New Urban Configurations: Towards a New Urban Metabolism

The main aim of this paper is to demonstrate ways in which the urban territory, including urban-rural areas and suburbs, can be transformed into a social, economic and environmental opportunity to transform its current unsustainable urban metabolism into a sustainable one. Moreover, it aims to reflect on solutions regarding new urban configurations that such metabolic transformations provide. In order to do so, this paper is organized in two parts. The first part addresses the issue of sustainability through a critical review of the available body of knowledge that encompasses the field of urban form analysis and its contribution to sustainability. The second part reflects on urban metabolism and analyses the specific case of Vrin, located in Switzerland, exhibiting the results of a successful urban-rural transformation that has coped with processes of economic, social and environmental changes, but that has also proved to provide a new urban-rural configuration imposed by a change of urban metabolism likely to guaranty Vrin's survival and sustainable transformation.