Cities have an important role in preventing climate breakdown, both as a cause and as a solution. They are hotspots of climate emissions: London, Manchester and Birmingham together account for 20% of Britain’s greenhouse gases. More positively, they can also be more nimble and more focused than national governments, setting targets and strategies that are locally specific. In this book, One Planet Cities: Sustaining humanity within planetary limits, David Thorpe describes some of those strategies for sustainable cities.

An unusual author, is David Thorpe. He is a lecturer and consultant on sustainability, an author on Passive houses and solar power, and a novelist and comic books author. His background makes for an accessible book that is academically rigorous, but much more conversational that I would normally associate with Routledge as a publisher. He’s also clearly an ideas person, and so the book is bursting with examples from around…