Book Reviews

“For the first time in human history, the majority of planet Earth’s human inhabitants reside in urban settings,” writes Igor Vojnovic in his introduction to Urban Sustainability: A Global Perspective (p. xi). Increases in worldwide urbanization are presenting cities and regions with new challenges that need to be addressed not only at the local level but within a larger global context. Such an immense change in the fabric of cities requires a new approach to address these issues. The wide range of environmental, political, economic, and social issues is compounded by urbanization and the need to achieve sustainable places. Through international case studies, Urban Sustainability: A Global Context creates the necessary foundation for understanding urbanization and its challenges. In his introduction Vojnovic explores the paradigm shift necessary for sustainable urban management in a new era of urbanization and illustrates the “potential and challenges of re-engineering” the dynamic city (p. xxvi). Whereas the contributors to this edited volume strive to re-educate their readers about the challenges facing urban sustainability in an increasingly global context, Nan Ellin, in Good Urbanism: Six Steps to Creating Prosperous Places, provides a framework for identifying strengths in urban areas and using them to transform cities into zones of prosperity. Ellin makes extensive use of successful case studies to illustrate good urbanism in action. Urban Sustainability brings together the ideas of theorists and practitioners from around the world. Each chapter explores an evolving urban environment and the often difficult shift towards developing sustainable policies and initiatives. The 25 chapters, organized by region, include case studies in Asia, Australia, Africa, South America, the Caribbean, the United States, Canada, and Europe. Urbanization has created different problems in various regions and the reactions of planners and politicians to these issues have been equally diverse. In Chapter 1 Vojnovic introduces the reader to the concept of sustainability by discussing the nomenclature used, policy history, and its relationship to urbanization. Later chapters highlight the challenges involved in trying to achieve local and regional sustainability, the interrelationships between environmental, physical, political, and social aspects of urban areas, and examples of both “success stories” and complications. The discussion of Asia focuses on China, Japan, Thailand, Israel, and India. This section illustrates the need for sustainability at various scales. The chapters advocate a multiscale approach to sustainability, showing the effect of local policies on regional water quality in Shanghai’s Changjiang River and the trickle-down effects of a national sufficiency economy on local agricultural towns in Thailand. These case studies show urban sustainability at different scales and the need for it to be addressed at every level. While Asia is experiencing the highest rate of urbanization and development, the book’s third region, Africa, is facing the most extreme urban environmental and socioeconomic stresses. The legacy of apartheid has left cities in South Africa like Durban with inefficient and unequal sociospatial systems that limit progressive strategies like South Africa’s Reconstruction and Development Program and the adoption of the UN’s Local Agenda 21 sustainable development policy. In one of