The New City - by Dickson Despommier

About the Book

Dickson D. Despommier proposes a visionary yet achievable plan for creating a new, self-sustaining urban landscape.

Book Synopsis

Cities are at once among humanity's crowning achievements and core drivers of the climate crisis. Their dependence on the outside world for vital resources is causing global temperatures to rise and wildlife habitats to shrink. But we have the opportunity to make cities more sustainable by transforming the built environment.

Dickson D. Despommier proposes a visionary yet achievable plan for creating a new, self-sustaining urban landscape. He argues that we can find solutions through the concept of biomimicry: emulating successful strategies found in nature. A better city is possible if we heed the lessons that forests and trees teach about how to store carbon, grow food, collect rainwater, and convert sunlight into energy. Touring established and leading-edge technologies, The New City provides a blueprint for tomorrow's urban environment. Cities built from wood will be more resilient and less destructive than concrete and steel construction; they will also encourage reforestation, boosting carbon sequestration. Vertical farms inside city limits will supply residents with a reliable, healthy food supply. Buildings will harvest moisture from the rain and air to secure a clean water supply. Renewable energy, including not only wind, solar, and geothermal but also clear photovoltaic window glass and nonpolluting hydrogen fuel cells, will power a cleaner city.

The New City delivers both a passionate call to action for halting climate change and a bold vision of the sustainable future within our grasp.

Review Quotes

A rewarding and motivating read, one not lacking in research to support the hopefulness of his claims and at the same time consistently stimulating possibilities for further exploration.-- "H-Net"

Offers an important contribution to the literature, providing a compelling set of interconnected clean and green possibilities for the environment in which most of us will live.-- "H-Environment"

A provocative read for those at all levels of scholarship and engagement who want to think outside the box about the problems cities face worldwide . . . Highly recommended.-- "Choice"

A top 12 climate book to give friends and family over the holidays.-- "Yale Climate Connections"

This elegantly packaged book offers some compelling ideas and solutions for those seeking more sustainable cities. A provocative read for those at all levels of scholarship and engagement who want to think outside the box about the problems cities face worldwide. Highly recommended.-- "Choice Reviews, American Library Association (ALA)"

Despommier inherits from generations of ecological scientists -- ranging from Charles Darwin to Rachel Carson and James Lovelock -- a commitment to ecological balance, to the notion of human communities as webs of dependencies that anthropogenic climate change and biosphere disruption have shredded.-- "Peter Schwartz, Wikidworld "Reimagining Western Civilization" substack"

A really interesting and important book.-- "Andrew Keen, Keen On podcast"

I eat, sleep, and breathe sustainability and have read widely on the subject. Yet I learned something new in each chapter. Moreover, Despommier's excitement for this topic is almost palpable. I wish more authors shared such enthusiasm in their books.-- "The Green Dispatch"

Dickson Despommier has done it again, and this time he goes higher toward the goal of feeding our growing global urban population with innovation, examples, and leadership. Farming inside cities is a critical part of feeding billions of people, and thanks to this new book we have a renewed vision of how to get there.--Josh Tickell, author of Kiss the Ground

Despommier conjures a future of totally sustainable 'off-grid' cities. A high degree of self-sufficiency in energy, water, and food will ensure quality of life for the urban population (more than two-thirds of the planet by the 2040s) while taking a great deal of pressure off the nonurban environment, providing a path to surviving climate change. The narrative depends on ambitious technical and policy assumptions, but Despommier has credibility as a visionary, given his broad ecologist's perspective and his successful record of defining the emerging urban-agriculture and vertical-farming sectors. This is a profoundly optimistic vision of cities inspired by and synchronized with nature.--Gregory Kiss, Kiss + Cathcart, Architects

Dickson D. Despommier paints a picture of the future city, where carbon sequestered in buildings, vertical farms, recycled water from the air, circular economies for waste, and renewable energy provide urban dwellers with their needs and wants. His argument that our species can only persist by refashioning cities around the realities of nature rings true in today's perilous world.--Ruth DeFries, Denning Family Professor of Sustainable Development, Columbia University, and author of What Would Nature Do?

Each change in the evolution of human history begins with a voice that sees the world differently--not the way it is, but the way it could be. Despommier is one of these people, and he has spent much of his career advocating for a sustainable ecology based on human health and a sensible approach to food production.--Scott Erdy, design principal, Erdy McHenry Architecture, and visiting lecturer, University of Pennsylvania

How can we reconsider infrastructure to better serve our urban centers? Climate resiliency isn't just an environmental issue; it's a social justice issue, a public health issue, and an economic resiliency issue. We need solutions that address all four. Despommier's timely book helps us answer this question holistically, addressing the fact that sustainable communities are indeed successful ones. But most importantly, Despommier's work reminds us of the necessity of action.--Nona Yehia, cofounder and CEO, Vertical Harvest

The science of bad climate news is ever present, but in this wondrous work by Dickson D. Despommier, we see that the good news for the future might well be found in the rethinking and redesign of our cities.--Robert Fullilove, Mailman School of Public Health, Columbia University

About the Author

Dickson D. Despommier (1940-2025) was emeritus professor of public health and microbiology at Columbia University. His previous books include The Vertical Farm: Feeding the World in the Twenty-First Century (2010), which popularized the idea of raising crops inside tall buildings; People, Parasites, and Plowshares: Learning from Our Body's Most Terrifying Invaders (Columbia, 2013); and Parasitic Diseases (seventh edition, 2019).

Mitchell Joachim is cofounder of the nonprofit architecture and urban design research group Terreform ONE and associate professor of practice at the NYU Gallatin School of Individualized Study.