Publications

Andersson, E., Grimm, N., Lewis, J., Redman, C., Barthel, S., Colding, J., Elmqvist, T. 2022. Urban climate resilience through hybrid infrastructure. Current Opinion in Environmental Sustainability. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.cosust.2022.101158

Urban infrastructure will require transformative changes to adapt to changing disturbance patterns. We ask what new opportunities hybrid infrastructure—built environments coupled with landscape-scale biophysical structures and processes—offer for building different layers of resilience critical for dealing with increased variation in the frequency, magnitude and different phases of climate-related disturbances. With its more ...

Colding, J., Samuelsson, K., Marcus, L., Gren, Å., Legeby, A., Berghauser Pont, M., Barthel, S.. 2022. Frontiers in Social–Ecological Urbanism. Land. http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/land11060929

This paper describes a new approach in urban ecological design, referred to as social–ecological urbanism (SEU). It draws from research in resilience thinking and space syntax in the analysis of relationships between urban processes and urban form at the microlevel of cities, where social and ecological services are directly experienced by urban dwellers. The paper elaborates on three types of media for urban designers to int...

Colding, J., Barthel, S., Ljung, R., Eriksson, F., Sjöberg, S.. 2021. Urban Commons and Collective Action to Address Climate Change. Social Inclusion. http://dx.doi.org/10.17645/si.v10i1.4862

Climate change and the coupled loss of ecosystem services pose major collective action problems in that all individuals would benefit from better cooperation to address these problems but conflicting interests and/or incomplete knowledge discourage joint action. Adopting an inductive and multi‐layered approach, drawing upon the authors’ previous research on urban commons, we here summarize key insights on environmentally orien...

Linder, N., Rosenthal, S., Sorqvist, P. & Barthel, S. 2021. Internal and external factors’ influence on recycling: Insights from a laboratory experiment with observed behavior. Frontiers in Psychology 12, 699410.

Internal psychological factors, such as intentions and personal norms, are central predictors of pro-environmental behavior in many theoretical models, whereas the influence from external factors such as the physical environment is seldom considered. Even rarer is studying how internal factors interact with the physical context in which decisions take place. In the current study, we addressed the relative influence and intera...

Barthel, S., Colding, J., Hiswåls, A., Thalén, P., Turunen, P.. 2021. Urban green commons for socially sustainable cities and communities. Nordic Social Work Research. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/2156857x.2021.1947876

In these times of global pandemics and climate crisis, social sustainability has become a crucial issue within diverse sectors and disciplines. This article aims to broaden the discussions on social sustainability in general, and in relation to community work within professional social work in particular. By means of a cross-disciplinary bricolage approach –with a focus on the commons – we aim to construct a holistic view of ...

Samuelsson, K., Barthel, S., Giusti, M., Hartig, T.. 2021. Visiting nearby natural settings supported wellbeing during Sweden’s “soft-touch” pandemic restrictions. Landscape and Urban Planning. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.landurbplan.2021.104176

The coronavirus pandemic entailed varying restrictions on access, movement and social behavior in populations around the world. Knowledge about how people coped with “soft-touch” restrictions can inform urban spatial planning strategies that enhance resilience against future pandemics. We analyzed data from an online place-based survey on 2845 places across Sweden that respondents abstained from visiting, visited with similar...

Linder, N., Giusti, M., Samuelsson, K., Barthel, S.. 2021. Pro-environmental habits: An underexplored research agenda in sustainability science. Ambio. http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s13280-021-01619-6

Habits are the fundamental basis for many of our daily actions and can be powerful barriers to behavioural change. Still, habits are not included in most narratives, theories, and interventions applied to sustainable behaviour.  One reason societies struggle to reach policy goals and people fail to change towards more pro-environmental lifestyles might be that many behaviours are now bound by strong habits that override knowl...

Raymond, C.M., Kaaronen, R., Giusti, M., Linder, N. & Barthel, S. 2021. Engaging with the pragmatics of relational thinking, leverage points and transformations – Reply to West et al. Ecosystems and People 17(1), 1–5.

We reply to ‘A relational turn for sustainability science?’ by West et al. We commend West et al. for their salient comments about the relational turn. Yet the article leaves us wondering about the methodological challenges and pragmatics of relational thinking. The authors omitted important tensions in relational thinking discussion about how to assess dynamic socio-ecological systems, and how to lever change for sustainabil...

Brandt, S., Lim, N., Colding, J., Barthel, S.. 2021. Mapping Flood Risk Uncertainty Zones in Support of Urban Resilience Planning. Urban Planning. http://dx.doi.org/10.17645/up.v6i3.4073

River flooding and urbanization are processes of different character that take place worldwide. As the latter tends to make the consequences of the former worse, together with the uncertainties related to future climate change and flood-risk modeling, there is a need to both use existing tools and develop new ones that help the management and planning of urban environments. In this article a prototype tool, based on estimated...

Pan, H., Page, J., Cong, C., Barthel, S., Kalantari, Z.. 2021. How ecosystems services drive urban growth: Integrating nature-based solutions. Anthropocene Volume 35, September 2021, 100297, http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.ancene.2021.100297

Addressing urban challenges with nature-based approaches can improve and protect ecosystem services. Yet, urban planning has not efficiently integrated such approaches to manage land use. This paper examines interactions between human and natural systems that result in ecosystem services and changes in land use and land cover in urban areas. It develops a social-ecological model for land use and land cover change, and for eco...