72
grounds. As one of the local citizen’s group concluded: “the idea of relocating population masses rather than treating and solving problems of cities where they exist
is just as repugnant as … timbering without reforestation…” (Wildermuth 2008 :
231). With the failure of the Experimental City project, opportunities to make progress on both green cities and Industrial Ecology were lost.
2 Formative Years of IE
When Industrial Ecology did emerge in North America around the 1990s, the subject of green cities or urban systems was at fi rst largely absent. This can be seen
from examining the contents of early books and conference proceedings in the formative years of Industrial Ecology (Table 4.1 ). Georg Winter’s 1988 book on
Business and the Environment considers IE from a corporate perspective; it does
have advice for companies with respect to buildings, but gives no mention to cities.
Contributors to a broad purview of intersections between technology and the environment (Ausubel and Sladovich 1989 ) mention issues of air pollution in cities and
the management of municipal solid waste, but none give specifi c focus to cities. On
May 20–21, 1991, Kumar Patel organized a colloquium on Industrial Ecology at the
US National Academy of Sciences; the 23 papers from the meeting, none of which
were on cities, were published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
A further early publication in which cities are omitted is a collection of papers
edited by Brad Allenby and Deanna Richards ( 1994 ). There are also examples of IE
principles being applied earlier than the 1990s outside of North America – such as
in Japan in the early 1970s (Erkman 1997 ). The report from a US-Japan Workshop
on Industrial Ecology, held March 1–3, 1993, in Irvine, California, however, has no
mention of urban issues either from Japanese or American perspectives (Richards
and Fullerton 1994 ). Of course, it may be the case that cities were considered in
other early literature pertaining to IE in Japan, or elsewhere for that matter, but
clearly cities were low priority.
The subject of cities did get on the agenda for the 1992 Snowmass conference on
Industrial Ecology and Global Change, which was important for the development of
the discipline (Socolow et al. 1994 ). Approximately 50 people attended the meeting
in Colorado, supported by the Offi ce for Interdisciplinary Earth Studies. One of the
32 papers in the proceedings was a study quantifying methane emissions for an
American city by Robert Harris of the University of New Hampshire (Harris 1994 ).
In Tom Graedel and Brad Allenby’s textbook on Industrial Ecology, cities are
recognized in a chapter on the future of industrial activities (Graedel and Allenby
1995 ). The section entitled The Ecologically Planned City suggests that engineers
might consider cities “as systems to be optimized for sustainability” (p. 336), but
discussion is limited to just two paragraphs. The reason for such little detail on cities
perhaps becomes apparent in Allenby’s later text on policy frameworks and
implementation of IE – which indicates that the science has yet to be done. Under
the subtitle Physical Models of Communities , Allenby ( 1999 : 20) writes:
C.A. Kennedy
grounds. As one of the local citizen’s group concluded: “the idea of relocating population masses rather than treating and solving problems of cities where they exist
is just as repugnant as … timbering without reforestation…” (Wildermuth 2008 :
231). With the failure of the Experimental City project, opportunities to make progress on both green cities and Industrial Ecology were lost.
2 Formative Years of IE
When Industrial Ecology did emerge in North America around the 1990s, the subject of green cities or urban systems was at fi rst largely absent. This can be seen
from examining the contents of early books and conference proceedings in the formative years of Industrial Ecology (Table 4.1 ). Georg Winter’s 1988 book on
Business and the Environment considers IE from a corporate perspective; it does
have advice for companies with respect to buildings, but gives no mention to cities.
Contributors to a broad purview of intersections between technology and the environment (Ausubel and Sladovich 1989 ) mention issues of air pollution in cities and
the management of municipal solid waste, but none give specifi c focus to cities. On
May 20–21, 1991, Kumar Patel organized a colloquium on Industrial Ecology at the
US National Academy of Sciences; the 23 papers from the meeting, none of which
were on cities, were published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
A further early publication in which cities are omitted is a collection of papers
edited by Brad Allenby and Deanna Richards ( 1994 ). There are also examples of IE
principles being applied earlier than the 1990s outside of North America – such as
in Japan in the early 1970s (Erkman 1997 ). The report from a US-Japan Workshop
on Industrial Ecology, held March 1–3, 1993, in Irvine, California, however, has no
mention of urban issues either from Japanese or American perspectives (Richards
and Fullerton 1994 ). Of course, it may be the case that cities were considered in
other early literature pertaining to IE in Japan, or elsewhere for that matter, but
clearly cities were low priority.
The subject of cities did get on the agenda for the 1992 Snowmass conference on
Industrial Ecology and Global Change, which was important for the development of
the discipline (Socolow et al. 1994 ). Approximately 50 people attended the meeting
in Colorado, supported by the Offi ce for Interdisciplinary Earth Studies. One of the
32 papers in the proceedings was a study quantifying methane emissions for an
American city by Robert Harris of the University of New Hampshire (Harris 1994 ).
In Tom Graedel and Brad Allenby’s textbook on Industrial Ecology, cities are
recognized in a chapter on the future of industrial activities (Graedel and Allenby
1995 ). The section entitled The Ecologically Planned City suggests that engineers
might consider cities “as systems to be optimized for sustainability” (p. 336), but
discussion is limited to just two paragraphs. The reason for such little detail on cities
perhaps becomes apparent in Allenby’s later text on policy frameworks and
implementation of IE – which indicates that the science has yet to be done. Under
the subtitle Physical Models of Communities , Allenby ( 1999 : 20) writes:
C.A. Kennedy