Book Talk | The Myth of Sustainable Cities: Losing the Holocene

Join us for a conversation with IoES Professor and Founding Director of the California Center for Sustainable Communities at UCLA Stephanie Pincetl about her new book, "The Myth of Sustainable Cities: Losing the Holocene," followed by an audience Q&A

Featuring Professor Stephanie Pincetl

Founding Director of the IoES California Center for Sustainable Communities

In Conversation With Professor Monica L. Smith

Professor, Navin and Pratima Doshi Chair in Indian Studies

Department of Anthropology and the Institute of the Environment and Sustainability

About “The Myth of Sustainable Cities: Losing the Holocene”

High-energy cities have been normalized across the world and touted as the ultimate home of humans. Claims that dense cities with their shared infrastructure and public transportation are one of the key solutions to the climate crisis abound.

But what if cities are not just part of the problem, but are making things worse? What if these arguments for cities are obscuring real problems—and real solutions? Professor Pincetl argues that the intrinsic energy needs of cities cannot be sustained in a post-hydrocarbon future without continuing the unequal extraction of resources and the continued de-development of non-Western, non-affluent countries.

Instead, the book seeks to convince readers that relying on urbanization as a solution to climate change will only continue the extraction of enormous amounts of resources while impoverishing, polluting, and exterminating entire ways of life and obscuring the possibility that an alternative path is both necessary and possible.

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• California Center for Sustainable Communities at UCLA