Sustainable London

How is London responding to social and economic crises, and to the challenges of sustaining its population, economy and global status? Sustainable development discourse has come to permeate different policy fields, including transport, housing, property development and education. In this exciting book, authors highlight the uneven impacts and effects of these policies in London, including the creation of new social and economic inequalities. The contributors seek to move sustainable city debates and policies in London towards a progressive, socially just future that advances the public good. The book is essential reading for urban practitioners and policy makers, and students in social, urban and environmental geography, sociology and urban studies.

This comprehensive volume opens with an introductory editorial giving a general review of London's environment and its prospects for a sustainable future. The subsequent chapters are written by experts on architecture, planning, air pollution, biodiversity, transport, rivers, parks, aesthetic aspects of London's landscape, politics, health, and economics. The highly topical material authoritatively describes the major recent developments that have greatly affected London's environment and in some ways have set the city on a path towards a more sustainable future. This progress includes changes in the law (GLA act), politics (adopting sustainability as a political goal), policies on waste disposal (no more landfills), housing areas, building development (e.g. Canary Wharf), traffic management (congestion charges), policies for enhancing biodiversity, transport infrastructure (cars, railways), and managing the risk of floods and other disasters (in response to climate change). The book shows how these policies and practical developments interact, and therefore need to be understood by considering them as a whole. A postscript by the Deputy Mayor of London, Nicky Gavron, is included summarising London's environmental policies that have been developed since the conference on “London Environment and Future” was held on September 18–19, 2002. Contents:World Contexts:London's Urban Renaissance (R Rogers)Sustainability of London's Environment and the World Context (M Meacher)Environmental Developments and Perceptions:Environmental Strategies for London (D Goode)The Air Over London (H ApSimon)London's Water Supplies (R S Wotton & H Evans)The Royal Parks and Their Role in a Sustainable City (W Weston)Planning and Politics:Dealing with Disasters (D J Parker & E C Penning-Rowsell)Civilising Transport (D Banister & E Duxbury)A London Fit for Pirates (J Glancey)London's Governance and Sustainability (T Travers)and other papers Readership: Students, instructors, researchers, engineers, medical doctors, businessmen, and general readers with broad interests in environmental issues, including the scientific, policy and community aspects. Key Features:No other environmental book conveys the recent developments in London, or attempts to relate them to the environmental and general history of the cityThis book will be useful in the academic world for students and lectures and it will also be useful for local and national government and politics having to make decisions about sustainable development and the environmentThe unique overview provided here should also be useful to consultants, businesses and lawyers working on urban environmental/sustainability issuesKeywords:Environmental Strategies;Urban Environment;London

Faced with a global threat to food security, it is perfectly possible that society will respond, not by a dystopian disintegration, but rather by reasserting co-operative traditions. This book, by a leading expert in urban agriculture, offers a genuine solution to today’s global food crisis. By contributing more to feeding themselves, cities can allow breathing space for the rural sector to convert to more organic sustainable approaches. Biel’s approach connects with current debates about agroecology and food sovereignty, asks key questions, and proposes lines of future research. He suggests that today’s food insecurity – manifested in a regime of wildly fluctuating prices – reflects not just temporary stresses in the existing mode of production, but more profoundly the troubled process of generating a new one. He argues that the solution cannot be implemented at a merely technical or political level: the force of change can only be driven by the kind of social movements which are now daring to challenge the existing unsustainable order.Drawing on both his academic research and teaching, and 15 years’ experience as a practicing urban farmer, Biel brings a unique interdisciplinary approach to this key global issue, creating a dialogue between the physical and social sciences

Sustainable development is capturing the attention of planners, politicians and business leaders. Within the academic sphere its study is increasingly breaching disciplinary boundaries to become a focus of attention for natural and social scientists alike. But in studying such a key concept, it is vital that there is a clear definition of what it means, how it is applied on the ground, and the influence it exerts upon people's perceptions of change in the physical environment, economic activity and society. Exploring Sustainable Development is a major new text which provides a multifaceted introduction to key areas of study in this field, examining sustainability at the full range of spatial scales from the local to the global. Building on existing theory it demonstrates the unique contributions that thinking geographically about space, place and human-environment relationships can bring to the analysis of sustainable development. This book explores different interpretations of sustainable development in both theory and practice, in developed and developing countries, and in rural and urban areas. It pays particular attention to the local, national and international politics of implementation, the future of climate and energy, the role of business, and different conceptions of agricultural sustainability. This wide-ranging text is ideal for undergraduates and postgraduates in geography, environmental science, development studies, and related social and political sciences.

This book focuses on recent regional policy and planning debates in all the English regions.

First Published in 2008. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

For more than a century, the Olympics have been the modern world's most significant sporting event. Indeed, they deserve much credit for globalizing sport beyond the boundaries of the Anglo-American universe, where it originated, into broader global realms. By the 1930s, the Olympics had become a global mega-event that occupied the attention of the media, the interest of the public and the energies of nation-states. Since then, projected by television, funded by global capital and fattened by the desires of nations to garner international prestige, the Olympics have grown to gargantuan dimensions. In the course of its epic history, the Olympics have left numerous legacies, from unforgettable feats to monumental stadiums, from shining triumphs to searing tragedies, from the dazzling debuts on the world's stage of new cities and nations to notorious campaigns of national propaganda. The Olympics represent an essential component of modern global history. The Olympic movement itself has, since the 1990s, recognized and sought to shape its numerous legacies with mixed success as this book makes clear. It offers ground-breaking analyses of the power of Olympic legacies, positive and negative, and surveys the subject from Athens in 1896 to Beijing in 2008, and indeed beyond. This book was published as a special issue of the International Journal of the History of Sport.

Acknowledging the smart cities phenomenon not as a future goal but as an active part of our present, this book critically examines the strategies, business models, practices, tools, and actions needed to ensure that smart cities deliver the solutions they promise.