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Alternative Urban Futures: Planning for Sustainable Development in Cities Throughout the World

Rowman and Littlefield Inc.
February/March 2004
The book can be ordered through Amazon.com or directly from Rowman and Littlefield Inc.

Alternative Urban Futures: Planning for Sustainable Development in Cities throughout the World focuses on planning and policy approaches and appropriate technologies that can be used to minimize a city's impact on the environment while providing urban residents with the infrastructure and services they need to sustain a high quality of urban life. The book's focus is on ecologically and socially responsible planning and management of the urban infrastructure in five critical areas: water supply and management, waste minimization and management, energy production and use, transportation, and food systems. The book is unique in its emphasis on sustainable urban infrastructure management, processes and appropriate technologies, its pragmatic focus, its comprehensiveness, and its truly international, non-Eurocentric approach. Professor Pinderhughes begins each chapter by examining and challenging traditional (unsustainable) models of urban development, planning and management. She then discusses the value of alternative (sustainable) approaches and appropriate technologies, providing readers with detailed descriptions of appropriate technologies that can be used in the five urban infrastructure areas on which the book focuses. Each chapter includes examples of ecologically and socially responsible planning and policy approaches that have been successfully implemented in cities throughout the world.

One of the book's important contributions is its focus on sustainable development planning in cities in Eastern Europe, Africa, Asia, and Latin America. The book is especially effective in its emphasis on recently published work supporting new planning and policy recommendations. Each chapter ends with a summary, accompanied by a list of questions that can be addressed with information provided in the text. The final chapter, on sustainable development planning in cities, provides a synthesis of current thinking about ecologically and socially responsible urban planning approaches in the areas of water, waste, energy, transportation and food systems.