ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses the innovations – for instance, the great improvements in energy efficiency in most aspects of housing and housing appliances, the trend towards recognizing waste streams as resource streams, and innovations in urban agriculture and urban forestry that reduce cities’ ‘ecological footprints’. One of the factors constraining action by governments towards resource conservation and waste reduction is the worry about the employment costs. In most cities in the South, the potential for new employment in resource conservation is rather less, given that levels of resource use are so much lower and levels of recycling, reclamation and reuse often much higher. Some city authorities are seeking to introduce social and environmental goals into their solid waste collection and the management. One of the main resource issues in the North is the transition to a much less fossil-fuel intensive society.
