Urbanization and Sustainability Linking Urban Ecology, Environmental Justice and Global Environmental Change

About this book

Urbanization and Sustainability: Linking Urban Ecology, Environmental Justice and Global Environmental Change offers a global perspective and case studies that address three themes. The first is global environmental change, understood not as unidirectional human degradation of the biophysical world, but as the integration of social and ecological dynamics on multiple spatial and temporal scales. Global environmental change is meaningful only when we incorporate the feedbacks, cascading effects, thresholds, lags, and interactions between societies and ecosystems.

The second theme is urbanization. Cities are and will continue to be the primary human habitat, and urbanization processes will drive and respond to the challenges posed by global environmental change. Growing urban populations can create negative pressures on global ecosystems, but can also be the seedbeds of solutions to global sustainability challenges.

The third theme of Urbanization and Sustainability: Linking Urban Ecology, Environmental Justice and Global Environmental Change is justice. Urbanization and global environmental change have created gross inequities, with the most vulnerable suffering a disproportionate burden of ill effects. A focus on justice can ameliorate existing and future inequities while addressing the fundamental normative underpinnings of sustainability.

Contents

Contents

1. Urbanization and Sustainability: The 'Why' and 'How' of Linking Urban Ecology, Environmental Justice, and Global Environmental Change
2. What is a City? An Essential Definition for Sustainability
3. Ecology and Environmental Justice: Understanding Disturbance Using Ecological Theory
4. Connecting Environmental Justice, Sustainability, and Vulnerability
5. Urban Ecology and Nature's Services Infrastructure: Policy Implications of the Million Trees Initiative of the City of Los Angeles
6. Risky Business: Cap-and-Trade, Public Health, and Environmental Justice
7. Urbanization, Environmental Justice and Social-Environmental Vulnerability in Brazil
8. Environmental Inequality in Sao Paulo City: An Analysis of Dif-Ferential Exposure of Social Groups to Situations of Environmental Risk
9. Climate Change Adaptation and Socio-Ecological Justice in Chile's Metropolitan Areas: The Role of Spatial Planning Instruments
10. Double Exposure in the Sunbelt: The Sociospatial Distribution of Vulnerability in Phoenix, Arizona
11. Climate Change, Urban Flood Vulnerability and Responsibility in Taipei

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