80% of the US population lives in cities and 56% of the world’s population as a whole. How to create sustainable and resilient modern social systems is thus a significantly urban problem. There are encouraging signs that cities can lead the way toward more sustainable futures, however. For example, household energy consumption in the US is already considerably lower in urban areas (85.3 million BTU/yr) than in rural areas (95 million BTU/yr) and especially suburban areas (109 million BTU/yr). Density and efficiency matter for sustainable infrastructure, as does the capacity of urban decision-making processes to scale initiatives rapidly. CFAR studies a range of urban infrastructures—energy, housing, waste, health—as they are being reimagined and retrofitted to help enable more sustainable and equitable forms of urban living.
Relevant publications:
Pope and Utting, “The Sixth Sphere” (Log, 2024)
Boyer, “Infrastructural Futures in the Ecological Emergency” (Historical Social
Research, 2022).
Gori, Avantika*, Ioannis Gidaris*, James R. Elliott, Jamie Padgett, Kevin
Loughran*, Philip Bedient, Pranavesh Panakkal*, and Andrew Juan. 2020.
“Accessibility and Recovery Assessment of Houston’s Roadway Network Due to
Fluvial Flooding during Hurricane Harvey.” Natural Hazards Review 21(2): 1-20.
Available online.