As human activity and environmental change come to be increasingly
recognized as intertwined phenomena on a rapidly urbanizing planet, the
field of urban ecology has risen to offer useful ways of thinking about
coupled human and natural systems.
On the forefront of this discipline is Marina Alberti, whose innovative
work offers a conceptual framework for uncovering fundamental laws that
govern the complexity and resilience of cities, which she sees as key to
understanding and responding to planetary change and the evolution of
Earth. Bridging the fields of urban planning and ecology, Alberti
describes a science of cities that work on a planetary scale and that
links unpredictable dynamics to the potential for innovation. It is a
science that considers interactions - at all scales - between people and
built environments and between cities and their larger environments.
Cities That Think like Planets advances strategies for planning a
future that may look very different from the present, as rapid
urbanization could tip the Earth toward abrupt and nonlinear change.
Alberti's analyses of the various hybrid ecosystems, such as
self-organization, heterogeneity, modularity, multiple equilibria,
feedback, and transformation, may help humans participate in guiding the
Earth away from inadvertent collapse and toward a new era of planetary
co-evolution and resilience.
