Future Cities: Dynamics and Sustainability / Edition 1

by F. Moavenzadeh, Keisuke Hanaki, Peter Baccini

Overview

The world's burgeoning cities are a critical fact of the 21^st Century - and represent one of the greatest challenges to the future. By the year 2050 cities with populations over three million will more than double from 70 today to over 150.

The authors in this book claim that contrary to conventional wisdom, that cities distort natural processes, just the opposite is true. Cities are far more than the sinks of energy, vast drains of natural resources, and obstacles to sustainable development. Properly managed, they claim, cities can be transformative arenas in which raw materials may be rationally and economically developed to support people decently, and whole regions sustainably.

This volume provides new ideas for managing the mega-cities of our future. The editors' goal is to shape a new way of thinking about mega-cities - one that promotes their function in modern societies as engines of the ideas, technologies, and loci of political will needed to build a new regime of global sustainability.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781402005404
Publisher:	Springer Netherlands
Publication date:	04/30/2002
Series:	Alliance for Global Sustainability Bookseries , #1
Edition description:	2002
Pages:	240
Product dimensions:	6.10(w) x 9.25(h) x 0.02(d)

Table of Contents

Introduction: Cities: Challenges and Opportunities for Sustainability.- I. Resource Management on a Regional Scale.- 1. Restructuring Urban Systems.- 2. Scenarios for the Transition to a Second Solar Society: Case Study of a Swiss Lowland Region.- 3. Sustainable Water Management.- II. Urban Activities: Local and Global Impacts.- 4. Brook Revitalization in Zurich: A Multisystems Analysis of Sustainable Development.- 5. Environmental Loading of Resource and Heat Recovery.- 6. Towards Sustainable Urban Transport: Finding Synergies between Lowering Local and Global Impacts.- 7. The Urban Heat Environment and Urban Sustainability.- 8. “Green” Buildings: Private and Public Gains.- III. Developing and Developed Countries: Challenges and Cooperation.- 9. The Sustainability Challenge for Climate Change: Balancing Inter- and Intragenerational Equity.- 10. Megacities and Global Accords.- 11. Research in Partnership with Developing Countries: Application of the Method of Material Flux Analysis in Tunja, Colombia.

Editorial Reviews

Unidentified contributors discuss how human activities in vast urban agglomerations affect global, regional, and local environments, particularly in terms of the consumption and alteration of natural resources. They also examine how urban institutions emerging from the concentration of human talent and influence can imagine and build a sustainable world. Members of the Alliance are mostly from corporations; the series will report research into emerging barriers to sustainable development and methodologies and tools to help overcome them. The volume is not indexed. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

Booknews

From the reviews:

"Future Cities: Dynamics and Sustainability, is an edited volume that consists of theoretical and analytical articles. … The editors are optimistic that despite all the impacts cities are making on natural processes, cities are not necessarily in conflict with the environment. … the book presents articles with a highly academic focus that should prove useful to students and researchers who are interested in urban metabolism and its sustainability linkages." (Xuemei Bai, Journal of Industrial Ecology, Vol. 7 (2), 2003)

From the Publisher