Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
policies that can create more just cities are an essential part of this chapter, although
it does deal with incremental change, rather than the radical approaches favoured by
those advocating transformational societal change.
The next four chapters deal with the different ways that urban places relate
to, and affect their environment. Chapter 4 (Green Cities) picks up some of the
older ideas of the Garden City movement in which cities included features of the
natural biotic environment especially trees and grass, within their boundaries, and
describes the new rationales for such policies. It then reviews policies that lead
to urban places literally becoming greener, in which the term 'green' is
not
used
as a surrogate for sustainability, but deals with environmental restoration and re-
vitalization. Chapter 5 (Background to Sustainable Cities) provides the context
to the issue of sustainability, showing the complex, multi-dimensional nature of
the term and the problems of measuring the concept. An example of the relative
sustainability of the major cities of the world through the Green Index (EIU
2012
)
shows the wide variations in the degree of sustainability of these places. The chap-
ter then focuses on the various issues associated with the input-output balance of
cities in terms of major resource needs, such as water and energy supply, and then
waste and pollution outputs, including ways of reducing the impact of these nega-
tive effects upon human and environmental health and the warming of the planet.
Particular attention is paid to the ability of various renewable energy resources
to replace the use of fossil fuels, whose negative effects are causing negative
atmospheric changes as well as local urban effects. Chapter 6 (Sustainable City
Policies) extends the discussion by focusing on the ways that greater sustainabil-
ity can be achieved through policy initiatives that are specifically urban-based,
such as recycling and building construction initiatives, transport change. It also
provides examples of how various types of areal developments are reducing the
waste of resources and decreasing various types of pollution. Chapter 7 continues
the ideas of the previous three chapters but focuses upon the way these ideas are
being pursued by new citizen-based initiatives such as the Transition Town move-
ment which is designed to create more locally resilient and sustainable places. It
also describes the Eco-District approach which is a relatively new initiative devel-
oped from community activists in Portland in Oregon state, U.S.A., that seeks to
improve conditions at an intra-urban community level, again with local activism,
rather than by government policies.
Chapter 8 (Winter Cities) focuses on a more specific environmental topic, the
problems faced by urban places that have long winters, showing how various ad-
aptations in physical and well as human terms can improve the liveability of these
places. Chapter 9 (Resilient Cities) is a topic that has received a great deal of atten-
tion in the last decade, namely the way that episodic extreme natural hazards can
destroy or seriously damage our settlements. Indeed the vulnerability of the largest
settlements to such hazards became part of the U.N.'s 2012 world urbanization re-
port. The discussion describes the character of these events and the range of policies
by which urban places can be made more resilient to these natural events, especially
in the cities of developing countries. They have far less resources to fall back on
to recover from the devastating blows that come from major storms, earthquakes,
volcanic eruptions or other catastrophic events.
