Why ‘sustainable urban development’ is an oxymoron—the 2nd law, overshoot and cultural dysfunction
▻https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/sustainable-cities/articles/10.3389/frsc.2026.1805103/full
Most urban sustainability efforts focus on aspects of climate change and emissions reductions mostly involving technological fixes. These techno-fixes involve massive capital investment and are ‘sold’ to society on the basis of profit-making potential and continuing economic growth, i.e., they designed to extend the unsustainable status quo by alternative means. This orientation is based on a faulty narrative that ignores crucial elements of human evolution, far-from-equilibrium thermodynamics, and ecological limits. While global heating is a potentially horrific problem, it is merely one major co-symptom of the real existential threat, ecological overshoot—urban industrial society is depleting and dissipating the biophysical basis of its own existence. From this perspective, the (…)