Report from the Congress For European Urbanism

"Discussions of sustainable building, clean energy systems, improved transit options and other urban issues are decades old, but the study of how to combine all of those separate elements into one integrated form – the city – is still largely emerging."

"It is clear there is plenty of need for pioneering research and debate on this topic. Diana Ürge Vorsatz, lead author of the fourth report from the International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), discussed the limited extent to which urban form has been addressed in the IPCC reports thus far. She announced that her next project, however, will look deeply into the issue of cities. The new report, called the Global Energy Assessment will address measures of how much energy cities consume, and climate-related challenges facing urban environments such as reduced availability of clean water. Vorsatz asserted that any climate change solutions must be city-based because most greenhouse gas emissions originate in cities, and the percentage of the world’s population living in cities – now over half – increases every year."