The Metabolism of Settlement - by Carlos Arnaiz & Peter G Rowe & Claire Doussard (Paperback)

Book Synopsis

This book is about a methodological approach that allows urban settlement patterns to be re-written, as it were, into water, energy and other material flows emanating from original sources in the geosphere, biosphere, hydrosphere, and so on, through various stages of transformation during settlement construction and operation and then on to end-of-life activities. In short, the methodology produces a so-called 'cradle-to-grave' account of the material aspects of urban settlement from which technological and design proposals can be crafted ameliorating and diminishing adverse impacts, as well as related outcomes such as embodied energy and carbon concentrations so deleterious to climate change and proliferation of other hyperobjects.