Cities as Forces for Good Network


Research

CFG takes as rounded a view of its challenges as possible: from Engineering to Ecology to Anthropology to Business, and all disciplines and perspectives in between. We approach the concept of sustainability from the organizational framework of Triple Bottom Line accountancy. Policy interventions, business strategies and start-ups, technological innovations, and programs for re-engineering should be seen to be environmentally benign, economically feasible, and socially legitimate. How do we imagine our hopes and fears for the future? How can the city and its infrastructure be formed and operated so as to enhance the restoration of natural capital and the delivery of ecosystem services from the environment? Along what technological trajectories might we achieve a transition away from current patterns of unsustainability? What makes governance more enabling of these transitions (and less disabling)? Are our transitions climate-robust? How do they secure public health and enhance well-being? Where in current city-infrastructure arrangements are we wasting the most resource value? Where, therefore, might we make the most financial successes; and through what kinds of business start-ups? These form the portfolio of questions driving our thinking and the work of CFG.