Scaling Urban Environmental Challenges: From Local to Global and Back

Description

i? Think globally, act locallyi? emphasizes the importance of scale in dealing with environmental challenges, but not how to factor it in. This major new book focuses on the spatial dimensions of urban environmental burdens, showing how important it is to take these into account when pursuing environmental justice and good governance - whether in the context of the sanitary risks of slum living, the pollution of uncontrolled industrialization and motorization, or the enormous ecological footprints of affluent urban lifestyles. Written by leading experts in the fields of urban development and environmental planning, the book reviews the urban environmental shifts that have shaped todayi? s challenges, and examines conditions and problems in the urban centres of low-, middle- and high-income countries. Case studies address such economically diverse cities as Accra, New Delhi, Mexico City and Manchester, while thematic chapters explore issues including water, sanitation and transportation. The book concludes by exploring and analysing different scales of governance. The editors argue that we should not rely solely on local governance to address local burdens like poor sanitation, nor depend only on global governance for global challenges such as greenhouse gas emissions, but that scale is crucial in both understanding the problems and devising successful responses. Published with UNU-IAS and IIED.

Peter J. Marcotullio is a Research Fellow at the UNU-IAS, Japan. Gordon McGranahan is Director of the Human Settlements Programme at IIED, UK co-author of The Citizens at Risk: From Urban Sanitation to Sustainable Cities (2001) and co-editor of Air Pollution and Health in Rapidly Developing Countries (2003). .

'With chapters by some of the most thoughtful international urban environmental scholars ... many concrete examples from around the world, this volume advances the science by addressing issues of scale in both its meanings; the geographical scale of environmental interactions as well as the difficulties involved in scaling (overcoming) the many challenges of designing and promoting sustainable human environments worldwide' Kirk R. Smith, Professor of Environmental Health Sciences, University of California, Berkeley, USA