A Series of Essays on the Urban Future

The Future of Cities

Whether hundreds of years ago or today, the far-reaching environmental impacts of urbanization are because cities are “a node of pure consumption existing parasitically on an extensive external resource base.” These environmental impacts have been catastrophic, with 78 percent of carbon emissions, 60 percent of residential water use, and 76 percent of wood used for industrial purposes attributed to cities over the past century.

This book is being published as a series, with permission of the American Enterprise Institute. Each week a new chapter will be published, with links to each chapter.

Click or tap a link below to read or download each chapter. (PDFs open in new tab or window)

Next-Generation American Suburbs – Alan M. Berger (new this week)

Alan M. Berger is professor of landscape and urbanism at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the founding director of P-REX lab. His research includes urban planning for autonomous mobility, resilient urbanism, growth boundary landscapes, reclamation of ecological systems, wetland design, and sustainable cities and suburban forms. His most recent book, edited with Carolyn Kousky and Billy Fleming, is A Blueprint for Coastal Adaptation: Uniting Design, Economics, and Policy (Island Press, 2021). His articles and essays have been published in over 60 international journals and media outlets, including the New York Times, Economist, Smithsonian, Boston Globe, and Forbes.