How to Save the City - by Paul Chatterton (Paperback)

About the Book

Paul Chatterton engages, inspires and empowers the reader to take action to make cities more sustainable, liveable and safer places. He guides the reader through a sequence of challenges, strategies, players, moves and practical tactics of how to save their city.

Book Synopsis

A call to arms, How to Save the City invites the reader to engage with the challenges of living and working in cities at a time when several conflating emergencies have become more pressing and connected. While the climate crisis is the most urgent, we also face deep social crises in housing, gender and race inequalities, the breakdown of our natural world, our energy consumption, and the deep ripples resulting from the Covid-19 pandemic. These emergencies are playing out in acute ways in urban areas. Locked in to high-energy, high-resource use, cities are responsible for about three-quarters of global greenhouse gas emissions, have ecological and carbon footprints far bigger than their city limits, and are the beating heart of our pro-growth, unequal, consumer-saturated way of life. The city has to change, but how and by whom? Paul Chatterton engages, inspires and empowers the reader to take action to make cities more sustainable, liveable and safer places. He guides the reader through a sequence of challenges, strategies, players, moves and practical tactics of how to save their city.

Review Quotes

At a time when humanity needs to fundamentally change everything, all too often our imaginations get stuck, unable to really embrace the possibilities of the near future. How to Save the City is a brilliant dive into a delicious array of ways we could reshape the future, presented in such a way that the win/win/win nature of these solutions becomes obvious. Paul Chatterton acts as our tour guide from the future and wow, what a future.--Rob Hopkins, Transition Network

A fantastic handbook for anyone wanting to get into action and transform the future of their city - dive in.--Kate Raworth, author of Doughnut Economics

An excellent and superbly written book, which persuasively argues that the transformational change demanded by the ecological, democratic and social crises that our cities face can be brought about by the professional experts - we, us, the residents of cities. The author lays out a path, starting from the question 'do we need to save cities?' (yes) to an in-depth exploration of how and by whom, underpinned by the premise that 'people make their own cities, but they do not make them under circumstances they choose'. Chatterton's exploration is provocative, thought provoking, and in an age of climate breakdown, important indeed.--David Miller, Managing Director, C40 Centre for City Climate Policy and Economy

Global boiling is here! And that's just one of the crises we face. This book urges a leap into action. It casts all city dwellers as emergency responders who can (metaphorically speaking) take up a hose or carry a stretcher. Inspiring and instructive, Paul Chatterton outlines practical ways for how to save our cities. There is no time to dither and much to do. If you want to know how we can haul ourselves away from disaster and begin to transform our urban environments - read this book.--J. K. Gibson-Graham, Community Economies Institute & Institute for Culture and Society, Western Sydney University

It's easy to bury your head in the sand and think that technology will fix the climate crisis. Alternatively, you can feel that climate activists (Paul included) are very brave people, braver than me: they will fix it. You can think we are doomed: there is nothing I personally can do, the problems are overwhelming. This inspiring book shows that there are things we can all do, and perhaps we should focus more on them than worrying about our current predicament. A perfect guide to what is to be done.--Peter North, Professor of Alternative Economies, University of Liverpool

This is a clever and useful account of where we are (a tough place) and how we might get out (by, you know, making some changes). Read it, reflect on it, and then act on it.--Bill McKibben, author of The End of Nature

This is a high-energy, thoughtful and exciting book that is certain to inspire students, activists and anybody who cares about the current climate crisis.--Nik Heynen, Professor of Geography, University of Georgia

This is a very unusual, very clever, very important book. In the face of the emergency created by changing climatic, social and ecological conditions, it asks simply: what can we do here and now to rescue cities and, by extension, the world? It is a very practical book, with detailed analysis and suggestions as to what to do. Face up to the awful reality that confronts us, but don't panic, do something, change things! It is a book that shakes us, in a very helpful and stimulating way. Definitely a book to read, and to apply in practice.--John Holloway, author of Change the World Without Taking Power and Crack Capitalism

Thought provoking.--Danny Dorling, Halford Mackinder Professor of Geography, University of Oxford

About the Author

Paul Chatterton is Professor of Urban Futures in the School of Geography at the University of Leeds. He has been a campaigner on social, ecological and climate issues for 25 years. His books include Low Impact Living and Unlocking Sustainable Cities.