PEMEX Urban Park is an urban regeneration project focused on the remediation and reclamation of PEMEX’s brownfield and the adjacent natural lagoon ‘Laguna La Escondida’ located in the city of Reynosa, Tamaulipas, Mexico. The 65-hectare brownfield is strategically located within the urban center, one of the causes of high levels of air and water pollutants in the city. Historically, the presence of the oil refinery generated dystopic neighbourhoods, some with no access to public spaces, others with inadequate conditions for any type of sustainable community engagement. The natural lagoon, the ‘Laguna La Escondida’, is a 152-hectare body of water, contaminated by toxic metals and chemicals produced by the refinery and the city’s uncontrolled rapid growth. Although contaminated, the lagoon is an essential resource for many local floras and migrating species of fauna. This study includes a thorough analysis of comparable precedents of industrial heritage sites, their associated values and strategies of transformation of polluted landscapes, demonstrating the needs of a broader urban-hydro-ecological approach, emerging from the desire to revive and reintegrate nature into the city. Site analysis and case studies also highlight the important role of culture, of the history embedded in the place, as well as the communities interlinked with the oil refinery. The project, implementing the transformation of PEMEX oil refinery into an urban park, will keep the refinery infrastructure untouched as a memory of the past, acting as a catalyst for eco-socio-cultural activities, providing the community with a place to reconnect as a civic society. The proposal enhances the inherent values of the site, such as history, culture and nature. While purification of water is the focus of this new urban-hydro-ecological proposal, the research suggests alternative remediation strategies that will reverse the damage without compromising future generations’ wellbeing. Phytoremediation and rhizo-filtration strategies are analysed as a technique to clean the toxins and heavy metals from the contaminated soil and water. The bioremediation of the lagoon would increase water-quality and reinstate the biodiversity. PEMEX Urban Park envisions an urban eco-hydrological future of the area and re-imagine it as a social condenser in response to capitalism as a form of urbanization.

The retrofit of Sustainable Drainage Systems (SuDS) has been applied successfully to properties to help mitigate future flooding and to deliver other benefits to properties, such as improvements in air and wa- ter quality, economic benefits and improved business reputation. However, the uptake of SuDS retrofit has been low due to a lack of understanding of the true costs and benefits and concerns about long-term maintenance. This study presents a cost-benefit analysis (CBA) of the monetary and non-monetary val- ues of SuDS retrofit in the context of an individual property, in this case, a leisure centre. A qualitative study was carried out comprising a series of interviews with stakeholders to the property, an analysis of documentary evidence and observations on the site. The findings demonstrate the importance of teamwork amongst the stakeholders during the decision-making process in helping to overcome many of the known challenges. The willingness to pay process is used to value the tangible and intangible benefits arising from the scheme. The installation would provide a net value to the client of well over £100,000 over a 10-year period versus the installation costs of £39,000 and the return on investment would be achieved in just 3 years. The findings highlight many of the apparent barriers that need to be overcome when installing retrofit schemes and clearly demonstrate the importance of the intangible benefits derived. It is recommended that these are given full consideration at the decision-making stage and in supporting the uptake of the retrofit of SuDS.

It is estimated that Japan’s population will peak in 2008 and decline thereafter. The urban structure is expected to change significantly due to this population decline. Kkanagawa prefecture in Japan, which is the target of this study, occupies a part of the Tokyo metropolitan area, and estimates have been published that show a decline in population from 2020. In response to such a future population decline, plans are being made for a compact city with the aim of optimizing the population distribution. On the other hand, Japan is a country with high potential for many natural disaster risks. In particular, the Tokyo metropolitan area has a high probability of earthquake occurrence and is an area with high earthquake risk. We analyse the change of earthquake risk due to the future population decline and the change of earthquake risk by inducing a compact city utilizing population decline. In Kanagawa prefecture in the metropolitan area of Japan, we analysed the forecast of the decrease in residential buildings due to population decline by structure, building age and building height. The seismic damage evaluation was carried out using the same three earthquake scenarios as the seismic damage assumed by Kanagawa prefecture. The number of damaged buildings in the future was calculated for each earthquake scenario. The earthquake scenarios are 1) tshin nanbu earthquake, 2) miura peninsula fault group earthquake and 3) kanto earthquake. Building damage is estimated every 10 years from 2020 to 2040 due to population decline in each scenario. Next, we analyse the change in earthquake risk caused by the compact city policy due to population decline and other disaster prevention measures. In this study, we examined the change of the earthquake risk by the compact city plan according to the future population decrease in Kanagawa prefecture.

Increasing urbanization and changing population demographics represent two golden opportunities to reimagine how humanity may influence the trajectory of the planet. Although there is substantial information about ‘the speed in which we are falling off the cliff’ with respect to the negative effects of climate change, biodiversity loss, and nitrogen and phosphorus overuse, much less is known about how humanity may transition to living within sustainable ecological and social boundaries. Transitioning to global sustainability requires a framework that integrates both fundamental ecological boundaries with social foundations that provide basic needs. One such framework is Raworth’s Doughnut Model, where the doughnut indicates a ‘sweet spot’: meeting basic social needs of all within sustainable boundaries for earth-systems processes. While there are a global and a few national level analyses of sustainability using this framework, there are no regional level assessments. We used Raworth’s Doughnut Model to assess regional level sustainability for a mid-sized metropolitan area in the Midwestern United States. We pooled county data from government and non-profit reports to quantify social foundation and ecological boundary sustainability across one of the most populous regions in the upper Midwestern United States. Our regional doughnut analysis revealed many ecological overshoots and social deficits, and identified key areas for urban, peri-urban and rural sustainability collaborations. Our analysis also revealed the importance of geospatial variation in ecological boundary overshoot and social deficits. In many ways, our study system of the upper Midwestern United States is representative of city sizes of the future and understanding these trajectories of ecological and social parameters may inform future global sustainable pathways.

The Amazon is facing challenges for solid waste management, due to its social, environmental and economic vulnerabilities. The main goal of this research was to investigate barriers of integrated municipal solid waste (MSW) management for the Amazon, applying the Delphi method. A consultation with waste management experts allowed raising the main alternatives recommended for that geographical region. In addition, in loco surveys evaluated the MSW management of three cities from Southwest Brazilian Amazon (SWBRAM): Humaitá and Manicoré, in the state of Amazonas (AM), and Ariquemes, In the state of Rondônia (RO), Brazil. A total of 35 experts responded to the consultation, and there was unanimity that the prevention of solid waste generation should be encouraged in the Amazon. There was a consensus on the treatment of MSW in the Amazon: composting of organic waste (88%) and recycling of dry waste (86%), in addition to the disposal of MSW in landfills (83%). The municipalities of Humaitá and Manicoré collect and dispose MSW in dumps. However, in Manicoré, there is a Recyclable Material Collectors Cooperative that diverts about 3.0 t month-1 of recyclable waste from the dump. Ariquemes disposes its MSW in the only sanitary landfill of SWBRAM, which receives about 135 t day-1 of the MSW generated in the 14 municipalities that form an Inter-municipal Consortium. The main challenges raised for the MSW management in the Amazon were as follows: investments in preventing MSW generation; supporting the creation of Cooperatives and the social inclusion of waste collectors; improving and integrating the river and road modals; creating conditions for the commerce of materials in Manaus recycling market; and supporting the creation of Inter-municipal Consortium for landfill construction and operation.

In modern society, the analysis of human potential includes the assessment or conditional accounting of its intellectual stock and future opportunities. The problem of preserving, developing and realizing human potential is the subject of increased public attention. It is necessary to choose a new development strategy, an innovative and promising path based on the development of new technologies, where the decisive role of the intellectual forces of society. The education system is a ‘forge’ of human potential, a kind of source of unlimited resources of intelligence, thanks to which it becomes possible to form fundamentally new ecocentric values in the developing world. Awareness of the unity and balance of socio-ecological-economic interests, which are the basis of the life of mankind, led to a fundamental idea about the transition of world-management thought to a new way of making safe environmental and economic strategic decisions and the rejection of the old, extensive path that has not justified itself. Maintaining balance in the ecological and economic systems of the intensively developing techno-sphere is unacceptable without a person’s adequate understanding of the ongoing changes associated with his continuous production and economic activities. The formulated educational, ecological and economic paradigm creates at the same time a fundamental basis for the formation of the orientation of the student’s personality, capable of realizing and self-realization of his capabilities in the field of ecology and economics, socially stable and easily adaptable, capable of developing and changing his own strategy in the transforming circumstances of life. In light of the goals and objectives of the integrated environmental and economic education, it is necessary to revise generally accepted ideas about the causes of the degradation of the planet’s ecosystem and the slowdown in global economic growth, which are not so much technological progress as the person himself, his personal qualities and personality orientation, the formation of which depends on the field of education. The developed principles of integrated environmental and economic education are considered by us as an effective tool for the training of highly qualified specialists who possess the entire set of professional knowledge and value orientations that correspond to the realities of the current unstable environmental and economic state of social development. The content of ecological and economic education serves as a factor of integration of natural science and humanitarian paradigms, and the core of this integration is ecological and economic values, the orientation of which determines the appropriate human behavior.

Climate change effect on water quality performance of lakes, rivers and streams is a significant concern for watershed planning and management. Climate change characteristics may potentially increase the likelihood that waterbodies will fail to meet established water quality standards, often obligating watershed managers to undertake expensive monitoring and load allocation studies for possible remedies against such impairment. One such load allocation study involves the implementation of water quality trading (WQt), which often is proposed as a mechanism for improving surface water quality goals under a socially and economically feasible manner. However, while future growth and land use change is incorporated through a margin of safety, WQt markets do not typically incorporate the characteristics of climate change that have been suggested to exhibit strong linkages against achieving the desired levels of water quality benefit. Consequently, this modelling study evaluates the characteristics of climate change upon the levels of water quality benefit along a river system subject to distinct load removal exercises: a) removal upon point sources only and b) removal based on a point–nonpoint source trad- ing mechanism under a theoretical WQt program. this study applies such assessments upon the load allocation exercises through carbonaceous biochemical oxygen demand reduction for addressing a recognized dissolved oxygen problem along the Jordan river in Utah, conducting such analyses through selected climate change projections described by the representative concentration pathways. For achieving such tasks, separate simulations are conducted through the Water Quality Assessment simulation program, evaluating the performance of such trading mechanisms under observed meteorological data against modelled climate data through selected representative concentration pathway projections under a historical period from Water year 2007 to 2009. This exercise assesses the performance of such load allocation studies subject to climatic characteristics toward suggesting linkages among climate change, water quality benefit and the effectiveness of a theoretical WQt mechanism.