Sustainable Urban Metabolism - 9780262019361

Urbanization and globalization have shaped the last hundred years. These two dominanttrends are mutually reinforcing: globalization links countries through the networked communicationsof urban hubs. The urban population now generates more than eighty percent of global GDP. Citiesaccount for enormous flows of energy and materials -- inflows of goods and services and outflows ofwaste. Thus urban environmental management critically affects global sustainability. In this book,Paulo Ferrão and John Fernández offer a metabolic perspective on urban sustainability, viewingthe city as a metabolism, in terms of its exchanges of matter and energy. Their book provides aroadmap to the strategies and tools needed for a scientifically based framework for analyzing andpromoting the sustainability of urban systems.

Using the concept of urbanmetabolism as a unifying framework, Ferrão and Fernandez describe a systems-oriented approachthat establishes useful linkages among environmental, economic, social, and technical infrastructureissues. These linkages lead to an integrated information-intensive platform that enablesecologically informed urban planning. After establishing the theoretical background and describingthe diversity of contributing disciplines, the authors sample sustainability approaches and tools,offer an extended study of the urban metabolism of Lisbon, and outline the challenges andopportunities in approaching urban sustainability in both developed and developing countries.