A sustainable city is built around people and the natural environment, integrating workplaces, housing, energy production, transportation, infrastructure, farms, parks, and natural habitat. It is democratic, with all citizens participating in day-to-day decision-making, egalitarian, and integrated by race, gender age, mental and manual labor. It interconnects work and home, urban and rural, civilization and nature, local and global.

Every neighborhood is as self-reliant and self-contained as possible, with workplaces, apartment buildings, energy production, schools, daycare, health clinic, public safety organization, stores, and service shops. Collective spaces include a town square, community center for cultural activities, recreation, and meetings, areas for children, youth, sports and social gatherings, families, and the elderly. Farms raise crops, orchards, and domestic animals. The city includes natural habitat belts connected to the surrounding forest, savannah, desert, bodies of water.

Workplaces producing goods and services are clean, quiet, safe, and distributed throughout the city. Extractive industries such as metals use methods least disruptive to nature and dispose of toxic waste safely and long-term. Heavy industry such as steel or those using toxins such as electronics, dispose of inorganic toxins and decompose organic toxins.

For construction of housing, priority is on natural materials such as rammed earth, layered timber, and stone, with steel and concrete used sparingly. Apartment buildings are modular, with roofs, walls, terraces, and balconies, covered in greenery, and include community areas. Housing is mixed by race, age, physical and psychological ability.

Energy is renewable, use sun, wind, water, geothermal, depending on local conditions, with energy storage devices. Hydropower dams do not disrupt wildlife or the environment. Water is renewable, returning to soil and aquifers after use. Human and material waste is recycled as much as possible or safely disposed of.

Transportation at ground level is human-powered—walking, bicycling, skateboards. Powered transportation of people and goods and is either underground or above-ground.

The metropolitan area maintains close ties with communities worldwide through exchange of goods, services, culture, ideas, and people, but be as self-sufficient locally and regionally as possible. Farmland is closely tied to cities by transportation and communication and exchange of goods and services. Cities are surrounded by extensive natural habitat that people visit without damaging.

A sustainable city requires true democracy and equality, where the whole citizenry participates in production, decision-making, resolving conflicts, and protecting and assisting the natural environment. There can division of labor, but no ruling class, exploitation for profit, racial or gender discrimination. Material consumption meets the needs of the people comfortably, and surplus is saved for emergencies or invested in enhancing the quality of life and natural environment.