Cities and the Biosphere: This article belongs to Ambio’s 50th Anniversary Collection. Theme: Urbanization

Abstract

Sustainable cities have been in focus for a long time. Our journey with this paper (Folke et al. 1997) goes back to the mid-1990s when the United Nations Habitat II conference was held in Istanbul, Turkey, with a focus on fostering sustainable human settlements in its diverse dimensions. But, the supporting land area of cities, their ghost acreage or hinterland, was largely out of sight and thereby also out of mind (Borgström 1974). Show more