The Sustainable City

Abstract

The analysis of global urban development in the last couple of decades has been greatly influenced by the ‘sustainability debate’ and the increasing recognition that we are all part of one eco-system (Therborn 2000). This debate focuses upon the interplay between the environment and the natural resources it contains — water, energy, soil, air — and the pollution and consequent corruption of the eco-system that has taken place through industrial and urban development. A recent idea that has gained currency in the debate is that of the ‘ecological footprint’ which is the calculated amount of ecologically productive land needed on a continuous basis to supply a population with all its resources (goods, services and energy, and so on) and to assimilate all wastes (Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment 1998:2). The use of this concept is an attempt to provide integration across the natural and social environment. In much of this debate, ‘sustainability’ is seen largely as a matter of bio-physical processes and the social and the cultural facets of the city and the social actions and political institutions which have emerged over time are seen as secondary to the natural or derivatives from the bio-physical environment.