Future Cities, Livable Futures: Toward a Sustainable Model for Urban-Watershed Systems

University Of Texas At Arlington, Arlington TX

Investigators

Abstract

As the global population continues to grow, cities must address the challenges and opportunities of urban watersheds, urban and surrounding lands that contribute runoff to a particular water body such as a river. To do this effectively, cities must use a systemic approach that integrates perspectives of science, engineering, design, planning, and policy, while incorporating input from citizens along the water's edge. The "Future Cities, Livable Futures: Toward a Sustainable Model for Urban-Watershed Systems" workshop will be held at the University of Texas at Arlington in the Dallas-Fort Worth (DFW) metroplex on August 16 and 17, 2019, to discuss approaches to these complex problems. Participants will have an opportunity to discuss and evaluate the environmental impacts from transportation and related infrastructure systems, climate change, and economic and population growth on the Trinity River Watershed from a variety of disciplinary perspectives to examine the complexities of urban-watershed systems. The future of the Trinity River Watershed will be re-envisioned as a relevant model for future urban watershed management and planning across the United States. The workshop will provide a great platform to introduce cross-disciplinary dialogues around urban-watershed management, explore best practices, and explain and better understand the different factors that interact to form an urban-watershed system. This workshop will result in an interdisciplinary research partnership targeted at developing a research initiative on the creation and stewardship of sustainable urban watershed systems. This workshop will incorporate a unique participatory approach with design and systems thinking to explore the needs of different stakeholders and the concrete constraints that hydrological and human-made systems impose on urban watersheds, while also examining the manner in which these needs and constraints reinforce social inequity and economic disparity. This approach will begin with cross-sector presentations on best practices and lead to a hands-on re-imagination of the future of the Trinity River Watershed system. With inputs from participants, the principal investigators will identify activities and research areas that will engage stakeholders and collaborators in future endeavors with positive impacts on future urban watershed development in the DFW region and other cities in the United States. Systems sciences will be applied to decipher how different social, environmental, and economic factors, patterns, and behaviors of the urban watershed interact to form a complex system. Network analysis will also be used for the study of the urban watershed as a dynamic system in order to simulate the heterogeneous factors that interact and constitute urban-watershed relationships. Based on the information gathered from the conference, the workshop leaders will better understand the interactions among environmental, social, and economic variables within a dynamic system. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.