num_pages: 304
description: The future of our cities is not what it used to be. The modern-city model that took hold globally in the twentieth century has outlived its usefulness. It cannot solve the problems it helped to createespecially global warming. Fortunately a new model for urban development is emerging in cities to aggressively tackle the realities of climate change. It transforms the way cities design and use physical space generate economic wealth consume and dispose of resources exploit and sustain the natural ecosystems and prepare for the future.In Life After Carbon  urban sustainability consultants Pete Plastrik and John Cleveland assemble this global pattern of urban reinvention from the stories of 25 innovation lab cities across the globefrom Copenhagen to Melbourne. A city innovation lab is the entire city the complex messy real urban world where innovations must work. It is a city in which government business and community leaders take to heart the challenge of climate change and converge on the radical changes that are necessary. They free downtowns from cars turn buildings into renewable-energy power plants re-nature entire neighborhoods incubate growing numbers of clean-energy and smart-tech companies convert waste to energy and much more. Plastrik and Cleveland show that four transformational ideas are driving urban climate innovation around the world in practice not just in carbon-free advantage efficient abundance nature's benefits and adaptive futures. And these ideas are thriving in markets professions consumer trends community movements and higher levels of government that enable cities.Life After Carbon presents the new ideas that are replacing the pillars of the modern-city model converting climate disaster into urban opportunity and shaping the next transformation of cities worldwide. It will inspire anyone who cares about the future of our cities and help them to map a sustainable path forward.
language: English
title: Life After Carbon: The Next Global Transformation of Cities
publisher: Island Press