Green Cities: From Tokenism to Incrementalism and Transformation

Abstract

This chapter examines how sustainability and green discourses and agendas relating to urban and peri-urban areas have arisen, evolved and been applied over time and in different socio-spatial contexts. It commences with a brief historical overview of the importance of health and wellbeing to the rise and embedding of urban planning as a discipline, and how early visionary efforts focused on green or public open space and garden cities. These have remained important planning foci but have been reinterpreted with changing times. Initiatives to enhance urban sustainability through urban greening can be traced back to the 1980s, although its widespread