The document discusses the unsustainability of modern cities and proposes a new urban design model called "urban eco-regions". It argues that cities are overly dependent on resources from outside their boundaries and produce too much waste. It suggests redesigning cities to be more self-sufficient by including their surrounding productive lands and ecosystems within their political jurisdictions. The goal would be for urban eco-regions to meet most of their residents' needs locally while dramatically reducing their ecological footprints to become contributors rather than burdens to the global environment.

1. Getting Serious About Urban Sustainability William E. Rees, PhD, FRSC Re-Imagining Cities: Urban Design After Oil Breakout Sessions – New Urban Forms and Strategies Regional Urban Design University of Pennsylvania, 7 November 2008

3. Context: The Anomalous, Unsustainable Oil-Based Expansion of the Human Enterprise Continuous growth—population and economic—is an anomaly. The growth spurt that recent generations take to be normal is the single most abnormal period of human history. 2008 Population: 6.8 billion The use of fossil fuel beginning in the 19 th Century allowed the explosive growth of the human enterprise

5. As presently conceived and designed, cities are not complete (human) ecosystems (Enclosed in a bell-jar, any city would simultaneously starve and suffocate)