A new tool to put
sustainability firmly in the urban planning process seems to have omitted a
crucial element of sustainability: biodiversity. Is this a result of us not
fully understanding our impacts?
As part of the EU
BRIDGE1 project the Decision Support System2 tool aims to help urban planners integrate
sustainability into strategic urban planning. The system helps, by modelling
the flow of energy and materials (e.g. water, energy and pollutants) to and
from the urban and outside environments, providing planners with valuable
insight into the potential impacts of planning options.
Tools which help
put sustainability at the heart of urban planning are to be welcomed, what is
not clear is whether this particular tool takes account of biodiversity per se.
Although in introducing the tool, the team establish a clear link between a
‘city’ being comparable to a ‘natural ecosystem’, has the interaction of
biodiversity been accounted? At one end, this might be movement and interaction
of pets and at the other potential impacts to physical and genetic biodiversity
movement.
Including
biodiversity may not require any further significant investment, rather a
coupling and clearly combined objectives. For example, greening
the urban environment can have many benefits, such as urban cooling, pollution
control and biodiversity infrastructure. Without biodiversity being part of
this picture, we may be missing opportunities.
Further, with
technology and therefore data collection becoming ever cheaper and ‘citizen
friendly’ and with the advent of the ‘internet of things’, our ability to
monitor our impacts and those of planning decisions is becoming easier. A
recent example of this is the BBC's documentary on Life of Cats3. This project used tiny cameras and
tracking devices to watch and analyse how people’s pet cats interacted with the
urban and outside environments. Such use of technology will surely help close the information gap, and perhaps facilitate biodiversity truly being a part of urban sustainability.
Do we truly
understand our impacts on biodiversity as a result of the urban environment? If
not, is this preventing modelling of our impacts on biodiversity? How can we
use advancements in technology to help?
Sources
Photo
d.boyd Flickr Account - Creative Commons
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