Emerging Considerations
Industrial Symbiosis within Eco-industrial Parks: Sustainable Development for Borg El-Arab in Egypt
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Dr. Suzanna Suzanna Elmassah
This paper explores how industrial symbiosis within eco-industrial parks (EIPs) can help advance sustainable development in Egypt. Based on the industrial ecology theory, this study focuses on the industrial zone of Borg El-Arab near Alexandria and explores possibilities to transform it, or parts of it, into an EIP. It identifies opportunities for possible by-product exchange in the third industrial zone of Borg El-Arab, which has the highest solid waste output. The study then introduces a pilot model of a brownfield EIP and suggests that the benefits from by-products exchange would be enhanced even further if some factories are created to close the loop of industrial processes in the zone (brick production, animal feed and fish farms, and organic fertilizers production). These conclusions confirm that there is a real potential to improve environmental performance of the Borg El-Arab industrial city and align it with the national and global sustainable development goals.
Knowledge-Based Urban Development in a Migration Society
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Svenja Kück, Kerstin Fröhlich
Processes of urban development involve a steadily increasing diverse range of actors and stakeholders. In addition to traditional actors such as the municipal administration, civil-society actors, economic actors, and citizens are gaining importance. As they join formal and informal processes of urban development, they form a crucial new resource. In numerous popular paradigms of urban development (Knowledge-Based Urban Development, Creative City, Smart City, etc.) participation and civic involvement are key elements for accelerating planning procedures and gaining new actors in urban development. Besides raising diversity in the process of urban development, migration is another fundamental trend in cities. In particular, so-called "nomads of knowledge" are considered drivers of processes of urban development. From the perspective of two research projects on migration and urban development, this paper raises a question concerning the practice of a Knowledge-Based Urban Development against the background of current urban migration realities, particularly in times of increased forced migration. We examine the roles and specific attributes affiliated, on the one hand, with the “participating citizen” and, on the other hand, with the “refugee to be integrated”. We ask moreover, how these attributes manifest themselves and are negotiated in the local context of a “knowledge city”, such as Heidelberg. Finally, we sketch and discuss the interrelations between various forms of migration and mobility and future questions of urban development.
Urban Environmental Poverty: A First Systematic Review of the Literature
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Jose Alberto Lara Pulido
The environment is recognized as the basis of the recently approved Sustainable Development Goals of the UN; nevertheless, most of the literature still focuses only on its impacts on a rural environment and rural poverty. The Kuznets Curve hypothesis validity continues to bind only people with scares resources with environmental quality. However, cities have become the basic habitat of the world population becoming not only useful but also necessary, to identify the differences and specificities of the relationship between poverty and the environment. This systematic review of the literature follows the steps suggested by Khan, Kunz, Kleijnen, and Antes in 2003. Web of Science and EBSCO were the search engines used and the research was conducted in Spanish and English. In urban environments, powerful arguments exist to suggest the reversal of the Environmental Kuznets Curve hypothesis; since the analysis shows that poverty, inequality, government failures, and the lack of access to public goods are the main factors that determine environmental poverty. In addition, the different manifestations of environmental poverty exacerbate poverty understood as income poverty. Thus, environmental poverty generates an infinite spiral of poverty and degradation of natural capital, not only in rural areas or low income but in urban areas. The literature analysis allowed us to identify some research gaps. In particular, it is detected that noise, access to green areas, clean energy, and its relation to urban poverty are incipient in the literature, demonstrating that urban poverty has a particular relationship with environmental poverty.
