Examining the Urban Agenda

While the theory and methods I use to examine urban processes may not always indicate it, my work is shaped by an underlying set of questions about cities as part of sustainable systems. Cities are network nodes, and as such cannot be "self-sufficient" in the survivalist sense of the term; we cannot talk about taking cities "off the grid." However, I see few rigorous, holistic frameworks for evaluating the "level of sustainability" of contemporary cities, and few realistic conversations about what models of intervention may be available for "retrofitting" sustainable practices into the cities that we have built.

So, then, there are two basic bundles of questions I hope to explore in this arena. One begins: how can we evaluate the relative and absolute sustainability of cities? If we must do so in a network context, what are the useful scales for analysis? Can we study cities in the context of regions, or must we always, for rigor, talk about world systems? What kind of basket of indicators can both show progress toward a goal that some dismiss as an ever-receding mirage, but still demonstrate usefull the degree of change left to make?

Continuing from there, the second set of questions is about models. What models for evoloving toward more sustainable cities have been attempted? How successful have they been? Are there models that might lead toward more sustainable cities that have been overlooked even as they are practiced? And, finally, what are the social threshholds that must be reached in order to make real change?