Over 100 scientists, architects, journalists, artists, designers and activists address creatively the unprecedented challenges and solutions facing the Urban Planet.
Planet Earth has been the human habitat for more than one hundred thousand years and today rapid global urbanization offers the promise of better services, stronger economies and connections. However, this process also carries risks and many unforeseeable consequences.
The authors of Urban Planet make this journey to the city more legible, highlighting the hopes and hindrances its brings, and the need for a parallel evolution of our sciences and systems if we are to reap the rewards of the great urban trek that we are now on.
Rationale for the book:
- We are in the midst of the largest migration and urbanization processes in human history
- Rapid global environmental changes represent both immense challenges and huge opportunities for urban sustainability
- Urban sustainability efforts the major part of global sustainability efforts
- An interdisciplinary systems approach and co-production of new knowledge are needed to address the new complexity of the Anthropocene
Key features and benefits:
The book is unique, an unusually wide range of academic disciplines contribute with taking a serious approach to building interdisciplinary knowledge around a much-needed systems approach to further deepen our understanding of the complex global urbanization process. These perspectives are further enriched by the contribution from more than 30 architects journalists, artists, designers, activists and youth, giving a diversity of often neglected voices and perspectives on the challenges and solutions facing the Urban Planet. The book is further unique since it attempts to connect challenges and solutions at the local scale with drivers and policy frameworks at the regional and global scale and provide a much-needed cross-scale perspective with deepened understanding or urban-rural and local-global interactions.
More than 100 authors argue that to overcome the major challenges we are facing, we must deepen our understanding of the complexity of cities and urban regions and embark on a large-scale reinvention of ways of living together, grounded in inclusiveness and visions of sustainability.
Download the eBook:
The Urban Planet eBook is available open access (free to download). Click here to access the eBook.
