Taking Sustainable Cities Seriously
- 380 pages
- 14 hours of reading
A theoretically driven comparison of sustainability programs in American cities, updated with the latest research and additional case studies.
Kent E. Portney Books
January 1, 1951 – June 13, 2020
Kent E. Portney is a Professor and Senior Fellow at the Institute for Science, Technology, and Public Policy at Texas A&M University. His work delves into the profound issues of sustainability and the interplay between science, technology, and public policy. He critically examines how we can construct cities that are not only environmentally responsible but also socially equitable and economically viable. Through his research and writing, Portney seeks to offer insights into the complex challenges facing modern societies, proposing pathways toward a more sustainable future.
Sustainability
- 248 pages
- 9 hours of reading
The word "sustainability" has been connected to everything from a certain kind of economic development to corporate promises about improved supply sourcing. But despite the apparent ubiquity of the term, the concept of sustainability has come to mean a number of specific things. In this accessible guide to the meanings of sustainability, Kent Portney describes the evolution of the idea and examines its application in a variety of contemporary contexts, including economic growth, consumption, government policy, and urban planning. Portney takes as his starting point the 1987 definition by the World Commission on Environment and Development of sustainability as economic development activity that "meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs." Essentially, Portney explains, sustainability focuses on the use and depletion of natural resources. It is not the same as environmental protection or natural resource conservation; it is more about finding some sort of steady state so that the Earth can support both human population and economic growth. Portney looks a political opposition to the promotion of sustainability, which usually questions the need for sustainability or calls its costs unacceptable; collective and individual consumption of material goods and resources and to what extent they must be curtailed to achieve sustainability; the role of the private sector; the co-opting of sustainability by corporations; government policy on sustainability at the international, national, and subnational levels; and how cities could become models for sustainability action. -- Cover flaps