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Unlocking Sustainable Cities

Unlocking Sustainable Cities

A Manifesto for Real Change

by Paul Chatterton

Series: Radical Geography

A toolkit for realising a more sustainable and co-operative urban future.
This book is a manifesto for real urban change. Today, our urban areas are held back by corporate greed, loss of public space and rising inequality. This book highlights how cities are locked into unsustainable and damaging practices, and how exciting new routes can be unlocked for real change.

Across the world, city innovators are putting real sustainability into practice - from transforming abandoned public spaces and setting up community co-operatives, to rewilding urban nature and powering up civic energy.

Paul Chatterton explores the power of these city experiments that harness the creative power of the collective, focusing on five themes: compassion, imagination, experimentation, co-production and transformation; and four city systems: mobility, energy, community and nature. Imagining radical alternatives, such as car-free, post-carbon, common and 'bio-cities', this is a toolkit for unlocking real urban change.

Paul Chatterton is an academic, campaigner and writer. He is currently Professor of Urban Futures in the School of Geography at the University of Leeds. He is the co-author of Do It Yourself (Pluto, 2007), author of Low Impact Living (Routledge, 2016) and Unlocking Sustainable Cities (Pluto, 2018).

'Uplifting in vision and down-to-earth in practice, this book makes sustainable cities visible, tangible and irresistible' - Kate Raworth, author of 'Doughnut Economics' 'As global crises multiply and politicians seem unable to act, many are turning to the local for signs of hope... Chatterton makes a powerful appeal for cities to rise to act on climate change, common ownership and genuine sustainability' - Molly Scott Cato, Green MEP for South West England and Gibraltar 'Without ever losing sight of what's at stake, Chatterton's masterful and accessible book is a must for anyone interested in taking back cities for people and planet' - J.K. Gibson-Graham, Jenny Cameron and Stephen Healy, authors of 'Take Back the Economy: An Ethical Guide For Transforming Our Communities' 'This is an empowering book, with a manifesto for change that works really well - especially with people fed up with over-hyped 'smart cities' rhetoric and top-down political fixes' - Jonathan Porritt, Founder Director, Forum for the Future
Acknowledgements
Series Preface
Introduction
1. The Car-Free City
2. The Post-Carbon City
3. The Bio City
4. The Common City
5. Think Big, Act Small, Start Now
6. A Brief Manifesto for Real Change
Notes
Index
Published by Pluto Press in Nov 2018
Paperback ISBN: 9780745337012
eBook ISBN: 9781786803641

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