The liveability of cities worldwide is under threat by the predicted increase in intensity and frequency of heatwaves and the absence of a clear spatial overview of where action to address this. Heat stress impairs vital urban functions (Böcker and Thorsson 2014), hits the local economy (Evers et al. 2020), and brings risks for citizens’ health (Ebi et al. 2021). The ongoing densification of cities may escalate the negative consequences of heat, while rising climate adaptation ambitions require new pathways to (re)design public places for a warmer climate. Currently, policy makers and urban planners rely on remote sensing and modelling to identify potential heat stress locations, but thermal comfort models alone fail to consider socio-environmental vulnerabilities and are often not applicable in different countries (Elnabawi and Hamza 2020).In the Cool Towns Interreg project, researchers collaborated with municipalities and regions to model urban heat stress in nine North-Western European cities, to find vulnerabilities and to measure on the ground (see Spanjar et al. 2020 for methodology) the thermal comfort of residents and the effectiveness of implemented nature-based solutions. Using the Physiological Equivalent Temperature (PET) index, several meteorological scenarios were developed to show the urban areas under threat. The PET maps are complemented by heat vulnerability maps showing key social and environmental indicators. Coupled with local urban planning agendas, the maps allowed partner cities to prioritize neighbourhoods for further investigation. To this end, community amenities and slow traffic routes were mapped on top of the PET maps to identify potential focus areas.A comparative analysis of the collated maps indicates certain spatial typologies, where vital urban activities are often influenced by heat stress, such as shopping areas, mobility hubs, principal bicycle and pedestrian routes. This project has resulted in the development of a multi-level Thermal Comfort Assessment (TCA), highlighting locations where vulnerable user groups are exposed to high temperatures. Standardized for European cities, it is a powerful tool for policy makers and urban planners to strategically identify heat stress risks and prioritize locations for adapting to a changing climate using the appropriate nature-based solutions.
MULTIFILE
Efforts to reduce negative externalities of urban logistics vehicle movements often concentrate on two aspects; organizing logistics more efficiently in order to reduce the number of incoming vehicles in urban areas and reducing the emissions of vehicles within urban areas. The stopping practices are an underexposed area, in research and spatial planning. Even if movements into an area are organized more efficiently and vehicles might be zero emission, at the end of the day, logistics vehicles need to stop close to their destination to deliver goods or perform services. Herewith those vehicles put a claim upon – increasingly scarce – urban space with possible subsequential negative effects for both urban residents and drivers. This research develops a typology for urban stopping practices of logistics vehicles, including temporal and spatial aspects. Based on a survey with drivers, and interviews with experts and policy makers, the potential of different interventions to reduce the negative externalities of stopping practices is assessed. Despite the impact on policy goals, urban logistics stopping receives little attention from public stakeholders and is largely left to self-organization. Digitization and (bottomup) enforcement are interesting interventions, while drivers also indicate that more space allocated to logistics functions is inevitable. The best mix of interventions, including allocation of locations and enforcement, would both be high and low technology. Cities can benefit from a more desired situation by looking into physical interventions before digital interventions are ready for deployment.
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To realize a more sustainable city logistics system the focus should go beyond reducing emissions only. Next to zero emission vehicles, reduction of urban logistics trips is required in light of several urban, environmental and economic challenges. This contribution focuses on the role of hubs and decoupling points, where logistics flows to and from a city are decoupled from the flows in a city, to optimize the city logistics. For six distinctive hubs or decoupling point concepts, we examine the potential under current market and legal conditions. By decomposing city logistics in subsegments and urban logistics trip structures, we estimate the realistic trip reduction potential of decouple points in the current city logistics conditions.
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