Books

Humanity on the move: unlocking the transformative power of cities

Kraas, Frauke / Claus Leggewie / Peter Lemke / Ellen Matthies / Dirk Messner / Nebojsa Nakicenovic / Hans Joachim Schellnhuber / Sabine Schlacke / Uwe Schneidewind / unter Mitarbeit von Clara Brandi, Anna Schwachula et al.
Books (2016)

Berlin: Wissenschaftlicher Beirat der Bundesregierung Globale Umweltveränderungen (WBGU)

ISBN: 978-3-936191-45-5

The momentum of urbanization and its impacts are so massive that we must face up to this trend. In view of the existing cognitive, technical, economic and institutional path dependencies, a policy of business as usual – i.e. an unstructured, quasi-automatic urbanization – would lead to a non-sustainable ‘world cities society’. Only if cities and urban societies are sufficiently empowered can they make use of the opportunities for sustainability and successfully follow the urban transformation pathways. The success or failure of the Great Transformation will be decided in the cities. The WBGU discusses the relevant conditions for the success of this transformation in this report.