Project Details
Description
Research on the complex interactions among human and natural systems increasingly has emphasized the need for careful collaborative and comparative insights. Especially valuable have been efforts to explore human-natural interactions in densely populated regions like the northeastern U.S. and eastern China. This project focuses on the conducts o a conference that will deal with urban dimensions of environmental change, which coordinated examinations of science, exposures, policies, and technologies. The conference will be jointly sponsored by Montclair State University of New Jersey and East China Normal University, The conference will be held in Shanghai, China, in May 2004. Conference participants will examine the causes, impacts, and responses to environmental change in the world's major cities and urban areas. Relating to both the science and the management of urban environmental change, topics for the conference will include policy, regulation, technology, impact adaptation, mitigation, and remediation. The conference will be organized into two parallel parts. One part will be a workshop meeting of invited Chinese and U.S. scholars who will present and discuss current research on urban environmental change. The second part of the conference will be an 'open meeting' of the urban environmental change community involving a larger group of scholars as well as practitioners giving presentations in organized paper and poster sessions. The conference will address specific questions regarding contemporary urban environmental management, such as the need for integrated management structures that address the complexity, multiplicity, and interlocking nature of environmental problems in urban areas; the implications of new and emerging environmental stresses such as global climate change; and the need for increased stakeholder involvement in urban political discourse. A second set of issues to be discussed at the conference include how do current processes of urban environmental change and management intersect with issues of vulnerability, sustainability, and equity, all three of which are emerging as crucial issues in both the developed and the developing worlds.
The products of workshop and open meeting should have immediate utility in both academic and broader societal settings. The products should provide a better understanding and definition of the theoretical constructs of current and future urban environmental problems, as well as potential foundations for their management. By design, the conference activities will encourage a dialog between researchers and stakeholder practitioners. Specific products of the conference will include a schematic diagram illustrating key elements and interconnections in a reconceptualized framework for understanding of urban environmental change and management; a set of potential empirical measures and indicators to be used for comparative study of the character of urban environmental change and associated management strategies; the specification of a set of key research and information needs; and the specification of a set of research tools, methods, approaches, and technologies that would be most useful for addressing the research and information needs.
Status | Finished |
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Effective start/end date | 15/06/03 → 31/05/06 |
Funding
- National Science Foundation: $35,000.00