Cities That Think like Planets: Complexity, Resilience, and Innovation in Hybrid Ecosystems

by Marina Alberti

Overview

As human activity and environmental change come to be increasingly recognized as intertwined phenomena on a rapidly urbanizing planet, the field of urban ecology has risen to offer useful ways of thinking about coupled human and natural systems.

On the forefront of this discipline is Marina Alberti, whose innovative work offers a conceptual framework for uncovering fundamental laws that govern the complexity and resilience of cities, which she sees as key to understanding and responding to planetary change and the evolution of Earth. Bridging the fields of urban planning and ecology, Alberti describes a science of cities that work on a planetary scale and that links unpredictable dynamics to the potential for innovation. It is a science that considers interactions - at all scales - between people and built environments and between cities and their larger environments.

Cities That Think like Planets advances strategies for planning a future that may look very different from the present, as rapid urbanization could tip the Earth toward abrupt and nonlinear change. Alberti's analyses of the various hybrid ecosystems, such as self-organization, heterogeneity, modularity, multiple equilibria, feedback, and transformation, may help humans participate in guiding the Earth away from inadvertent collapse and toward a new era of planetary co-evolution and resilience.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780295743677
Publisher:	University of Washington Press
Publication date:	03/01/2018
Edition description:	Reprint
Pages:	304
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x (d)
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

Marina Alberti is professor of urban design and planning and director of the Urban Ecology Research Lab at the University of Washington.

Table of Contents

Preface ix

Acknowledgments xvii

1 Cities and Imagination 3

2 The Hybrid Ecosystem A Hypothesis 11

3 Reframing Urban Ecology 58

4 Emergent Properties in Coupled Human-Natural Systems 84

5 Resilience in Hybrid Ecosystems 106

6 Eco-Evolution on an Urban Planet 133

7 Reverse Experiments 164

8 Incomplete Knowledge, Uncertainty, and Surprise 179

9 Scenarios Imagining the Possible 192

10 Building Cities That Think like Planets 207

Glossary 225

Bibliography 231

Index 265

What People are Saying About This

Richard T. T. Forman

"Reading this book is like taking a journey, discovering and gathering ecological concepts to tweak cities into promising human-and-nature trajectories. Embrace rapid change, build on uncertainty, treasure coevolved hybrid links, add a pinch each of optimism, innovation, and more. Envision our future, transform urban planning, and, indeed, relish Alberti’s feast of ideas."

Hilda Blanco

"Cities That Think llke Planets is a very bold and broad argument supported by the latest research in complexity studies. A timely and significant achievement."