Deep Dive #9 - New Perspectives on a Sustainable City

00:00:05: Hello and welcome to another episode of Deep Dive into Applied Science.

00:00:11: Today we are talking with someone from Environmental Campus Birkenfeld about a topic that actually we've never talked before.

00:00:21: And our guest can introduce himself.

00:00:24: So, hi guys, my name is Stefan Sturm and I am currently doing my PhD in the Department of City Planning at the RPTU Kaiserslautern Landau and at the same time I am employed in the Department of Environmental Business and Environmental Law at the Environmental Campus in Birkenfeld as a lecturer for fundamentals of sustainable business and sustainability in general.

00:00:51: That's a very detailed introduction.

00:00:53: Thank you very much.

00:00:55: So before we dive deeper, as always in this podcast, please describe your PhD project in one sentence.

00:01:05: I can try.

00:01:06: If I have to put it in one sentence, I would figuratively say that The original intention was to use the theoretical implications of systems theory in order to hold up a mirror to the profession of city developers by adding an irritating perspective or something like that.

00:01:29: I ended up some kind of holding up that same mirror to myself, which is quite good because it's exactly one of those implications of systems theory to self-reflect.

00:01:43: So please correct me if I'm wrong.

00:01:45: You basically try to look at, well, let's say, resilient urban development from different perspectives.

00:01:53: Is that right?

00:01:55: I would say so, but that is what the city developers already do.

00:02:02: And I am adding one irritating perspective in order to yes somehow open up some different angles on this view of resilience because there is always some kind of subjective component to it when you are talking about resilience.

00:02:24: So I am for instance looking at the problem from a different angle than you, and this would imply several communication skills for getting along with different problems like climate change, for example.

00:02:44: When you mention irritating perspectives, what exactly do you mean by that?

00:02:49: Do you have an example for such an irritating perspective?

00:02:55: For example, if one person is focusing on climate change related stuff and is heading towards something like adding blue and green infrastructure to a city, I always open up a different perspective by saying we have to consider housing as well.

00:03:18: race for example the rents of people when we are redeveloping different districts in order to be more green or to.

00:03:27: Be more climate change resilient.

00:03:29: I think so this would be my irritating of perspective that I open up some different views on or different angles on this topic.

00:03:38: so tell me where does the interest in this whole topic come from.

00:03:43: Well, to explain this I have to backtrack a little bit.

00:03:46: I think my interest really started when I was researching systemic interdependencies for my master's degree back in twenty seventeen.

00:03:56: When I did my master's thesis I examined and assessed to a certain degree the concept of Herman Daley, who tried to make some economy without macroeconomic growth.

00:04:10: And I assessed it from a social ecological perspective.

00:04:15: And to do so, I had to consider many different fields of study, such as physics, biology, chemistry and economy, of course, and in order to bring forth some kind of interdisciplinary assessment, it was necessary to have some systemic reflections on it.

00:04:40: Almost sounds like a very philosophical approach because you sound like a conglomeration of a lot of different topics.

00:04:48: Yeah, combined into one.

00:04:51: Yeah, I would say so.

00:04:52: It's kind of a philosophical question.

00:04:56: How you are perceiving reality or how you are perceiving such a thing like resilience.

00:05:03: At first I wasn't quite sure what kind of examination object I wanted to examine or which would best suit my purpose or theoretical interest.

00:05:18: In fact, I wasn't really sure if I wanted to do a PhD at all at that time when I finished my master's degree.

00:05:26: But I kept reading books about systems theory or sustainability in general or constructivism, which is somehow the philosophical foundation that comes after the systems theory.

00:05:40: And I was keeping my eye open while I kept reading.

00:05:44: At some point I asked myself if it would be better to do a PhD if I'm doing all this research anyway.

00:05:55: In the first summer of the COVID-IX pandemic I had an eye-opening while socially distancing chat with my future second supervisor who came up with the idea of examining the development of cities.

00:06:12: And cities were at that time obviously facing a lot of challenges because of the cobit nineteen pandemic and additionally because of climate change as well and found that really intriguing and.

00:06:28: To some degree this discourse about pandemics and climate change was held under the term of resilience and so.

00:06:39: It happens that I came up with urban development and resilience discourse while keeping my system theoretical background.

00:06:50: So you already mentioned climate related catastrophes quite a lot and also the whole resilience development of cities.

00:06:59: So what do you think how important will be.

00:07:03: the urban development or the resilient urban development of cities in the future?

00:07:08: regarding the whole climate change we are facing.

00:07:12: I think it somehow highly depends on the region we are looking at and the time horizon we are looking at here.

00:07:19: For example, if we are looking at cities that are located in regions such as the Sahelian Zone, they will be facing much more severe droughts than they are already used to, or cities in coastal areas.

00:07:35: They are going to face the croering challenges of storm surges and sea level rise, for example, which can be compensated to a certain degree, I think, by adding or installing dams and levees and stuff like that as profoundly shown in the Netherlands, for example.

00:07:55: But if we are looking at the larger timescale of decades or even centuries, it won't be really possible to compensate those sea level rises if we are sticking to the emissions trajectory we are currently doing.

00:08:12: And therefore, if I had to make some concrete example, the cities which are located in the north of Germany, such as Hamburg, for instance, won't be able to cope the sea level rise to that degree as it would possibly be two or three meters until the year of two thousand three hundred.

00:08:37: So whole cities like Hamburg would have to be relocated, not just single infrastructure, infrastructural elements, whole cities.

00:08:48: And therefore it is really, really important not only to somehow adapt to climate change, but also to mitigate as far it is possible.

00:09:01: Let's just take one small step back.

00:09:04: How does the city become more resilient in the first place?

00:09:08: At first, and to come back to the philosophical question, I have to clarify what resilience really means to me.

00:09:19: As I understand it, resilience cannot be solely described as an objective capacity or capability of any kind of system, like a city, to withstand or to adapt to a bunch of objectively existing crisis situations, as there is always some kind of subjective component or aspect to it.

00:09:42: So if one person considers something as a great threat, it might be completely irrelevant to another person.

00:09:49: Not saying that there is no threat at all for the second person, but we have always to consider social aspects and individual aspects of the resilience discourse.

00:10:01: Resilience should be seen as some kind of concept of reflection in my opinion.

00:10:07: And that having said, the city would become more resilient, in my opinion, if they are managing or the inhabitants are managing to perpetuate an integrated city development process, which could, for instance, entail things like talking about what kind of measures we can... put into cope with climate change, for example, by adding some infrastructural elements like sponge city elements, which are capable of resorbing great masses of water or green facades or something like that.

00:10:49: Resilient cities also include measures against not only climate change, but also against things like terrorist attacks.

00:10:58: So you're basically protecting cities against two man-made catastrophes, terrorism and climate change.

00:11:06: Yeah, I would say it's quite evident that a good proportion of the crisis situations we are facing right now are to a good extent self-inflicted.

00:11:18: So this entails not only for climate change, but as you already mentioned.

00:11:23: terrorist attacks, pandemics or cyber attacks or some things which are correlated to biodiversity loss or something like that, which always comes back to us in some way, even if we are not knowing the exact way it's going to happen.

00:11:44: I would always say there are some developments to the resilience discourse.

00:11:50: For example, since the onset of the Ukrainian war and security has taken a pivotal role in the city development process or discourse, because, especially in Germany, we have been some kind of reluctant against the possibility that Something like that could happen in the middle of Europe.

00:12:18: That's a euphemism.

00:12:19: That's a nice way to say it.

00:12:21: And I think we are now considering it as much more probable and therefore we are talking about it to a much higher degree.

00:12:32: When we talk about resilient development, one of the main aspects or one of the solutions is always the use of nature-based infrastructure.

00:12:43: I think you call them green and blue infrastructure.

00:12:46: Can you maybe elaborate a little bit on that?

00:12:49: Nature-based solutions are a frequently topic that is being discussed in the resilience discourse.

00:12:56: And moreover, I would say in the sustainability discourse as well, as demonstrated in the book, Three Decrees More, which has been edited by Klaus Wiegand, who made several examples of how nature-based solutions are going to be or can be adapted to different things like agriculture, for instance.

00:13:20: In short, nature-based solutions are actions that are using natural or natural processes in order to cope with different problems such as climate change, water supply, or a disaster risk reduction, for example.

00:13:41: And I would say you are replacing the existing infrastructure, which is mainly gray and made of concrete and tar and stuff like that, by green infrastructural elements such as trees, bushes, grass and stuff like that, in order to build up the aforementioned green facades, for example, parks and green corridors for fresh airflow into the core of the city.

00:14:14: Additionally, you're going to add blue infrastructural elements which consist of different types of water bodies and areas such as rivers, ponds, lakes or rainwater retention basins.

00:14:31: And in order to speak of green-blue infrastructure, you have to combine those green and blue infrastructural elements in a way that should be, in my opinion, visually appealing or is more visually appealing than gray infrastructural elements in the most cases.

00:14:48: Yes,

00:14:50: I would agree.

00:14:51: Besides the green infrastructure, heat stress and also air pollution are regarded as, well, let's say, major problems in especially bigger cities, how can you fight these?

00:15:04: Well, I think that's the good part.

00:15:06: If you are managing to perpetuate something like an integrated city development process where you are using nature-based solutions, as well as combined measures for traffic reduction and the building up of pedestrian areas.

00:15:25: For instance, you can fight air pollution and heat stress as well.

00:15:29: If we look at Paris, for example, at the moment, we can see that much is possible if we are having the will to do something.

00:15:40: The politicians and the inhabitants of Paris are obviously doing a good job with a well thought of concept where they are adding green infrastructural elements and we all also have the evidence right now that the temperature in the core of Paris is down two or three degrees, I think.

00:16:05: It's actually quite a lot.

00:16:07: Paris or France is actually quite a good example because there are not so many countries that are so focused on one specific city as France is with Paris.

00:16:20: So what about areas Outside of cities, what about rural areas?

00:16:26: Aren't they in need of more resilient development too?

00:16:29: Well, actually, in my dissertation, I was focusing on medium-sized cities, which is associated with a statistical number of twenty thousand to one hundred thousand inhabitants.

00:16:42: It's quite a debatable number, I think, but we are working with it.

00:16:48: And I think smaller cities often have some advantage in perpetuating some kind of integrated city development process because you can achieve more with less people.

00:17:00: And therefore, if the people in the city are really recognizing the need for resilience-related adaptions or adjustments in the infrastructure and are acting accordingly, it will be really good in rural areas as well.

00:17:18: And I think there is happening a lot as already.

00:17:22: For example, they are developing things like, we could name them heavy rain precautionary plants, where the rural areas as well are trying to implement some plants, how to react to heavy rainfall events or flooded events if they are going to happen.

00:17:45: And that is already being facilitated by the federal state as well.

00:17:52: And I have to admit, even though I was looking at medium-sized cities, most of the medium-sized cities in Germany are in urban areas.

00:18:03: So I had to consider that while I was picking my case study cities, because I wanted to have some good mix of urban and rural areas here.

00:18:14: If we look at, well, let's say the political harsh landscape as of right now, and also the rapid progression of climate change, how do you see the future of resilient urban development?

00:18:30: Well, I believe that the concept of resilience should be implemented into laws to a higher degree.

00:18:38: by pushing informal planning concepts and instruments, but without being too normative about what kind of measures are adding to resilience.

00:18:49: As I already said, I think it's kind of the reflection process that adds to resilience much more than specific measures.

00:18:58: However, I feel that the legislators do incorporate the term of resilience if they do.

00:19:08: into the legislation by putting a more normative approach on.

00:19:13: And we have to be really cautious about it because if we are focusing on climate change-related measures and we are forgetting, for example, that we have to take into consideration the less well-off population or the less well-off section of the population, we would do a great mistake with it.

00:19:35: And therefore, I would recommend to implement this kind of approach, resilience approach by adding more informal aspects to the planning law.

00:19:49: One

00:19:49: of my final questions, and it's more like a fun question, let's stay local for a moment and let's look at TRIA for example.

00:19:59: So as we all know, as the oldest city in the country, is TRIA resilient in your eyes?

00:20:05: And if not, What would need to change for it to become a resilient city in the future?

00:20:13: Due to my focus on medium-sized cities, TRIA was narrowly excluded as a possible case study city.

00:20:22: And now it's officially.

00:20:23: TRIA is a big city.

00:20:24: Yes, although a slightly more benevolent interpretation of the statistical numbers would have allowed to take Tria into consideration as the population size isn't that much bigger than the one hundred thousand inhabitants.

00:20:41: But I cannot say with certainty if I consider Tria to be resilient or not and I wouldn't be able to if I had.

00:20:50: I have had a closer look at Tria because as I already said it's a concept that should be done by the inhabitants of the city itself.

00:20:59: I can advise them but I never can say... Tria as a whole is resilient or not.

00:21:06: But I can say, for example, to give at least one example, that Tria showed off some kind of resilience by adopting measures after the rampage that happened on the Christmas market roughly five years ago, I think.

00:21:24: I have been there last year and I never had any kind of unsecurity feelings.

00:21:30: because they made some adoptions about this.

00:21:34: You probably mean the driver in the inner city.

00:21:39: It's actually quite a good point.

00:21:41: So we also have some troubles with our river, as we all know.

00:21:45: But I think, I hope you agree, Tria has actually good measurements against high water.

00:21:52: And since Trier is one of the oldest cities, if not the oldest city in Germany, you could easily argue there has to be some kind of resilience in order to stay vibrant to the present day.

00:22:05: True.

00:22:05: I actually never thought about it like that.

00:22:07: Let's look for the final part at the economical aspect of urban development.

00:22:16: Cannot be a driving force for business.

00:22:22: Well, can a broader economy profit from the urban development of cities of all?

00:22:28: Is it possible or is this like only, well, let's say, is it only an investment without any profit?

00:22:39: I would certainly think that you can do or adopt some business cases in order to get a more resilient city because You need to build all this green and blue infrastructural elements.

00:22:55: You need to increase the share of renewable energies and heat supply, for example.

00:23:02: You need storage technologies, retention technologies, which are able to absorb or restore water masses.

00:23:10: You need some general consulting for all sections of the population.

00:23:16: especially in the private sector, I think we have to do a lot more because the people have to be aware of the possible threats they are facing according to climate change or pandemics, stuff like that.

00:23:30: And they need to know how to act if something happens.

00:23:35: And I think there's a lot to do and therefore we have a lot of business cases there where companies could easily make some money with.

00:23:49: So far, if you look back at your whole PhD project, what has been the most challenging aspect so far?

00:23:56: I

00:23:56: would personally say that the most challenging aspect of my project has been the elaborate theoretical implications of the system theory that I wanted to adapt to the city development.

00:24:13: As it drove me to the very limits of my mental capacities several times, it's a bit like pulling the rug out from under your own feet, with other words.

00:24:24: You are always questioning yourself and your insights, which is good for a scientist, I think, but only to a certain degree.

00:24:32: You have to be more patient and more good-minded to yourself.

00:24:37: And on the other side, to end with a more positive aspect, I have made really good experiences with... the research form of semi-structured interviews and content analysis and qualitative research in general.

00:24:55: Almost every person I talked to during my PhD interviews had been really helpful for irritating my own perspective, I think.

00:25:06: And therefore, I'm really, really grateful for having done this kind of research.

00:25:14: and some valuable information for people that are also interested in doing their PhD.

00:25:23: So if people and also if companies are interested in you, your work, your project, how can they reach out to you?

00:25:31: How can they contact you?

00:25:32: There are several good ways to reach out for me in order to have some nice little chat about my topic, including systems theory, systemic sustainability research, urban development, and of course fundamentals of sustainable business.

00:25:50: You can reach me by phone, mail, and by LinkedIn, although I wouldn't really recommend the last one as I'm not really active in there.

00:26:01: It doesn't matter whatsoever.

00:26:02: And also, if people look for your name, they will probably find you on the website of Trier University.

00:26:09: Exactly.

00:26:11: So, Stefan, thank you very much for coming on the podcast.

00:26:15: It was very interesting, also very broad topic, which includes a lot of things.

00:26:21: But it was quite interesting.

00:26:22: So thank you very much for presenting.

00:26:24: Good luck for the end of your PhD.

00:26:28: It's approaching fast.

00:26:30: as you told me and thank you very much for listening, thank you very much for watching and we will see and hear each other in the next episode of Deep Tithe.