The policy challenge of sustainable development consists of finding a path towards a positive social and ecological co-evolution
Both biological and cultural diversity are now severely threatened and working for their preservation is a critical task
The restorative economy unites ecology and commerce into one sustainable act of production and distribution that mimics and enhances natural processes.
The conventional view holds that cities first formed after the Neolithic revolution. The Neolithic revolution brought agriculture, which made denser human populations possible, thereby supporting city development (Bairoch 1988, p. 3-4). The advent of farming encouraged hunter-gatherers to abandon nomadic lifestyles and to choose to settle near others who lived off of agricultural production. The increased population density encouraged by farming and the increased output of food per unit of land, created conditions that seem more suitable for city-like activities. In his book, “Cities and Economic Development,” Paul Bairoch takes up this position as he provides a seemingly straightforward argument, which makes agricultural activity appear necessary before true cities can form.
According to Vere Gordon Childe, for a settlement to qualify as a city, it must have enough surpluses of raw materials to support trade (Pacione 2001, p. 16). Bairoch points out that, due to sparse population densities that would have persisted in pre-Neolithic, hunter-gatherer societies, the amount of land that would be required to produce enough food for subsistence and trade for a large population would make it impossible to control the flow of trade. To illustrate this point, Bairoch offers “Western Europe during the pre-Neolithic, [where] the density must have been less than 0.1 person per square kilometer”, (Bairoch 1988, p. 13) as an example. Using this population density as a base for calculation, and allotting 10% of food towards surplus for trade and assuming that there is no...