2014-2015
What are the contemporary challenges of urban sustainability in relationship with urban living and urban communities?
How do social dynamics affect systemic functioning of cities?
In what way new city-regional spatial configurations affect the ecological footprint of cities?
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Most of the research on metabolism of cities has been focused on how different urban characters affect, influence and mutate the metabolic dynamic of food, energy, waste, water and other material resources. The policy challenge is the achievement of sector specific policies addressing the multiple ways according to which each of these material flows can be modified within the urban dimensions to reduce the ecological footprint of urban spaces and function.Innovation of the institutional and social condition of planning and urbanism, with a particular focus on the city-regional scale. New policies, hence, do not need exclusively to focus on technological innovation but must consider how these material aspects interrelate with the socio-cultural environments of cities. Research and practices with regard to urban metabolism need to better discover and explore the institutional conditions for a radical.
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