Are people responsive to a more sustainable, decentralized, and user-driven management of urban metabolism?:

Chelleri, Lorenzo; Kua, Harn W; Rodriguez Sanchez, Juan P; Nahiduzzaman, Kh M; Thondhlana, Gladman

Title: Are people responsive to a more sustainable, decentralized, and user-driven management of urban metabolism?:
Creator: Chelleri, Lorenzo
Creator: Kua, Harn W
Creator: Rodriguez Sanchez, Juan P
Creator: Nahiduzzaman, Kh M
Creator: Thondhlana, Gladman
Date Issued: 2016
Date: 2016
Type: text
Type: article
Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/144299
Identifier: vital:38329
Identifier: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8253-0264
Description: Smart, green, and resilient city paradigms have been mainly promoted through top-down and technocratic approaches. However, based on the notion to return to “the right to the city”, emerging community-driven initiatives are providing self-managed infrastructures contributing to urban sustainability transitions. This paper explores the relevance of the behavioral aspects of people-centered approaches in dealing with two different facets of urban metabolism: physical infrastructure (involvement with the management of decentralized infrastructures) and consumption patterns (involvement in proactive reduction of resources used). In the first case we assessed community perceptions about the roles, benefits, and willingness to proactively engage in the management of decentralized green infrastructures in Bogotá City, Colombia. For the second facet, we measured the effectiveness of change agents in re-shaping energy consumption decisions within urban social networks in South Africa and Saudi Arabia. This paper’s results show that pre-determined and standardized strategies do not guarantee positive, nor homogeneous, results in terms of meeting sustainability targets, or promoting community involvement. Hence, a better integration of people-centered and top-down approaches is needed through context-dependent policies, for enhancing both users’ appreciation of and commitment to urban metabolism participative management.
Format: 2 pages
Format: pdf
Language: English
Relation: Sustainability
Relation: Chelleri, L., Kua, H.W., Rodriguez Sanchez, J.P., Nahiduzzaman, K.M. and Thondhlana, G., 2016. Are people responsive to a more sustainable, decentralized, and user-driven management of urban metabolism?. Sustainability, 8(3), p.275.
Relation: Sustainability volume 8 number 3 275 275 March 2016 2071-1050
Rights: Publisher
Rights: Use of this resource is governed by the terms and conditions of the MDPI Open Access Statement

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Thondhlana, Gladman (Dr)

RU Department of Environmental Science

SDG 11. Sustainable Cities and Communities

SDG 12. Responsible Consumption and Production

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