IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/gam/jsusta/v15y2023i3p2443-d1051015.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Remarks on the Concept of a Sustainable City in Light of Konrad Lorenz’s Concept of Man

Author

Listed:
  • Ryszard F. Sadowski

    (Institute of Philosophy, Cardinal Stefan Wyszynski University in Warsaw, ul. Woycickiego 1/3, 01-938 Warsaw, Poland)

Abstract

For several decades now, intensive research has been carried out on the concept of a city that would be as environmentally friendly as possible, while simultaneously providing a high quality of life for its residents. As a result of this research, the concept of a sustainable city that addresses these challenges has been developed. The significance of this issue is evidenced by the fact that Sustainable Development Goal 11 is explicitly concerned with this topic. This paper aims to analyze the concept of a sustainable city from the perspective of the so-called ‘layered’ concept of man authored by Konrad Lorenz. It is based on the observation that the pace of biological evolution and that of the cultural evolution man undergoes differ significantly. While humans have adapted very quickly to urban living in their cultural layer, adaptation to city life in their biological layer has been very slow. The natural way of life pursued by the Homo sapiens was a hunter–gatherer lifestyle, which biological evolution had adapted the species to over hundreds of thousands of years. The changes associated with the Neolithic Revolution and the formation of the first cities took place about 11,000 years ago. Thus, not enough time has elapsed for humans to adapt biologically to their radically changed living conditions. The purpose of this paper is to look from a new perspective at the challenges faced by city dwellers, and in doing so, to identify the sources of these challenges and to arrange them in a hierarchy. An additional goal is to expand the argument for promoting certain elements of a sustainable city. Indeed, much seems to suggest that Lorenz’s concept offers a novel approach to looking at such urban issues as the challenges of overpopulation, man’s restricted access to nature, and the ever-increasing pace of life.

Suggested Citation

  • Ryszard F. Sadowski, 2023. "Remarks on the Concept of a Sustainable City in Light of Konrad Lorenz’s Concept of Man," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 15(3), pages 1-12, January.
    • Handle: RePEc:gam:jsusta:v:15:y:2023:i:3:p:2443-:d:1051015
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/15/3/2443/pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/15/3/2443/
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Stanislav E. Shmelev & Irina A. Shmeleva, 2009. "Sustainable cities: problems of integrated interdisciplinary research," International Journal of Sustainable Development, Inderscience Enterprises Ltd, vol. 12(1), pages 4-23.
    2. Ginevra Balletto & Mara Ladu & Federico Camerin & Emilio Ghiani & Jacopo Torriti, 2022. "More Circular City in the Energy and Ecological Transition: A Methodological Approach to Sustainable Urban Regeneration," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 14(22), pages 1-18, November.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Myriam Caratù & Valerio Brescia & Ilaria Pigliautile & Paolo Biancone, 2023. "Assessing Energy Communities’ Awareness on Social Media with a Content and Sentiment Analysis," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 15(8), pages 1-28, April.
    2. Haochen Qian & Fan Zhang & Bing Qiu, 2023. "Deciphering the Evolution, Frontier, and Knowledge Clustering in Sustainable City Planning: A 60-Year Interdisciplinary Review," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 15(24), pages 1-27, December.
    3. Stanislav E. Shmelev & Nathan Lefievre & Nadim Saadi & Irina A. Shmeleva, 2023. "Interdisciplinary Linkages among Sustainability Dimensions in the Context of European Cities and Regions Research," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 15(20), pages 1-28, October.
    4. Anne Parlina & Kalamullah Ramli & Hendri Murfi, 2021. "Exposing Emerging Trends in Smart Sustainable City Research Using Deep Autoencoders-Based Fuzzy C-Means," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 13(5), pages 1-28, March.
    5. Stanislav Edward Shmelev (ODID), "undated". "Multi-criteria Assessment of Ecosystems and Biodiversity: New Dimensions and Stakeholders in the South of France," QEH Working Papers qehwps181, Queen Elizabeth House, University of Oxford.
    6. Sergey Mityagin & Nikita Kopyt & Irina A. Shmeleva & Sofia Malysheva & Ekaterina Malysheva & Aleksandr Antonov & Aleksey Sokol & Nikita Zakharenko & Tatiana Churiakova & Semen A. Budennyy & Alexander , 2023. "Green Spaces in Urban Environments: Network Planning of Plant Species Composition," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 15(20), pages 1-22, October.
    7. Andrea Sarcina & Rubina Canesi, 2023. "Renewable Energy Community: Opportunities and Threats towards Green Transition," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 15(18), pages 1-21, September.
    8. Riccardo Trevisan & Mara Ladu & Emilio Ghiani & Ginevra Balletto, 2024. "Achieving Net Zero Condominiums through Energy Community Sharing," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 16(5), pages 1-28, March.
    9. Chun-Fa Cheng & Kuo-Tai Cheng, 2018. "Evaluation of the sustainability of Hakka villages in the Lui–Tui area of Taiwan via emergy analysis," Environment, Development and Sustainability: A Multidisciplinary Approach to the Theory and Practice of Sustainable Development, Springer, vol. 20(6), pages 2831-2856, December.
    10. Mohammed Abdulfattah Bay & Mohammed Mashary Alnaim & Ghazy Abdullah Albaqawy & Emad Noaime, 2022. "The Heritage Jewel of Saudi Arabia: A Descriptive Analysis of the Heritage Management and Development Activities in the At-Turaif District in Ad-Dir’iyah, a World Heritage Site (WHS)," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 14(17), pages 1-24, August.
    11. Nina Liu & Shuqi Wang & Fei Su & Jun Ye, 2022. "Research on Coupling Coordination of China’s New-Type Urbanization and Urban Resilience—Taking Yangtze River Economic Belt as an Example," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 15(1), pages 1-25, December.
    12. Rui Jin & Chunyuan Huang & Pei Wang & Junyong Ma & Yiliang Wan, 2023. "Identification of Inefficient Urban Land for Urban Regeneration Considering Land Use Differentiation," Land, MDPI, vol. 12(10), pages 1-24, October.
    13. Miguel Amado & Evelina Rodrigues, 2019. "A Heritage-Based Method to Urban Regeneration in Developing Countries: The Case Study of Luanda," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 11(15), pages 1-20, July.
    14. Luisa Errichiello & Roberto Micera, 2018. "Leveraging Smart Open Innovation for Achieving Cultural Sustainability: Learning from a New City Museum Project," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 10(6), pages 1-23, June.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:gam:jsusta:v:15:y:2023:i:3:p:2443-:d:1051015. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: MDPI Indexing Manager (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.mdpi.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.