Who is familiar with the IMAGINE foresight initiative and Energie-CItés, is familiar with the "One planet living" concept. Indeed, the London Borough of Sutton, membre of Energie-Cités and active participants to our annual IMAGINE seminars is currently engaged in the "One planet Sutton" project, which is for the borough a way to create, share and reach the vision of a sustainable and attractive future for its community.

In her post in World changing, Holly Pearson, a practising urban planner, tells us how she met Jennie Moore, a fellow alumna from the University of British Columbia’s School of Community and Regional Planning presently investigating the concept of a “One planet city” for her doctoral research.

A brief abstract of the questions Jennie's works adress is given here:

What can be done to restructure the physical form of cities? What strategies are available to reduce the footprint of a city, and how close can a city get to ecological sustainability or “one planet living”? The obvious solutions are to promote compact and mixed use urban development, district energy, local food production, and the like. But the potential for change through strategies like these is limited, given the fixed and usually unsustainable form of existing urban areas.

The second question relates to the social and cultural aspects of cities’ ecological impact – how do we, as city dwellers, become fair and equitable stewards of the planet in our patterns of consumption and production? When we’ve pushed physical city restructuring as far as it can go, what opportunities exist for changes in social behavior?

To read more:
World Changing: http://www.worldchanging.com/archives/008537.html
Towards One planet living in sutton: http://www.oneplanetsutton.org/
The "One planet living" concet: http://www.oneplanetliving.org/