Eco-acupuncture: Designing Future Transitions for Urban Communities for a Resilient Low-carbon Future

Over the coming decades, as we navigate the end of the fossil fuel era, probably soon to be known as the carbonaceous period in human development (or more evocatively, after Yusoff [2010], the period of ‘the economy of dead animality’), we can predict with some certainty that cities will be the locus for action for whatever emerges to replace it. This is not just a recognition that more than half the worlds population now resides in cities and therefore that all actions in response to the threatening global conditions will reflect the interests of city-based citizens; it is much more. The very nature and form of cities their physical and cultural dimensions will amplify their place in the coming ‘post-carbon’ revolution a revolution to transform the energy basis of the economy and to deliver resilience in the face of changed global conditions. This revolution will be as significant as any in human history and it will be first and foremost an urban revolution (even if it does also have the dimensions of an industrial, economic, ‘metabolic’, social and even ethical revolution).