Sustaining Urban Networks: The Social Diffusion of Large Technical Systems

Telecommunications, transportation, energy and water supply networks have gained crucial importance in the functioning of modern social systems over the past 100 to 150 years. Sustaining Urban Networks studies the development of these networks and the economic, social and environmental issues associated with it.

Taking sustainability in its triple economic, environmental and social dimensions, contributors such as Bernard Barraque and Olivier Coutard take stock of previous research on large technical systems and discuss sustainability from three main perspectives: uses, cities, rules/institutions.