Rethinking sustainability in urban áreas: São Paulo, London, Berlin

The five chapters of this volume speak to a series of social and environmental problems faced by many cities around the world: the degradation of green public spaces; homelessness; access to blue-green infrastructure; and food waste. Such problems – like many other challenges to the sustainability of our urbanising world – have global dimensions, but their concrete forms relate to local contexts limiting the applicability of ‘best practice’ solutions derived from experiences elsewhere. Each of the studies here therefore takes a cross-comparative approach, grounded in the specificities of three cities with very different historical trajectories and expectations for the future: London, Berlin and São Paulo. This approach has allowed the authors not only to diagnose successes and failures in relation to their immediate environments, but also to draw out cross-cutting recommendations for the future. The work is the result of the ‘Global Research Academy’ study programme undertaken by doctoral researchers from Universidade de São Paulo, Freie Univerisität Berlin, and King’s College London.