in the beginning

Abel Wolman in 1965 published "The metabolism of cities" in Scientific American and coined a term which remains helpful in exploring and understanding how we design cities, as well as how to make them better.

At its most simple level the concept of urban metabolism compares the requirements of energy and resources of a city to the metabolic requirements of any organism. For example just as a tree requires water (mainly obtained by the roots) for its metabolism (mainly in the leaves) a city requires water which is used by the citizens mostly in their properties.

In the diagram at left I've shown a comparison of this overlaid on a sketch of a tree.

Water comes into the system and is transported to the locations of metabolic activity. Indeed its remarkable how closely the water pipes of a city resemble the Xylem of the tree in the job of transporting water from the water source to where it is used.

Like any model, having something concrete to compare our experiences provides a basis for thinking about it and gives our minds something to compare it with. This then facilitates making observations and comparisons from the real world (also called nature) where things have been going on for longer than we can imagine. There we only find systems that work, so rather than apply trial and error we can copy what we know already works.

In the pages of this blog intend to discuss things which relate to urban metabolism as well as develop the idea further. I encourage any positive feedback and will attempt to publish any comments and credit those contributors.