Hi SUS Members,
Ben Goldstein and Yuli Shan here.
The next American Association of Geographers (AAG) Annual Meeting will be in March 2025 in Detroit. The Urban Systems subsection of ISIE is organizing a paper session entitled, "Sustainable urban systems: concepts, models, and future outlook." Please see below for full details (circulate it as well!). It is called a paper session, but it is really just 15-minute talks with 5 minutes of questions (just like ISIE meetings). We think AAG is an excellent opportunity for industrial ecologists to branch out into the world of spatial analysis/social theory and also for us to highlight the ways that methods and data from industrial ecology can complement other disciplines (esp. geography).
Please do consider submitting an abstract by October 31 (deadline will likely be extended). Don't worry if your abstract is rough (you can fix it later). It does not undergo strict peer review. We, Ben and Yuli, are the only ones who review the abstracts. We do this to ensure they fit the session and we have complete autonomy in deciding what gets accepted to the session. As long as your paper is generally related to the environmental impacts of cities (methods, models, frameworks, etc.), you can be certain that we will accept it. Nonetheless, please email Ben (benjgo@umich.edu) and Yuli (y.shan@bham.ac.uk) with your abstract (or idea) before registering to ensure we can include you in the session prior to paying the registration fee (which is refundable before a certain date anyways).
Since AAG is a bit different than other conferences, I will outline the specific steps to submit an abstract:
- Submit your abstract to Ben and Yuli.
- Once you get a positive response from us, register for AAG. Note that it can be cheaper to pay to join AAG as a member and pay the reduced member fee for the conference than to attend as a non-member.
- Formally submit your abstract via the AAG submission portal. You will receive a PIN number for your abstract (jot that down).
- Send your PIN to Yuli and Ben so we can add you to our session.
Apologies for the long email. Hope that some of you decide to join us for the conference as it is an excellent chance to broaden your horizons and build connections to allied sustainability scholars.
Thanks
Ben and Yuli
Paper Session: Sustainable urban systems: concepts, models, and future outlook
Session Organizers: Benjamin Goldstein (Chair, University of Michigan-Ann Arbor), Yuli Shan (Co-chair, University of Birmingham)
Consumption of resources and production of waste and emissions in cities shape changes in distal locations that span the planet. Cities house just over 50% of humanity and cover a mere 3% of global terrestrial surface, but their combined metabolism is immense, accounting for 70% of energy use, 80% of carbon emissions [1], and the majority of global flows of water, wood, nutrients, metals and aggregates [2-4]. As intense sites of resource consumption, waste production, and greenhouse gas emissions, cities are key fulcrums of change in transitioning towards a more sustainable and net-zero future. Accurate monitoring of resource use and environmental change wrought by urban processes are essential to making this transition equitable and just.
This session aims to take stock and think critically about the ways that academics across a broad array of disciplines are quantifying and mapping the environmental impacts and changes of cities. We are especially interested in teasing out linkages between urban form/design and the impacts of cities, and better understanding how academics can capture urban-rural linkages (i.e., planetary urbanization, urban land teleconnections, transboundary metabolic flows, and related concepts). We encourage papers on applied contributions (esp. studies of environmental “footprints” and urban sustainability data analytics), as well as more conceptual and theoretical work.
Possible topics for presentation may include, but are not limited to:
- Application of material and GHG emission flow analysis, life cycle assessment, input-output analysis and other methods from industrial ecology to cities
- Emergent related concepts such as the circular economy, urban symbiosis, resource efficient cities, and political-industrial ecology.
- Methods, models, and conceptual frameworks to capture transboundary metabolic flows of cities.
- Applications to inform urban development and design.
Submission Guidelines:
Please email abstracts (max 250 words) to Benjamin Goldstein (benjgo@umich.edu) and Yuli Shan (y.shan@bham.ac.uk) by October 31, 2024 (or AAG extended deadline if applicable). Please email the session organizers if you have any questions. Those confirmed to the session will need to submit their abstract online and send us their PIN by October 31, 2024. See https://www.aag.org/events/aag2025/ for more information.
References:
- Lwasa et al., 2022: Urban systems and other settlements. In IPCC, 2022: Climate Change 2022: Mitigation of Climate Change. Contribution of Working Group III to the Sixth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, UK and New York, NY, USA. doi: 10.1017/9781009157926.010
- Brown, L.R., 2013. Eco-economy: Building an economy for the earth, Eco-Economy: Building an Economy for the Earth. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315071893
- Grimm, N.B., Faeth, S.H., Golubiewski, N.E., Redman, C.L., Wu, J., Bai, X., Briggs, J.M., 2008. Global change and the ecology of cities. Science (80). 319, 756–760. https://doi.org/10.1126/science.1150195
- Bai, X., 2007. Industrial Ecology and the Global Impacts of Cities. J. Ind. Ecol. 11, 1–6.
