Alternative Urban Futures: Planning for Sustainable Development in Cities throughout the World [Paperback]

Alternative Urban Futures challenges existing models of urban development and promotes alternative paradigms, processes, and technologies designed to fulfill human needs and limit the harmful impacts of human activities on the environment. The book focuses on how planners and policy makers can develop and manage essential urban infrastructures in ways that support sustainable development in the areas of waste management, water supply and management, energy production and use, building design and construction, land-use, transportation, and food systems. Each chapter features case studies that provide concrete examples of how ecologically and socially responsible urban and sustainable development planning and policy approaches have been successfully implemented in cities around the world. The book is especially effective in its emphasis on recently published statistics and writing supporting new planning and policy recommendations. Each chapter ends with a summary, accompanied by a list of questions that can be addressed with information provided in the text.Raquel Pinderhughes is professor of urban studies and environmental studies at San Francisco State University.

This timely volume will serve as shock therapy for North American professionals whose greatest mind-stretch to date has involved minor disputes over zoning by-laws or the merits of so-called 'smart growth.' The book is a needed 'dirt-under-the-fingernails' addition to the staid old planners' library of routine procedures and administrative abstraction. William E. Rees, University of British Columbia

Can urban areas ever be sustainable? This book goes to the heart of the issue-providing useful examples and plenty of rigorous thinking. Michael Redclift, University of London

Offers a vision of how cities can change basic infrastructure practice and policies to promote sustainability. Both students and practitioners will be impressed with the clear analysis and highly practical approacl€