Sustainable cities or sustainable urbanisation

Abstract

Rapid urbanisation is arguably the most complex and important socio-economic phenomenon of the 20th and 21st centuries. Generally understood as a shift from a predominantly rural to a predominantly urban society, it also represents major and irreversible changes in production and consumption and the way people interact with nature. It is therefore somehow surprising that, within the international debate, it is only recently that cities and the urbanisation process started to be looked at through a ‘sustainability’ lens.