ABSTRACT
This chapter describes the discontinuity in the trajectory of human development represented by the transition from pre-industrial rural society to modern urban life in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. It also presents an approach situating the energy metabolism of the modern city in relation to the metabolic patterns expressed by the various household types composing the city. Cities are the nervous system regulating the entire set of activities expressed by modern societies. For this reason, many tend to blame cities for the lack of sustainability of the current pattern of metabolism. The metabolism of modern socio-economic systems is based on flows with an extremely high energy intensity and energy density. The applications of the multi-scale integrated analysis of societal and ecosystem metabolism (MuSIASEM) approach to the analysis of urban metabolic patterns are still in the exploratory phase. The incredible set of transformations experienced by human civilization in the last century is associated with the phenomenon of urbanization.
