Does a review of urban resilience allow for the support of an evolutionary concept?

Over the last five decades, resilience has received ever greater interest from academics and practitioners and has been applied in different scientific areas, such as engineering, environmental science or medicine. In particular, resilience has become a fundamental concept in contemporary urban development, planning and management (UDPM). Despite the various reviews that have recently been made of this subject, an updated analysis of the concept is required so that commonly held views about resilience can be matched against empirical evidence while, at the same time, clarifying the use of its main formulations and connecting its embryonic development to its application in urban-centric research. This paper therefore reviews the concept of resilience (considering its primary formulations, its historical evolution and its conceptual underpinnings), establishing how it has been applied and developed in the UDPM context. Based on this review, this paper reiterates the idea of a three-dimensional framework for exploring the concept of resilience ([1] 'engineering' vs. [2] 'ecological' vs. [3] 'evolutionary resilience'). The search for urban resilience can potentially adopt an integrative approach, assuming an evolutionary perspective that can be adapted to different situations and stakeholders, thus offering a better adjusted and more dynamic urban planning and management.

Urban-centric resilience in search of theoretical stabilisation? A phased thematic and conceptual review.

Over the last decades 'resilience' has particularly arisen as an attractive perspective with respect to cities. As cities continue to expand, their susceptibility to uncertainties and new challenges, such as climate change, has increased, rendering 'urban resilience' an increasingly favoured concept in the realm of Urban Development, Planning and Management (UDPM). Despite recent reviews, an updated analysis of the concept is required to understand whether there is in fact scientific evidence to support the expansion and favouring of 'urban resilience' in UDPM. The need to understand how the concept evolved is further emphasised by the need to perceive how the distinct sciences have contributed to its development, and which were the focuses and conceptual underpinnings of such evolution. Thus, the objective of this paper is to provide a broader review of the multidimensional concept of 'urban resilience', while understanding how distinct research fields have contributed to its inception and expansion, and how distinct conceptualisations of resilience have influenced its evolution. Supported by a bibliometric analysis of urban-centric publications, this paper highlights the recent extensive growth and expanding application of 'urban resilience' to distinct research fields, as well as an apparent theoretical stabilisation of the concept, which reemphasises the idea of a three-dimensional conceptual resilience perspective in scientific literature: (1) 'engineering', (2) 'ecological', and (3) 'social-ecological resilience'. Consequently, this research emphasises that, if the related conceptual underpinnings are clear, 'urban resilience' can potentially serve as an 'integrative metaphor', adapted by diverse stakeholders, to reinforce UDPM initiatives.

Carbon (CI) and energy intensity (EI) dataset for retail stores.

This data article presents data collected from the 250 highest revenue retailers around the world, assessed according to publicly available data from the fiscal year 2016, in order to determine retailer׳s overall carbon intensity (CI) and energy intensity (EI). Data collection included additional variables such as retailers' revenue rank, operational typology, number of stores, store sales area and number of workers. Based on this dataset, CI and EI benchmarks were calculated for food and non-food retailers, applying the statistic function first quartile (Q1) for the best practice, second (Q2) and third (Q3) quartiles for conventional practice and fourth quartile (Q4) for worst practice and correlations were tested between the variables "EI", "CI" and "retailer revenue", applying the statistic function CORREL (Ferreira et al., In press) [1]. Finally, a cluster analysis was performed for food and non-food retailers, to identify possible segmentation patterns between the variables "EI", "CI" and "retailer revenue". The information provided in this data article is useful for furthering research developments on the influence of isolated variables on retail EI and CI and in assisting retailers, architects, engineers, and policy makers in establishing optimal energy performance goals for the design and operation of retail stores. For further data interpretation and discussion, see the article "Combined carbon and energy intensity benchmarks for sustainable retail stores" (Ferreira et al., In press), of the same authors.

Construction and demolition waste indicators.

The construction industry is one of the biggest and most active sectors of the European Union (EU), consuming more raw materials and energy than any other economic activity. Furthermore, construction waste is the commonest waste produced in the EU. Current EU legislation sets out to implement construction and demolition waste (CDW) prevention and recycling measures. However it lacks tools to accelerate the development of a sector as bound by tradition as the building industry. The main objective of the present study was to determine indicators to estimate the amount of CDW generated on site both globally and by waste stream. CDW generation was estimated for six specific sectors: new residential construction, new non-residential construction, residential demolition, non-residential demolition, residential refurbishment, and non-residential refurbishment. The data needed to develop the indicators was collected through an exhaustive survey of previous international studies. The indicators determined suggest that the average composition of waste generated on site is mostly concrete and ceramic materials. Specifically for new residential and new non-residential construction the production of concrete waste in buildings with a reinforced concrete structure lies between 17.8 and 32.9 kg m(-2) and between 18.3 and 40.1 kg m(-2), respectively. For the residential and non-residential demolition sectors the production of this waste stream in buildings with a reinforced concrete structure varies from 492 to 840 kg m(-2) and from 401 to 768 kg/m(-2), respectively. For the residential and non-residential refurbishment sectors the production of concrete waste in buildings lies between 18.9 and 45.9 kg/m(-2) and between 18.9 and 191.2 kg/m(-2), respectively.