Understanding Urban Sustainability

Meeting fundamental human needs while preserving the life support systems of planet Earth will require a world-wide acceleration of today's halting progress in a transition toward sustainability. "Understanding Sustainable Cities: Concepts, Cases, and Solutions" presents a plethora of subject matters in urban sustainability, providing both instructors and students with in-depth knowledge about crosscutting issues, concepts, and solutions inherent in modern sustainability thinking.

This text works to illustrate how cities can and have applied concepts such as ecological footprint, modeling urban sustainability, sustainability indicators, urban adaptation, and climate action planning into their programs, policies, and urban planning and design. Discusses values and ethics (philosophy), perceptions and behavior (social sciences), green infrastructure (urban ecology and green networks), restoration of cities and place-making (urban planning), green design (urban design and architecture), urban policies and programs (public policy and public administration), and learning from the earliest cities (anthropology and archaeology). Can be used as a supplement in other environmental, sustainability, geology, anthropology and social sciences classes in which the professor wishes to cover selected issues in sustainable cities or sustainability.