Sustainable Urban Metabolism

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This work presents a unified framework for analyzing urban sustainability through the lens of cities' inflows and outflows of matter and energy. Urbanization and globalization have significantly shaped the last century, with urban hubs connecting countries via networked communications. Currently, urban populations generate over eighty percent of global GDP, leading to substantial flows of energy and materials, including goods, services, and waste. Consequently, urban environmental management plays a crucial role in global sustainability. The authors, Paulo Ferrão and John Fernández, adopt a metabolic perspective on urban sustainability, conceptualizing cities as metabolic systems defined by their exchanges of matter and energy. They provide a roadmap for strategies and tools necessary for a scientifically grounded analysis of urban systems' sustainability. By employing urban metabolism as a central framework, they describe a systems-oriented approach that connects environmental, economic, social, and technical infrastructure issues. This approach fosters an integrated, information-rich platform for ecologically informed urban planning. The authors establish a theoretical foundation, explore various contributing disciplines, sample sustainability approaches and tools, conduct an in-depth study of Lisbon's urban metabolism, and discuss the challenges and opportunities in pursuing urban sustainability in both developed and develo