Background to Sustainable Cities - Theme Cities: Solutions for Urban Problems - page 150

Chapter 5
Background to Sustainable Cities

Wayne K﻽D﻽ Davies

Climate change is the biggest crisis our civilization faces.
(A. Gore, March 31, 2014)

5﻽1 Introduction

Towns and cities have always been unsustainable places, dependent on many inputs,
such as food, water and energy, and producing noxious, if not toxic outputs. Most
urban places were small in the past, so many of these inputs could be supplied, and
outputs disposed of, without major problems, although the larger imperial capitals
always had difficulties. In the last two centuries the explosive growth in the num-
ber and sizes of urban places led to new technological solutions to solve many of
these input-output issues, but others were ignored. Towards the end of the twentieth
century more and more people became sceptical that continued innovation is pos-
sible while the 1960s and early 1970s saw early warnings of impending problems
associated with current development practices. For example, The Limits of Growth
(Meadows, Randers and Meadows 1972 , 2004 ) predicted growth constraints be-
cause of the finite nature of many resources. The Population Bomb (Ehrlich 1968 )
warned about future food shortages because of explosive population growth. Rachel
Carson's ( 1962 ) path-breaking book Silent Spring highlighted the harmful effects of
so many of our industrial processes and the products they produced that poisoned
flora and fauna, especially the loss of many birds and their songs, which led Carson
to her title. Indeed, Carson's topic, followed by many others on related themes, did
much to stimulate the environmental movement. Certainly criticisms of the methods
used by these pioneering authors, the slow-down in population growth rates from
the huge increases of the 1960s, as well as increasing agricultural and technological