Sustainable urban metabolism

摘要

As populations grow larger and cities expand, there is an urgent need to understand how to make urban areas more sustainable. Given the substantial interest in this topic, Ferrao and Fernandez's text Sustainable Urban Metabolism is likely to appeal to a wide variety of academics. The book offers one of the first critical explorations of a concept designed to make cities healthier; as the authors declare "cities have become our most complex anthropogenic systems" (page xi) and thus more research is required to delve deeper into their workings before analysing how to improve such complex environments. Through understanding the concept of Urban Metabolism (UM), they argue that this will enable key actors to understand other avenues for achieving such an ambitious goal: "Urban Metabolism is a multi-disciplinary and integrated platform that examines material and energy flows in cities as complex systems as they are shaped by various social, economic and environmental forces" (Holmes and Pincetl, 2012, page 2).