lecture_46880

at data.aalto.fi

http://data.aalto.fi/id/courses/noppa/lecture_46880

Consumption and the ¿rebound effect¿, a central stage in the product life cycle, are attracting increasing attention in both general environmental discourse and the research community. Consumption will be characterized in strategic, quantitative and socio-cultural terms. Cities are a particular system with intensive demand for water, energy, food, raw materials, wastes, and information. The principles of ecology and ecosystem management are applied to analyze urban organisms and settings and to model the relevant cycles. Emphasis is also placed on the quantitative description of the physical aspect of urban sustainability. This leads to discussing the planning and design of a more sustainable city. The material flows of national economies can be treated as physical accounts, roughly analogous to national economic accounts. In recent years, a number of national material accounts have been developed. Some of their features and implications will be described.