Urban Metabolism Analysis

Urban metabolism analysis treats a city as a living organism that ingests materials, water, energy and food and excretes wastes, emissions and outflows, accounting for these flows to understand and improve a city's resource use. Drawing on the biological metaphor that Abel Wolman introduced in his 1965 'The metabolism of cities', the method draws a system boundary around the urban area and constructs a mass and energy balance of everything entering, accumulating in, and leaving it. The resulting per-capita flows and efficiency indicators expose how resource-intensive a city is and where interventions could close material loops.