Reimagining Sustainable Cities: Strategies for Designing Greener, Healthier, More Equitable Communities

by Stephen M. Wheeler

A cutting-edge, solutions-oriented analysis of how we can reimagine cities around the world to build sustainable futures.   What would it take to make urban places greener, more affordable, more equitable, and healthier for everyone? In recent years, cities have stepped up efforts to address climate and sustainability crises. But progress has not been fast enough or gone deep enough. If communities are to thrive in the future, we need to quickly imagine and implement an entirely new approach to urban one that is centered on equity and rethinks social, political, and economic systems as well as urban designs. With attention to this need for structural change, Reimagining Sustainable Cities advocates for a community-informed model of racially, economically, and socially just cities and regions. The book aims to rethink urban sustainability for a new era.   In Reimagining Sustainable Cities, Stephen M. Wheeler and Christina D. Rosan ask big-picture questions of interest to readers How do we get to carbon neutrality? How do we adapt to a climate-changed world? How can we create affordable, inclusive, and equitable cities? While many books dwell on the analysis of problems, Reimagining Sustainable Cities prioritizes solutions-oriented thinking—surveying historical trends, providing examples of constructive action worldwide, and outlining alternative problem-solving strategies. Wheeler and Rosan use a social ecology lens and draw perspectives from multiple disciplines. Positive, readable, and constructive in tone, Reimagining Sustainable Cities identifies actions ranging from urban design to institutional restructuring that can bring about fundamental change and prepare us for the challenges ahead.  

Genres: Nonfiction

340 pages, Kindle Edition

Published December 7, 2021

Reviews

[Jonathan Drouin · Rating 3 out of 5]

Reimagining Sustainable Cities sets out with the gallant intent of providing examples, ideas, and theories on how to push urban design and green living forward for a more sustainable world. The issues at hand to move us toward this utopia are the same issues the book runs head first into; there is simply an overwhelming amount of info to process and problems to analyze at any one point. Taking any random sample of the book and reading a section or even just a paragraph feels like you are trying to drink from a firehose of knowledge. Examples are thrown around every other sentence in a neverending cycle. The examples can often be interesting or enlightening but they never feel fully connected. To be clear, there is a lot of good info here, it just often comes at a pace that is exhausting.

Reimagining Sustainable Cities covers the whole vast swath of leftist ideas and amalgamizes them into structured chapters that do a pretty good job of focusing the reader on a central point. I never felt lost as can sometimes happen in non-fiction when the author may go off on a tangent. The arguments tie back into each other in an intuitive way for the most part. The tone is aggressively optimistic almost to the point of irritation at points and this leads to him managing to handwave some major issues with some of the presented theories or examples without really providing appropriate counterweights. Things never quite feel grounded in reality in a satisfying way. I admire the purpose and can appreciate the effort provided by the author but there is a lack of stickiness to what is presented here. It made me wish this was presented as a Kurzgesagt video or as a graphic novel like Open Borders.

[Brittany Lucas · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is not a book that I actually chose to read, and definitely wasn’t one I would have reached for. This was the assigned reading for an Urban Sustainability class that I was required to take, but I ended up really enjoying this book. The way Wheeler and Rosan go into sustainability and strategies to fight the climate crisis was unexpected and eye opening. They really hit home how important equality is in sustainability, and made the argument for climate change so human. I really appreciated their humanistic approach to sustainability, I’ll definitely continue to learn and talk to others about sustainability and the absolute need for equality in this fight.

[Kyle Thackston · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book has a very ambitious scope, and my impression is that this results in a book that feels like a collection of summaries of summaries. It points out what problems exist, but does not give many paths to solutions outside of overturning the existing economic structure. Most topics are covered in a superficial sense that does little other than to inform the reader the topic exists. It reads a little too academically for my tastes, with seemingly little interest in communication to the lay person or practical implementation. It could be a good resource for those looking for further reading on many other related subjects, or perhaps an intro class.

[Sara Best · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was a thought provoking book. There were a few things I didn't totally agree with, but that doesn't stop me from being challenged about how I may be able to implement ideas from this. On a different note, I found the abundance of long sentences with semicolons rather distracting. Several times I had to reread a sentence to untangle the meaning. Sometimes a list shifted from negative concerns to positive alternatives and I had to backtrack to find the transition point. The semicolons were easily overlooked.

[Beckett Zinn-Rowthorn · Rating 3 out of 5]

Somewhat surface level overview of urban sustainability. Perfect for undergrads or urban professionals who want to learn how to incorporate sustainability and sustainability advocacy into their current/future public sector careers, but scholars or those already familiar with the topic might find it lacking depth.

[Mary]

Rated one of the top 5 science books of 2021.