Abstract

How do we know when a city is truly sustainable? Is it even possible for cities in a global age to be so? How can professional and governance practices retool to enable truly sustainable urbanism? Urbanists plan and design forms, traditionally. Yet in nature as in cities, humans, other species, and ecosystems – including cities – live, evolve, and adapt through processes.

Understanding processes is a key to design, build, manage, and govern the city region sustainably. Process knowledge guides everything, from site planning and material selection to constructions methods and assessing sustainability. After all, the active verb “sustain” means to keep a process going over a long time – so it is durable.

Michael Neuman is Professor of Sustainable Urbanism at the University of New South Wales. Before coming to Sydney he lived in Barcelona, where he advised the current mayor and was consultant to the Barcelona Metropolitan Territorial Plan. Prior to that he was an associate professor of urban planning, director of the Master of Urban Planning Program, and founder and Chair of the Sustainable Urbanism post-graduate program at Texas A&M University.