Urban Planet: Knowledge towards Sustainable Cities

by Thomas Elmqvist (Editor), Xuemei Bai (Editor), Niki Frantzeskaki (Editor), Corrie Griffith (Editor), David Maddox (Editor)

Overview

Global urbanization promises better services, stronger economies, and more connections; it also carries risks and unforeseeable consequences. To deepen our understanding of this complex process and its importance for global sustainability, we need to build interdisciplinary knowledge around a systems approach. Urban Planet takes an integrative look at our urban environment, bringing together scholars from a diverse range of disciplines: from sociology and political science to evolutionary biology, geography, economics and engineering. It includes the perspectives of often neglected voices: architects, journalists, artists and activists. The book provides a much needed cross-scale perspective, connecting challenges and solutions on a local scale with drivers and policy frameworks on a regional and global scale. The authors argue that to overcome the major challenges we are facing, we must embark on a large-scale reinvention of how we live together, grounded in inclusiveness and sustainability. This title is also available Open Access.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781107196933
Publisher:	Cambridge University Press
Publication date:	04/26/2018
Pages:	514
Product dimensions:	7.09(w) x 9.96(h) x 1.34(d)

About the Author

Thomas Elmqvist is a Professor in Natural Resource Management at Stockholm Resilience Centre, Stockholm University, Sweden.

Xuemei Bai is a Professor of Urban Environment and Human Ecology at Fenner School of Environment and Society at the Australian National University.

Niki Frantzeskaki is Associate Professor of Sustainability Transitions Governance at the Dutch Research Institute for Transitions (DRIFT) at Erasmus University, The Netherlands.

Corrie Griffith is Program Manager of the Global Consortium for Sustainability Outcomes at Arizona State University.

David Maddox is the founder and Executive Director of 'The Nature of Cities', a transdisciplinary essay site with more than 600 writers from around the world, from scientists to civil society, designers to artists.

Timon McPhearson is Associate Professor of Urban Ecology and Director of the Urban Systems Lab at the New School University, New York, and a Research Fellow at the Cary Institute of Ecosystem Studies and Stockholm Resilience Centre, Sweden.

Susan Parnell is Professor of Urban Geography and co-founder of the African Centre for Cities at the University of Cape Town, South Africa, and Visiting Professor at LSECities.

Patricia Romero-Lankao is Senior Research Scientist at the US National Center for Atmospheric Research based in Colorado, where she is currently leading the 'Urban Futures' initiative.

David Simon is Director of Mistra Urban Futures at Chalmers University of Technology, Gothenburg, and Professor of Development Geography at Royal Holloway, University of London.

Mark Watkins is Program Manager for the Central Arizona-Phoenix Long-Term Ecological Research Program (CAP LTER), part of the US LTER network.

Table of Contents

Introduction; Part I. Dynamic Urban Planet: 1. Global urbanization: perspectives and trends; 2. Embracing urban complexity; 3. Understanding, implementing, and tracking urban metabolism is key to urban futures; 4. Live with risk while reducing vulnerability; 5. Harness urban complexity for health and wellbeing; 6. Macro-economy and urban productivity; Part II. Global Urban Sustainable Development: 7. Rethinking urban sustainability and resilience; 8. Indicators for measuring urban sustainable development and resilience; 9. The UN, the urban sustainable development goal and the new urban agenda; 10. Utilizing urban living laboratories for social innovation; 11. Can big data make a difference for urban management?; 12. Collaborative and equitable urban citizen science; Part III. Urban Transformations to Sustainability: 13. Sustainability transformation emerging from better governance; 14. To transform cities, support civil society; 15. Governance and the new politics of collaboration and contestation; 16. Seeds of the future, found in the present; Part IV. Provocations from Practice: 17. Sustainability, Karachi, and other irreconcilables; 18. What knowledge do the cities themselves need?; 19. Banksy and the biologist: redrawing the twenty-first century city; 20. Every community needs a forest of imagination; 21. How can we shift from a imaged-based city to a life-based city?; 22. A chimera called smart cities; 23. Beyond fill-in-the-blank cities; 24. Persuading policy makers to implement sustainable city plans; 25. To live or not to live: urbanisation and the knowledge worker; 26. City fragmentation and the commons; 27. Cities as global organisms; 28. From concrete structures to green diversity: ecological landscape design for restoring urban nature and children's play; 29. Building cities: a view from India; 30. The barking dog syndrome; 31. Overcoming inertia and reinventing 'retreat'; 32. Money for old rope; 33. An aesthetic appreciation of tagging; 34. Understanding Arab cities; 35. Who can implement the sustainable development goals?; 36. Achieving sustainable cities by focusing on urban underserved; 37. The rebellion of memory; 38. Cities don't need 'big' data – they need innovations that connect to the local; 39. Digital urbanisation and the end of big cities; 40. The art of engagement / activating curiosity; 41. Nairobi's illegal city makers; 42. Active environmental citizens with receptive government officials can enact change; 43. The sea wall; 44. Academics and non-academics: who's who in changing the culture of knowledge creation?; 45. Private fears in public spaces; 46. Leadership: science and policy as uncomfortable bedfellows; 47. Sketches of an emotional geography towards a new citizenship; 48. The shift in urban technology innovation; 49. Greening cities: our pressing moral imperative; 50. Recognition deficit and struggle for unifying city fragments; 51. Disrespecting the knowledge of place; 52. Broadening our vision to find a new eco-spiritual way of living.

Editorial Reviews

‘The fast-paced urbanization of the world significantly alters our attitudes towards space, particularly the ways we comprehend and organize them. This development is unprecedented in our recent history and calls for global reflections aiming at enlightening and supporting the implementation of local policies. Such is the ambition of Urban Planet book. To overcome the major challenges we are facing - particularly the ones dealing with climate and resilience - cities, such as Paris and many other cities around the globe, must understand and embrace their own complexity, so as to harness complexity to better serve the well-being of their citizens. It is by empowering the collective intelligence and sharing knowledge, that our cities will reinvent ways of living together, grounded in inclusiveness and the daily practice of democracy.' Anne Hidalgo, Mayor of Paris

‘The authors of Urban Planet make [the] journey to the city more legible, highlighting the hopes and hindrances its brings, and the need for a parallel evolution of our science and systems if we are to reap the rewards of the great urban trek that we are now on.' Greg Clark, CBE, Urban Innovation Centre, London

From the Publisher