Cities for a Single Planet

The authors and most of the collaborators of this publication are all members of Neustart Schweiz, an independent study group that has been reinventing itself since 2010. The members of the group are active in cooperatives, citizens’ initiatives, ecological organizations, and scientific institutions. Our main activity has consisted in putting together publications, giving talks and participating in discussions in Switzerland, Germany, France and other countries. The discussions are always animated and sometimes lead to concrete projects. People are usually pissed when they see the graphs showing ecological limits. It is fun to be missionaries of the new “urban”.

Based on previous publications of the Neustart Schweiz team, the focus of this book will be on boroughs (20,000 citizens) and cities (500,000). After the presentation of our model and the special studies (IT, water management, social dynamics), we will mention in a second part a few examples of citizens’ initiatives. There are thousands of such initiatives all over the world. The ones we present are not representative, but just some of those we came across in the last ten years. None of them base themselves explicitly on our concepts and models. Most of them have never heard of us. Maybe they will now.