Five Rules for Tomorrow's Cities

As urban designers respond to the critical issue of climate change they must also address three cresting cultural waves: the worldwide rural-to-urban migration; the collapse of global fertility rates; and the disappearance of the middle class. In Five Rules for Tomorrow's Cities, planning and design expert Patrick Condon offers five rules to help urban designers assimilate these interconnected changes into their work: (1) See the City as a System; (2) Recognize Patterns in the Urban Environment; (3) Apply Lighter, Greener, Smarter Infrastructure; (4) Strengthen Social and Economic Urban Resilience; and (5) Adapt to Shifts in Jobs, Retail, and Wages.

Five Rules for Tomorrow's Cities provides grounded and financially feasible design examples for tomorrow's sustainable cities, and the design tools needed to achieve them.

Patrick Condon has over 30 years of experience in sustainable urban design: first as a professional city planner and then as a teacher and researcher. Condon started his academic career in 1985 at the University of Minnesota before moving to the University of British Columbia in 1992. After acting as the director of the landscape architecture program, he became the James Taylor Chair in Landscape and Liveable Environments. In that capacity, he has worked to advance sustainable urban design in scores of jurisdictions in the US, Canada, and Australia. He and his research partners collaborated with the City of North Vancouver to produce a 100-year plan to make the city carbon-neutral by 2107. Condon and his partners received the Canadian Institute of Planners Award for Planning Excellence, an ASLA award for research, and the BC Union of Municipalities Award of Excellence for this work. He was the founding chair of the new UBC Master of Urban Design program where his teaching and research are now concentrated. Condon is the author of Seven Rules for Sustainable Communities.