Cities and their environments
Document Type
Chapter
Publication Date
5-18-2021
Abstract
If it is properly managed with attention not only to human well-being but also to the well-being of the other species that share our common spaces, urbanization can be a powerful force for good. This analytic survey of cities and their environments begins with a review of commonly misunderstood features of the demography of urban population growth and the geography of urban spatial expansion. The principal theme that runs through the remainder of the chapter is the need for unified governance approaches to highly heterogenous spaces, which span core urban areas, the urban fringe, and an outer envelope of rural land, water basins, and a variety of ecological habitats. Some of these critical spaces are large geographic units that extend far beyond the boundaries of municipal jurisdictions as such. The need for some integrating governance mechanism has been apparent for decades in low- and high-income countries alike. The all-too-obvious absence of such joined-up authorities, especially in poor countries, testifies to the legal, administrative, budgetary, technical, and scientific challenges entailed in creating such sustainable governance systems.
Recommended Citation
Montgomery, Mark R., Jessie Pinchoff, and Erica Chuang. 2021. "Cities and their environments," in L.M. Hunter, C. Gray, & J. Véron (eds.), International Handbook of Population and Environment 10: 349–374. Springer Cham.
DOI
10.1007/978-3-030-76433-3_17
Language
English
Project
Population, Environmental Risks, and the Climate Crisis (PERCC)