ABSTRACT
As places of competition, cities are centres of post-industrial production because of comparative advantages from the efficiency of their infrastructure, the connectedness of their economies and their ability to attract resources, knowledge and labour. Their ‘pull’ on skilled labour resources in turn creates growing pains in the form of pressure on existing infrastructure, indicating the tensions between urban infrastructure, growth and development (Seitz 2000; Munnell 1990). Cities also create most of the world’s anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions and there is growing consensus over the need to reduce these emissions radically, while at the same time to adapt city infrastructure to a changing climate (Newman and Kenworthy 1999; Low et al. 2005; Girardet 2004).
