Ch. 4 - The Vulnerability of 21st Century cities

Question 1

What are the main vulnerabilites that cities face today?

Answer 1

Global Independence

Reliable Food Supplies

Peak Oil

Climate Change

Question 2

Why is the relationship between Cities and Ecology so vital?

Answer 2

Global ecological change is accelerating

Cities are facing unprecedented challenges to their functional integrity, even survival!

Cities need to be looked at as ecological entities to ensure they are sustainable in relation to biophysical laws

Question 3

What are some unprecedented aspects of the appearance of urban formations/cities?

Answer 3

Cities themselves are seen as an emergent phenomena

Shift from hunter-gatherer to agriculture-based, settlement-centered way of life.

Urbanization insulates city-dwellers from the negative consequences of their own ecological dysfunction. People are unable to see the impact they leave on the earth while they live in cities

Question 4

Urbanization is still viewed as an ______ or ______ phenomenon

Answer 4

Economic or Demographic

Question 5

What is a challenging aspect of the concept of Urbanization?

Answer 5

Living in urban areas does not reduce the dependence on productive ecosystems to support it.

Question 6

What does Urbanization do to local, cyclical, ecological production systems?

Answer 6

It turns them into global, horizontally disintegrated, unidirectional, throughput systems

Question 7

Known as the maximum rate of production or the maximum rate at which something can be processed

Answer 7

Throughput

Question 8

What is an Ecological Footprint?

Answer 8

The area of land and water ecosystems required, on a continuous basis, to produce the resources that the population consumes and to assimilate its wastes (carbon dioxide), wherever on earth the relevant land/water is located.

Question 9

Known as the capacity of a given biologically productive area to generate an on-going supply of renewable resources and to absorb its spillover wastes. Unsustainability occurs if the area’s ecological footprint exceeds _______

Answer 9

Biocapacity

Question 10

Without Rural Sustainability, there can be no _______

Answer 10

Urban Sustainability

Question 11

What can the government enforce for people in urban areas to improve urban sustainability

Answer 11

Promote the articulation of less material-intense lifestyles

Population reduction

Reshaping cities in the shape of natural ecosystems