ABSTRACT
This chapter summarizes the importance of the design of cities and buildings in most sustainability issues, to show why urban transformation is necessary. It outlines ways that urban planning and built environment design can not only solve a range of sustainability problems while reducing consumption, but serve as lever of socio-ecological sustainability. The chapter examines how conventional design drives demand before surveying ways that buildings can increase sustainability. The annual amount of natural resources used by cities in 2010 could double by 2050, according to the United Nations Environment Program. Climatic and ecosystem changes are already in train due to excessive atmospheric/oceanic carbon. This will be cataclysmic, unless there is radical change to urban environments. The built environment has substantial embodied water as it is composed of manufactured products. There are many environmental education/action programs like Land-care, Water-watch, Habitat for Humanity and Engineers without Borders. Abysmal living environments in impoverished regions reinforce social hierarchies, inequities, class segregation and large-scale immigration.
