抄録
In our long history, we human beings have accumulated remarkable wisdoms of coexisting with nature. Many of our ancestors reflected upon the human-nature relationships and knew how people should occupy the land, even in the time when people did not have too much concern about the damage that they posed on the environment. However, after the Industrial Revolution, many ugly industrial cities emerged; but the planners’ prescription was only a better urban design separating the residents from unpleasant industrial hazards. It was not until after World War II when industrialization and urbanization associated with mass production and mass consumption started to prevail all over the world and the unsustainable signs became apparent, that we recognized the irretrievable damage that human inventions have brought to the ecosystem (Carson, 1962) and the limits for economic development (Meadows et al., 1972). After the World Commission on Environment and Development published the Brundtland report in 1987 and the United Nations held its historical convention Earth Summit at Rio de Janeiro in 1992, “sustainable development” or “sustainability” as a goal has begun to gain world-wide consensus. A huge amount of studies have been added to almost all research fields as well as the practices in different levels of government, involving various parties of stakeholders. However, despite decades of effort, we are still in the midst of searching for a road map towards sustainability (Biermann, 2013; Linnér and Selin, 2013). In an increasingly connected and interrelated world, it is ideal to find global sustainability in which all parts act coherently as a systematic whole. However, another way of thinking should also deserve consideration: if all the parts in the world sustain their own, we should not need to worry about our common future.
