Innovations in artificial intelligence, machine learning, digital communication networks and platforms (like smart grid technologies), robotics, and remote monitoring programs offer the potential to transform economic sectors worldwide. For the Blue Economy and the coastal regions that support it, these innovations will support a host of new industries, including the expansion of offshore solar and wind energy, or expanded information and communication networks to support transactional industries, engineered fisheries, and distribution systems.
At the same time, the pace and breadth of anthropogenic changes to climate and ecological systems around the world are pushing closer to an irreversible brink due to sustained temperature increases, sea level rise and massive flooding events due to extreme weather patterns, and inalterable ecosystem transitions in many of the world’s most fragile, coastal settings. Investments in climate resilience alongside digital upgrades will continue for the foreseeable future.
And yet, how, where, and for whom the ‘new’ Blue Economy materializes remains under-examined. For instance, coastal cities are particularly impacted by both economic transitions and the climate crisis because of the concentration of population and often striking inequalities that can be present in urban society. Parallel to this is a renewed emphasis on developing and implementing policies, programs, and strategies to mitigate the potential impacts of these ‘turbulent’ transitions with a special focus on incentivizing
the private sector to create companies and jobs, find innovative solutions to the digital divide, and apply them to both curbing the trend towards global warming and mitigating its effects.
This Research Topic for Frontiers in Sustainable Cities as well as Frontiers in Global Change and the Future Ocean aims to advance empirical examinations of these issues through scholarship that specifically interrogates how opportunities for developing sustainable and equitable urban futures align (or diverge) from innovations in the Blue Economy writ large. We welcome both disciplinarily-grounded as well as interdisciplinary, transdisciplinary, and convergence case studies or other empirical work, as well as novel approaches to the examination of this topic.
This issue seeks contributions that will focus on understanding the intersection of technological, climatological, and/or meteorological change facing cities as they seek to address local social disparities via investments in the Blue Economy.
As examples, with the caveat that we are happy to consider paper proposals addressing other aspects of this topic:
- An interdisciplinary framing paper proposal could consider the current moment and near future within the ‘long duree’ of capitalist development of the world’s oceans, the legacies of colonialism and the offshoring of industry.
- A public policy paper proposal could focus on how ‘Blue Tech’ digital technologies are embedded within Blue Economy solutions to consider the educational and skills requirements needed to engage with these new technologies, and the existing and emergent social inequalities faced in specific urban contexts that have or may arise as the Blue Economy evolves, and tools and case studies of approaches to civic engagement, policy implementation and assessing urban social impacts implied or created by the advancement of the Blue Economy.
- An urban-focussed social science paper proposal could examine how investments in the Blue Economy intersect with post-industrial decline, new digital divides, and the urban dimensions of the green transition and 4th industrial revolution.
- An economic paper proposal could consider an industry case study of an emergent sector like deep sea mining or offshore wind and how and where these sectors are locating onshore, in port cities, what waterfront investments are necessary for implementing deep sea ventures, and how these coastal infrastructures are designed to be flexible and adaptable to the effects of sea level rise and the intensifying climate crisis.
- An infrastructure transformation paper proposal may consider how investments in sustainable infrastructure are impacted by–or shape change in–specific place-based or social contexts.
Keywords:
Blue Economy, Digital Technologies, Social Inequalities, Civic Engagement, Global Change, Ecological Systems, Policy Implementation, Coastal Urban Society
Important Note:
All contributions to this Research Topic must be within the scope of the section and journal to which they are submitted, as defined in their mission statements. Frontiers reserves the right to guide an out-of-scope manuscript to a more suitable section or journal at any stage of peer review.
Innovations in artificial intelligence, machine learning, digital communication networks and platforms (like smart grid technologies), robotics, and remote monitoring programs offer the potential to transform economic sectors worldwide. For the Blue Economy and the coastal regions that support it, these innovations will support a host of new industries, including the expansion of offshore solar and wind energy, or expanded information and communication networks to support transactional industries, engineered fisheries, and distribution systems.
At the same time, the pace and breadth of anthropogenic changes to climate and ecological systems around the world are pushing closer to an irreversible brink due to sustained temperature increases, sea level rise and massive flooding events due to extreme weather patterns, and inalterable ecosystem transitions in many of the world’s most fragile, coastal settings. Investments in climate resilience alongside digital upgrades will continue for the foreseeable future.
And yet, how, where, and for whom the ‘new’ Blue Economy materializes remains under-examined. For instance, coastal cities are particularly impacted by both economic transitions and the climate crisis because of the concentration of population and often striking inequalities that can be present in urban society. Parallel to this is a renewed emphasis on developing and implementing policies, programs, and strategies to mitigate the potential impacts of these ‘turbulent’ transitions with a special focus on incentivizing
the private sector to create companies and jobs, find innovative solutions to the digital divide, and apply them to both curbing the trend towards global warming and mitigating its effects.
This Research Topic for Frontiers in Sustainable Cities as well as Frontiers in Global Change and the Future Ocean aims to advance empirical examinations of these issues through scholarship that specifically interrogates how opportunities for developing sustainable and equitable urban futures align (or diverge) from innovations in the Blue Economy writ large. We welcome both disciplinarily-grounded as well as interdisciplinary, transdisciplinary, and convergence case studies or other empirical work, as well as novel approaches to the examination of this topic.
This issue seeks contributions that will focus on understanding the intersection of technological, climatological, and/or meteorological change facing cities as they seek to address local social disparities via investments in the Blue Economy.
As examples, with the caveat that we are happy to consider paper proposals addressing other aspects of this topic:
- An interdisciplinary framing paper proposal could consider the current moment and near future within the ‘long duree’ of capitalist development of the world’s oceans, the legacies of colonialism and the offshoring of industry.
- A public policy paper proposal could focus on how ‘Blue Tech’ digital technologies are embedded within Blue Economy solutions to consider the educational and skills requirements needed to engage with these new technologies, and the existing and emergent social inequalities faced in specific urban contexts that have or may arise as the Blue Economy evolves, and tools and case studies of approaches to civic engagement, policy implementation and assessing urban social impacts implied or created by the advancement of the Blue Economy.
- An urban-focussed social science paper proposal could examine how investments in the Blue Economy intersect with post-industrial decline, new digital divides, and the urban dimensions of the green transition and 4th industrial revolution.
- An economic paper proposal could consider an industry case study of an emergent sector like deep sea mining or offshore wind and how and where these sectors are locating onshore, in port cities, what waterfront investments are necessary for implementing deep sea ventures, and how these coastal infrastructures are designed to be flexible and adaptable to the effects of sea level rise and the intensifying climate crisis.
- An infrastructure transformation paper proposal may consider how investments in sustainable infrastructure are impacted by–or shape change in–specific place-based or social contexts.
Keywords:
Blue Economy, Digital Technologies, Social Inequalities, Civic Engagement, Global Change, Ecological Systems, Policy Implementation, Coastal Urban Society
Important Note:
All contributions to this Research Topic must be within the scope of the section and journal to which they are submitted, as defined in their mission statements. Frontiers reserves the right to guide an out-of-scope manuscript to a more suitable section or journal at any stage of peer review.