ABSTRACT

To introduce the thinking behind ecological footprint analysis, let’s explore how our society perceives that pinnacle of human achievement, “the city.” Ask for a definition, and most people will talk about a concentrated population or an area dominated by buildings, streets and other human-made artifacts (this is the architect’s “built environment”); some will refer to the city as a political entity with a defined boundary containing the area over which the municipal government has jurisdiction; still others may see the city mainly as a concentration of cultural, social and educational facilities that would simply not be possible in a smaller

Ecological footprint analysis is an accounting tool that enables us to estimate the resource consumption and waste assimilation requirements of a defined human population or economy in terms of a corresponding productive land area. Typical questions we can ask with this tool include: how dependent is our study population on resource imports from “elsewhere” and on the waste assimilation capacity of the global commons?, and will nature’s productivity be adequate to satisfy the rising material expectations of a growing human population into the next century? William Rees has been teaching the basic concept to planning students for 20 years and it has been developed further since 1990 by Mathis Wackernagel and

settlement; and, finally, the economically-minded see the city as a node of intense exchange among individuals and firms and as the engine of production and economic growth.