GEOG 442: Urban Land Assessment – Day 2

Housekeeping Items Is there anybody who wasn't here on Monday who didn't get an outline? We have put two new books on reserve: Planet U by M'Gonigle and Starke, and Sustainability on Campus by Barlett and Chase. I will have some other resources to show you later. We are privileged to have Steve Earle and Chris Lauren in today to talk to us about the current activities of the Campus Sustainability Committee and SOLUTIONS for Sustainability, respectively.

Housekeeping Items Here is a link for the concept of overshoot, the point of which was apparently reached in 1986: A useful source for transportation assessment expertise can be found at: One of the graphics that is missing from the paper on “Sustainable Urban Development: From Theory to Practice” is the one illustrating the concept of an urban domain – the area within which hypothetically a city region could support itself within its own carrying capacity without exploiting the carrying capacity of other regions.

The Approximate 'Urban Domain' of Vancouver

Housekeeping Items I haven't put “Sustainability at Vancouver Island University” on reserve yet because I'm waiting for a final version from the Student Union. Please read “Urban Form and the Environment: The Centrality of Land Use Planning to Sustainability.” I would like to talk about the other two articles today, beginning with “Sustainable Urban Development.”

Throughput and Carrying Capacity

“Sustainable Urban Development” The article starts by discussing carrying capacity and throughput as different sides of the same coin – with the carrying capacity concept working backwards from the limitations of nature, and throughput focusing on the aggregate consumption of resources and production of wastes. The ecological footprint concept developed by Bill Rees looks at the aggregate throughput of a given population, and extrapolates that to how much ecologically productive land would be needed to support them relative to the total population of the Earth. If they require more than the global average, then there is said to be an “ecological deficit” or condition of overshoot.

“Sustainable Urban Development” Each concept has a different cachet. Carrying capacity focuses on natural limits, and might lead to a bioregional or deep ecology approach, whereas throughput leads on to look at how ecological impact can be minimized through smart growth or “factor 4/ factor 10” approaches. But when considering the ecology of urban systems, we need to think about these issues in a broader perspective that also considers institutions, infrastructure, culture, and quality of life.

Model of An Urban System The model starts from the premise that the ecological impacts of an urban community are determined, in physical terms, by its size, structure and density. It, in turn, is made up of three components: a biophysical system, an institutional-infrastructural system, and a socio- cultural system. The first two provide both support and assimilation functions (resources and waste in the case of ecosystems; goods, services, mobility, waste and sewage handling in the case of the second), and the third involves both demographic characteristics and cultural expectations. The state and interaction of these three systems influences ecosystem integrity and quality of life.