The ISET Platform Lecture Platform Lecture – Building the Green City of Future
The pace and scale of urbanization seen all over the world in recent decades highlights the urban character of our contemporary civilization. The future of most societies will be played out in cities. Our improved understanding of the changes happening in cities has brought out a startling truth: the impact of ecological changes in urban areas may be more pervasive than the impacts of social and economic changes. Indeed, urbanism is shaping up as the triangular relationship of nature, society, and economy. Just as the socio-cultural town of yore marched through the industrial era to find itself transformed into a socio-economic entity manifested as contemporary civilization, so now it seems poised to be transformed into a socio-ecological entity (e.g. Pelling, 2010; Dodman and Mitlin, 2011; Kates et al., 2012; Satterthwaite and Dodman, 2013) and Homo sapiens would become Homo sapiens urbanus (State of Cities, 2010).