Environmental Issues And Urban Development Of The Walled Cities

In the context of Transforming City Regions, phenomena such as globalization and digitalization accelerate change and bring several aspects of life into motion. If used in a smart way, such developments might trigger a promising dynamic for local people, their living environment, and regional economy. "Urban Integration: From Walled City to Integrated City" reflects on the challenges such dynamics encompass and also on the significance of social integration in urban contexts. The book compiles contributions from researchers, practitioners, and students to an international symposium held at Essen Zollverein in May 2018.

Cities have experienced an unprecedented rate of growth in the last decade. More than half the world's population lives in urban areas, with the U.S. percentage at 80 percent. Cities have captured more than 80 percent of the globe's economic activity and offered social mobility and economic prosperity to millions by clustering creative, innovative, and educated individuals and organizations. Clustering populations, however, can compound both positive and negative conditions, with many modern urban areas experiencing growing inequality, debility, and environmental degradation. The spread and continued growth of urban areas presents a number of concerns for a sustainable future, particularly if cities cannot adequately address the rise of poverty, hunger, resource consumption, and biodiversity loss in their borders. Intended as a comparative illustration of the types of urban sustainability pathways and subsequent lessons learned existing in urban areas, this study examines specific examples that cut across geographies and scales and that feature a range of urban sustainability challenges and opportunities for collaborative learning across metropolitan regions. It focuses on nine cities across the United States and Canada (Los Angeles, CA, New York City, NY, Philadelphia, PA, Pittsburgh, PA, Grand Rapids, MI, Flint, MI, Cedar Rapids, IA, Chattanooga, TN, and Vancouver, Canada), chosen to represent a variety of metropolitan regions, with consideration given to city size, proximity to coastal and other waterways, susceptibility to hazards, primary industry, and several other factors.

Meet the "brown agenda" challenge of fast-growing cities. Planning and development professionals who need to cope with the problems of increasing urbanization will find practical tools in Joseph Leitmann's Sustaining Cities: Environmental Planning and Management in Urban Design. This unique reference explores the highest priority problems -sanitation and drainage, solid waste management, degradation of environmentally sensitive land, uncontrolled emissions, accidents linked to congestion, and improper disposal of hazardous waste, problems that result in poor health, lower productivity, reduced income and quality of life. It's the first book to give you realistic, innovative, in-depth options that you can use on a day-to-day basis, with examples from many parts of the world. You get a proven planning framework and strategic approach for addressing the environmental issues confronting and caused by cities, and resources you can turn to for more help, information, and training.

For too long, cities have been thought of as environmental blackspots, with high levels of air and soil pollution, overcrowding, poor sanitation and growing waste disposal problems. This book takes a more positive attitude: cities can be made to work sustainably. Their high population density can work in the environment's favour if they can achieve efficient use of resources such as energy and water supplies, and improve transport and infrastructure. The best cities today are clean, resource efficient, green and pleasant, and not only act as cultural and entertainment centres, but also harbour great varieties of wildlife. Making Cities Work looks at the vital role which local authorities can - and must - play in safeguarding and developing our towns and cities. Their role is crucial, and the aim of the book is to make governments, international bodies and local authority associations aware of how potential environmental and social problems can be overcome, and what can be achieved. This book is being written by urban development experts, based on material supplied by the world's leading city associations. It is being edited by one of the world's most highly regarded cultural ecologists, and has been commissioned by UNHCS for the Habitat II conference. Clearly written, accessible, and fully illustrated throughout with photographs, figures and graphs, it is ideal for students, fascinating reading for the general public, and essential for those involved in local authorities, planning and development.

Growing Compact: Urban Form, Density and Sustainability explores and unravels the phenomena, links and benefits between density, compactness and the sustainability of cities. It looks at the socio-climatic implications of density and takes a more holistic approach to sustainable urbanism by understanding the correlations between the social, economic and environmental dimensions of the city, and the challenges and opportunities with density. The book presents contributions from internationally well-known scholars, thinkers and practitioners whose theoretical and practical works address city planning, urban and architectural design for density and sustainability at various levels, including challenges in building resilience against climate change and natural disasters, capacity and integration for growth and adaptability, ageing, community and security, vegetation, food production, compact resource systems and regeneration.

With an ever-growing majority of the world's human population living in city spaces, the relationship between cities and nature will be one of the key environmental issues of the 21st Century. This book brings together a diverse set of authors to explore the various aspects of this relationship both theoretically and empirically. Rather than considering cities as wholly separate from nature, a running theme throughout the book is that cities, and city dwellers, should be characterized as intrinsic in the creation of specifically urban-generated ‘socio-natures’.