A questão a ser abordada na tese se encontra sob o tema do planejamento urbano, enfatizando a dissonância entre os avanços dos estudos acerca da Ciência das Cidades e a prática de planejamento usual, cujo caráter é extremamente normativo e prescritivo. Destarte, por um lado, se revisa o planejamento urbano - seu desenvolvimento, bases teóricas, processos e ferramentas; aproximando-se da realidade brasileira; e, por outro lado, se revisa o estado da arte da Ciência das Cidades, evidenciando-se como o entendimento acerca deste fenômeno se desenvolveu. Portanto, com o objetivo de discutir as possibilidades e delinear as prováveis e desejáveis características de uma estrutura de planejamento que possa responder de modo mais acurado à dinâmica intraurbana, foi sugerida uma macroestrutura baseada em uma Panarquia. A microestrutura envolve um processo que inicia a partir da demanda pontual de um agente, cujos impactos são percebidos nos outros níveis da estrutura urbana, determinando âmbitos de agentes envolvidos. Na sequência, se estabelecem processos classificatórios, informativos, avaliativos, decisórios e de retroalimentação. Por fim, sugere-se que seja estabelecida uma substituição gradual das regras normativas apriorísticas por critérios mais amplos e regras locais de interação. / The question to be addressed in the thesis is under the theme of urban planning, emphasizing the dissonance between the advances of studies on the science of cities and the usual planning practice, whose character is extremely normative and prescriptive. Thus, on the one hand, it reviews urban planning – its development, theoretical foundations, processes and tools; approaching the Brazilian reality; and, on the other hand, it reviews the state of the art of the science of cities, demonstrating how the understanding of this phenomenon has been developed. Therefore, in order to discuss the possibilities and outline the probable and desirable characteristics of an alternative planning framework that can respond more accurately to the intra-urban dynamics, it is suggested a panarchy based macrostructure. The microstructure involves a process that starts with a punctual demand of an agent, whose impacts are perceived in other levels of the urban structure, determining levels of stakeholders. Following are established classification, information, evaluation, decision-making and feedback processes. Finally, it is suggested a gradual replacement of normative rules by broader criteria and local interaction rules.

The idea of evolutionary resilience in complex systems has gained attention in the recent years. This approach provides better insights in the context of emergence and adaptive capacity, that characterises complex adaptive systems (CAS) such as social-ecological systems (SES), than traditional reductionist and engineering resilience approaches. Departing from this premise, a set of methodologies that are funded in these principles have been developed, with promising perspectives for the analysis of these systems. In this thesis, one of these methodologies, the panarchy, is applied into La Marjaleria case study, in Castelló (Spain), in order to explore its capacity to offer new useful insights for the management of the area throught he scope of resilience. Looking for a systematic methodological approach, the focal SES and their scales are initially defined, followed by an adaptive cycle approach, performed for each of the scales, and finally a panarchy approach that is applied through focusing on the interactions between the adaptive cycles at the different scales. The results are also presented through a new graphic approach that accounts for the representation of the adaptive cycles at the different scales and their interactions in a dynamic manner that includes the time variable, and that can therefore facilitate its understanding. From the analysis performed, the system is found to be stuck in a rigidity trap because of the lack of transformative visions from both scales above (municipality) and below (households). Furthermore, the influence of cascade effects from both the upper and lower scale in the manner through which the focal scale navigated the adaptive cycle has become evident. The panarchy has also helped to discover some existing mismatches and archetypes affecting the system. After all, a general resilience assessment has helped to find out that the system presents a low resilience, and therefore an inherent risk of collapse in the event of external shocks that can make thresholds to be crossed. A further analysis, focused on the specific resilience, has been performed for the risk of flooding. The results show that the engineering resilience approach through which this risk has been traditionally managed could have helped to underestimate flood hazard and therefore contributed to an irresponsible occupation of the floodable area. New approaches towards resilience risk management could help to address the problematics caused by floods and also open new opportunities for long-term sustainability of the system. The panarchy approach can offer useful insights for the assessment of SES from the scope of complexity and multi-scale interactions, providing an approach consistent with the evolutionary resilience characteristic of CAS. However, there still exist some gaps, both in its perception by practitioners and in the availability of solid grounds towards the standardization of its application, implying that there is still room for further improvement in this methodological approach.

Liming has been used extensively in Sweden, but the management success has been only partial, mostly mitigating the impact of acidification rather than restoring the ecological communities to a self-maintaining pre-acidified state. Rather than a sound restoration tool, liming is a form of command-and-control management that comprises a significant disturbance in the system, which manifests in the form of profound alterations of biophysical settings of lakes. This thesis aims to assess biological responses to liming with a special focus on resilience by looking at the cross-scale interaction aspects of littoral invertebrate communities in limed lakes within the framework of panarchy theory. The thesis is based on multivariate time series modeling (AEM-RDA) to extract hierarchical temporal fluctuations patterns (temporal scales) in littoral invertebrate communities. This analysis tested for the premise of panarchy theory that complex systems are hierarchically structured. Time series analyses were followed by Spearman rank correlation analysis to test another premise of panarchy theory; namely, that “information” (e.g., management interventions) flows between these hierarchical scales. Specifically, Ca:Mg ratios were used as a surrogate of liming, and correlated with each temporal pattern identified by the AEM-RDA. The result showed the distinct temporal scales in littoral invertebrate communities in limed lakes, fitting the premises of panarchy theory and agreeing with previous studies that found hierarchical temporal organizations in other lake communities. The correlation analyses indicated weak cross-scale manifestation of Ca:Mg ratios in the littoral invertebrate communities, suggesting a weak information flow of liming in managed lakes. This “dilution” of management may provide one mechanism that could explain why liming is not effective in creating a self-organizing, resilient system. The results of this study allow shedding further light on liming as a coerced regime (degraded complex systems forced into a state of desired conditions (e.g., ecosystem service provisioning) through constant management). Most research has so far focused on the evaluation of traditional metrics of biodiversity, which have shown that community structure is substantially altered in limed lakes, deviating from those in circumneutral reference lakes and degraded acidified lakes. This thesis, therefore, concludes that integration of traditional ecological approaches and complexity studies may provide complementary insight into the organization of ecosystems and sustainable resource management.

No description available.

There is mounting evidence that sustainable scale thresholds are now being exceeded worldwide and environmental resource shocks (e.g. climate change, water and oil shortages) may be inevitable in some regions of the world in the near future. These could result in severe economic breakdowns, welfare loss, and in the worst-case, the collapse of modern civilization. Therefore, a pre-eminent challenge of our times is to determine how to design a resilient (safe-fail) economy – one that can endure, adapt to and successfully recover from breakdowns when they occur. Surprisingly, while ecological economic theory relies heavily on natural science concepts such as thermodynamics, insufficient attention has been paid to the important ecological concept of resilience, particularly as it applies to economic design. The three major policy goals of current ecological economic theory (sustainable scale, just distribution and efficient allocation) focus instead on preventing environmental resource shocks and breakdowns, but given their unpredictability prevention may not always be possible. How resilience can inform the blossoming field of ecological economics is thus explored in this theoretical, transdisciplinary paper. Drawing on literature as diverse as archaeology and disaster planning, it develops six key principles of economic resilience and applies them to analyze the resilience of key societal systems including our money, electricity, water, transportation, information/communication and emergency response systems. Overall, economic resilience appears to be a unique concern that is not readily subsumed under any of the three existing ecological economic policy pillars. In fact, efforts to build in resilience have the potential to both complement and at times contradict the other three goals, especially efficiency. The need to further study these possible tradeoffs provides strong justification for adding a fourth distinct policy pillar, namely “Resilient Design”, to core ecological economic theory. Indeed, ecological economist’s longstanding criticism of economic growth meshes readily with the Resilience Alliance’s own figure-8 adaptive cycle theory critiquing the resilience costs of growth, providing significant opportunities for the future collaboration of these two fields in broadening global system theory.

There is mounting evidence that sustainable scale thresholds are now being exceeded worldwide and environmental resource shocks (e.g. climate change, water and oil shortages) may be inevitable in some regions of the world in the near future. These could result in severe economic breakdowns, welfare loss, and in the worst-case, the collapse of modern civilization. Therefore, a pre-eminent challenge of our times is to determine how to design a resilient (safe-fail) economy – one that can endure, adapt to and successfully recover from breakdowns when they occur. Surprisingly, while ecological economic theory relies heavily on natural science concepts such as thermodynamics, insufficient attention has been paid to the important ecological concept of resilience, particularly as it applies to economic design. The three major policy goals of current ecological economic theory (sustainable scale, just distribution and efficient allocation) focus instead on preventing environmental resource shocks and breakdowns, but given their unpredictability prevention may not always be possible. How resilience can inform the blossoming field of ecological economics is thus explored in this theoretical, transdisciplinary paper. Drawing on literature as diverse as archaeology and disaster planning, it develops six key principles of economic resilience and applies them to analyze the resilience of key societal systems including our money, electricity, water, transportation, information/communication and emergency response systems. Overall, economic resilience appears to be a unique concern that is not readily subsumed under any of the three existing ecological economic policy pillars. In fact, efforts to build in resilience have the potential to both complement and at times contradict the other three goals, especially efficiency. The need to further study these possible tradeoffs provides strong justification for adding a fourth distinct policy pillar, namely “Resilient Design”, to core ecological economic theory. Indeed, ecological economist’s longstanding criticism of economic growth meshes readily with the Resilience Alliance’s own figure-8 adaptive cycle theory critiquing the resilience costs of growth, providing significant opportunities for the future collaboration of these two fields in broadening global system theory.

No description available.

Research was undertaken for this thesis to uncover characteristics of resilient volunteers and stewardship groups, both of which are a major element of the social mobilisation strategy used in Australia to manage natural resources. The ability of volunteers and groups to overcome problems, deal with new issues as they arise, and keep going under pressure is termed 'resilience'. A 'resilience management' approach to natural resource management uses the idea of 'adaptive change' or panarchy to understand the development of resilience and thus, sustainability in human communities. According to this theory, sustainable communities are both changeable and stable, adapting to new situations as they arise. The research approach used in the study is called 'phenomenography'. It is an interpretive approach, based on the central assumption that there is variation in the ways in which people experience the same phenomenon. Phenomenography was used to see if lessons about resilience and sustainability could be learnt from catchment volunteers. All participants were 'catchment volunteers' working along the east coast of Queensland. They were drawn from a variety of organisations and programs including Landcare; Coastcare; Bushcare; Greening Australia; Waterwatch; treeplanting groups; and Integrated Catchment Management Committees. A total of 26 personal and group interviews involving 85 participants were conducted. Interviews comprised a series of semi-structured questions that were tape-recorded, then transcribed verbatim. Through a process of comparing and contrasting themes in the transcriptions, six conceptions emerged. These were: catchment volunteering was experienced as seeking and maintaining balance; developing/maintaining an identity; empowerment; learning; networking; and sustainable. Analysis of these themes was used to develop a model of catchment volunteer experiences depicting relationships between conceptions (termed the 'Outcome Space' in phenomenography). In this study the Outcome Space emerged as a set of scales, signifying the importance of keeping a balanced perspective on volunteering - a balance between things such as personal goals and organisational goals; between dedication to an unpaid vocation and family life; and between social benefits and environmental benefits. From the Outcome Space, several conceptual and practical outcomes were developed. These included: a typology of participation based on volunteer experiences; a table describing forms of empowerment in catchment volunteering; a table listing drivers for catchment volunteers; an illustration of Holling and Gunderson's adaptive cycle as it applies to stewardship groups; a table of factors that enhance the resilience and sustainability of stewardship groups; a model of the relationship between external pressures and resilient, sustainable stewardship groups; and guidelines for developing resilient sustainable stewardship groups. These outcomes contribute to an understanding of individual, group and community level responses to environmental issues; and how resilience can be developed in volunteers and stewardship groups and programs.