Social Sustainability
Urban Metabolism
Analysing cities as organisms — quantifying the flows of energy, water, food and materials they consume and excrete.
Definition
Urban metabolism is the analysis of a city as a system of material and energy flows: the inputs (food, water, energy, materials, goods), the throughputs that sustain urban life, and the outputs (waste, emissions, wastewater, heat). Coined by Abel Wolman (1965) for an American city's water and waste flows, the framework underlies material flow accounting for cities, industrial ecology, and circular city strategies that aim to close loops — waste to resource, wastewater to recycled water, heat recovery.
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