From Sustainable to Thrivable Urban Development: Conceptual Frameworks for Designing a Socio-Cultural, Relational, and Educational Ecosystem of Cities

This chapter considers the socio-cultural, relational, attitudinal, and moral-psychological aspects of a healthy and authentic community in urban settings, with a special focus on the concept of Living Cities and how to foster an interdependent ecosystem of cities across the globe. It emphasises how thrivable urban development can provide pathways to ecosystemic prosperity and the regeneration of life on Earth. Systemic innovations that aim to shift development goals with regard to urban planning are presented. Actionable tools for urban designers offered in this chapter enable opportunities to rethink and remake the role of humans and their impact on their environment. For instance, the perspective that allows Western notions of sustainability/regeneration to be better understood as a decolonising practice is presented as a way to humanise emerging thrivability initiatives in both the Global North and Global South. These frameworks, perspectives, and practices seek to ensure an empathy-based shift in the cultural and moral paradigm of contemporary urban development such that the local genius expressed in diverse behaviours and systems of urban life is respected and supported. As such, this chapter offers an integral approach to the shaping of a post-postmodern ideology of city development in ways that are inclusive of the Global South through a unitive narrative that foments a praxis dedicated to planetary thrivability.