Towards sustainable cities: A multi-criteria assessment framework for studying urban metabolism

Oleksandr Galychyn

MPRA Paper from University Library of Munich, Germany

Abstract: The thesis discusses the importance of sustainable urban management, considering the expected increase in urban populations to 70% by 2050. This growth will lead to greater land use and emissions, adversely affecting ecosystems and human health. Sustainable urban management should adopt a systemic perspective, viewing cities as socio-ecological systems with complex interactions between humans and nature. This involves shifting from traditional urban metabolism models to network models that reveal internal city processes. The theoretical framework combines Ecological Economics and Industrial Ecology through network science. A bibliometric analysis of global literature on urban metabolism identified new research areas. The empirical part integrates environmental accounting and network science to assess environmental costs, efficiency, self-sufficiency, and sectoral impacts in urban systems, aligning with Sustainable Development Goals 11 and 12. A case study in Vienna revealed that mining and agriculture receive little investment, with weaknesses in the urban metabolic system's hierarchy, particularly in wholesale, retail, and energy sectors. An emergy-based evaluation highlighted the larger environmental footprint of agricultural products. A multicriteria approach combining input-output and emergy accounting methods is suggested for a comprehensive understanding of socio-ecological interactions, addressing the limitations of single criteria approaches to urban metabolism.

Keywords: input-output analysis; multi-criteria assessment; emergy accounting; ecological network analysis; urban metabolism (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O44 Q21 Q51 Q56 Q57 Y40 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022-05-11, Revised 2022-05-11
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://mpra.ub.uni-muenchen.de/121584/1/MPRA_paper_121584.pdf original version (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:pra:mprapa:121584

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in MPRA Paper from University Library of Munich, Germany Ludwigstraße 33, D-80539 Munich, Germany. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Joachim Winter ().