-- Resilient Cities: Responding to Peak Oil and Climate Change

Half of the world’s inhabitants now live in cities. In the next 20 years, the number of urban dwellers will swell to an estimated five billion people. With their inefficient transportation systems and poorly designed buildings, many cities—especially in the United States—consume enormous quantities of fossil fuels and emit high levels of greenhouse gases. But our planet is rapidly running out of the carbon-based fuels that have powered urban growth for centuries; and we seem to be unable to curb our greenhouse gas emissions. Are the world’s cities headed for inevitable collapse? The authors of the spirited book, Resilient Cities: Responding to Peak Oil and Climate Change, don’t believe that oblivion is necessarily the destiny of urban areas. Instead, they believe that intelligent planning and visionary leadership can help cities meet the impending crises, and look to existing initiatives in cities around the world. Rather than responding with fear (as a legion of doomsaying prognosticators have done), they choose hope.

• Where do we stand today in our use of oil and our contribution to climate change?
• How can we address the four possible outcomes for cities: “collapse,” “ruralized,” “divided,” and “resilient?”
• How could a “sustainable urbanism” replace today’s “carbon-consuming urbanism?”
  
• How can we feasibly develop new transportation systems and buildings to replace our present low-efficiency systems?
  
• What are the ten “strategic steps” that any city can take toward greater sustainability and resilience?

Come learn about the practical ideas already working in some cities that will improve Seattle’s ability to respond to the dynamics of a post peak oil world. Our cities have problems that will worsen if they are not addressed, but these problems are solvable. The time to begin solving them is now.

About the Presenter
Peter Newman is Professor of Sustainability at Curtin University in Western Australia and Director of the CUSP Institute. Professor Newman is internationally recognized as one of the world’s leaders in sustainability. He has written eight books on the subject of sustainability, transport planning and cities, including Sustainability and Cities: Overcoming Automobile Dependence (Island Press, 1999), Cities as Sustainable Ecosystems and Resilient Cities (Island Press, 2008) and the new book Resilient Cities: Responding to Peak Oil and Climate Change (Island Press 2008), and well over 200 refereed journal articles. He is a member of the Board of Infrastructure Australia, which is delivering $20 billion of infrastructure to Australian cities and regions using a new sustainability-based approach.

For more information about this event, please contact:
Katherine Cornwell
Green Building Team
(206) 684-0806
katherine.cornwell@seattle.gov