The Roepke Lecture in Economic Geography Recycling Urban Systems and Metropolitan Areas: A Geographical Agenda for the 1990s and Beyond

As we enter the post-recession 1990s, individual metropolitan areas and entire urban systems face daunting problems in adapting to continued global economic restructuring, ethnocultural changes, deterioration of the built environment, and ecological degradation. This paper reviews the dimensions of these problems and offers a critique of contemporary theories, processes, and practices of urban development. It argues the need for new urban forms, and specifically for the reuse, intensification, and reurbanization of older urban areas and for an overall reduction in the waste of land and resources created by our cut-and-burn style of development. It then examines the challenges and constraints involved in shifting the relative balance of development between greenfield and existing built-up areas. Two case studies, one of the reversal of inner city population decline in Toronto, the other a more comprehensive exercise to evaluate alternative urban forms, are introduced to illustrate how difficult it will be to redirect current trajectories of urban growth toward more efficient, socially equitable, and ecologically sustainable urban futures.