Doctoral Dissertation Research: Infrastructural Design Challenges in Municipal Planning Efforts Aimed at Maximizing Energy Efficiency

2007年，全球一半的人口在人类历史上第一次集中在城市。到2050年，全球近90%的人口增长和60%的总能源消费将发生在城市。气候科学家建议，应对人为气候变化的努力将在城市中成败，特别是通过城市交通网络的大规模改造。随着世界各地的市政规划者考虑大规模汽车对生态和公共健康的危害，向无碳交通的过渡已经成为市政规划者和工程师的一个重大担忧。该项目对研究生进行基于经验的科学实地考察的方法进行培训，探索哪些因素有助于提高城市基础设施周围的能源效率和优化流动性的市政规划工作的文化和社会效力和效力。在芝加哥大学Michael Fisch博士的指导下，通过对节能基础设施设计的民族志研究，Rebecca Journey将调查影响城市规划工作的社会和文化因素。城市规划者肩负着为不断扩张的城市提供节能交通基础设施的任务，他们越来越多地将目光投向北欧。在这一背景下，丹麦首都、自称“生态大都市”的哥本哈根作为一个原型浮出水面。在市政规模上，这一雄心在哥本哈根市政府的长期、全面规划倡议--气候计划中得到了概述，该计划旨在建设世界上第一个碳中性首都，进而塑造一个可能被证明有能力缓解气候担忧的公民群体。为此，该项目将跟踪气候计划规定的一系列基础设施设计、开发和改造项目。通过参与者观察、多媒体记录和对城市规划师、建筑师、政策制定者和市民的人种学访谈，本研究将调查可持续交通技术的社会文化驱动因素和体验维度。出于很好的理由，机动性研究往往集中在汽车、火车和飞机上。这些研究揭示了运输网络中资源分配的不公平，以及化石燃料流动造成的环境和地缘政治危害。然而，除了使碳基交通的危害显而易见之外，机动性研究还应该关注替代能源成为日常生活中一个可想象的和实际的维度的模式。这项研究正是通过用斯堪的纳维亚未被研究的区域和文化视角丰富基础设施和机动性的社会科学研究来承担这一责任。

In 2007, half of the global population became concentrated in cities for the first time in human history. By 2050, nearly 90% of global population growth and 60% of aggregate energy consumption will occur in cities. Climate scientists suggest that efforts combat anthropogenic climate change will be won or lost in cities, especially through the large-scale transformation of urban transit networks. As municipal planners worldwide reckon with the ecological and public health hazards of mass automobility, a transition to decarbonized transit has emerged as a significant concern for municipal planners and engineers. This project, which trains a graduate student in methods of conducting empirically grounded scientific fieldwork, explores what factors contribute to the cultural and social efficacy and effectiveness of municipal planning efforts aimed at improving energy efficiency and optimizing mobility around urban infrastructures. Through an ethnographic study of energy efficient infrastructure design, Rebecca Journey, under the supervision of Dr. Michael Fisch of the University of Chicago, will investigate the social and cultural factors that shape urban planning efforts. Tasked with retrofitting ever-sprawling cities with energy efficient transport infrastructure, urban planners are looking increasingly to Northern Europe for models. Within this context, the Danish capital and self-styled "eco-metropolis" of Copenhagen has surfaced as a prototype. At a municipal scale, this ambition is outlined in the Climate Plan, Copenhagen Municipality's long-range, comprehensive planning initiative to build the world's first carbon-neutral capital, and by extension, to shape a citizenry that might prove capable of mitigating climate concerns. To that end, this project will track a range of infrastructure design, development, and retrofit projects prescribed by the Climate Plan. Through participant-observation, multimedia documentation, and ethnographic interviews with city planners, architects, policymakers, and citizens, this research will investigate the sociocultural drivers and experiential dimensions of sustainable transport technology. For good reason, mobility studies have tended to focus on cars, trains and planes. Such studies have illuminated the inequitable distribution of resources in transit networks as well as the environmental and geopolitical hazards of fossil-fueled mobility. Yet in addition to rendering the harms of carbon-based transit apparent, mobility studies should attend to the modes by which alternatives become a thinkable and practical dimension of everyday life. This research takes up precisely this charge by enriching the social scientific study of infrastructure and mobility with the understudied regional and cultural perspective of Scandinavia.