Sustainability and the City

Preface

Cities are without a doubt one of the miracles of human creation and the embodiment of the human environment. As such, cities—the manifestation of human imagination and skills—comprise synthetic materials and artificial technologies and provide human services. Insofar as they are large and densely populated human settlements with defined legal and political boundaries that comprise clusters of buildings, open spaces, public facilities, and infrastructure, cities are mainly spaces of services that are exchanged between a wide variety of stakeholders—namely, residents, traders, visitors, and the city authorities. In addition, as today more than 50 percent of the world’s population lives in urban areas, a proportion that will grow tremendously ...