About the Book
This volume addresses in depth, and in one place, the many environmental problems - and their solutions - that face world cities. Cities generate two-thirds of the world's wealth and account for eighty per cent of gross national production. The book looks at, from the urban designer/planner's point of view, all the concomitant problems resulting from this scenario: "brownfields" - distressed industrial areas; eroding infrastructure; pollution; resource losses; environmental hazards; and global environmental issues.
Table of Contents:
Can urban development be sustained? Key problems and their causes; approaches to the urban environment; a planning framework; tools for analysis and planning; management strategies and action plans; management issues and options; best practices; conclusions; resources; training resources.
About the Author :
Josef Leitmann, Ph.D., is a senior urban planner at the World Bank where he specializes in urban and environmental management. This book was written while he was on leave as a visiting professor of city and regional planning at the Middle East Technical University in Ankara, Turkey. Its preparation was enriched by his work on local environmental management with UNCHS/Habitat, the international Union of Local Authorities and the World Wildlife Fund's Turkish affiliate. Leitmann is on the International Advisory Board of the Centre for the Urban Environment in The Netherlands. He earned his doctorate in city and regional planning from the University of California at Berkeley and a Master's degree in public policy from Harvard.
Review :
The publication on books and journal articles on "sustainability" in recent years has been relentless. Often sustainability is prominent in the title but hard to find in the text. Sustainable Cities is a unique entry in that it is a textbook, clearly designed to promote the understanding and implementation of sustainability principles among educators, students, planning practitioners, decision makers, administrators, and community leaders. As a senior urban planner at the World Bank, Leitmann has specialized in urban and environmental management. The author respects cities, which is important in a world experiencing rapid urbanization. The book includes 10 chapters, divided into three parts. In the first part, "Cities and Sustainability," the author presents historic views about the urban environment, assesses major problems and their underlying causes, and discusses whether urban development can be sustained. In the second part, "Planning to Sustain Cities," he provides an urban environmental planning framework, supported with analytical planning tools, strategies, and action plans. In the final section, "Managing to Sustain Cities," Leitmann provides a range of urban environmental management options, seasoned with many successful examples of good planning practice around the globe. Leitmann offers a realistic, concise assessment of the problems and underlying causes of global environmental degradation, as illustrated by Mexico City and Las Vegas. For example, based upon his three-part definition of urban sustainability (minimizing ecological footprints, sustaining production of wealth, and reducing key environmental impacts), Las Vegas, a rapidly developing, recklessly water-consuming desert city, is clearly a poster child for unsustainable urban growth, earning a "sustainability rating" of "two thumbs down" (p. 121). Leitmann proposes the "Local Environmental Action Planning" or LEAP process (p. 143), as a strategic alternative to current growth trends. LEAP seeks to stregthen local capacity to plan effectively in three ways: informed consultation (clarify environmental issues, involve key stakeholders, secure political commitment, and set priorities and objectives; integrated local environmental action plan (establish long-term goals with phased targeting, achieve stakeholder agreement or issue-oriented solutions, and develop specific action plans based upon least-cost project options, policy reforms, and institutional improvements); implementation (initiate projects, policies, and programs; institutionalize the process; and monitor and evaluate). Leitmann acknowledges that any planning process, including LEAP, has its problems and weaknesses. He warns, for example, of the danger of excluding stakeholders and allowing experts to dominate an intended "bottom-up" planning process and of potential political and/or bureaucratic opposition to needed institutional changes. LEAP is not merely a generic theory looking for experimental application. Leitmann presents case studies illustrating commitment to sustainability at several levels: international (global campaign to reduce greenhouse gas emissions), national (phasing out leaded gasoline in Thailand), city (integrating the environment and urban development in Singapore), sectoral (matching sanitation services to socioeconomic status in Kumasi, Ghana), and neighborhood (perserving a community's informal role in solid waste management in Cairo). He provides a compendium of more than 200 examples of good planning practice from nations and cities around the globe, including 12 from North America. The book is clearly international in scale and pragmatic in concept, and is well suited for either academic or practical use. The chapters are coordinated to build Leitmann's planning framework, and their internal consistency enhances the boo's clarity. An introductory outline is followed by a well organized, readable text with informative charts, tables, box inserts, and visuals. At the end of each chapter are "Resources and Exercises for Further Thought" that include expanded comments by chapter subheading, recommended Web sites, further readings, organizational contacts, and a list of informative references. A variety of exercises encourage the user to apply chapter concepts to personal experience... Journal of the American Planning Association 20040524
