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Role of Sustainable Urban Metabolism in Urban Planning

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Urban Metabolism and Climate Change

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Abstract

The term “metabolism” refers to the fundamental process whereby living organisms maintain a constant exchange of products and materials to their surroundings in order to sustain their growth and development. Likewise, urban metabolism is considered as a multidisciplinary field for understanding various aspects of cities. In-depth understanding of various dimensions of urban metabolism shows strong interlinkages with the sustainability of a city. Urban metabolism based on the judicious resource utilisation, self-sufficiency, and resilience of a city provide a road map for the sustainable urban planning. It is proposed that urban metabolism is measured as part of the planning practises, where various metabolic elements like resources (inputs), processes (metabolism of resources), wastes/emissions (outputs), and their fate and transport (linear and/or circular) be evaluated at different scales. The estimation of these components needs to be specific and balance the complexity and practicability of the planning practises. Land, a major component of urban planning, plays a crucial role in supporting the metabolic structure of a city. This chapter investigates academic scope of urban metabolism, which includes its relationship with city sustainability and urban planning. Scopus-based literature survey is performed to observe the global research scenario on urban metabolism and urban planning. The findings revealed that the topic is well-explored and has been given ample attention by the scientific community in the developed nations, however, there is a paucity of information from the developing and other nations. The limitations are also examined in light of urban sustainability knowledge in order to identify research gaps and requirements within the field of urban metabolism. Overall, appropriate urban planning, particularly in the developing economies, based on the principles of urban metabolism can be a sustainable approach for reducing the carbon footprints of cities and mitigating climate change in the coming decades.

Mushtaq Ahmad Dar and Riya Raina contributed equally.

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Acknowledgements

MAD is thankful to Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR), New Delhi, India for providing financial assistance as Senior Research Fellowship. RS gratefully acknowledges the financial support from DST-SERB, New Delhi, India as National Post-Doctoral Fellowship Scheme (Grant number: PDF/2020/001607).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Botany, Panjab University, Chandigarh, 160014, India

    Mushtaq Ahmad Dar, Rishikesh Singh, Shalinder Kaur & Daizy R. Batish

  2. Department of Environment Studies, Panjab University, Chandigarh, 160014, India

    Riya Raina & Harminder Pal Singh

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  1. Mushtaq Ahmad Dar
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  2. Riya Raina
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  3. Rishikesh Singh
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  4. Shalinder Kaur
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Correspondence to Daizy R. Batish .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Environmental Studies, Delhi College of Arts and Commerce, University of Delhi, New Delhi, India

    Rahul Bhadouria

  2. Department of Botany, Deen Dayal Upadhyaya College, University of Delhi, New Delhi, India

    Sachchidanand Tripathi

  3. Department of Environmental Studies, PGDAV College, University of Delhi, New Delhi, India

    Pardeep Singh

  4. School of Environmental Sciences, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, India

    P. K. Joshi

  5. Department of Botany, Panjab University, Chandigarh, India

    Rishikesh Singh

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Dar, M.A., Raina, R., Singh, R., Kaur, S., Singh, H.P., Batish, D.R. (2023). Role of Sustainable Urban Metabolism in Urban Planning. In: Bhadouria, R., Tripathi, S., Singh, P., Joshi, P.K., Singh, R. (eds) Urban Metabolism and Climate Change . Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-29422-8_8

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