Conclusion: Taking the Road Less Traveled
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 March 2012
Summary
I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I–
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.
—Robert Frost, “The Road Not Taken”Against the background of the imposing dangers to international stability, global ecological equilibrium and human survival, we close this book with a summary of the road most traveled to date in the projects and programs to build sustainable cities and city-regions. Despite the welter of “sustainable cities” populating the built environment of the twenty-first century, we argue that only the road less traveled – i.e., the strong sustainability strategy outlined in this book and used as a critical evaluative framework for analyzing representative cases around the world – holds out hope of creating new sustainable city-regions across the globe. Such cities can, and must be, guided by their technological tools, architectural blueprints and sociocultural practices defining strong and robust sustainability. Only this approach offers genuine hope of closing the gap and overcoming the frictions between the nations of the north and those of the south. That is, we can only accomplish this goal by greening the cities of the north and providing exemplary strategies, tools and programs for the developing nations of the south to pursue an alternative and ecologically resilient path to strong urban sustainability. Only then will incrementalist, reformist, smart strategies dominating the sustainability debate be surpassed by the achievement of true sustainability locally that radiates outward regionally, nationally and globally.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- The City as Fulcrum of Global Sustainability , pp. 227 - 234Publisher: Anthem PressPrint publication year: 2011