Urban food waste in the U.S. is almost exclusively bound for landfills, with significant environmental and the economic consequences. Contrary to this linear flow, cities across the developed world are implementing organics collection programs (OCP) that transform waste into a resource. These systems convert excess food into inputs (e.g. biofuel or soil amendment) for other processes (i.e. food and energy production, water reclamation) thereby approximating naturally occurring closed-loop nutrient systems. However, efforts to address the flow of food waste into landfills have largely focused on technical solutions that alter the waste management systems of provision, largely ignoring the social aspects of food waste generation and source separation. Drawing on the Theory of Planned Behavior and concepts from social marketing research, results from longitudinal repeated-measures experiments indicate that providing supportive infrastructure is necessary for residents to act on their "intention" to divert food waste from landfills. The experiments are also the first to confirm that communicating the new community norms of separation in the context of a new OCP will increase separation behavior. In sum, closing the loop on urban food systems demands transformations of the systems of provision as well as the social aspects of waste systems. This research traces the evolution of organic waste policy on two continents using problem-framing as a lens through which to understand how different characterizations of food waste as a problem (i.e. as one of disposal efficiency, risk management or value recovery) result in different policy responses with varying degrees of linearity in urban food material flows. This dissertation contends that successfully closing the loop on urban food systems will demand new problem-framing that employs systems-thinking at the highest levels of policy-making, transformations of both the systems of provision and social practices, and an understanding of the relationship between social and natural systems (i.e. socio-ecological relationships).

The large concentration of the world’s population in cities, along with rapid urbanization, have brought numerous environmental and socioeconomic challenges to sustainable urban systems (SUS). However, current SUS studies focus heavily on ecological aspects, rely on SUS indicators that are not supported by available data, lack comprehensive analytical frameworks, and neglect SUS regional differences. This paper develops a novel approach to assessing urban sustainability from regional perspectives using commonly enumerated socioeconomic statistics. It integrates land use and land cover change data and ecosystem service values, applies data mining analytics to derive SUS indicators, and evaluates SUS states as trade-offs among relevant SUS indicators. This synthetic approach is called the integrated socioeconomic and land-use data mining–based multi-objective assessment (ISL-DM-MOA). The paper presents a case study of urban sustainability development in cities and counties in Inner Mongolia, China, which face many environmental and sustainable development problems. The case study identifies two SUS types: (1) several large cities that boast well-developed economies, diversified industrial sectors, vital transportation locations, good living conditions, and cleaner environments; and (2) a few small counties that have a small population, small urban construction areas, extensive natural grasslands, and primary grazing economies. The ISL-DM-MOA framework innovatively synthesizes currently available socioeconomic statistics and environmental data as a unified dataset to assess urban sustainability as a total socio-environmental system. ISL-DM-MOA deviates from the current indicator approach and advocates the notion of a data-mining-driven approach to derive urban sustainability dimensions. Furthermore, ISL-DM-MOA diverges from the concept of a composite score for determining urban sustainability. Instead, it promotes the concept of Pareto Front as a choice set of sustainability candidates, because sustainability varies among nations, regions, and locations and differs between political, economic, environmental, and cultural systems.

AbstractGreening the Greyfields uses ‘greening’ as a term related to the regeneration of an urban area, as well as to the choice of environmentally beneficial (or at least neutral) technology for new urban development. This chapter will outline how new twenty-first-century green urban infrastructures can help realise the value proposition of regenerating established middle suburbs. The technologies covered include energy, water, and waste systems, along with smart information and communications technology (ICT) systems that are needed to make the ‘distributed green technology’ work efficiently and equitably. Micro-mobility (scooters and bikes) is likely to help accessibility at a precinct scale and will be discussed in the next chapter, although they certainly fit within the new distributed infrastructure model. While this chapter looks at ‘greening’ in terms of ‘green tech’, Chapter 5 will look at nature-based solutions more broadly. Greening the greyfields provides the opportunity for new ‘green tech’ to be introduced in urban development in an integrated way.

Abstract With ever‐growing populations, cities are increasingly interested in ensuring a well‐functioning food system. However, knowledge of variation between individual city food systems is limited. This is particularly true in countries such as India, experiencing significant issues related to food security and sustainability. This paper advances the understanding of urban food systems, by analyzing the unique food systems of nine cities within India, through the integration of multiple city‐specific data sources including demand of residents, visitors and industries, and commodity‐specific supply chains to assess nutrition, environmental impact, and supply risk. This work finds a large degree of intercity food system variability across multiple food system characteristics. Specifically, levels of undernutrition vary, with the percentage of city populations who are underconsuming protein ranging from 0% to 70%, and for calories 0% to 90%. Environmental impacts (consumptive water loss, land use, and greenhouse gas emissions) of urban food demand also show variation, largely influenced by differing composition of residential diet. Greenhouse gas emissions are also largely influenced by location of production and spatially informed energy intensity of irrigation. Supply chain distance (“food‐miles”) also vary by city, with the range of 196 (Pondicherry) to 1,137 (Chennai) km/Mg—shorter than more industrialized nations such as the United States. Evaluating supply chain risk in terms of water scarcity in food‐producing regions that serve city demand finds production locations, on average, to be less water‐scarce than the watersheds local to the urban environments. This suggests water‐intensive agriculture may at times be best located at a distance from urban centers and competing demands.

Abstract Cities are the engine of economic development and human wellbeing, but their dynamics needs to be supported by the convergence of large flows of material and energy resources. Assessing a city resource metabolism becomes increasingly crucial, not only concerning the relation with the environment as a source or a sink, but also concerning the internal dynamics of resource exchange among city components and sectors. We applied Emergy Accounting (EMA) and Cumulative Energy Demand (CED) methods to develop and validate indicators of urban environmental sustainability, using as case studies five urban systems of different size in Italy. CED allowed an assessment of the commercial energy consumption required on local and global scales to support the city life and economy. Airborne emissions related to direct and indirect energy consumption were also assessed. EMA was used to quantify the environmental support required for the urban metabolism, in terms of resource generation and ecosystem services supply. Combining these three aspects, a new metric is discussed and developed to estimate the environmental impact of cities, with reference to their resource use, in order to implement comprehensive indicators and suggest resource use criteria at urban level. A city’s support area to buffer upstream and downstream environmental loading is also calculated. Relative and absolute sustainability concepts are introduced and discussed, showing how far the investigated cities are from a resource-based environmentally sustainable state. Finally, practices are suggested as an exit strategy from the present intensive fossil powered economy towards a higher level of environmental sustainability and wellbeing.