Adventures in Sustainable Urbanism

Edited by Robert Krueger, Tim Freytag, and Samuel Mössner

Subjects: Environmental Studies, Environmental Politics, Urban And Regional Planning
Series: SUNY Press Open Access
Hardcover : 9781438476490, 278 pages, November 2019
Paperback : 9781438476483, 278 pages, July 2020

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Table of contents

List of Illustrations
Preface
Introduction

Global Transformations, Cities, and the New Sustainability Consensus
Robert Krueger, Tim Freytag, and Samuel Mossner

1. Constructing Sustainable Development
Robert Krueger, Tim Freytag and Samuel Mossner

2. The Rise of Sustainable Urban Development
Robert Krueger, Tim Freytag, and Samuel Mossner

3. A Tale of Two Cities: Christchurch, New Zealand, and Sustainable Urban Disaster Recovery
Tim Baird and C. Michael Hall

4. Reworking Newtown Creek
Winifred Curran and Trina Hamilton

5. From Sprawling Cowtown to Social Sustainability Pioneer: The Sustainability Journey of Calgary, Alberta
Freya Kristensen

6. The Greenest City Experience: Exploring Social Action and Social Sustainability in Vancouver, Canada
Marit Rosol and Cristina Temenos

7. Introducing Luxembourg: Ephemeral Sustainabilities
Constance Carr

8. Montpellier Écocité: From Growth Machine to Sustainability?
David Giband

9. Building Ecopolis in the World’s Factory: A Field Note on Sino-Singapore Tianjin Eco-city
I-Chun Catherine Chang

10. Sustainable Empire?
Michal Kohout

11. Middle-Class Family Enclavism and Solidarity from a Distance Notes from a Field of Contradictions in Dortmund, Germany
Susanne Frank

12. A Conclusion? Or, Toward a New Beginning?
Robert Krueger, Tim Freytag, and Samuel Mossner

Contributors
Index

Opens up new ways of thinking about and debating the consequences of sustainable urbanism as it moves from planning to practice.

Description

In the context of urban sustainable development, the "details" of sustainability's current expressions perpetuate environmental injustice, untenable growth, and the destruction of functioning ecosystems. In response to this state of affairs, Adventures in Sustainable Urbanism aims to prompt new debates about the consequences of sustainable urbanism as it moves from planning to practice. Contributors explore policy, practice, and experience from cities around the world, including Calgary, Christchurch, Dortmund, Vancouver, and others. Written by scholars who live in these cities, chapters offer empirically rich descriptions for opening up new lines of thinking, theorizing, and debate about the sustainable city and its actual material expressions in place. By examining the sustainable city through various analytical framings, contributors urge readers to move from viewing the sustainable city as something everyone can agree on, to a highly politicized and contested process. Additional resources are provided for readers who may wish to extend their own research into a city or theme.

SUNY Press has collaborated with Knowledge Unlatched to unlock KU Select titles. The Knowledge Unlatched titles have been made open access through libraries coming together to crowd fund the publication cost. Each monograph has been released as open access making the eBook freely available to readers worldwide. Discover more about the Knowledge Unlatched program here: https://knowledgeunlatched.org/. It can also be found in the SUNY Open Access Repository at https://soar.suny.edu/handle/20.500.12648/8435.

Robert Krueger is Associate Professor of Geography at Worcester Polytechnic Institute and the coeditor (with David Gibbs) of The Sustainable Development Paradox: Urban Political Economy in the United States and Europe. Tim Freytag is Professor of Human Geography at the University of Freiburg, Germany. Samuel Mössner is Professor for Planning and Sustainability at the University of Münster, Germany.

Reviews

"…a wide swath of information arguing the urgency and importance of environmental sustainability for the present and future of the globe permeates the text … Committed readers will surely be able to enrich their toolkits and build on the material found here, a testament to the volume's ultimate quality. " — CHOICE

"This is a very compelling book that clearly conveys the multiple and contested meanings and practices of sustainable urban development. In the end, the reader is left to consider not only the plurality of understandings of sustainability—clearly not an innocent or neutral concept—but the varied interests sustainability may serve. This book represents a unique contribution to the field. " — Byron Miller, coeditor of The Routledge Handbook on Spaces of Urban Politics