The Sustainable City

At the close of the twentieth century, the present-day Western city model predominating the world over has shown itself to be clearly unequal to the task of successfully facing up to the socio-ecological problems which affect the largest human communities: energy wastage, inability to guarantee social fairness, the degradation and massive, widespread occupation of land, pollutant production systems, inability to manage waste, etc. Now is the time to rethink the city in terms of sustainability - that is, in a way which is compatible with local, regional and global ecological systems, to avoid negative consequences for our legacy to future generations. We have to return to the compact, diverse city, the traditional Mediterranean city model.