69
© The Author(s) 2016
R. Clift, A. Druckman (eds.), Taking Stock of Industrial Ecology,
DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-20571-7_4
Chapter 4
Industrial Ecology and Cities
Christopher A. Kennedy
Abstract The study of cities, or urban systems, in Industrial Ecology has a peculiar
history. In the 1960s, there was a false dawn for green cities in the United States
under the Experimental City project, the unfulfi lled plans for which included numerous aspects of Industrial Ecology (IE). When IE eventually began to form as a discipline in the 1990s, cities or urban systems were at best a fringe topic, although
their importance was recognized by thought leaders in the fi eld. The development of
research on cities as a theme within IE perhaps followed with the broadening of IE
to include Social Ecology. Then the study of urban metabolism, which had its own
separate literature, arguably became one of the three metabolisms within IE – along
with industrial and socio-economic. In this review of work on IE and cities, a Scopus
search of ISI-rated publications fi nds over 200 papers on the topic, many of which
are in the Journal of Industrial Ecology . Amongst the common themes are papers
on urban industrial symbiosis, urban infrastructure frameworks, transportation,
waste, energy, greenhouse gas emissions, other urban contaminants, metals, phosphorus and food in cities. The great ongoing challenge for work on IE and cities
remains to understand the environmental impacts related to urban metabolism and
attempt to reduce them. More specifi c examples of possible future work include
determining potentials for city-scale industrial symbiosis and uncovering how much
is occurring and exploring theoretical limits to the sustainability of cities using nonequilibrium thermodynamics.
Keywords Urban systems • Urban metabolism • Industrial symbiosis • Material
fl ow analysis • Energy • Water • Waste • Urban infrastructure
C. A. Kennedy (*)
Department of Civil Engineering , University of Toronto ,
35 St. George Street , Toronto , ON M5S 1A4 , Canada
e-mail: christopher.kennedy@utoronto.ca
© The Author(s) 2016
R. Clift, A. Druckman (eds.), Taking Stock of Industrial Ecology,
DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-20571-7_4
Chapter 4
Industrial Ecology and Cities
Christopher A. Kennedy
Abstract The study of cities, or urban systems, in Industrial Ecology has a peculiar
history. In the 1960s, there was a false dawn for green cities in the United States
under the Experimental City project, the unfulfi lled plans for which included numerous aspects of Industrial Ecology (IE). When IE eventually began to form as a discipline in the 1990s, cities or urban systems were at best a fringe topic, although
their importance was recognized by thought leaders in the fi eld. The development of
research on cities as a theme within IE perhaps followed with the broadening of IE
to include Social Ecology. Then the study of urban metabolism, which had its own
separate literature, arguably became one of the three metabolisms within IE – along
with industrial and socio-economic. In this review of work on IE and cities, a Scopus
search of ISI-rated publications fi nds over 200 papers on the topic, many of which
are in the Journal of Industrial Ecology . Amongst the common themes are papers
on urban industrial symbiosis, urban infrastructure frameworks, transportation,
waste, energy, greenhouse gas emissions, other urban contaminants, metals, phosphorus and food in cities. The great ongoing challenge for work on IE and cities
remains to understand the environmental impacts related to urban metabolism and
attempt to reduce them. More specifi c examples of possible future work include
determining potentials for city-scale industrial symbiosis and uncovering how much
is occurring and exploring theoretical limits to the sustainability of cities using nonequilibrium thermodynamics.
Keywords Urban systems • Urban metabolism • Industrial symbiosis • Material
fl ow analysis • Energy • Water • Waste • Urban infrastructure
C. A. Kennedy (*)
Department of Civil Engineering , University of Toronto ,
35 St. George Street , Toronto , ON M5S 1A4 , Canada
e-mail: christopher.kennedy@utoronto.ca