Study shows that urbanization leads to less ecological knowledge and therefore, less environmental action

Researchers at the National Institute of Standards and Technology, (NIST), and their collaborators have revealed a stark contrast in urban and suburban thinking about coastal ecosystems.

The study was based on data from a survey of 1,400 East Coast residents. The journal published their findings. npj Urban SustainabilityThe results of the survey showed that urban residents often had a less realistic and simplistic understanding of coastal ecosystems than those living in suburban areas. The research also revealed a lower willingness to take proenvironmental actions among urban residents. The authors identified a problem they call urbanized knowledge syndrome. This could be detrimental to natural ecosystems, and may hinder community resilience to natural catastrophes.

“We believe that urbanization is not only affecting the ecological aspect of the system but also the social aspect of the system. This may lead to people becoming disengaged from positive environmental behavior. It’s a snowball effect,” Payam Aminpour (a postdoctoral researcher at NIST) said.

Aminpour and his fellows participated in NIST’s Community Resilence Program. They were particularly interested to gain a better understanding about what drives decisions around resilience and adaptation measures for urban areas. A survey developed by Northeastern University co-authors was distributed to them. This has allowed them to make significant progress.

The survey targeted eight states’ coastal counties, which included those with shorelines that had varying densities. According to the six-level urban/rural classification scheme of the National Center for Health Statistics, the majority of the respondents resided in the three most urban levels. These ranged from cities centers to the suburbs.

The list of questions was intended to gather information about respondents’ demographics, understanding ecosystems, as well as whether or not they had participated in a list containing pro-environmental activities. This included voting for candidates based upon environmental stances, complaining to government agencies and contributing to conservation groups.

NIST’s Aminpour and his colleagues used fuzzy cognitive mapping to create visual representations from each respondent’s environmental perceptions. This was based on survey data. These maps showed the nature of perceived relationships among different environmental elements, such as how recreational areas impact marshes and vice-versa.

Two distinct types emerged from the crowd of maps as the researchers searched for patterns.

According to some respondents, the relationships in their maps tended to be in one direction. This is known as linear thinking. A person might see sea walls as shoreline fortifications that protect erosion at no cost. This is called linear thinking. Another example of linear thinking is the belief that overfishing only affects fish.

The maps of other residents showed more complex, two way relationships. This suggested that these respondents considered the environment as an integrated system. This system thinking, also known systems thinking, may lead to the recognition that although sea walls are structurally sound, they can alter the flow of water and accelerate erosion. A person might also recognize that overfishing could lead to more restrictions on fishing in the future, due to a decrease in fish stocks.

The latter model is more likely to help people think about nuanced aspects human-nature interactions such as the give and take dynamics between different elements.

Next, the team attempted to identify factors that could possibly explain why people choose one model over another.

Aminpour stated that they investigated the relationship between these two distinct mental models. This included many aspects such as education, age and homeownership. “We found that among those factors, urbanization, the percentage of shorelines with gray infrastructure, had strong positive associations for the mental models of residents with more linear thinking.”

Aminpour explained that suburban residents who lived nearer to artificial structures than urban dwellers were more aligned towards systems thinking.

One important behavioral difference was the self-reporting by both groups of people about their preferences for the environment. Linear thinking, which is a common trait among urbanites, was closely linked to less pro-environmental actions.

Aminpour explained that further analysis included comparing every pair of maps within both the systems thinking and linear clusters to understand how diverse each model was. Although greater diversity of thinking has been associated with greater adaptability and resilience in communities in the past, the team found more evidence for urbanized know syndrome. The group that displayed more urbanization and linear thinking had a greater degree of uniformity. The systems thinking group had much more diversity.

These findings strongly tie environmental factors and lines of thought and behavior within coastal communities. However there are still many things to be learned before we can draw any concrete conclusions.

“We are still unsure which comes first. Do you have systems thinking and prefer to live in areas that have more natural ecosystems or do you think living in less urbanized areas makes you more able to develop systems thinking? Aminpour stated, “We need more rigorous experiments for that to find out.”

These questions are crucially important, according to the researchers. If urbanization is indeed driving behavior, then gray infrastructure and urban development may be fueling a selfless feedback loop that could cause damage to ecosystems and community resilience.

It could be a powerful argument for green infrastructure (also known as green infrastructure) to have more facilities and structures that include nature. It would also feed into the ongoing NIST effort to understand the impact that different types infrastructure have on communities.

This approach could flip the cycle, leading to greater systems thinking as well as greater sustainability.

“We have evidence that infrastructure is more important than we thought. It may have ripple effects through aspects in communities, such as the diversity of thinking about environment,” Jennifer Helgeson, NIST research economist, and study co-author. “This is only the tip of the iceberg, of all the things we can learn.”