Report on Urban Metabolism of London

This whole study is responsible of discussing the different issues related to the urban metabolism and their applications for the stability of environment. An urban metabolism can be considered as an influx of different materials as well as energy sources, outflows of the emissions and waste along with the preservation of different materials as a stock in the built environment and the infrastructure. This study in summarizing the available studies on the complete metabolism of different cities along with the examples of consumption accounts for the cities such as UK or another. All of the material and energy flows totally depends on the topography and the structure of a city, quality of the building and its infrastructure along with the social behavior and structure of the inhabitants. Here is message which states that cities are one of the multifaceted systems whose efficiency, quality and flexibility cannot be talked independently as a financial issue.

London of Urban Metabolism of London

London is the capital of England which have a population of almost 9 million. People living their suffered a lot because of the weather conditions, still they are facing but the condition is way better than the previous times. Many people in London are still facing a host of different challenges. Toxicity in the air, noise pollution, threats the green spaces and many kind of opposing outcomes of the change in climate are also seen by the people still. All of these causes huge hazards to the health and they need to be controlled as soon as possible to make sure people of London don’t face any major problem is future times.

In all of the most detailed studies on UK, Study of urban resource consumption is the best one so far. The goals of the study are:

Quantification of the materials and energy which are consumed by London and Londoners.

Calculation of the environmental footprint of the Londoners.

Comparison of the ecological footprints of the citizens of London with different other regions.

Quantification of the ecological stability of a range of different development areas.

To measure the quality as well as availability of the data essential to transport such type of the examination and in different cases to make the references to recover the data necessities for the resource flow and analysis of ecological footprint.

Image below shows the Ecological footprint of Londoners through the parts presenting actual size and UK

 Annual per capita resource consumption: 20.3 MWh of the energy, 5.5 tons of carbon dioxide emission, 6.7 tons of the material consumed out of which 57% is the material used for construction, 118 thousand liters of the water being consumed out of which 28% is the leakage one.

  Almost 26 million tons of the waste generated, 58% from the construction sector while 13% from the center of domestic.

 For the sustainability of long term, it was being estimated that almost reduction of 35% in EF will be required by the year 2020, and almost 80% of the reduction by the year 2050.

Calculating and development of urban metabolism of Urban Metabolism of London

Analysis of Urban metabolism is responsible for all the different methods which happens in any of the city, no matter whether they are observed economically, physically or socially (Kennedy et al. 2007). Purpose of doing this is about the industrial ecology as compared to the political ecology among which urban metabolism is being studied in the specific conditions of the inflows of different materials along with the energy resources, outflows of the waste and the methods for their retention as a standard in the built environment and its organization.

Number of different details for studying the urban metabolism among which the very first one is wastes, energy, industrial production and different other flows which are being known in the urban metabolism are required while the calculation of greenhouse gas inventories of the different cities. While the second measure of the competence of the reserve use has been established in the different cities based on the urban metabolism studies. (Oswald & Baccini, 2003)

Third one is the planning related to urban and its design context, urban metabolism has already been used a source of framework for the undertaking of design which is maintainable or low carbon districts in the other cities. Fourth one is that urban consumers as well as urban retailers can make way more informed purchasing decisions if they have all the basic knowledge of the impacts of their different choices (Wiedmann 2012). Therefore, urban metabolism is considered to be the interdisciplinary attempt and it has already been undertaken by many of the urban engineers, planners natural ecologists, scientists among many different others.

There is an additional aspect on the urban metabolism and is given by Ferrão & Fernández (2013) and Baccini and Brunner (2012). Different trials related to the material flows and the reduction in energy flows in different cities and being discussed by the Steinberger and Weisz in a year 2010 while the Keirstead and Calderon in 2012 highlights the gap between policy tools and accounting frameworks. Different kind of lose matches can also be made among the metabolism of a city and metabolism of an ecosystem or an organism. There is no doubt in it that cities and ecosystems both of them are the type of compound systems that completely depends on the external environment for the inputs of different resources as well as accumulation of the wastes, along with this creates a ordered structure based on the expense of an increasing disorder. For example, the environment disruption outside the particular boundaries. (Golubiewski, 2012)

Stocks and flows of Urban Metabolism of London

Careful consideration is required to the practical amount as well as types of the stock along with the flow data that is available and required for the study of an urban metabolism. As it is clear enough that there are different kind of flows in the urban metabolism and specific attention needs to be given for monitoring stock as well. Inflow of the water, food, energy and all of the basic materials like cement and steel they also carries much importance due to a connection with variety of the pressing environmental concerns starting from the change in climate towards the pressure to the global biodiversity. There are many different kind of critical shocks within the urban metabolism which is responsible for underlying the sustainability of different cities like, water which is being stored in the urban aquifers, different kind of toxic materials which are being bound in the building stock and different kind of nutrients which are dumped in the urban waste (Kennedy et al. 2007).

Waste and Management of Urban Metabolism of London

In previous times, there was not this much amount of waste as it is seen now a days and if people had waste they also had proper systems of disposing them but now there is no such efforts being seen sue to which not only environment is becoming populated but diseases are also taking place and their cure is not even available.

Waste is being released from different factories, animals, houses and what not but to make sure that the environment is safe enough or it does not causes any be defect on the environment different things are required to be done. Very first thing which should be kept in mind that make sure never leave the waste material unattended, different mechanisms should be available to recycle them or make them useful through any kind of technique. Another thing is that waste material can also be dumped into the ground to make sure it doesn’t cause any bad effect on the people living in a society.

Water of Urban Metabolism of London

Two different points have been known, first one is that Londoners used to source their fresh water from different kind of wells, springs and Thames. With the passage of time, as city started to grow these sources started becoming polluted and many different private companies started competing for the providing of fresh water to the common people living in London (Thames Water 2013). Every human being on this earth needs to drink fresh water and this can only be done if the amount of pollution is being reduced to some extent.

Transport of Urban Metabolism of London

At the beginning, people didn’t have their own conveyance. They used to travel with bus or train but now with the passage of time we have seen that every person owns their own car and they travel on it no matter whether they have to visit the nearby market or another city. Due to the overuse of these cars, environment has become so much polluted and it has become difficult for everyone to breathe.

Table shows the amounts of different components of Urban Metabolism of London

 Recommendations of Urban Metabolism of London

1. There are many of the practical reasons for the analyzing of urban metabolism and then using it to develop up the different tools for strategic support of sustainable development at local as well as national scales. This urban metabolism is responsible for the providing of necessary data on the use of energy and it helps in letting people know that how energy should be consumed and it which certain amount they should consume it to make sure it doesn’t cause any negative impact on anything.

2.  Different techniques should be made to make sure that different water sources don’t get polluted enough as the environment gets polluted. Water needs to remain purified as we see according to different studies being done that there are many chances of the deficiency or shortage of water. Plus water is the need of every individual so this is their right to drink fresh water without paying to different companies.

3.  It is very important to take up a lifecycle perspective while assessing different environmental impacts on the different cities, or else the policies can also shift and there are possible chances to magnify the environmental burdens as compared to their reduction. One of the very comprehensive technique for assessing life cycle environmental effects is by the applying of input and output models. This has been used already to assess the urban scale direct and indirect water use throughout the whole UK.

4. Different changes for the future related to urban infrastructure will be very significant for the knowing of life’s quality as well as reduction in the environmental impacts. Quality of the life relies more as compared to the quality infrastructure than on the feasting of the luxury foods. There are many people whose lifestyle has been locked in already by the infrastructure systems so in case if they want to live happily chances are very less. Ratio of the stocks should be noticed carefully that what kind of stocks are coming in and for what specific reason or purpose. They should also be controlled to a certain limit.

Conclusion of Urban Metabolism of London

This whole work revolves around the urban metabolism of London. Different kind of energies are being used in the city and they need to be stopped as they are causing a high risk to the population of London. People themselves are using them without even thinking about their health along with the people who lives around them. They need to wake up and be aware of the coming consequences if not stopped on time.

References of Urban Metabolism of London

Kennedy, C.A., Cuddihy, J. & Engel Yan, J. (2007). The changing metabolism of cities”, Journal of Industrial Ecology. 11(2): 43- 59

Baccini, Peter, and Franz Oswald. "Designing the urban: Linking physiology and morphology." Handbook of transdisciplinary research. Springer, Dordrecht, 2008. 79-88.

Wiedmann, T. O. (2012). "Defining (Urban) Producer and Consumer Sinks." Journal of Industrial Ecology 16(3): 317-321.

Golubiewski, N. (2012). Is there a metabolism of an urban ecosystem? An ecological critique. Ambio 41(7): 751-64

Kennedy, C.A., Cuddihy, J. & Engel Yan, J. (2007). The changing metabolism of cities”, Journal of Industrial Ecology. 11(2): 43- 59.

Thames Water. (2013). Annual Performance Report 2012/13. London. Retrieved from

http://www.thameswater.co.uk/tw/common/downloads/aboutus-financial/annual-performancereport-2012-13.pdf.