The role of food-energy-water nexus analyses in urban growth models for urban sustainability: A review of synergistic framework

The integration of food-energy-water (FEW) sectors is essential for addressing the co-evolution of urban infrastructure systems during urban growth. But how these evolutionary pathways can affect an urban growth model is unclear. This review paper offers a synthesis of the current philosophy of a FEW nexus in connection with the realm of urban growth models (UGMs) to signify the paradigm collision and shift with interdisciplinary sustainability insights. Findings indicate that urban metabolism and urban ecology in relation to FEW sectors can be incorporated into UGMs with scales via multicriteria decision analysis as FEW technology hub integration can play a critical role in UGMs via a common cellular automata (CA) architecture for both model construction and solution procedure. Synergies between FEW sectors and CA-based UGMs as well as tradeoffs across FEW technology hub integration are highlighted to reflect the cascade effects and higher order impact on urban metabolism and urban ecology. This concept was confirmed with a case study in Miami, Florida, the United States for demonstration. Such synergistic framework is helpful for fostering more sustainable, green, smart, forward-looking, environmentally-sound, socially equitable, risk-informed, resilient, and cost-effective urban growth simulations. It is anticipated that the proposed hybrid FEW-CA-based UGMs can fully account for interactions of context- and culture-driven issues for multi-scale and multiagent urban planning and design in different countries.