Chapters 14-17 Flashcards
(4 cards)
What is ecological modernization?
A weak approach to environmental sustainability that focuses on technological solutions to environmnetal problems, such that symptoms of our ailing biophysical environment are treated but the underlying processes, structures, and values that create environmnetally unsustainable communities remain unchalleneged. For example, the development of and incentives to purchase hybrid vehicles might be seen as ecological modernization, while designing pedestrian-, bicycle-, and transit-oriented neighborhoods and trying to change the cultural values underlying transportation mode choices could be seen as sustainable community development.
What is commodification?
Making a commodity of some intangible attribute of urban space. Commodification of the core, for example, would entail the notion that one can purchase (or own) some of the ambiance that is attributed to a core area; see milieu effect.
What are slow-growth cities?
Cities where population growth over a 10-year period is less than 10%. Given the high proportion of the Canadian urban system on slow-growth trajectories or in decline (losing population), urbanists are calling for more sophisticated and realistic approaches to urban development that are not centrally focused on unrealistic expectations of continuous growth; see qualitative development.
What is qualitative development?
An approach to urban development that departs from a fixation on urban expansion and population growth (i.e. quantitative development), focusing instead on the existing built environment, infilling and redeveloping, and conserving or adapting existing buildings for reuse, with attention to preserving and accentuating a sense of place and urban quality, often at a pedestrian scale.
