的持续融化，越来越多的人将进入北极高地开发当地资源，扩大交通联系。这种活动增加的结果将是极端条件下城市发展的加剧。该项目的目的是促进北极城市的更大可持续性，以便人类对更大环境的最终影响将尽可能小。为了实现这样一个广泛的国际目标，国际研究和教育伙伴关系(PERR)将把来自美国、加拿大、丹麦/格陵兰、挪威和俄罗斯的科学家聚集在一起。在北极各国以及其他对北极日益感兴趣的欧亚国家之间发展强有力的合作，对于确保有效管理这一极地地区的未来发展是必要的。随着美国在2015年5月至2017年5月担任北极理事会主席，北极理事会将提高政策制定者促进可持续发展的能力，方法是提供工具来衡量进展，确定最迫切需要的领域，选择可验证的最佳实践，审查机会成本，并确定外部参与者在哪里可以产生最大影响。具体来说，该项目将开发北极城市可持续发展指数，这将使评估该地区人类活动在许多重要维度上的后果成为可能。该指数将用于衡量各种北极城市的可持续性成果和实现这些成果的进展情况。该指数的关键要素将包括永久冻土融化、繁荣-萧条经济周期以及随之而来的社会紧张局势加剧的外来务工人员涌入。我们的中心假设是：衡量所有规模和机制的可持续性努力，并以指数的形式汇编结果，将引发改善城市规划的努力。该项目将是多学科性质的，融合了地理学、气候学、建筑学、设计学、社会学和政治学的分析工具。重要的是，该指数将不仅限于在北极地区使用。它可以有效地衡量其他极端气候条件下的可持续性，例如在波斯湾崛起的新城市和亚利桑那州凤凰城等地。

AbstractArctic PIRE: Promoting Urban Sustainability in the ArcticAs Arctic ice continues to melt, humans will enter the high north in growing numbers to develop local resources and expand transportation links. The result of this increased activity will be intensified urban development in extreme conditions. The purpose of this project is to promote greater urban sustainability in the Arctic so that the ultimate human impact on the larger environment will be as small as possible. To achieve such a broad international goal, this Partnership for International Research and Education (PIRE) will bring together scientists from the U.S., Canada, Denmark/Greenland, Norway and Russia. Developing strong cooperation among the various Arctic countries, as well as other European and Asian countries with growing interests in the north, is necessary to ensure that future development in this polar region is managed effectively. With the U.S. chairing the Arctic Council from May 2015 to May 2017, this PIRE will improve the ability of policy-makers to promote sustainability by providing tools to measure progress, identify areas of most urgent need, select verifiable best practices, examine opportunity costs, and determine where external actors can have the greatest impact.Specifically, this project will develop an Arctic Urban Sustainability Index, which will make it possible to assess the consequences of human activities in the region across a number of important dimensions. The Index will be used to measure sustainability outcomes and progress toward achieving those outcomes in a wide variety of Arctic cities. Key elements of the index will include thawing permafrost, a boom-bust economic cycle, and an influx of migrant workers with the resulting increase in social tensions. Our central hypothesis posits that: Measuring sustainability efforts across the full range of scale and mechanisms and compiling the results in the form of an index will trigger efforts to improve urban planning. The project will be multi-disciplinary in nature, incorporating the analytical tools of geography, climatology, architecture, design, sociology, and political science. Importantly, the Index will not be limited to use in the Arctic. It could be effective in measuring sustainability in other extreme climate conditions, such as in the new cities rising in the Persian Gulf and in places like Phoenix, Arizona.