%0 Book %A National Research Council %E Brose, Dominic A. %T Pathways to Urban Sustainability: Perspective from Portland and the Pacific Northwest: Summary of a Workshop %@ 978-0-309-30081-0 %D 2014 %U https://nap.nationalacademies.org/catalog/18704/pathways-to-urban-sustainability-perspective-from-portland-and-the-pacific %> https://nap.nationalacademies.org/catalog/18704/pathways-to-urban-sustainability-perspective-from-portland-and-the-pacific %I The National Academies Press %C Washington, DC %G English %K Environment and Environmental Studies %K Policy for Science and Technology %P 88 %X Pathways to Urban Sustainability: Perspective from Portland and the Pacific Northwest is the summary of a workshop convened by the National Research Council's Science and Technology for Sustainability Program in May 2013 to examine issues relating to sustainability and human-environment interactions in the Portland metropolitan region. Topics addressed included the role of land-use restrictions on development, transportation innovations, and economic and social challenges. The speakers at the workshop used examples from Portland and the greater Pacific Northwest region to explore critical questions in finding pathways to urban sustainability. This was the third and final of a series of three place-based urban sustainability workshops - the other two workshops focused on Atlanta, Georgia and Houston, Texas. These public workshops gathered local, state, and federal officials, academics, and key stakeholders to examine how challenges due to continued growth in the regions can be addressed within the context of sustainability. For more than 40 years, the Portland Metropolitan Region has been a national leader in urban policies and investments intended to revitalize the central city and adjacent neighborhoods, preserve the environment, improve equity, and make the city more economically competitive and livable. Portland has been both emulated as path breaking and discounted as overly idiosyncratic. Among the elements contributing to Portland's success have been strong public-private partnerships, a culture of planning, and a willingness to implement diverse ideas generated by federal, state, and local agencies, academics, and the private sector. Regionally, Portland benefits from its location in the middle of the progressive Cascadia Corridor, stretching from Vancouver, British Columbia, to San Francisco, California. This report uses examples from Portland and the Northwest U.S./S.W. Canada region to explore critical questions about the future of urban sustainability. The report provides background about Portland and Cascadia, emphasizing policy innovations and lessons that are potentially transferable elsewhere; focuses on ways to leverage local success through partnerships with state and federal agencies, companies, and nongovernment organizations; examines academic and corporate scientific and engineering research that could help cities to become more sustainable; and addresses the challenging question of how resource-constrained cities can become agents for achieving broader societal goals not directly linked to their operational mandates, such as climate change mitigation, energy independence, and improvement in human health, particularly in low-income communities. %0 Book %A National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine %T Pathways to Urban Sustainability: Challenges and Opportunities for the United States %@ 978-0-309-44453-8 %D 2016 %U https://nap.nationalacademies.org/catalog/23551/pathways-to-urban-sustainability-challenges-and-opportunities-for-the-united %> https://nap.nationalacademies.org/catalog/23551/pathways-to-urban-sustainability-challenges-and-opportunities-for-the-united %I The National Academies Press %C Washington, DC %G English %K Environment and Environmental Studies %P 192 %X Cities have experienced an unprecedented rate of growth in the last decade. More than half the world’s population lives in urban areas, with the U.S. percentage at 80 percent. Cities have captured more than 80 percent of the globe’s economic activity and offered social mobility and economic prosperity to millions by clustering creative, innovative, and educated individuals and organizations. Clustering populations, however, can compound both positive and negative conditions, with many modern urban areas experiencing growing inequality, debility, and environmental degradation. The spread and continued growth of urban areas presents a number of concerns for a sustainable future, particularly if cities cannot adequately address the rise of poverty, hunger, resource consumption, and biodiversity loss in their borders. Intended as a comparative illustration of the types of urban sustainability pathways and subsequent lessons learned existing in urban areas, this study examines specific examples that cut across geographies and scales and that feature a range of urban sustainability challenges and opportunities for collaborative learning across metropolitan regions. It focuses on nine cities across the United States and Canada (Los Angeles, CA, New York City, NY, Philadelphia, PA, Pittsburgh, PA, Grand Rapids, MI, Flint, MI, Cedar Rapids, IA, Chattanooga, TN, and Vancouver, Canada), chosen to represent a variety of metropolitan regions, with consideration given to city size, proximity to coastal and other waterways, susceptibility to hazards, primary industry, and several other factors. %0 Book %A Institute of Medicine %T Healthy, Resilient, and Sustainable Communities After Disasters: Strategies, Opportunities, and Planning for Recovery %@ 978-0-309-31619-4 %D 2015 %U https://nap.nationalacademies.org/catalog/18996/healthy-resilient-and-sustainable-communities-after-disasters-strategies-opportunities-and %> https://nap.nationalacademies.org/catalog/18996/healthy-resilient-and-sustainable-communities-after-disasters-strategies-opportunities-and %I The National Academies Press %C Washington, DC %G English %K Health and Medicine %K Conflict and Security Issues %P 504 %X In the devastation that follows a major disaster, there is a need for multiple sectors to unite and devote new resources to support the rebuilding of infrastructure, the provision of health and social services, the restoration of care delivery systems, and other critical recovery needs. In some cases, billions of dollars from public, private and charitable sources are invested to help communities recover. National rhetoric often characterizes these efforts as a "return to normal." But for many American communities, pre-disaster conditions are far from optimal. Large segments of the U.S. population suffer from preventable health problems, experience inequitable access to services, and rely on overburdened health systems. A return to pre-event conditions in such cases may be short-sighted given the high costs - both economic and social - of poor health. Instead, it is important to understand that the disaster recovery process offers a series of unique and valuable opportunities to improve on the status quo. Capitalizing on these opportunities can advance the long-term health, resilience, and sustainability of communities - thereby better preparing them for future challenges. Healthy, Resilient, and Sustainable Communities After Disasters identifies and recommends recovery practices and novel programs most likely to impact overall community public health and contribute to resiliency for future incidents. This book makes the case that disaster recovery should be guided by a healthy community vision, where health considerations are integrated into all aspects of recovery planning before and after a disaster, and funding streams are leveraged in a coordinated manner and applied to health improvement priorities in order to meet human recovery needs and create healthy built and natural environments. The conceptual framework presented in Healthy, Resilient, and Sustainable Communities After Disasters lays the groundwork to achieve this goal and provides operational guidance for multiple sectors involved in community planning and disaster recovery. Healthy, Resilient, and Sustainable Communities After Disasters calls for actions at multiple levels to facilitate recovery strategies that optimize community health. With a shared healthy community vision, strategic planning that prioritizes health, and coordinated implementation, disaster recovery can result in a communities that are healthier, more livable places for current and future generations to grow and thrive - communities that are better prepared for future adversities. %0 Book %A National Research Council %T Urban Stormwater Management in the United States %@ 978-0-309-12539-0 %D 2009 %U https://nap.nationalacademies.org/catalog/12465/urban-stormwater-management-in-the-united-states %> https://nap.nationalacademies.org/catalog/12465/urban-stormwater-management-in-the-united-states %I The National Academies Press %C Washington, DC %G English %K Environment and Environmental Studies %P 610 %X The rapid conversion of land to urban and suburban areas has profoundly altered how water flows during and following storm events, putting higher volumes of water and more pollutants into the nation's rivers, lakes, and estuaries. These changes have degraded water quality and habitat in virtually every urban stream system. The Clean Water Act regulatory framework for addressing sewage and industrial wastes is not well suited to the more difficult problem of stormwater discharges. This book calls for an entirely new permitting structure that would put authority and accountability for stormwater discharges at the municipal level. A number of additional actions, such as conserving natural areas, reducing hard surface cover (e.g., roads and parking lots), and retrofitting urban areas with features that hold and treat stormwater, are recommended. %0 Book %A National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine %E Weinstein, James N. %E Geller, Amy %E Negussie, Yamrot %E Baciu, Alina %T Communities in Action: Pathways to Health Equity %@ 978-0-309-45296-0 %D 2017 %U https://nap.nationalacademies.org/catalog/24624/communities-in-action-pathways-to-health-equity %> https://nap.nationalacademies.org/catalog/24624/communities-in-action-pathways-to-health-equity %I The National Academies Press %C Washington, DC %G English %K Health and Medicine %P 582 %X In the United States, some populations suffer from far greater disparities in health than others. Those disparities are caused not only by fundamental differences in health status across segments of the population, but also because of inequities in factors that impact health status, so-called determinants of health. Only part of an individual's health status depends on his or her behavior and choice; community-wide problems like poverty, unemployment, poor education, inadequate housing, poor public transportation, interpersonal violence, and decaying neighborhoods also contribute to health inequities, as well as the historic and ongoing interplay of structures, policies, and norms that shape lives. When these factors are not optimal in a community, it does not mean they are intractable: such inequities can be mitigated by social policies that can shape health in powerful ways. Communities in Action: Pathways to Health Equity seeks to delineate the causes of and the solutions to health inequities in the United States. This report focuses on what communities can do to promote health equity, what actions are needed by the many and varied stakeholders that are part of communities or support them, as well as the root causes and structural barriers that need to be overcome.