Introduction: Urbanism and Sustainability

Abstract

While we are preparing for an urban age with a population that will exceed 60 percent of the world's total, sustainability is the buzzword now in urban studies. It has become the goal of urban planners, city designers, administrators, economists, and anthropologists involved in the process of urbanization. Alexandru Balasescu goes further to argue that each one of us shapes the city in which we live. The city is the result of humanity's decisions regarding their habitat; it is the material form of human emotions, desires, and ways of understanding of (and relating to) the world. We shape the city and the city shapes us. Taking Bucharest and Istanbul as examples, he discusses urban sustainability from the perspective of conflict solutions and futures. He reproblematizes the goal of sustainability, which he sees as locked up in the rhetoric of economic growth, and brings into the conversation on sustainability the concepts of cohabitation, negotiation, and harmony.