Next-Generation Cities: An Encyclopedia

Cities are our future and increasingly determine global resource use. Growing urbanization presents some of the most significant opportunities and challenges of our time. Today, cities suffer from severe congestion, public space is lost to car traffic and parking, and biocapacity is overspent by consumption levels and urban growth. The climate crisis highlights the need for urban policies that provide a holistic framework for sustainability, including renewable energies, highly efficient buildings, sustainable industrial and urban infrastructure and transportation.

To provide affordable, accessible and inclusive housing for everybody, we need to put society’s benefit before short-term profit thinking. The question is: Will we succeed in transforming cities defined by cars and reliant on high energy and resource consumption into genuinely environmentally friendly, livable, and participative urban spaces?

Next-Generation Cities: An Encyclopedia is a curated collection of expert papers and represents the backbone of the work of the Next-Generation Cities Institute at Concordia University in Montréal, Canada. In an interdisciplinary framework, it reflects the collaborative approach necessary to solve complex urban issues. A new model of city building brings together the best practices of many professions and interest groups. The Encyclopedia compiles public and private sector experts, professors, and graduate student contributions in four volumes. It considers the different perspectives, objectives, methodologies, and guidelines for transforming today’s cities into inclusive, human-centred, livable, culturally vibrant, resilient and sustainable human settlements.

Contents:

• Volume 1: Design, Arts, Culture and Community:
  • Introduction:
    • The Soul of Cities: Creativity and Resilience in Sustainable Urban Futures (Ursula Eicker, Baron Tymas, Pierre Gauthier, Silvano De La Llata)
  • Participatory City-making Practices and the Role of the Urban Community:
    • Open Urbanisms: Challenges and Opportunities of Cities as Boundless Systems (Silvano De La Llata)
    • Toward a Transformative Smart City: Explorations on Digital Governance, Innovation, and Citizen Participation in Brazil (Bruno Ragi Eis Mendoca)
    • Sharing a City by Space and Over Time (Matthias Fritsch)
    • The Translational City (Sherry Simon)
    • Ignorance (Danielle Douez)
    • Social Procurement and Employment Precarity: Forging Connections of Support for Work-integration Social Enterprises (WISEs) (Norma Rantisi, Deborah Leslie)
    • The Experience of the City: On Urban Parks, Spas, Festivals, Casinos, and How Such Sites Contribute to the Branding of the Contemporary Metropolis (David Howes)
    • Public Markets in Sustainable Development: The Call for Sustainability Amid Retail Transformation (Judy Chen)
    • The Market Language: Public Markets as Performative Social Places (Judy Chen)
  • A Design, Arts, and Culture-based Approach to Environmental Awareness:
    • Eco-didacticism in the City as Means for Environmental Public Awareness and Action (Carmela Cucuzzella)
    • Making the Invisible Tangible: Joint Art-science Methods for Materializing Urban Air Pollution (Alice Jarry, Brice Ammar-Khodja, Jean-Michael Celerier, Jacqueline Beaumont, Matthew Halpenny, Philippe Vandal)
    • Cities and Cinema: A Mutual Evolution (Aristofanis Soulikias, Nasim Naghavi, Carmela Cucuzzella)
    • Enhancing Public Engagement on Sustainable Development Through Multidisciplinary Arts-Based Academic Projects (Baron Tymas)
  • Participatory City-making Practices, and the Role of Higher Education:
    • CityStudio: A Partnership Framework for Municipalities and Academic Institutions to Collaborate for Meaningful Quality of Life Impacts (Duane Elverum)
    • The Shift Centre for Social Transformation: Power Sharing and Community Leadership for Social Impact (Stephanie Childs, Richenda Grazette)
    • Competitions as Means for an Alternative Development in the City (Carmela Cucuzzella, Jean-Pierre Chupin)
    • Enhancing Teaching and Learning Experiences in Built Environment About Sustainability Through Interactive Approaches (Morteza Hazbei, Burcu Olgen)
• Volume 2: Built and Natural Environment:
  • Introduction:
    • Building Sustainable Cities: Evolution and Livability (Ursula Eicker, Pierre Gauthier, Erkan Yönder)
  • Opportunities and Challenges of City Building:
    • On Sprawl and Compromised Urban Future (Pierre Gauthier, Qiu Feng)
    • Measuring and Monitoring Urban Sprawl: Necessary Steps Towards More Effective Anti-Sprawl Policies (Jochen Ag Jaeger, Christian Schwick, Naghmeh Nazarnia, Parnian Pourtaherian, Sepideh Mosharafian, Martin Behnisch, Tobias Krüger, Yves Maurer)
    • Retrofitting the City of the Automobile: On Challenges and Opportunities of an Integrated Approach to Mass Transit and Physical Planning (Pierre Gauthier, Qiu Feng)
    • Understanding Future Urban Development, Resilience, and Sustainability of Cities in the Global South Using Agentbased Model Approaches (Elaine Varela and Ursula Eicker)
    • Challenges and Opportunities for Increasing the Sustainability of Marginalized Communities: The Case of the Bedouin in Southern Israel (Shabtai Isaac, Na’ama Teschner, Tareq Abu Hamed)
    • The Indigenous Urbanism: Recentering Oceania within Pacific Urban Futures (James Miller)
    • Asset Management for Sustainable Cities (Rebecca Dziedzic)
    • Building Climate Resilience: Financial Interventions in Real Estate Markets (Erkan Yönder)
    • Pathways to Resilient Solar Buildings and Communities (Andreas Athienitis, Caroline Hachem-Vermette)
    • Occupant-Centric Buildings (Mohamed Ouf)
    • Resilience Management: Tools and Applications (Osama Moselhi, Ahmed Assad)
  • Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services in Urban Environments:
    • The City Biodiversity Index (CBI), or Singapore Index on Cities’ Biodiversity (Jochen Jaeger, Carly Ziter)
    • Urban Green Infrastructure and Their Ecosystem Services (Lingshan Li)
    • Earth Observation in Support of the Assessment and Monitoring of Urban Green Spaces and the Ecosystem Services They Supply (Angela Kross)
    • Application of Sustainable Environmental Remediation for Urban Sites (Catherine Mulligan)
    • Using Climate-Sensitive 3D City Modeling to Analyze Outdoor Thermal Comfort in Urban Areas (Fatemeh Izadi, Rushikesh Padsala, Rabeeh Hosseini)
  • Urban Infrastructure and Metabolism:
    • Circular Economy: A Way to Go for Sustainability (Osama Moselhi)
    • Waste Management Infrastructure for a Circular Economy (Chunjiang An)
    • Smart Multi-Purpose Utility Tunnels (Amin Hammad, Tersoo K Genger, Ali Alaghbandrad, Yisha Luo)
    • Energy Efficient Water Distribution (Rebecca Dziedzic, Geneva Starr)
    • Wastewater in Modern Cities: A Brief Overview (Catherine Mulligan, Matthew Cotton, Farhad M Moghadam)
    • Towards a Green Industry (Alex De Visscher, Yaser Khojasteh Salkuyeh)
    • Sustainable Infrastructure Finance in a Next-generation Cities’ Context — The Case of District Heating and Cooling Networks (Tobias Popovic, Kristina Lygnerud, Sebastian Schultze)
    • Cooperative Business Models in a Next-generation Cities’ Context — The Case of District Heating and Cooling Networks (Thomas Baumgärtler, Tobias Popovic)
    • Dynamic Networked Micro-Grids for Urban Energy Resilience (Fuzhan Nasiri, Mohammad Javad Bordbari)
    • Urban Wind Resources (Navid Shirzadi)
    • Renewable Electricity with Reversible Heat Pumps and Thermal Storage (Saeed Ranjbar)
    • Cogeneration Systems for Efficient Electricity and Heat Generation from Renewable Fuels (Hadis Montazeri Nejad)
    • The Role of Hydrogen and Synthetic Fuels in Future Urban Energy Systems (Hadis Montazeri Nejad)
    • Thermal Distribution Network (Abolfazl Rezaei)
    • Electricity Networks and Smart Grids (Ramanunni Parakkal Menon, Ursula Eicker)
    • Using DC Technology for Nano and Microgrids: Benefits and Challenges (Jingdi Wang, Luiz AC Lopes)
• Volume 3: Mobile, Secure and Sharing Cities:
  • Introduction:
    • Shaping the Future: Digital Technologies Driving Sustainable Urban Evolution (Ursula Eicker, Govind Gopakumar, Chun Wang)
  • Transportation Infrastructure, Policy and Technology Developments:
    • Accessibility, X-minute City, and Equity: Understanding Concepts, Applications, and Implications (Ehab Diab, Michael Lu, Jessica Lam, Madhav Badami)
    • Cammm Atlas as Didactic Tool for Planning Sustainable Mobility in the City (Carmela Cucuzzella, Pierre Gauthier, Omar Ortiz Meraz, Firdous Nizar)
    • Non-intrusive Load Monitoring Techniques — A Literature Review on State-of-the-Art (Mohammad Kaosain Akbar, Manar Amayri, Nizar Bouguila, Ursula Eicker)
    • Introduction to Electric Vehicles: Navigating a Greener Future (Mohammad Ali Sayed, Mohammad Ekramul Kabir, Jun Yan, Mohsen Ghafouri, Chadi Assi, Mourad Debbabi)
    • Transfer Deep Reinforcement Learning for Autonomous Driving (Gaith Rjoub, Hanae Elmekki, Jamal Bentahar, Rachida Dssouli)
    • Electrification of Buses (Kayhan Alamatsaz, Frédéric Quesnel)
    • Assessing Sustainability for Urban Transportation Systems: A Comparative Study and Key Considerations (Sarah Farahdel, Chun Wang, Anjali Awasthi)
    • Equitable Community Integration of Urban Air Mobility: Challenges, Approaches, and Opportunities (Alexander Ireland, Sarah Farahdel, Nima Moradi, Chun Wang, Fereshteh Mafakheri, Anjali Awasthi)
  • Modelling of Built and Natural Environment and Transportation:
    • “Stateful Bim” (Building Information Modeling) for Digital Twinning of the Built Environment (Mazdak Nik-bakht, Arash Hosseini Gourabpsi)
    • Tools4Cities (Christopher Gibbs, Oriol Gavaldà)
    • The Urban Building Energy Retrofitting Tool: An Open-source Framework to Help Foster Building Retrofitting/First Results for Montreal (Oriol Gavaldà, Pilar Monsalvete)
    • How Do We Propose to Measure Sustainability and Livability in Cities and Communities in Tools4Cities? A Review of Current Evaluation Frameworks and a Proposal for Improvement (Oriol Gavaldà, Ursula Eicker, Christopher Gibbs)
    • A New Workflow for Dynamic Urban Building Energy Modelling (Soroush Samareh Abolhassani)
    • Energy Flexibility in Low Voltage Distribution System Using Multi-level Energy Management Framework (Sadam Hussain)
    • Emerging Methods in the Collection, Processing and Analysis of Data in Transportation Planning (Mahan Mollajafari, Zachary Patterson)
    • Enhancing Pedestrian Safety through the Application of Computer Vision and the Internet of Things (Ujjwal Khanna, Anjali Awasthi)
    • Internet of Things (IoT) for Cities (Ramanunni Parakkal Menon, Ursula Eicker)
  • Sharing Economy Systems:
    • Matching Mechanisms for the Sharing Economy (Jie Gao, Chun Wang)
    • Stable Matching Mechanisms for Shared Mobility Systems (Chun Wang)
    • Machina Economicus: A New Paradigm for Prosumers in the Energy Internet of Smart Cities (Luyang Hou, Jun Yan, Yuankai Wu, Tie Qiu)
    • Recent Advances in Graph-Based Machine Learning for Applications in Smart Urban Transportation Systems (Hongde Wu, Sen Yan, Mingming Liu)
• Volume 4: Pathways to Urban Transformation:
  • Introduction:
    • Transforming Cities: Pathways to Zero Carbon, Equitable, and Inclusive Communities (Ursula Eicker, Baron Tymas, Silvano De La Llata, Pierre Gauthier, Erkan Yönder, Chun Wang, Govind Gopakumar)
  • Transforming Cities:
    • Empowering Cities in the Race to a Just Net-Zero Transition (Hannah Abdullah, Ursula Eicker, Karim Elgendy, Roxana Dela Fiamor, Namita Kambli, Adeline Rochet)
    • Urban Development and Cities in the Global South (Sreelakshmi Ramachandran, Govind Gopakumar)
    • The Importance of Urban Ecological Infrastructure for Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (Carly Ziter)
    • Challenges for a More Resilient Future for Slums and Informal Urban Settlements (Elaine Varela, Jordi Morató)
    • Sustainable Urban Mobility: Shaping Cities of the Future Through the SDGs (Jenny Chaverri)
    • Future of Urban Mobility: Can Transit Oriented Development (TOD) Help End Automobile Dependence? (Ahad Farnood, Govind Gopakumar, Pierre Gauthier)
    • 15-Minute City (Ahad Farnood, Ursula Eicker)
    • The Need for a New League of Communities to Lead the Shift to Sustainability (Daniel Hoornweg)
  • Sustainable Built Environment:
    • Transformative Change in Real Estate; Yield Development Paradigm as a Strategic Decision-Making Sustainability Framework for Impact (Natalie Voland, Martin Townsend, Ursula Eicker)
    • Community Engagement for Eco Districts in a Cross-stakeholder Participatory Governance Framework: A Case Study in Lachine-est, Montreal (Natalie Voland, Myriam Grondin, Ursula Eicker)
    • ESG, a Question of Survival for Banks and Their Clients? Value Creation in Commercial Real Estate (René Demers, Julien Alarie)
    • Contested Places for Sustainability: Mapping Interpretations of Sustainability in the Context of Brownfield Redevelopment (Veera Turku, Ursula Eicker, Pierre Gauthier)
    • Transforming Urban Areas into High-Efficiency Districts with Local Renewable Generation and Storage (Ursula Eicker, Andrea Gabaldon Moreno)
    • Financing Sustainability in the Real Estate Sector: Challenges and Opportunities (Thomas Walker)
    • Financing Infrastructures in Next-generation Cities (Yunping Liang)
  • Living Labs, Lessons Learned, Case Studies:
    • Innovation in Municipal Governance (Anaïs Del Bono, Marguerite Mendell)
    • Living Lab Typologies and Methodologies to Shape the Next Generation of Cities Pro-Actively (Michael Bossert)
    • Lab Batlló, the Urban Living Lab of Can Batlló in Barcelona: From an Initial Design of an Innovation Living Lab to the Crystallization of Bottom-up Strategies Through the Energy Community of La Bordeta (Oriol Gavaldà)
    • The ABC Accelerator: A Multistakeholder Concordia University Hands-On Initiative to Scale Impact Uptake in Private Real Estate (Oriol Gavaldà, Natalie Voland, Ursula Eicker)

Readership: Policy-makers, researchers and professionals in urban/town planning, architcture, municipal and state governance, infrastructure, and civil engineering.