Sustainable Places (Routledge Explorations in Environmental Studies)

This book calls for more holistic place-based action to address the social and environmental crisis, deploying the Deep Place approach as one contribution to the toolbox of actions that will underpin the UN Decade of Action towards the Sustainable Development Goals.

The authors suggest that ‘place’ is a critical window on how to conceive a resolution to the multiple and overlapping crises. As well as diagnosing the problem (the world as it is), this book also offers a normative advocacy (the world as it could/should be and proposed pathways to get there). A series of ‘Deep Place’ case studies from the UK, Australia, and Vanuatu help to illustrate this approach. Ultimately, the book argues for the need for a real and green ‘new deal’ and identifies what this should be like. It suggests that a new economic order, whilst eventually inevitable, requires radical change. This will not be easy but will be essential given the current impasse, caused, not least by the conjunction of carbon-based, neoliberal capitalism in crisis and the multifactorial global ecological crisis. Ultimately, it concludes that there is a need to develop a new model of ‘regenerative collectivism’ to overcome these crises.

This book will be of interest to academics, policy practitioners, and social and climate justice advocates/activists.

David Adamson is an Honorary Professor at the College of Health, University of Newcastle, Australia, and Emeritus Professor at the University of South Wales, UK.

Lorena Axinte is a Research Associate at the School of Geography and Planning, Cardiff University, UK.

Mark Lang is an Honorary University Associate at the School of Law and Politics, Cardiff University, UK.

Terry Marsden is an Emeritus Professor of Environmental Policy and Planning at the School of Geography and Planning, Cardiff University, UK.