Eric Chu

Bio: Eric Chu is an academic researcher from University of California, Davis. The author has contributed to research in topics: Urban planning & Urban climate. The author has an hindex of 31, co-authored 96 publications receiving 19139 citations. Previous affiliations of Eric Chu include Monash University & National Tsing Hua University.

Urban adaptations observed : the politics of governing climate resilience in Indian cities

Abstract: Thesis: Ph. D. in Environmental Policy and Planning, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Department of Urban Studies and Planning, 2015.

Ten new insights in climate science 2022

Abstract: Non-technical summary We summarize what we assess as the past year's most important findings within climate change research: limits to adaptation, vulnerability hotspots, new threats coming from the climate–health nexus, climate (im)mobility and security, sustainable practices for land use and finance, losses and damages, inclusive societal climate decisions and ways to overcome structural barriers to accelerate mitigation and limit global warming to below 2°C. Technical summary We synthesize 10 topics within climate research where there have been significant advances or emerging scientific consensus since January 2021. The selection of these insights was based on input from an international open call with broad disciplinary scope. Findings concern: (1) new aspects of soft and hard limits to adaptation; (2) the emergence of regional vulnerability hotspots from climate impacts and human vulnerability; (3) new threats on the climate–health horizon – some involving plants and animals; (4) climate (im)mobility and the need for anticipatory action; (5) security and climate; (6) sustainable land management as a prerequisite to land-based solutions; (7) sustainable finance practices in the private sector and the need for political guidance; (8) the urgent planetary imperative for addressing losses and damages; (9) inclusive societal choices for climate-resilient development and (10) how to overcome barriers to accelerate mitigation and limit global warming to below 2°C. Social media summary Science has evidence on barriers to mitigation and how to overcome them to avoid limits to adaptation across multiple fields.

Decoupled Structure-Preserving Doubling Algorithm with Truncation for Large-Scale Algebraic Riccati Equations.

Abstract: In \emph{Guo et al, arXiv:2005.08288}, we propose a decoupled form of the structure-preserving doubling algorithm (dSDA). The method decouples the original two to four coupled recursions, enabling it to solve large-scale algebraic Riccati equations and other related problems. In this paper, we consider the numerical computations of the novel dSDA for solving large-scale continuous-time algebraic Riccati equations with low-rank structures (thus possessing numerically low-rank solutions). With the help of a new truncation strategy, the rank of the approximate solution is controlled. Consequently, large-scale problems can be treated efficiently. Illustrative numerical examples are presented to demonstrate and confirm our claims.

Urban Climate Adaptation

Abstract: Despite early optimism in cities’ leadership on climate adaptation planning, critics increasingly find that prevailing adaptation interventions are financially speculative, economically exclusive, and socially discriminatory. In this chapter, the authors discuss how emerging adaptation plans have taken on characteristics of climate urbanism by privileging the epistemologies, operations, and normative values of cities in the Global North, which in turn has shaped the scope, scale, strategies, and empirical evidence of adaptation actions on the ground. Dominant global imaginaries of climate-resilient futures prioritize technological fixes, decentralized and individual responsibility, consumption-led economic growth, and the securitization of upper-middle class values, experiences, and lifestyles. Adaptation planning practice has yet to recognize the long history of alternative epistemologies, everyday strategies, and normative socio-cultural values that tackle the drivers of systemic environmental, racial, and economic injustices in cities. Socio-political instability, even under currently observed warming trends, suggests that effective and just adaptation moving forward must be more political, relational, and anticipatory not only to biophysical changes but also to responses from the market, state, community, and social movements. Adaptation plans must therefore engage with epistemologies heretofore sidelined in the field, including critical political economy, embodied knowledge, postcolonial, anti-racist, and feminist studies. This chapter charts a way to comparatively view these alternative perspectives from “off the map” that are essential in pursuit of more just, equitable, and sustainable cities.

Translating and embedding equity-thinking into climate adaptation: an analysis of US cities

Abstract: Abstract Cities increasingly recognize the importance of furthering social equity in their climate adaptation planning. Such efforts are often in response to grassroots mobilizations, yet it is not clear to what extent they translate into urban coalitions, policy designs, and implementation efforts within city governments. In this paper, we respond to this knowledge gap by assessing how equity-thinking is translated into cities’ adaptation decision-making and governance arrangements, especially in ways that can lead to more inclusive and just climate adaptation outcomes for historically marginalized communities. We analyze adaptation plans for the 25 largest US cities using deductive and inductive coding strategies to uncover the ideas, rhetoric, and processes that guide equitable plans. We then map these outcomes of equity-thinking across procedural, distributive, and recognitional categories. Our analysis lends support to the operation of two social constructivist mechanisms of equity-thinking in adaptation planning—namely ideology and recognition. In an ideology-driven pathway, where beliefs are shared, adaptation efforts are mobilized through local actors and within public agencies who decide on the appropriateness of social equity definitions. Recognition-driven pathways occur when climate equity rhetoric is reflected and normalized through adaptation planning procedures, where cities strive to be early adopters of equitable climate strategies. This result therefore highlights the multiple ways urban leaders, decision-makers, and planners can have in steering policies and designing different planning and implementation processes.

The Production of Space

Abstract: ‘The Production of Space’, in: Frans Jacobi, Imagine, Space Poetry, Copenhagen, 1996, unpaginated.