The EcoEdge: Urgent Design Challenges in Building Sustainable Cities

摘要

Advice on sustainability has become a growth industry, at least in the English-speaking world. A Januaryrn2012 search for the word in the Amazon.com online book catalogue produces more than 11 000 hits. New releases in the previous 90 days number 319. 'Sustainable city' or cities yields more than 12 million Google hits and nearly 3600 Amazon book entries.rnA recent contribution to this verbal torrent is The EcoEdge: Urgent Design Challenges in Building Sustainable Cities, a modest volume of essays edited by Esther Charlesworth and Rob Adams, designers based in Melbourne, Australia. (Interestingly, using 'sustainability' and 'Australia' for a Google search of books produces 179 000 items, while sustainability and England yields only 142 000.) The book's principal content is 14 case studies meant to be 'inspiring benchmarks for transformation of cities' worldwide.