The Sustainable City VIII

With majority of the Earth's people now urban dwellers, and cities being the most efficient habitat for the utilization of resources, it is imperative that we continue to support standards of living and efficiencies of urban areas. However, the urbanization process has not been without its problems. In the first stages of their development, most cities consumed - and even wasted - the vital resources of space and energy, resulting in an abrupt decline in environmental quality. Today we recognize air, soil and water pollution and accumulation of waste are the bane of urban areas. There has also been a general reduction in the quality of urban life, including social problems. It is generally accepted that we now need to focus on healing our cities, rather than continuously growing them. While much has been done to address the original issues surrounding the quality of urban life, new challenges continue to arise. It is no longer sustainable to achieve improvements by means that require greater and greater energy consumption as we did in the past. Despite their complexity, however, cities are a great laboratory for architects, engineers, and other key professionals to apply new ideas and new technology to meet our requirements for more sustainable city environments. Each transdisciplinary conference on Urban Regeneration and Sustainability has brought together experts from multiple disciplines to share their ideas on urban planning in accordance with the principles of sustainability. They address not just environmental, architectural, and engineering concerns, but also quality of life, security, risk, and heritage. The diversity of topics and the case studies based on existing projects make the book an important contribution to the literature on urban planning.