Understanding urban metabolism : a tool for urban planning Understanding Urban Metabolism closes the gap between the bio physical sciences and urban planning and illustrates the advantages of accounting for urban metabolism issues in urban design decisions. Urban Metabolism considers a city as a system and distinguishes between energy and material flows as its components. Based on research from the BRIDGE project this book deals with the exchanges and transformation of energy water carbon and pollutants and introduces a new method for evaluating how planning alternatives can modify the physical flows of urban metabolism components and how environmental and socioeconomic components interact. The inclusion of sustainability principles into urban planning provides an opportunity to place the new knowledge provided by bio physical sciences at the centre of the planning process but there is a strong need for closing the gap between knowledge and practice as well as a better dissemination of research results and exchange of best practice. This book meets that need and provides the reader with the tools they need to integrate an understanding of urban metabolism into urban planning practice