Creating Regenerative Cities
"Large modern cities have effectively declared their independence from nature. But while they take up only three to four percent of the world's land surface, their ecological footprints cover the entire globe. With current methods of resources use, cities are undermining the ecological basis of their own existence. To meet the aspirations of city people in developing as well as developed countries, bold new initiatives are needed. Mere 'sustainable development' is not enough. The planning of new cities, as well as the retrofit of existing cities, needs to undergo a profound paradigm shift. Instead of simply using resources more sustainably, cities need to take responsibility for their use of resources, making 'regenerative development' into an organising principle. We need to move away from linear systems of resource use, and assure that cities operate as circular systems. Creating Regenerative Cities is a concise, solution-oriented manual for creating regenerative urbanisation. In our urbanising world a wide range of technical, management and policy solutions already exist, but implementation has been too slow and too little, in large part because the kinds of holistic approaches needed are still unfamiliar to fragmented and process driven urban policy making and governance. Herbert Girardet's 30 year experience as an ecologist, thinker and consultant to cities around the world has created this unique combination of tried and tested best practices and policies with the fundamental shift needed in the way we think about our cities"--
