The Urban Transformation of the Developing World


Book Description

This collection brings together essays from leading experts on urbanization who come from diverse disciplines. Divergences as well as convergences are explored in the introductory essay while the second essay presents the urban history of Asia, which is unparalleled in its time span, geographical spread, and cultural riches. The next three essays consider China, India, and Indonesia as regions in their own right, providing units of analysis that can usefully be compared with regions such as the Arab states, Africa South of the Sahara, and Latin America, which are discussed in the final three essays.




The Environmental Advantages of Cities


Book Description

An analysis that offers evidence to challenge the widely held assumption that urbanization and environmental quality are necessarily at odds. Conventional wisdom about the environmental impact of cities holds that urbanization and environmental quality are necessarily at odds. Cities are seen to be sites of ecological disruption, consuming a disproportionate share of natural resources, producing high levels of pollution, and concentrating harmful emissions precisely where the population is most concentrated. Cities appear to be particularly vulnerable to natural disasters, to be inherently at risk from outbreaks of infectious diseases, and even to offer dysfunctional and unnatural settings for human life. In this book, William Meyer tests these widely held beliefs against the evidence. Borrowing some useful terminology from the public health literature, Meyer weighs instances of “urban penalty” against those of “urban advantage.” He finds that many supposed urban environmental penalties are illusory, based on commonsense preconceptions and not on solid evidence. In fact, greater degrees of “urbanness” often offer advantages rather than penalties. The characteristic compactness of cities, for example, lessens the pressure on ecological systems and enables resource consumption to be more efficient. On the whole, Meyer reports, cities offer greater safety from environmental hazards (geophysical, technological, and biological) than more dispersed settlement does. In fact, the city-defining characteristics widely supposed to result in environmental penalties do much to account for cities' environmental advantages. As of 2008 (according to U.N. statistics), more people live in cities than in rural areas. Meyer's analysis clarifies the effects of such a profound shift, covering a full range of environmental issues in urban settings.




Green Cities


Book Description

"In Green Cities, Matthew Kahn surveys the burgeoning economic literature on the environmental consequences of urban growth. He discusses the environmental Kuznets curve, which theorizes that the relationship between environmental quality and per capita income follows a bell-shaped curve. The heart of the book unpacks and expands this notion by tracing the environmental effects of economic growth, population growth, and suburban sprawl. Kahn considers how cities can deal with the environmental challenges produced by growth. His concluding chapter addresses the role of cities in promoting climate change and asks how cities in turn are likely to be affected by this trend."--BOOK JACKET.




Rethinking Global Land Use in an Urban Era


Book Description

Today, global land use is affected by a variety of factors, including urbanization and the growing interconnectedness of economies and markets. This book examines the challenges and opportunities we face in achieving sustainable land use in the twenty-first century. The contributors, from a range of disciplines and countries, present new analytical perspectives and tools for understanding key issues in global land use.




Urban Environmental Education Review


Book Description

Urban Environmental Education Review explores how environmental education can contribute to urban sustainability. Urban environmental education includes any practices that create learning opportunities to foster individual and community well-being and environmental quality in cities. It fosters novel educational approaches and helps debunk common assumptions that cities are ecologically barren and that city people don't care for, or need, urban nature or a healthy environment. Topics in Urban Environmental Education Review range from the urban context to theoretical underpinnings, educational settings, participants, and educational approaches in urban environmental education. Chapters integrate research and practice to help aspiring and practicing environmental educators, urban planners, and other environmental leaders achieve their goals in terms of education, youth and community development, and environmental quality in cities. The ten-essay series Urban EE Essays, excerpted from Urban Environmental Education Review, may be found here: naaee.org/eepro/resources/urban-ee-essays. These essays explore various perspectives on urban environmental education and may be reprinted/reproduced only with permission from Cornell University Press.




Advancing the Science of Climate Change


Book Description

Climate change is occurring, is caused largely by human activities, and poses significant risks for-and in many cases is already affecting-a broad range of human and natural systems. The compelling case for these conclusions is provided in Advancing the Science of Climate Change, part of a congressionally requested suite of studies known as America's Climate Choices. While noting that there is always more to learn and that the scientific process is never closed, the book shows that hypotheses about climate change are supported by multiple lines of evidence and have stood firm in the face of serious debate and careful evaluation of alternative explanations. As decision makers respond to these risks, the nation's scientific enterprise can contribute through research that improves understanding of the causes and consequences of climate change and also is useful to decision makers at the local, regional, national, and international levels. The book identifies decisions being made in 12 sectors, ranging from agriculture to transportation, to identify decisions being made in response to climate change. Advancing the Science of Climate Change calls for a single federal entity or program to coordinate a national, multidisciplinary research effort aimed at improving both understanding and responses to climate change. Seven cross-cutting research themes are identified to support this scientific enterprise. In addition, leaders of federal climate research should redouble efforts to deploy a comprehensive climate observing system, improve climate models and other analytical tools, invest in human capital, and improve linkages between research and decisions by forming partnerships with action-oriented programs.




Environmental Impacts of a North American Free Trade Agreement


Book Description

In general, a reduction in trade barriers will affect the environment by expanding the scale of economic activity, by altering the composition of economic activity and by initiating a change in the techniques of production. We present empirical evidence to assess the relative magnitudes of these three effects as they apply to further trade liberalization in Mexico. We first use comparable measures of three air pollutants in a cross-section of urban areas located in 42 countries to study the relationship between air quality and economic growth. We find for two pollutants (sulphur dioxide and 'smoke') that concentrations increase with per capita GDP at low levels of national income, but decrease with GDP growth at higher levels of income. We then study the determinants of the industry pattern of US imports from Mexico and of value added by Mexico's maquiladora sector. We investigate whether the size of pollution abatement costs in US industry influences the pattern of international trade and investment. Finally, we use the results from a computable general equilibrium model to study the likely compositional effect of a North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) on pollution in Mexico.




Megacities


Book Description

World cities are reaching previously inconceivable sizes and populations. For the last fifteen years, The Megacities Foundation has encouraged public debate on this development, uniting practitioners from the fields of architecture, economics, geography, sociology and urban planning. This book offers a compilation of the Foundation's best lectures, defining megacities and their processes and systems.




The Impact of Urbanization on Environment in Africa. The Case of Yeka Sub City, Addis Ababa


Book Description

Bachelor Thesis from the year 2019 in the subject Geography / Earth Science - Physical Geography, Geomorphology, Environmental Studies, grade: A, Ethiopian Civil Service University (College of Urban Development and Engineering), course: Research, language: English, abstract: The general objective of this senior essay is to assess the impact that urbanization has brought to the environment in Yeka sub city. The research is descriptive in its very nature. Besides, both quantitative and qualitative research approach is used. Simple random sampling technique particularly lottery method is used to select samples from the total population. Both primary and secondary data sources have been employed, and questionnaire, interview and observation are employed to collect the required data. Furthermore, quantitative (i.e. descriptive statistics specially frequency distribution and percentage) and qualitative (i.e., verbal analysis or narration) data analysis methods have been launched to analyze the collected data. Data are mainly presented in tabular, pictorial and textual form. Continuous population growth in Yeka sub city resulted in the encroachment of forest land mostly through informal way and this resulted in the minimization of forest cover and the alteration of land use from natural forest into human-made residential and other built-up areas on a continuous manner. Besides the formal settlement, made by the legal allotment of land, the informal settlement is very high and even difficult to control. This indicates the high magnitude of urbanization in the sub city. The main causes for the continuous urban population growth or urbanization are influx of people into the city of Addis Ababa, ever-increasing natural birth rate and reduced mortality rate. The impact that urbanization has on the environment encompass deforestation, land slide and soil degradation, excessive waste generation and water and land pollution, and air pollution. Protecting agricultural and forest land as well as public open spaces from human settlement, containing the growth of the sub city within limited square with the help of policy instrument that earmark regulatory environment, restrict the geographic or spatial growth of the city, facilitate the management of urban growth and protect/preserve public open spaces and forest lands, reducing the influx of people through the creation of equal development opportunities for all rural and urban centers and implementing family planning is compulsory, and controlling informal settlement with a very strict regulatory environment is decisively needed.




Urbanization under a Changing Climate


Book Description

In response to the increasing urbanization, advances in the science of urban hydrology have improved urban water system management, creating more livable cities in which public safety and health, as well as the environment, are protected. The ultimate goal of urban water management is to mimic the hydrological cycle prior to urbanization. On top of urbanization, climate change, which has been demonstrated to alter the hydrological cycle in all respects, has introduced additional challenges to managing urban water systems. To mitigate and adapt to urbanization under a changing climate, understanding key hydrologic components should expand to include complex issues brought forth by climate change. Thus, effective and efficient measures can be formulated. This Special Issue of Water presents a variety of research papers that span a range of spatial and temporal scales of relevance in different societies’ efforts in adapting to the eminent changes in climate and the continuous changes in the landscape. From mitigating water quality in permeable pavements and bioretention swales to understanding changes in groundwater recharge in large regions, this Special Issue examines the state-of-the-art in sustainable urban design for adaptation and resiliency.