Sustainable Cities: Assessing the Performance and Practice of Urban Environments

Sustainable Cities is about the challenges faced by our urban environments and how these can be met. Examining the built environment at three levels of observation - individual buildings, urban neighbourhoods, and entire cities and towns, the first part of the book reveals the scale of the task. The second part of the book offer a critical assessment of the techniques used to assess urban development, including the measurement of greenhouse gas emissions, ecological footprint analysis, and the measurement of urban biodiversity, where different approaches can yield significantly different results. It concludes with an alternative approach to greenhouse gases, making the case for them to be seen as a resource rather than as a liability. In the final part, case studies of best practice are presented. With contributions from a range of leading international specialists, Sustainable Cities will be essential reading for academics and professionals in urban and municipal planning, environmental policy and planning, architecture, urban geography, climate change, energy resources and environmental science and technology.

Professor Pierre Laconte is President of the Foundation for the Urban Environment. He was a partner (with Raymond M. Lemaire et J. P. Blondel), of Groupe Urbanisme-Architecture the organisation responsible for the planning and implementation of the new university town of Louvain-la-Neuve, near Brussels, and which received the Aberrombie Award of the International Union of Architects. He is the editor of Changing Cities: Challenge to Planning Philadelphia.Christopher Gossop is a town planner and former planning inspector. He is a trustee of the National Energy Foundation, UK.