Sustainable Cities on an Interconnected Planet

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Cities need to change how they procure and use resources if they are to be more environmentally friendly and wish to increase human wellbeing. This transition is hard because urban activities have hidden consequences far away from cities and because improving one aspect of a city can have unforeseen tradeoffs in other areas. This research program aims to develop innovative methods that capture the complexities of contemporary cities and provide decision-support to bring about a sustainable urban future. The need for such methods is critical given the continued accumulation of people and economic activity in cities against a backdrop of global environmental change and growing resource scarcity.    Cities in Canada and beyond have inadequate tools to support decisions regarding their resource use and environmental impacts because existing tools: (i) lack baseline data on resource use in cities; (ii) neglect how urban activities cause environmental change at distant locations; and (iii) poorly capture interactions between urban sub-systems (e.g. agriculture and water use). As such, these tools see little application. My long-term research goal (>10 yrs) is to develop novel and useful methods and models to diagnose and remedy complex urban sustainability challenges. This five-year Discovery Grant research program consists of three goals aimed towards addressing the shortcomings of current decision-support tools. Methods to Estimate Resource Use in Cities: I will develop statistical models to estimate resource use by individuals and households. With spatial data, I will scale estimates to the neighbourhood and city. Spatial Models of Environmental Impacts of Cities: With data on international trade and transport networks, I will connect urban consumption determine in Part 1 to the factories, farms, and forests that supply cities, and estimate environmental impacts at these locations. Sustainable Urban-Rural Futures (SURF): I will develop dynamic models to capture interactions between urban sub-systems. A citizen science approach will explore long-term scenarios to optimize urban resource use and minimize environmental impacts outside the city determined in Part 2. Decision-makers will explore the model using a web-tool, "SURF."    This program will train 10 HQPs. Trainees will work at the juncture of engineering and geography using tools from data science, spatial science, and critical social theory.    This research focuses on bioresources - renewable materials and energy derived from biological processes - which are essential to combating climate change and resource scarcity. In particular, two bioresources (food, wood) and two materials ripe for substitution by bioresources (concrete, steel). The testbed will be the Great Lake Megalopolis, a massive system of interconnected urban and rural areas (incl. Chicago, Toronto, Montreal) with 60 million residents, a $6 trillion CAD economy, and immense resource demands and environmental impacts.