Cities and Sustainability

Abstract

Human beings live in organized collectivities to ensure their protection and meet their basic needs. But the growth of cities has been based on a tendency to ignore their dependence on local natural resources and the impacts they generate in terms of resource overexploitation and waste discharge within a territory that extends far beyond their immediate boundaries. The phenomenon of conurbation further intensifies this wasteful, polluting, and unsustainable development model. In response, transforming the way we inhabit the city and the territory to restore ecological balance and environmental sustainability becomes an ethical responsibility toward humankind and nature.