A Sustainable City, is it Possible?

The primary driver behind sustainable cities is the need to protect the natural world and us along with it. Events like the out-of-control wildfires in California in recent years have laid bare the destructive toll exacted by our industrialized and urban way of life. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s latest report makes clear that unless we take dramatic action within the next few years, the environmental damage will worsen beyond repair and vast swathes of the planet will become inhospitable to any form of life for hundreds, if not thousands of years. We need to do everything we can to avoid this outcome. If we build and retrofit cities to conserve landmass, draw power from renewable energy, and limit the use of automobiles, that alone could put a serious dent in carbon emissions and set us on a better, more sustainable path.