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Bridging the divide in urban sustainability: from human exemptionalism to the new ecological paradigm

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An Erratum to this article was published on 20 March 2007

Abstract

This paper reviews the main bodies of contemporary urban sustainability theory. From this analysis, two underpinning paradigms of urban sustainability are identified: (1) The ‘Human Exemptionalism Paradigm’ (HEP), which emphasizes the ability of humans to overcome environmental problems—see Urban Sociology, Urban Ecology, Urban Geography, Urban Psychology and Political Economy; and (2) The ‘New Ecological Paradigm’ (NEP), which emphasizes the criticality of ecological limits to human progress—see Urban Metabolism, Energy/Emergy Analysis and Ecological Footprinting. Each of these approaches is critically reviewed, highlighting their main assumptions, theoretical and practical foci. It is argued in the paper that if the related issues of urban sustainability and development are to be progressed, there needs to be: (1) a greater maturation of the NEP approaches, which are ‘relative newcomers’ to the area of urban theory; and (2) greater integration and dialogue between the HEP and NEP approaches to urban sustainability than has hitherto been the case.

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Notes

  1. Catton and Dunlap (1978) originally termed this perspective the ‘Human Exceptionalism Paradigm’ as it emphasizes the exceptional characteristics of the human species by virtue of culture, language and technology. To acknowledge that they were not questioning these characteristics, but rather the assumption that these characteristics ‘exempted’ humans from ecological constraints, they later changed the term to the ‘Human Exemptionalism Paradigm’ (Dunlap 1997, 2002).

  2. Catton and Dunlap (1978) originally labeled this paradigm the ‘New Environmental Paradigm’, but later revised this to the ‘New Ecological Paradigm’ as it seeks to emphasise the ecological base of human society (Dunlap 1997, 2002).

  3. This also applies to the sociological perspectives that have since followed or were at the time in their infancy, i.e., Rational Choice and Exchange Theory, Ethnomethodology, Phenomethodology, Feminism, Post-structuralism and Post-modernism.

  4. These schools of thought encompass Western thinking on the city over the last 160 years. By no means is the coverage presented here complete, nor are the summaries of the contributions made by key authors; the focus is rather on capturing the central themes of each school. Other perspectives of the city, as based on the HEP, include ‘Urban Planning’ (e.g., Ebenezer Howard (1965), Jane Jacobs (1961, 1970, 1984)), ‘Urban Psychology’ (Lynch (1960), Herbert Gans (1962, 1982)), ‘Urban Design’ and ‘Form’ (e.g., Le Corbusier (1929[1924], 1967[1935]), Frank Lloyd Wright (1958), Paolo Soleri (1969)) and the history of the city (e.g., Lewis Mumford (1961)).

  5. Human ecology seeks to isolate the forces at work within an urban community which facilitate ordered grou**s of people and institutions, and describe the typical clusters or constellations of persons and institutions brought about by the cooperation of these forces (Park 1967[1916]).

  6. Note that the HEP/NEP dichotomy does not represent the poles of an anthropocentric–ecocentric continuum. Like the HEP, the NEP is inherently anthropocentric—it must be so to be considered a ‘sociological’ paradigm, but it differs from the HEP by acknowledging humankind’s critical dependence on the environment.

  7. It is important not to confuse the treatment of the city as an ecosystem with the urban ecology school of thought as promoted by Park, Burgess and Wirth. The former is typically concerned with a city’s consumption of material and energy resources and production of waste outputs, while the latter simply uses ecological analogies to explain how people spread out and arrange themselves within the city.

  8. Using the second law of thermodynamics Georgescu-Roegen (1971) has argued that complete recycling is physically impossible. Although others disagree with Georgescu-Roegen’s (1971) assertion on theoretical grounds, they all agree that in practical terms complete recycling is impossible; for example, see Craig (2001) for further details on this topic.

  9. For further details refer to Wolman (1965), Newcombe (1975a, b), Newcombe et al. (1978), and Boyden et al. (1981) on urban metabolism; Newman et al. (1996), and Newman (1999) on extended urban metabolism; Hannon (1973, 1982), Bullard and Herendeen (1975), and Brown and Herendeen (1996) on urban energy analysis; Huang (1998) on urban emergy analysis; and Wackernagel and Rees (1996) on ecological footprinting.

  10. Warren-Rhodes and Koenig (2001) have since published an update of the Newcombe inter alia work on Hong Kong’s urban metabolism.

  11. Emergy is defined by Odum (1996, p. 288) as “all the available energy that was used in the work of making a product and expressed in units of embodied solar energy”.

  12. Huang (1998, p. 501) defines transformity as “the ratio of energy of one type required to produce a unit of energy of another type”.

  13. This represents an alternative to the earlier zonation theories of the Burgess’ Concentric Zone model (Park et al. 1925), Hoyt’s (1939) Sector theory and Harris and Ullman’s (1945) Multiple Nuclei theory.

  14. Wackernagel and Rees (1996), for example, found in a study on Vancouver that the city exceeds its available lamd area by 23 times. Other researchers have reached similar findings (McDonald and Patterson 2002, 2003, 2004; Lenzen 2004; Close and Foran 1998; Bicknell et al. 1998; Folke et al. 1994).

  15. The extended metabolism model of inter alia Newman et al. (1996) attempts to address this by the inclusion of social aspects of sustainability into the model to achieve ‘liveability’ in urban settlements.

  16. Only very recently, for example, was the journal of Urban Ecosystems established (March 1997).

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Acknowledgments

We acknowledge the work of Catherine MacGregor, Claire Gomas and Nicola Smith of Market Economics Ltd in compiling research material for this manuscript, along with the contribution of Derrylea Hardy of Massey University for her effort in the final preparation of this paper. We also acknowledge the Foundation of Research Science and Technology (Wellington, New Zealand), which funded this project as part of the ‘Sustainable Pathways’ programme (Contract MAUX306).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Market Economics Ltd., P.O. Box 331 297, Takapuna, Auckland, New Zealand

    Garry W. McDonald

  2. New Zealand Centre of Ecological Economics, School of People, Environment and Planning, Massey University, Private Bag 11 222, Palmerston North, New Zealand

    Murray G. Patterson

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  1. Garry W. McDonald
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  2. Murray G. Patterson
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Correspondence to Garry W. McDonald.

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An erratum to this article is available at http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s11252-007-0021-z.

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McDonald, G.W., Patterson, M.G. Bridging the divide in urban sustainability: from human exemptionalism to the new ecological paradigm. Urban Ecosyst 10, 169–192 (2007). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11252-006-0017-0

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11252-006-0017-0

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