Cities Demanding the Earth: A New Understanding of the Climate Emergency

by Peter J Taylor, Geoff O'Brien, Phil O'Keefe

Overview

This urgent book brings our cities to the fore in understanding the human input into climate change. The demands we are making on nature by living in cities has reached a crisis point and unless we make significant changes to address it, the prognosis is terminal consumption. Providing a radical new argument that integrates global understandings of making nature and making cities, the authors move beyond current policies of mitigation and adaption and pose the challenge of urban stewardship to tackle the crisis. Their new way of thinking re-orients possibilities for environmental policy and calls for us to reinvent our cities as spaces for activism.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781529210484
Publisher:	Bristol University Press
Publication date:	04/25/2020
Edition description:	First Edition
Pages:	164
Product dimensions:	6.14(w) x 9.21(h) x (d)

About the Author

Peter J. Taylor is Emeritus Professor of Geography at the University of Loughborough and Northumbria University. Geoff O’Brien is an Emeritus scholar at Northumbria University. Phil O’Keefe (1948-2020) was Emeritus Professor of Economic Development and Environmental Management at Northumbria University.

Table of Contents

List of Tables and Figures vi

About the Authors vii

Preface ix

1 Declarations: Root and Branch Unthinking 1

2 Alternate: Jane Jacobs' legacy 17

3 Inside Out: Fourteen Antitheses Authenticating Cities 45

4 Reset: Anthropogenic Climate Change Is Urban, not Modern 71

5 Action: Can We Stop Terminal Consumption? 95

References 123

Appendix: Primer on Climate Change Policy 137

Index 145

What People are Saying About This

From the Publisher

“This synthetic treatise offers fresh perspectives on two fronts: the city and climate change. The key concept—co-evolutionary urban and natural ecologies— forcefully links the destinies of place and planet, for better or worse.” Paul D. Raskin, Tellus Institute

"This innovative synthesis of critical urban thinking and climate change goes right to the root causes of the current emergency to provide a crucial re-interpretation of our predicament." Simon Dalby, Wilfrid Laurier University.