Rethinking Global Land Use in an Urban Era

16. Reconceptualizing Land for Sustainable Urbanity

16 Reconceptualizing Land for Sustainable Urbanity Christopher G. Boone, Charles L. Redman, Hilda Blanco, Dagmar Haase, Jennifer Koch, Shuaib Lwasa, Harini Nagendra, Stephan Pauleit, Steward T. A. Pickett, Karen C. Seto, and Makoto Yokohari Abstract Current systems to classify land are insufficient, as is the delineation of Earth’s surface into discrete categories of land covers and uses, because they ignore the multiple functions that land provides and the movement of people, materials, information, and energy they facilitate. To address sustainability challenges related to urban lifestyles, livelihoods, connectivity, and places, new conceptualizations are needed which have the potential to acknowledge and redefine the extent, intensity, and quality of urbanness on Earth. This chapter proposes a framework which focuses on people and institutions as agents of change and examines changes in urban lifestyles and livelihoods over larger regions, regardless of whether an area is delineated as “urban” or “rural.” It views urbanization and the urban era to be an integrated system and provides a multivariable approach to urbanity. It discusses a new land ethic and highlights challenges that exist to facilitate a sustainability transition. Introduction Standard urban-rural land classification systems are insufficient for analytical or planning purposes. The delineation of Earth’s surface into discrete categories of land covers (e.g., forest, rural) and uses (e.g., recreation, agriculture) ignores the multiple functions those areas may provide and the movement of people, materials, information, and energy they facilitate (Cadenasso et al. 2007; McHale et al. 2013). The Earth’s surface is far from static, and new conceptualizations are needed which incorporate an understanding of the processes that shape, take place on, and are facilitated by land. This is especially urgent in an era of rapid urbanization and globalization, where the structure 314 C. G. Boone et al. and function of lands may affect one another even at great distances and at near instantaneous speeds, a phenomenon known as teleconnections (Seto et al. 2012b). These teleconnections are amplified by urbanization, with the result that even seemingly remote areas may have urban characteristics. For these reasons, traditional concepts of urban and rural have become increasingly less useful in describing the function and structure of land as places of human activity. In this chapter we propose a conceptualization of land that measures and analyzes urbanity, the urban-ness of places, and the economic activity and population characteristics of the land. We define urbanity as how people support themselves through various livelihoods, the material culture and patterns of consumption representing different lifestyles, their spatial connectivity, and how they identify with the places where they reside and upon which they rely. The magnitude and qualities of livelihoods, lifestyles, connectivity, and place create the degree of urban-ness of intertwined human experiences and land configurations. Key terms used in this chapter can be summarized as follows: • Urbanity: urban-ness of land defined by the physical and functional characterstics that support and facilitate urban-like livelihoods, lifestyles , connectivity, and places. • Livelihood: means of securing necessities for life, such as occupations, access to resources and information, reliance on social networks, or supporting institutions. • Lifestyle: way of life that defines and reinforces self-identity. In the urban era it is often defined by and associated with occupation, socioeconomic status, consumption, behaviors, and other activities that distinguishes individuals or groups from others. • Connectivity: ability to connect between nodes in a network, and the magnitude, speed, direction, kinds, and infrastructure of those connections. • Place: an area or location defined by physical or social characteristics that create meaning (sense of place) and distinguish it from other areas or locations. It is possible to define a continuum of urbanity that is not defined by administrative boundaries of cities, but by the activities and functions that occur in places even far removed from what are traditionally understood as urban areas. In this chapter we demonstrate how the concept and elements of urbanity can be used to assess and visualize the potential for sustainability of places. We explore the notion of a new land ethic in an urban era, one that includes the elements of urbanity as a potentially positive set of attributes, and how explicit attention to ethics informs our choice of human well-being, ecological integrity , and social equity as sustainability dimensions. Reconceptualizing Land for Sustainable Urbanity 315 Conceiving Land as Places for and Defined by Human Activity, Relations, and Experience Urban areas are often conceptualized in a discrete manner; for...