Abstract
Background: The various elements of infrastructure in cities and their systems of governance—for transport, buildings, solid waste management, sewerage and wastewater treatment, and so on—may be re-worked such that cities may become forces for good (CFG, for short) in the environment. The chapter is a study in the lessons learned from implementing and pursuing research into how a systems approach can be employed to meet the challenges of achieving CFGs. Methodology: Four case studies in CFG are presented within the framework of the methods and computational models of Systems Dynamics (SD): transport infrastructure for the Kanyakumari city-region in India, resource recovery from wastewater infrastructure in the city of Harare, Zimbabwe, environmental injustice in the handling of solid municipal wastes in Kinshasa, Democratic Republic of Congo, and improving the use of energy in university campus buildings in Bloemfontein, South Africa. Application/Relevance to systems analysis: The chapter presents the successes and the difficulties of undertaking Applied Systems Analysis (ASA) in demanding urban contexts. Policy and practice implications: Policy for CFG derived from ASA often appears to be a matter of determining better technological innovations and engineering interventions in the infrastructure of cities, while practice often demands that infrastructure improvements follow from social and institutional improvements. Conclusion: The first of three conclusions is that combining the rigorous, logical, non-quantitative, more discursive and more incisive style of thinking derived from the humanities, particularly, social anthropology, with better computational modelling will yield better outcomes for ASA. Secondly, in a global context, cities—as opposed to nation-states—are increasingly becoming the locations and scale at which today’s environmental, economic, and social “problems” might best be “solved”. Third, and last, we conclude that South Africa, while it may not have a long tradition of problem-solving according to ASA, has for us emphasised (through our experience of the South African YSSPs) the limitations of an historical over-reliance on hard, quantitative methods of systems analysis.
The original version of this chapter was revised: Corresponding and chapter author names have been corrected and a deleted term has been included. The erratum to this chapter is available at https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-71486-8_18
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- 1.
There is also, or alternatively, a book in the offing (it is being prepared by one of us; MBB). It addresses this cross-disciplinary facet of ASA, especially in respect of developing the pan-systems concepts of resilience, learning, and adaptation. And our grasp of those concepts—hence the significance of this footnote—owes a very great deal to an avenue of thinking, analysis, and research opened up some four decades ago, in the early, formative years of IIASA. This was on the occasion of publication of the book Adaptive Environmental Assessment and Management (Holling 1978), with its first cross-disciplinary steps, from ecology (Nature) to institutional behaviour (Man). Further substantial steps—great strides, one might better say—were taken subsequently in Holling (1986).
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Using the word “environment” in its more familiar sense, i.e., not in the technical sense of “everything surrounding the defined system”.
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But let not that convention slip by unnoticed: the “R” for Removal in BNR. There are limits to its desirability; and these limits should become much more prominent in our thinking and problem-solving.
- 4.
The International Water Association (IWA) once had a Specialist Technical Group (SG) titled “Nutrient Removal”. It is now called “Nutrient Removal and Recovery” and comes under a new umbrella initiative on “Resource Recovery” together with a second SG on “Resources Oriented Sanitation”. A state-of-the-art compendium on resource recovery from water has now been published as a result of this new initiative (Holmgren et al. 2016).
- 5.
See “First view of Europe’s highest roof garden — an oasis on top of the Walkie Talkie tower”; Evening Standard, posted 6 June, 2013, www.standard.co.uk.
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Beck, M.B. et al. (2018). Cities as Forces for Good in the Environment: A Systems Approach. In: Mensah, P., Katerere, D., Hachigonta, S., Roodt, A. (eds) Systems Analysis Approach for Complex Global Challenges. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-71486-8_2
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