Is there not a contradiction between the aims of sustainable urban development, which inflates the cost of housing, and the requirements of fairness in access to housing? Analysing the situation in France and comparing it to neighbouring European countries, Vincent Renard provides answers to this question.
During the Christmas season, Books and Ideas offers a selection of reviews and essays that tackle the subject of cities and the issues they raise as complex centers of urban life: how could we live better in them? How to reduce the inequalities they create? Can they become more sustainable? The following texts cast a new light on all of these questions.
Focusing on the two cases of megaregions and global cities, sociologist Saskia Sassen explores how a more equitable distribution of benefits can be reached at the level of great urban conurbations. She calls for new analytical tools to envisage self-sufficiency without exclusion, stimulation without destruction and globalization without annihilation of diversity.
Cities consume and transform massive flows of energy and matter. How can their “metabolism” contribute to their sustainability? Addressing the issue of resources and waste in urban areas, Sabine Barles discusses the contradictions of urban self-sufficiency. Exploring means to control resources in an endogenous development perspective, she sketches the transition to a less matter-consuming society.
