Urban Sustainability-A Realistic Perspective
15 June 2009 | Green News | 1 Comment
Cities are systems that import energy and resources and produce degraded energy and matter that has to be assimilated by the surrounding area. Thus, when based on ecological and systemin definitions, ti is difficult to consider cities as sustainable systems.
However, cities present important advantages and should not be considered as places that generate only environmental cost. They may provide high-quality living conditions with lower levels of energy use, waste, pollution and in general low environmental impact that the wealthy rural or suburban areas. In parallel, health services in cities are much better developed than in rural areas and this is well proven by international epidemiological and demographic studies that suggest much higher survival rates in cities.
Economy of scale in cities decreases considerably the pressure on land and the cost of new infrastructure and services such as water treatment plants, energy and other networks, educational and health services, etc. Finally, benefits provided by cities to people outside their boundaries should not be neglected as the city’s economic activities provide incomes by purchasing goods. Thus, cities may hold promise for sustainable development mainly when they are able to support a large number of people and limit their per capita impact on the natural environment.
Tags: consider cities as sustainable systems, environmental cost, environmental impact, high-quality living conditions, levels of energy use, natural environment, produce degraded energy, Renewable Energy, rural or suburban areas, sustainable development, systems that import energy, water treatment plants
I think that this is possible. Cities need to be forced to get an extreme make over. This includes everything from trash collecting to water to transportation. This whole concept of farming out all the garage to the surrounding areas is gone because of a lot of the surrounding area around these big cities is gone. We need to recycle more, use less, and quite spreading out like a fungus.
Wesley B