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11 - Sustainability Issues in Urban Systems from a Metabolic Perspective

from Part III - Perspectives on Urban Sustainability

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 March 2020

By
João Meirelles ,
Anna Pagani ,
Aristide Athanassiadis  and
Claudia R. Binder
Edited by
Claudia R. Binder ,
Romano Wyss  and
Emanuele Massaro
Claudia R. Binder
Affiliation:
École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne
Romano Wyss
Affiliation:
École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne
Emanuele Massaro
Affiliation:
École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne
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Summary

This chapter provides an integrative view of the sustainability challenges of urban systems. Thereby, urban metabolism is explored as a promising framework which is often praised as offering a systemic understanding of sustainability challenges in different areas. Nevertheless, this framework still has several shortcomings. To overcome these limitations and to better understand what the urban characteristics are that make cities (un)sustainable and contribute to global (un)sustainability, we take a historical perspective. This is combined with additional pieces of evidence into a general and systemic metabolic view of the effects of urbanisation on social, environmental, and economic sustainability. The chapter concludes by proposing an integrative and transdisciplinary framework to cover the multiple facets of urban sustainability both in terms of spatial scales and from a disciplinary point of view.

Keywords

citiesurbanityurban metabolismurban historysustainability
Type
Chapter
Information
Sustainability Assessment of Urban Systems , pp. 261 - 289
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2020

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