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作者

Hsi-Chuan Wang

来源

URBAN AFFAIRS REVIEW,Vol.59,Issue3,P.

语言

英文

关键字

作者单位

摘要

IntroductionTo capture the process of how a city “attains resources” and “releases wastes”—while providing “economic outputs and social services”—the Urban Metabolism (UM) concept has inspired ideas for designing sustainable cities (Musango, Currie and Robinson 2017) despite years of being overlooked (Barles 2010). A broad definition from Kennedy, Pincetl and Bunje (2011) specifies UM as “the sum total of the technical and socio-economic processes that occur in cities, resulting in growth, the production of energy, and the elimination of waste” (the view adopted in this paper). The main schools of thought see UM as an interdisciplinary field in which cities are studied as organisms or ecosystems (Golubiewski 2012). This trend furthers several quantitative methods that can be used to assess urban resource flows (Musango, Currie and Robinson 2017). To change the “linear processes” into “networked and cyclical processes” aimed at resource-efficacy, researchers from different backgrounds have widely used UM to assess sustainable policies for cities worldwide. UM is now central to the study of sustainable urbanism.UM involves diverse quantitative approaches to analyzing how environmental, social, and economic factors interact in urban settings. It is also used to develop cross-disciplinary interventions for various urban systems and thus contributes to urban sustainability. Although challenges remain, resource-efficacy initiatives are an inevitable starting point in attaining the improved urban resource management needed to develop more resilient cities (Agudelo-Vera et al. 2012). Applying UM across disciplines is hence a global movement.The growth of relevant UM case studies has encouraged researchers to develop literature reviews, with six notable reviews documenting numerous cases to clarify our current understanding of UM (Beloin-Saint-Pierre et al. 2017; Holmes and Pincetl 2012; Pincetl, Bunje and Holmes 2012; Zhang 2013; Zhang, Yang and Yu 2015; Wang et al. 2021). While these reviews categorize cases based upon approaches such as Material Flow Analysis (MFA) and Energy Flow Analysis (EFA), they fail to address the context such as location. In other words, these reviews do not reveal the specifics of how UM has been used, how these cases have benefited cities, or which regions or cities need further study. A comprehensive review that includes context is needed to identify gaps in UM research.This paper looks at the contexts of UM case studies to reveal how, where, and why cases have been developed. It applies a global perspective to reveal whether cases are evenly distributed; when they are not, it asks why this uneven distribution occurs and where studies should be located in the future. Methodologically, this paper develops a comprehensive categorization regarding location, scale, and urban system. After the introduction, the paper is organized as follows: Materials and Methods depicts the materials and methods; Results presents findings of categorization; Discussion reveals significant places that lack UM case studies and considers city dynamics. My conclusion is provided in the last section.