ABSTRACT
Books about urban design and about the city appear in ever-increasing numbers and many of them talk about sustainable urban development and living. They frequently start with a discussion of the destructive impact of our way of (mostly urban) life on the regional and global environment and come up with a series of programmes of behavioural changes, specifically the change from car dependency to public transport and the change from a linear to a cyclic metabolism, i.e. from dumping waste to recycling. Yet, important as all these issues are, few publications attempt an analysis in depth of the role which the physical form and structure of today’s city plays in this process of environmental destruction, and few proposals are made as to how the city should be physically changed to improve its environmental impact. In fact, as this book will show later, much of the current discussion of a sustainable city form and structure is confused and inconclusive.
