Concrete Jungle: New York City and Our Last Best Hope for a Sustainable Future

摘要

There is a seeming contradiction, at least on the surface, between embracing large cities, particularly true metropolises, and protecting the natural world. How can this make environmental sense given the enormous numbers of people in cities, the relative paucity of other creatures there, and the way in which hulking man-made structures of concrete and steel have usurped what was once the domain of trees and plants? But as explained in Concrete Jungle, there is in fact a logic to it. The book, which uses New York City as its central example, has an arresting thesis: "Cities are the most extreme examples of environmental destruction. ... Yet ironically and simultaneously, cities represent the last best hope for conserving healthy remnants of the world's species and ecosystems."