Climate change is widely seen as an existential threat to human society. In this book, Peter J. Taylor, Geoff O'Brien, and Phil O'Keefe argue that current models of global governance, oriented around economic development and urban growth, are failing to respond the unprecedented challenges it presents. Cities Demanding the Earth makes the case that we must move focus away from policy dominated by supply issues and climate adaption, calling for radical new policy solutions and radical new ways of thinking about the social processes of climate change. The authors present case studies from cities in the United State and China, and apply the theories of the famed urban theorist Jane Jacobs, to provide clear policy recommendations, arguing that cities can, and must be reinvented as devices for meaningful environmental activism in the twenty-first century.