1.

The sustainable city: introduction and

overview
Hilda Blanco and Daniel A. Mazmanian

INTRODUCTION

The unprecedented urbanization of human populations around the world

presents one of the most profound challenges of the twenty-first century.
The causes and consequences are many, diverse and much debated. Yet the
number of urban dwellers, along with the growth of, especially, medium,
large and truly mega-cities continues unabated, with significant implica-
tions for the health and viability of their populations and their impact on
nature’s services.
We believe that in this context any meaningful path forward must weave
together both intra- and intertemporal needs and challenges into a more
comprehensive and thus sustainable cities approach. This approach must
ultimately be spread globally, although not through the dictates of a
central authority or even a binding global policy agreement, but through
the cumulative action of path-breaking lead cities and their leaders
around the world. Urban centers are the very places where societal chal-
lenges have throughout human history been confronted and overcome,
through necessity, human ingenuity, experimentation and the diffusion of
good ideas.
Cities today are already coming together in a shared concern with
the challenges of today’s urbanization, persuaded that the solutions can
be found in charting a new course, that of becoming more sustainable:
socially, economically and environmentally. The sustainable cities move-
ment is beginning to emerge in a host of cities around the world, ranging
from social and environmentally sensitive actions by groups of citizens, to
implementing sustainable public policies, to embracing a comprehensive
approach to sustainability that brings the major economic, social and envi-
ronmental pieces together within a comprehensive ‘systems’ approach to
the city, making it more resilient and livable.
We do not ignore the importance of global-level action when it comes
to sustainability, but recognize that this is a long way off politically and
will likely be based on what is learned through the efforts of cities in
this transition period for human populations. In effect, cities’ initiatives

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2 Elgar companion to sustainable cities

on sustainability are a critical step in the global transformation to

sustainability, serving as exemplars, as pragmatic local ways of addressing
both local and global issues, as means of empowering those who appreci-
ate the significance of the challenges of moving toward a more sustainable
future and choose to be a part of the process.
The present volume provides a framework for understanding the
city as a critical building block of a more sustainable future. The city is
approached in terms of becoming a ‘sustainable system’ in itself, nested
within a broader subnational, national, continental context, and ulti-
mately, a global systems context. It is a place where sustainable strategies
are being devised, and methods and tools for achieving them applied. The
volume is organized primarily to capture the two aspects of the trans-
formation: Part I focuses on examples of social, economic, political and
environmental policy strategies that are being developed. Part II brings
to the fore methods and tools for applying the various strategies and
analyzing the extent to which they are leading to greater sustainability,
likewise, along social, economic, political and environmental lines. The
authors bring to the discussion their diverse analytical and disciplinary
trainings and backgrounds and, together, provide a wide array of strategic
thinking and methods of analysis. Each strategy, each method, is a type
of ‘intervention’ in what is inherently a complex system, with a myriad
of interconnections and moving parts. However, cities, as any complex
system, do not evolve or change automatically or holistically, but through
interventions that leverage inflection points that move or steer them in
new directions. In the contemporary parlance of change, interventions –
imposed from outside a system or cultivated from within – are points of
inflection and turning points (sometimes referred to as tipping points).
In this case, strategies are interventions that turn cities in the direction of
increasing sustainability.
The final part (Part III) provides several thought-provoking perspec-
tives looking beyond current strategies and interventions, to more holistic
futuristic visions of the sustainable city. Perspectives on urban form, the
economic system, governance and technologies of the sustainable city are
elaborated.
The volume is intended for use by scholars, practitioners and students
interested in the role of, and prospects for, cities in the movement toward
sustainability. It is designed to be a comprehensive source of contempo-
rary research and knowledge about the array of methods and strategies in
use, providing insights and actionable information organized around the
environmental, social and economic dimensions of a sustainable city.

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 Introduction and overview 3

THE URBANIZATION CHALLENGE

An increasing population in a world of finite resources encapsulates the

challenge of sustainability. Sustainability is further strained by the increas-
ing and uneven rate of resource consumption. While the world’s popula-
tion tripled during the twentieth century, reaching seven billion in 2011,
the use of water resources grew six-fold. One-sixth of the world’s popu-
lation lacks access to safe drinking water and one-third lacks adequate
sanitation. Over the past two centuries, resource depletion and loss of
biodiversity have accelerated. Increasing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions
threaten global climate patterns.
The world’s population is not evenly distributed, but concentrated in
human settlements. Further, in 2008 the world reached a momentous mile-
stone: over half of the world’s population now live in urban areas. This
urbanizing trend will accelerate in the twenty-first century. As of 2010,
over 82 percent of people in North America, over 73 percent in Europe, 83
percent in South America and 89 percent in Australia were already living
in urban areas. Although Africa (39.3 percent urban population) and Asia
(44.4 percent urban) are still mainly rural, by 2050, urban populations are
projected to reach 57.7 percent in Africa and 64.4 percent in Asia (United
Nations 2012).
Cities are the dominant human habitat. If we are concerned about the
sustainability of the planet, then we need to focus on the sustainability of
cities. Cities are the place where global challenges converge, ideas are tested,
and solutions emerge. In order to discuss urban sustainability, we need first
to clarify what we mean by sustainability and by urban settlements.

THE SUSTAINABILITY CHALLENGE

Sustainability has become a popular term, and there are likely hundreds
of published definitions (Hempel 2009). The root of sustainability is the
adjective ‘sustainable’, which the dictionary defines as the ability ‘to be
maintained at a certain rate or level: sustainable fusion reactions. (Ecology)
(esp. of development, exploitation, or agriculture) conserving an ecological
balance by avoiding depletion of natural resources . . .’ (McKean 2005).
According to the law of entropy, in the long run nothing is sustainable.
Thus we should understand the term as a comparative, relative, not an
absolute term, judging situations as more or less sustainable over a given
time period, or cities as more or less sustainable compared to others.
Two major definitions of sustainability are important to understand:
the Brundtland Commission’s and ‘balancing the three Es’ definitions.

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4 Elgar companion to sustainable cities

The canonical definition of sustainable development is that of the United

Nations World Commission on Environment and Development Report
published in 1987, commonly known as the Brundtland Report (after its
Chairman, Harlen Brundtland):

Sustainable development is development that meets the needs of the present

generation without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their
own needs. (UN WCED 1987)

This definition builds on the common meaning of the term, the ability to
maintain an activity ‘at a certain rate or level’, and emphasizes retaining
opportunities of development for present generations, especially the poor,
and for future generations. It also refers to the more recent ecological
meaning of sustainability, the natural environment’s ability to meet human
needs and functions. This idea implies that earth systems have a carrying
capacity, a finite ability to sustain or carry life, and that at this point
human activity is unsustainable.1
Development that balances the three Es, environment, equity and the
economy, is a popular definition of sustainability (Daly and Cobb 1989;
Elkington 1994; Campbell 1996; Godschalk 2004). On this definition, these
three systems, the natural environment, along with the economy, and the
social/political/ethical system that would guarantee a certain measure of
equity, are assumed to be co-equal. Figure 1.1 is a popular way of depicting
this idea. This balancing of the three spheres concept has been popularized
for the business sector through the concept of the triple bottom line (TBL)
or the three pillars: people, planet and profit. TBL has developed account-
ing systems that expand the traditional financial performance measures to
incorporate social and environmental dimensions (Elkington 1998).
The definition of sustainability as a balance of the three spheres/dimen-
sions, however, gives a misleading impression of the relationship among
the three systems, environmental, social and economic. The relation is
not of equals but of nested dependency. Figure 1.2 shows a more realistic
schematic of the three systems, indicating the nested relations among the
three. All human societies depend on the natural environment for land,
goods, food, water, air and energy (Ross 2009). All manufactured goods
are based on these natural goods. We have no substitutes for many of these
natural goods, and thus the natural environment is the primary system
on which all human societies depend. Economies, which are social con-
structs, dependent on human social organizations, vary across the world
and across time. This relationship of dependency establishes an order of
system adaptation in our pursuit of sustainable development: societies
must strive to conserve natural resources and reduce resource degradation;
and economies within these societies will require changes to facilitate the

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 Introduction and overview 5

Environment

Sustainable
development

Social Economic

Figure 1.1 Sustainable development as a balance or interface among three

spheres

Economy

Society

Environment

Figure 1.2 The nested relationship among the three dimensions of

sustainability

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6 Elgar companion to sustainable cities

conservation and quality of natural goods and services. How sustainability

is to be achieved is all the more challenging in an age of growing economic
globalization operating in a world of global supply chains where the tradi-
tional economic relations between urban areas and their rural regions are
increasingly replaced by teleconnections or distal, often global, relations
that are complex and only partly understood (Seto et al. 2012).

ON DEFINING THE URBAN

Defining the ‘urban’ in the urban milestone achieved in 2008 is almost as dif-
ficult as defining sustainability. There is no recognized, global definition of
urban areas or cities. The United Nations, when it reports on urbanization
or cities, uses countries’ self-reports, with varying definitions. Urbanized
land is typically defined as land in state-recognized cities (municipalities or
local authorities), as land in agglomerations with threshold populations of
from 1000 to 5000 persons, and in some countries in terms of density per
unit area, ranging from 386 persons per square kilometers (USA), 1500
persons per square kilometer (People’s Republic of China) to 4000 per
square kilometer (Japan) (UN Population Division 2008).
Metropolitan areas are defined as integrated labor markets and com-
muting patterns rather than by density alone. They typically include at
least one central city, other cities and towns, suburban areas, as well as the
rural land in between. In this volume, we shall typically use the term cities
and urban areas interchangeably to refer to areas with urban densities, and
metropolitan areas to refer to areas that incorporate suburban areas and
fringe rural lands.

SUSTAINABLE CITIES

What then is a sustainable city? We can respond in simple ways, such as to

say that a sustainable city is an ecologically sustainable, socially just and
economically viable city. But going beyond easy answers, this is a difficult
question because sustainability is an integrative concept. It involves many
dimensions, related in complex ways. As we discuss above, there are three
major dimensions of sustainability widely recognized: environmental,
social and economic. Two other aspects of sustainability central to the
concept, but not as widely noted, are the ‘interdisciplinary or integrative’,
and the ‘systems-oriented’ aspects of the concept. The interdisciplinarity,
or better, the intent to integrate various dimensions in a situation, is the
hallmark of a sustainability approach, which is implicit in the definition

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 Introduction and overview 7

of sustainability as balancing the three Es. Thus, when applied to urban

issues or urban sustainability, a sustainable approach requires ‘substantive
interdisciplinarity’, beyond issues of environmental conservation, social
justice or economic efficiency. That is, since urban issues are interdiscipli-
nary, for example those of housing, land use, transportation and nature’s
services, whether development or urban life can be sustained over time
requires knowing and taking into account the fundamental connections,
for example, that housing has to transportation or to public health or other
systems on which it is dependent or interdependent.
Figuring out how to make urban settlements more sustainable requires
knowledge of how a local economy works, of how transportation systems
are connected to land use and urban density, to economic activities, to
the housing supply, to other public infrastructure and services, as well as
to the distribution or accessibility of these services or goods for different
groups within a city. The way urban systems work or fail to work together
is a large part of the sustainability of an urban settlement. The complexity
of varied, interrelated parts in these systems defies an explanation from
a single discipline. Thus a sustainable approach fundamentally relies on
interdisciplinary knowledge. Regarding the sustainability of cities, the
three Es could be conceived as meta-criteria that rely on an integrative,
systems-oriented, interdisciplinary knowledge base. That is, they are larger
questions that can be posed of existing or proposed systems or projects
once a rich understanding of a situation has been established: how can
changes in such a situation conserve ecological systems; how can changes
make systems more efficient; how can they improve social equity? Thus
urban sustainability research could be conceived as essentially interdisci-
plinary research, with an overlay of environmental, social and economic
criteria. Equally important, the sustainable city is where challenges and
problems are addressed to meet the needs of the present without under-
mining or precluding the opportunities of future generations. A sustain-
able city, in this sense, is an active, evolving, organic community addressing
problems of the present and foreseeable future while confronting ongoing
challenges of economic development, equity and justice, and environmen-
tal protection.

CITIES AS COMPLEX SYSTEMS

The systems-oriented nature of the concept of sustainable cities, involv-

ing the complex interplay among urban systems of infrastructures, built
environment, nature’s services, organization and information systems that
combine to facilitate urban life, is often also neglected.

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Like all complex systems, cities involve hierarchies (ordered levels of

subsystems). In particular, cities have been analyzed as open systems, that
is, systems that have the ability to self-organize and sustain themselves by
metabolizing inputs of energy, information and raw materials, and dis-
charging into their environments wastes and disorder (entropy). The urban
metabolism concept, a key method that is the subject of Chapter 13, is one
example of how cities can be studied as complex systems. In a pioneering
article on urban metabolism, Wolman (1965) analyzed a hypothetical city
of one million as a complex open system, with energy, materials and water
inputs and outputs. He estimated that, for one million inhabitants, 2000
tons of food, 4000 tons of fuel and 630 000 tons of water are needed daily
as inputs. These are converted daily into 2000 tons of garbage, 500 000 tons
of wastewater with 120 tons of solid particles, and 950 tons of atmospheric
pollutants. This illustrates the tremendous flow of water moving through a
city, as well as of materials and fuel.
Results from applying the method of urban metabolism analysis are
in terms of flows, the main flows of water, energy and materials cours-
ing through cities. The conduits for these flows are also complex urban
systems, including transportation, water supply, wastewater treatment,
solid waste disposal, energy and power systems, and information and com-
munication systems.
Key to understanding urban complexity is the relation between urban
systems and natural systems. For example, the built environment of cities
composed of structures, combined with the sealed surfaces of streets, pre-
vents precipitation from percolating into the ground and requires storm-
water systems to prevent urban flooding. Another important impact of
the sealed surfaces of cities is the heating of the local climate, also known
as ‘the heat island effect’. The removal of vegetation in cities and the con-
centration of asphalt and concrete, which absorb rather than reflect the
sun’s rays, increase the temperature of these surfaces as well as the ambient
temperature surrounding them.

ORGANIZATION AND CONTENT

This volume does not attempt to focus on urban systems in themselves,

but rather on strategies for improvement and methods and tools for
achieving urban sustainability within a systems framework. Why this is
imperative is underscored repeatedly throughout. Moreover, both strate-
gies and methods aimed at urban sustainability need to be sensitive to the
real-world subsystem addressed, as well as to the interconnections among
systems to which a subsystem connects as part of the whole. We highlight

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 Introduction and overview 9

all of the three Es, environment, equity and economy, but note that both
strategies and methods overlap these dimensions; for example, there are
environmental/spatial aspects to health and a sense of community.
Understanding cities as complex systems is essential in charting a path
to sustainability. However, just as important is the need to understand
more clearly the strategic points of entry into the city system in bringing
about change, in guiding and steering the city – the system – toward sus-
tainability. This entails human volition, vision, leadership, capacity, timing
and ‘luck’. This is why, in each of the sections of the volume, case studies
and examples are provided. While there is no formulaic approach that can
be universally applied, there are a number of promising emerging models
and helpful examples.

STRATEGIES

The section on strategies highlights several critical dimensions of a sus-

tainable city. It begins with a discussion of the major contemporary effort
by planners to address sustainability through compact and smart growth
strategies, by Peter Newman (Chapter 2). Strategies for making our cities
more sustainable along several key dimensions follow in the subsequent
chapters, beginning with the management of water, by Blanca Jiménez
Cisneros (Chapter 3), food systems, by Nevin Cohen (Chapter 4), and
consumer products, by Gregory A. Keoleian, Joshua P. Newell, Ming
Xu and Erin Dreps (Chapter 5). Other strategies that focus on economic
dimensions of sustainable cities include attracting green industry, by
Karen Chapple (Chapter 6) investing in sustainable infrastructure, by
Rae Zimmerman (Chapter 7) and confronting the inevitable reality that
no city can be sustainable absent fiscal sustainability (Chapter 8), by
Richard F. Callahan and Mark Pisano. Critically important social strate-
gies for sustainability focus on human health, as in the chapter by Alek
Miller and Richard J. Jackson (Chapter 9), education, by Michaela Zint
and Kimberly S. Wolske (Chapter 10) and strategies for effective public
participation, by Connie P. Ozawa (Chapter 11). The section concludes
with a focus on justice as a central component of the sustainable city, by
Manuel Pastor (Chapter 12).

METHODS

Moving from strategies to methods and tools, a first-order requirement

is how to analyze a city’s overall metabolism, dealt with by Christopher

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Kennedy, Larry Baker and Helge Brattebø (Chapter 13), followed by

developing a set of metrics that measure and track progress toward sus-
tainability, by Kent E. Portney (Chapter 14). One of the most salient
issues facing cities today is climate change, and as an important dimen-
sion of sustainability cities need an operational mitigation plan, which is
addressed by Michael R. Boswell, Adrienne I. Greve and Tammy L. Seale
(Chapter 15) and a climate adaptation plan, by Adrienne I. Greve and
Michael R. Boswell (Chapter 16). In Chapter 17, Adam Rose provides
a valuable approach to thinking about the economics of sustainability
by framing the issue as one of economic resilience, which enables econo-
mists to think ecologically. Finally, it is important to be able to assess the
economic value of ecosystem services to a city, and a very concrete trans-
formative way for a city to accomplish this is through its own purchasing
practices, as presented by Laurie Kaye Nijaki (Chapter 18).

LOOKING TO THE FUTURE

The above sections of the volume focus on current implementation strat-

egies and methods and tools aimed at providing cities ways to become
more sustainable. As such, they are bound by current knowledge and
understanding. Yet we recognize, for a volume focused on a sustainable
future-in-the-making, that the future is capable of surprising us. With this
in mind, we invited scholars who are looking ahead not to what is, but to
what ought to be, and what they surmise will be, to develop contributions
that are more speculative about aspects of sustainability that are crucial to
achieving a more sustainable future for our urban species. This includes a
select number of assessments of what a more sustainable city will look and
feel like. Tridib Banerjee places the sustainable city in the broad sweep of
movements and orthodoxies in planning, looking back and looking ahead
(Chapter 19). This is followed by, broadly speaking, a systems assess-
ment of what meaningful sustainable development will need to entail, by
Edward J. Blakely (Chapter 20). In Chapter 21, Daniel J. Fiorino unpacks
the concept of sustainable governance, and discusses the future of govern-
ance for achieving sustainable cities. The role that technology will play in
the future, enabling cities to quantify their activities, to become smarter
in their resource use, to enable more localized city functions, and to share
information widely, is next addressed by Bill Tomlinson (Chapter 22).
The volume closes with a summary and concluding chapter (Chapter
23) by the editors. It provides an overview of the chapters, reflects on the
dimensions of sustainable cities addressed by the chapter authors, and
raises issues for future research.

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 Introduction and overview 11

NOTE

1. For neo-classical economists, sustainability is interpreted as a ‘problem of managing a

nation’s portfolio of capital (manufactured and natural) to maintain a constant level’
(Ayres et al. 2001). Economists further distinguish between weak and strong notions of
sustainability. Weak sustainability characterizes the view of neo-classical economists who
believe that manufactured capital can be substituted for natural capital. Strong sustain-
ability is the view that the existing stock of natural capital, such as the ozone layer, cannot
be substituted by manufactured capital, and therefore must be maintained. This view
holds that a minimum amount of different types of capital (economic, ecological and
social) should be independently maintained to achieve sustainability (Brekke 1997).

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