打印

作者

来源

JOURNAL OF URBAN AFFAIRS,Vol.41,Issue3,P.419-421

语言

英文

关键字

作者单位

Florida Atlantic University

摘要

Economic, technological, social, and cultural forces continue to push people from rural to urban areas. Cities continue to absorb migrants and the number of city dwellers continues to rise. A majority of the world’s population now lives in urban areas. In the United States, the move to cities is steered by educated young adults seeking new economic and lifestyle prospects.The sustainable development movement uses nature and the environment while attempting to minimize harmful impacts on natural resources and the climate. The broad mission of the movement is to balance ecosystem/environment protection, economic development, and quality of life. The movement’s success will depend on its ability to plan and implement the transition to sustainable cities.How to plan and implement the decades-long transition to the sustainable city (SC) is the subject of this book. The book draws the links between sustainability processes and goal attainment. Sustainability is a challenging process of planning and creating decent employment, housing, commerce, and lifestyle opportunities, while safeguarding ecological and environmental systems.Steven Cohen, a professor at Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs, shows how the SC can provide decent qualities of life, employ smart economic and social change strategies, connect them to technologies, and increase participation in the brain-based economy including creative information technologies and services. Cohen describes the transition to the 21st-century SC through management, organization, policy, and political lenses. He provides numerous current sustainability case studies, applications, and solutions from the United States and other countries.Chapter 1 defines the SC and its management, economic, social, and political elements. Cohen explains the focus on cities and the transition to the SC. Chapter 2 defines and explains the following sustainable urban systems required to serve the SC: energy, water, solid waste, sewage treatment, food, open spaces and parks, and transportation. Both chapters present a focused formal discussion while touching lightly on academic theories and journal citations. The issues of sustainable practice and management appear familiar and serve well to connect readers to the subject. Next, chapters 3, 4, and 5 provide wide-ranging discussions on the transition to the SC. Solid analysis permeates this section and the rest of the book.Chapter 3 defines and explains sustainable lifestyles and their economic and social contexts. Economic, social, and cultural forces shape sustainable lifestyles. Changing norms of work, recreation, entertainment, consumption, health care, and physical fitness all inspire new lifestyles. Young millennials representing new values and growing environmental awareness are shaping sustainable urban lifestyles. They introduce fresh approaches to residence, work, transportation, leisure, and consumption. They also lead the “sharing economy,” an emerging movement for collaborative consumption of underused resources.Chapter 3’s discussion of emerging lifestyles provides an informative analysis of a novel and unpredictable area. The exploration of new sustainable lifestyles and daily urban lives is an interesting thread running throughout the book. The chapter examines how social and economic contexts are linked with SC lifestyles. Individual socioeconomic status affects the success and failure of long-term sustainability and green initiatives. Driven by economic growth, people with higher education and income, who are inclined to lifelong learning, are more likely to adopt sustainable lifestyles. They support environmental protection and smart/green production/consumption, including organic produce and hybrid and electric vehicles. Unfortunately, Chapter 3 ignores those with lower education and income, who lack access to decent employment and housing. They need better schooling, job training, and housing as well as clean water and toxic-free environments.Chapter 4 covers the transition to sustainably managed organizations. These leaders of the transition to the SC have begun to incorporate the physical environment and natural resources in their decisions and policies. They have also begun to include sustainability values and goals in their strategies and incentives. The chapter reviews management, organization, regulation, and finance strategies for organizational development and capacity building. Cohen delves into the sustainable supply chain, sustainability management, incorporating sustainability into organizational strategy, industrial ecology, metrics/measures, and sustainable finance.Chapter 5 covers politics and public policy in the transition to SCs in the United States. It opens with the role of public–private partnerships in the SC’s growing economy. The challenge is to account for sustainability values while balancing environmental and economic/business interests. The public’s growing environmental awareness plays an important role in putting sustainability issues on the political agenda. Politicians and local officials need public support in effort to bridge business interests and adopt and implement sustainability and green policies.Chapter 5 appropriately emphasizes the political salience of communities, cities, and states in the transition to SC. Cohen highlights the need for federal sustainability policy yet fails to elaborate on the need for cities to connect to federal and international policies. To make progress, cities and states need to comply with long-range national–global initiatives.Cohen’s solid policy analysis in chapters 4 and 5 is reflected throughout the book. Another strength of the book lies in its rich descriptions of current sustainability practices in the United States and other countries. Cohen provides readers with up-to-date entries including web sources, thereby making the publications readily accessible to readers.The next five chapters (6–10) cover state-of-the-art urban sustainability case studies from around the world. The case studies suggest different directions for making progress in balancing environmental concerns against economic growth interests while improving the quality of life. In each chapter, the case narratives are followed by a summary highlighting the following issues: values, politics, science and technology, economics and public policy design, and management and organizational capacity.Each chapter reviews several case studies. Chapter 6, on waste management, reviews cases from New York City, Hong Kong, and Beijing. Chapter 7, on mass and personal transit, deals with bus rapid transit in Bogota, light rail in Jerusalem, high-speed rail in China, and Tesla Motors in the United States. Chapter 8, on building the smart grid, includes microgrid development cases from New York University, the Power Africa initiative, and Higashimatsushima in Japan (tsunami-hit, it now has an impressive microgrid model). Chapter 9, on parks and public space, covers High Line Park in New York City, Victor Civita Plaza in Sao Paulo, Canal Park in Washington, DC and the Gas Works Park in Seattle. Chapter 10, on sustainable urban living, is about the success of Uber and Airbnb, two “shared economy” cases offering interesting insights into current urban life styles.The Sustainable City includes numerous international examples, provides critical analysis of urban policy making and implementation, and draws valuable and hopeful lessons for moving 21st-century cities forward. The book helped me to understand the links between urban demographics, sustainable/green lifestyles, management strategies, public policies, and politics. I recommend the book to politicians, public administrators, and environmental/planning scholars.