Resource-conscious urban planning and design: Exploring the potential of urban metabolism assessments

In view of urbanization, climate change, resource depletion and the impacts associated with resource consumption, it is imperative that cities foster sustainable resource management. Given that urban form and function impact urban resource flows and stocks, urban planners and designers have an important contribution to make. Moreover, the integrative and strategic problem-solving capacity of design is essential to create plans and develop strategies for the urban environment that guide and effectuate the sustainable management of resources. That said, it is essential to understand how urban areas function with respect to resource flows to make evidence-based decisions when formulating such plans and strategic visions. Assessments of the urban metabolism (UM) are considered valuable for providing such scientific evidence for planning and design of the urban environment. UM refers to the resource stocks and flows through cities and the affiliated processes that transform raw materials, energy, and water inputs into the built environment, human biomass, and waste. Conventional UM assessments, such as a material flow analysis (MFA), consist of a quantification of resource flows to disclose how a particular city functions at a specific moment in time.

Scholars acknowledge the potential of UM assessments generally, and of MFA specifically, to inform resource-conscious urban planning and design, but they also point to the shortcomings that hinder the full exploitation of this potential. A significant shortcoming of MFA is its ‘black box’ approach: it does not give insight in metabolic differences within a city nor in the city’s characteristics that shape the city and its UM, such as the type of businesses present, urban form and citizen characteristics. Therefore this research: (I) studies how comprehensiveness and resolution of analysis affect the potential of UM assessments in providing insightful understanding of UM, and (II) investigates the factors and mechanisms that underlie resource flows and stocks, to advance understanding of the systemic characteristics of cities and their metabolism. Energy and water were chosen as main resources of interest.

Given the aim of this thesis to contribute to the evidence base for resource-conscious urban planning and design with methodological advancements and system knowledge, this research can be considered ‘research for design’. This research is of mixed-methods and transdisciplinary nature, integrating methods and knowledge from different academic disciplines with knowledge from actors that are active in urban planning and design, and resource management. Stakeholder input is acquired in a case study of Amsterdam, which is central to this research. Other case-specific parts of this research consist of analyses of empirical data, including a MFA at the municipal level and analyses using more detailed spatial units such as neighbourhoods. Literature with a wide range of research designs is used throughout this research to engage with fields of knowledge from several relevant disciplines such as industrial ecology, urban ecology and environmental history.

Source: Voskamp, I. M. (2020). Resource-conscious urban planning and design: Exploring the potential of urban metabolism assessments. Wageningen University. https://doi.org/10.18174/533893