Unsustainable Urbanism? Cities, Climate Change and Resource Depletion: A Liverpool Case Study

Abstract

This paper brings together geographical debates about how responses to climate change and to the depletion of ecosystem resources can be balanced with the need to ensure that our cities are vibrant, inclusive and economically successful places. The paper uses Liverpool, UK as prism through which to review changing conceptualisations about how to make vibrant cities, bringing together a review of the city’s recent past with a discussion of contemporary discussions about how the city could move to a low carbon future under which CO₂-equivalent emissions are 80% lower than today by 2050. A key issue is to explore the unsustainability of current accepted paradigms for local economic development, and, in this context, to examine how behaviour and practices at one time seen as normal might be seen as pathological by future generations as conceptions of what is seen as ‘acceptable’ and ‘humane’ change.