PREFACE AND ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

One can hardly be sanguine about the fate of the Earth and the prospects of humankind flourishing over the remainder of the twenty-first century, given the many challenges facing socio-nature as a result of the continuing forces of technological modernity and the palpable threats stemming from the proliferation of neo-liberalism and right-wing populism across much of the West. Yet the resources of hope reside around us, often in the most unexpected places that blend threat and promise, if we but look for them. This book is in many respects the culmination of over thirty-five years of collaboration between a political scientist and an urban architect. Having initially crossed paths on the quadrangle of the University of Kentucky in the early 1980s, Richard S. Levine and I launched a conversation about the pressing need for the world to achieve sustainability and the role of the city as the space and place for bringing this goal to realization—a conversation that continues today. Little did we think then that that initial colloquy would animate our theoretical, design, and policy efforts through the remainder of our academic careers and into our individual retirements. Levine was the first to turn attention to China as a laboratory for advancing sustainability, playing a crucial role in the writing and selection of a multi-million dollar grant proposal, funded by the European Commission (project number: FP ICA4-CT-2002-10007). Titled “Sustainable Users Concepts for China Engaging Scientific Scenarios (SUCCESS),” this grant, awarded to Oikodrom—the Vienna Institute for Urban Sustainability— and the project team, provided funds to conduct interdisciplinary research and sustainability-oriented projects with rural villagers in seven Chinese peri-urban and rural settlements in six different provinces in China. Many of the tools of the strategy of sustainable city-regions (multiple scenario-building, expert-stakeholder participation, the Sustainable Area Budget, etc.) were utilized by Levine and other team members in these proto-sustainable settlements. Yanarella’s introduction to China’s sustainability programs occurred in 2013 when he taught a course on urban sustainability to undergraduates in Shanghai University’s short summer program and then was invited back the following summer (2014) to teach an undergraduate course on urban and water sustainability. These experiences led to inaugurating a course in summer 2015 and then again the next summer on Shantou as a living laboratory for sustainability solutions to advanced undergraduates at Shantou University