floris questions

Question 1

Name 6 criteria for a city according to Gordon Childe?

Answer 1

• Size and density of population above average
• differentiation of the population → specialisation
• payment of taxes to a deity or king
• monumental public buildings
• those not producing their own food are supported by the king.
• Systems of recording and practical science
• a system of writing
• development of symbolic art
• trade and import of raw materials
• specialist craftsmen from outside

Question 2

How did a city like Vegas come to life?

Answer 2

• Using and transforming resources
• Moving resources from one place on the planet to another.
• Concentrating resources, and increasing their entropy.
• People moving to places.

Question 3

What does a graph for materials consumed by cities over time look like?

Answer 3

exponential growth of consumption

Question 4

a. There are 3 different systems where sustainable development is needed, which 3 systems are those?
b. Name 2 goals of each system

Answer 4

a. biological system goals, economic system goals and social system goals.
b. biological: genetic diversity, resilience and biological productivity.
economic: satisfying basic needs, equity-enhancing, increasing useful goods and services
social: cultural diversity, institutional sustainability, social justice, participation

Question 5

What is society’s metabolism and how does it compare to urban metabolism?

Answer 5

Societies metabolism is society-nature interactions characterised by material and energy flows – input of raw materials, processing to manufactured products,services, and release of waste and emissions, including the energy conversion and use. It is determined by the modes of production (economy), the technology, and the lifestyle (culture). Urban Metabolism is looked at at a more local scale because this is a collection of complex sociotechnical and socio-ecological processes by which flows of materials, energy, people, and information shape the city, service the needs of its populace, and impact the surrounding hinterland.

Question 6

What are 6 approaches for assessing urban metabolism?

Answer 6

• material flow analysis
• input output analysis
• footprints
• life cycle assessment
• simulation methods
• hybrid methods

Question 7

Explain the shift from the city as an organism to the city as an ecosystem?

Answer 7

The city as an organism metaphor represents the current configuration of city metabolisms, which is mostly linear. Cities depend on their hinterlands for the majority of materials which are often used inefficiently. The city as an ecosystem metaphor is about a circular metabolism resembles a natural ecosystem with efficient consumption, recycling and reuse of resource flows. The city depends less from the hinterland and other cities.

Question 8

What is the difference between the temporal focus and the spatial focus?

Answer 8

The temporal focus focuses on what is available in the city today and in the future while the spatial focus focuses on where it is available and how/what you need to get there.

Question 9

What are abiotic resources?

Answer 9

Abiotic resources can be divided in 2 categories, long term geological cycles and short term cycles. Ores that contain minerals, gravel, stones etc are long term geological cycle abiotic resources. Short term are resources like water and gases from the atmosphere.

Question 10

What are biotic resources?

Answer 10

Biotic resources also can be divided within 2 categories: long term and short term cycles. Long term category contains: decayed plants and animals in the form of coal, petrol and gas. Short term cycles contain plants and animals like wood and fish.

Question 11

A. What are 3 of the immediate and 3 of the underlying drivers of anthropogenic GHG emissions?
B. Name 3 policies/measures that help to reduce the drivers.

Answer 11

A. immediate drivers: population, GDP per capita, Energy intensity and GHG intensity.
Underlying drivers: behaviour, trade, resource availability, governance, technology, urbanisation, industrialisation, infrastructure, development.
B. awareness creation, economic incentive, planning, research and development, information provision, direct regulation, non climate policies.

Question 12

The EU has made policies to become more circular. What are the 3 main points to become more circular?

Answer 12

Smarter product use and manufacture, Extend lifespan of product and its parts, and useful application of materials.

Question 13

What are critical raw materials and why are they important?

Answer 13

Raw materials which are economically and strategically important to an economy, but have a high-risk associated with their supply according to the EU. Sometimes they are scarce, sometimes the supply comes mainly from one country making it not a reliable supply chain.

Question 14

What are some social problems that come with the excavation of some specific minerals? (hint: Congo mines)

Answer 14

Workers that work in mines to extract these materials often have dangerous and unhealthy working conditions while getting low payments.

Question 15

What are RREs (rare earth elements)?

Answer 15

Set of seventeen chemical elements in the periodic table that are labelled rare.

Question 16

What is life cycle assessment and what is it used for?

Answer 16

Life cycle assessment is a cradle-to-grave or cradle-to-cradle analysis technique to assess environmental impacts associated with all the stages of a product’s life, which is from raw material extraction through materials processing, manufacture, distribution, and use.

Question 17

Name the 4 steps of life cycle assessment.

Answer 17

1. Goals and scope definition: what is the function and what is required from the economy?
2. Inventory analysis: What is required (from the environment)?
3. Impact assessment: what are the consequences?
4. Interpretation: how do we interpret these results and consequences?
   Example: 1. For coffee and tea, caffeine is the function, it keeps you awake. Lets say coffee has twice the amount of caffeine as tea. 2. What are inputs like energy and water and what are the outputs like waste, emissions etc. 3. Which areas and categories are impacted and which do we have to protect? Climate change, acidification, ozone layer depletion. For coffee and tea production, which parts of the production to final product process emits the most CO2 emissions? 4. For coffee, how much coffee does the average dutch person consume and how much CO2 does he/she emit by doing that.

Question 18

What is the social life cycle assessment?

Answer 18

Social life cycle assessment (SLCA) provides a holistic, systemic, and rigorous tool to understand social issues that may arise in the value chains of products and services sustaining human life today. Questions like what is required (from society) are relevant. Labour, investments and training are inputs that are required and that will result in wages, education and economic development. But we need guidelines to make sure people don’t work too much and are well paid for their labour.

Question 19

What are 4 differences between complicated and complex?

Answer 19

1. Practically speaking, the main difference between complicated and complex systems is that with complicated systems, one can usually predict outcomes by knowing the starting conditions. In a complex system, the same starting conditions can produce different outcomes, depending on the interactions of the elements in the system.
2. Complicated problems originate from causes that can be individually distinguished. Complex problems and systems result from networks of multiple interacting causes that cannot be individually distinguished, therefore they must be addressed as entire systems.
3. Complex systems cannot turn into complicated ones by collecting more data.
4. For complicated systems, linear cause-and-effect pathways allow us to identify individual causes for observed effects. For complex systems there are no clearly distinguishable cause and effect pathways, because we are dealing with patterns that are created from networks and multiple interacting causes.
5. For complicated systems does every output has a proportionate input. While for complex systems outputs are not proportional or linearly related to inputs, this is because small changes in one part can cause sudden changes in outputs in other parts.
6. For complicated systems we can decompose the system into its structural parts and then fully understand the functional relationships between these parts. For complex systems, these parts are richly interrelated and they can perform the same function. We can never understand complex parts fully because they change each other in unexpected ways.
7. Complicated systems can be fully known and modelled, while models of the complex systems only can be the system itself.
8. Complicated systems need an external force to change them while complex systems are adaptive and able to learn. To change or influence complex systems you have to learn to ‘dance’ with them.

Question 20

A. What is the difference between scenarios and forecasts?
B. What are 3 types of scenarios?

Answer 20

A. A forecast has only one path leading from the present to the future. Scenarios are multiple paths leading to multiple possible futures.
B. 1. Exploratory; start from past and present trends and lead to likely futures.
2. Anticipatory or normative; describe the desired future or feared future.
3. Predictive; describe the most probable future.

Question 21

Describe the four quadrant matrix approach to scenarios.

Answer 21

You make a cross with two arrows, dividing the space in 4 quadrants. The arrows point to two critical uncertainties. The 4 quadrants are the 4 scenarios. One axis (arrow) goes from stable to fluctuating for example and the other goes from high to low for example. Now we have 4 possible scenarios for these uncertainties. We can describe these 4 scenarios.

Question 22

What are benefits of bringing a complex phenomenon into a controlled urban environment?

Answer 22

If we bring a complex phenomenon into a controlled urban environment we can reduce it to a smaller scale so it is manageable and the phenomenon can be manipulated and observed. Another benefit of experiments like these are that they can influence a wider system.

Question 23

How can the global south contribute to making cities more sustainable?

Answer 23

Much of the challenges of urbanisation are found in the global south, so there are also a lot of opportunities and room for innovation. The strong social supporting networks, informal economies and resilience built around strong family ties and community interactions that can be found there are the base for experimentation and innovation.

Question 24

Explain the 3 level approaches to transition to a more sustainable city.

Answer 24

3 levels are landscape (macro), regime (meso) and niche (micro).
Macro is the broader pressure for transition. This focuses on political cultures, economic growth, macroeconomic trends, land use and utility infrastructure.
Meso focuses on how technologies and technological functions coevolve with social functions and social interests.
Micro operates at a small (micro) level and is one of the “protected” spaces. Usually encompassing small networks of actors learning about new and novel technologies and their uses.