Beatley presents the latest plans, initiatives and successful implementations in the last decade around the world for urban sustainability, although the article mostly focuses on examples from the United States. He suggests that sustainability could be the next innovation age and stresses its importance in urban planning; balancing ecology, economics and equity.
Practices that are relevant to cities are collaborative, systemic and holistic design aimed to achieve access to sustainable public transport and mixed-use development allowing a more compact urban form, vibrant pedestrian spaces to enhance the sense of community and encourage diversity, biophylic connection to natural surroundings through greening, local food production, resource efficiency and zero-waste targets by considering waste outputs as inputs for other systems. Challenges ahead include the scaling up of technologies to a city scale, reaching a broader audience to take personal action and keeping sustainability on the agenda individually and collectively.
Examples where a positive approach to sustainability has been taken are Hammarby at a suburban level in Sweden, the ecocity Dongtan in China and carbon-neutral Masdar City in the United Arab Emirates.
Beatley, Timothy. 2009. Sustainability 3.0 Building tomorrow's earth-friendly communities. Planning, May 1, pp 16-22. http://www.proquest.com/ (accessed 5/10/2010)
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