Creating Sustainable Cities

The global environmental impact of urban resource use could well become the dominant feature of the human presence on earth and, given the reality of ever larger numbers of cities, one of humanity’s greatest challenges for the new millennium.

Only in countries that are ‘fully’ developed, such as the UK or USA, where rural lifestyles have been effectively urbanised, are levels of consumption in urban and rural areas broadly similar.

The growth of modern urban economies, then, usually means two things: increased demands on the natural capital supplying cities, as well as increased discharges of wastes into the local and global environment. The global environmental impact of urban resource use is becoming a critical issue in the future of urbanisation and the dominant feature of the human presence on earth. As humanity urbanises, it also changes its very relationship to its host planet: global urbanisation has greatly increased humanity’s use of natural resources. This can be witnessed today in developing countries, where urban people typically have much higher standards of living than rural dwellers, depending on massively increased throughput of fossil fuels, metals, meat and manufactured products.