The Routledge Handbook of Urbanization and Global Environmental Change

Karen Seto, William Solecki, Corrie Griffith, Karen C. Seto, William D. Solecki, Corrie A. Griffith

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2015
• ISBN:
  9781317909316
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Architecture
• Subtopic: Urban Planning & Landscaping

This volume provides a comprehensive overview of the interactions and feedbacks between urbanization and global environmental change. A key focus is the examination of how urbanization influences global environmental change, and how global environmental change in turn influences urbanization processes. It has four thematic foci: Theme 1 addresses the pathways through which urbanization drives global environmental change. Theme 2 addresses the pathways through which global environmental change affects the urban system. Theme 3 addresses the interactions and responses within the urban system in response to global environmental change. Theme 4 centers on critical emerging research.

PART I

Pathways by which urbanization impacts environmental systems and become drivers of global environmental change

Part I explores the fundamental characteristics and dynamic processes that influence contemporary urbanization and how these drive and interact with environmental changes across regions. The chapters within this part take a critical look at a) urbanization trends including changing demographics, land use and land change to provide an understanding of how today’s patterns and processes of global urbanization differ from those of the past (Haase and Schwartz, Chapter 4; Deng, Chapter 3; Mitra et al., Chapter 5). Fundamental to the profound global urban transition we are experiencing is how socio-economic/political and ecological sub-systems are implicated by such change at multiple scales and the roles they have in further driving and shaping worldwide urban development.

This part highlights the understanding that urbanization is not solely a local phenomenon, but has far reaching affects on flows of natural and financial resources, patterns of consumption (i.e. food, water and energy) as well as other biophysical systems (i.e. carbon, hydrological and atmospheric cycles). Thus, b) existing linkages between urbanization and resource demand is a second critical topic addressed within this part. The understanding of how current urbanization trends and their effect on the supply and integrity of the Earth’s life support system and how to sustain these valuable resources as populations, consumption and economic activity continue to concentrate in urban areas are growing concerns amongst urban sustainability researchers. The authors herein examine the many complexities associated with urban systems as they offer insight to, for example: what effects does urbanization have on greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and energy use including the increasing demand for water and materials associated with construction and operation of a growing urban populace (Gober and Quay, Chapter 7; Marcotullio, Chapter 8; Güneralp, Chapter 6)? What are the local and far reaching effects on the environment including urban nutrient cycles (Hutyra, Chapter 13) as well as ecosystem services and biodiversity functioning and health (Elmqvist et al., Chapter 10)?

Just as resources are often teleconnected to rural and distal places much farther away from the center of urban activities, lifestyle choices and consumption patterns, typically associated with high-income countries, are becoming a growing ‘export’ of the global urbanization process. Thus, an understanding of how urbanization not only influences land and resources, but also c) urbanization influences on human and social behaviors including changing diets and food demand (Murray et al., Chapter 2); housing preferences (Leichenko and Solecki, Chapter 9); and other lifestyle choices are significant contributions to the urbanization and global environmental change knowledge base. These tightly coupled socio-economic and ecological processes driving global scale urbanization and other global changes consequently have large implications for human well-being. As urban economies continue to grow and expand, an increasingly important question relates to whether a positive relationship exists with human well-being and sustainability (Fragkias, Chapter 1); i.e. under what conditions is urbanization ‘good’ for both economic growth and the environment?

The fourth topic included in Part I is d) urbanization and climate, which uncovers the ways in which urbanization processes alter the local, regional and global climate. Over the last few decades, research in this area has grown tremendously as a result of more and improved data and methodologies that aid our understanding of the multi-scale influences urbanization has with other bio-physical systems. The chapters addressing this fourth topic reveal that cities and urban processes modify urban surface and atmospheric interactions, creating distinct urban climates (Grimmond et al., Chapter 12) including, for example, changes in precipitation (Mitra and Shepherd, Chapter 11) and the well-known urban heat island effect.

The authors included in Part I provide a variety of disciplinary perspectives on contemporary urbanization processes, emphasizing the profound nature of these influences—so large in scale, fast in pace and extensive in geographic reach that aggregated globally, they affect all aspects of the Earth system.

1

URBANIZATION, ECONOMIC GROWTH AND SUSTAINABILITY

Michail Fragkias

Historically, the organization of societies in dense settlements is closely correlated with the rise in incomes and human well-being. Analogies for the ways that dense human settlements lead to processes of wealth generation abound. Braudel (1982) discusses towns as electric transformers that “increase tension, accelerate the rhythm of exchange and constantly recharge human life” (p. 497). Cities have also been described as ‘engines’ of economic growth (Lucas, 1988). More recently, cities have drawn the analogy of stars—the changing characteristics of urban agglomeration as their size increases is paralleled to the functioning of stars “which burn faster and brighter (superlinearly) with increasing mass. […] although the form of cities may resemble the vasculature of […] biological organisms, their primary function is as open-ended social reactors” (Bettencourt, 2013, p. 1441). Notwithstanding all analogies, the concentration of human capital, large-scale physical infrastructure and public and market institutions in cities enable increases in innovation, economic activity and efficiencies from scale (Seto et al., 2010; Puga, 2010).

Urbanization provides economic benefits through what economists call agglomeration economies. Urban areas showcase unique outcomes, emerging only when population agglomerates in a single location. The agglomeration economies made possible by the concentration of individuals (and firms) are responsible for making cities the ideal setting for innovation, job and wealth creation (Carlino et al., 2007; Knudsen et al., 2008; Puga, 2010; Rosenthal and Strange, 2004). Larger agglomerations of individuals entail a wider ‘repertoire’ of intellectual capabilities and include a larger stock of ‘recipes’ for producing economic output. These two factors facilitate the creation of new ideas (partly through the recombination of old ideas). Larger agglomerations also increase the likelihood that people will interact; the aforementioned research suggests that these interactions are eventually responsible for the generation and dissemination of new ideas and recipes. Consequently, the heterogeneity and diversity of cities becomes a source of economic growth (Quigley, 1998). This self-reinforcing process scales super-linearly with an increase of the size of these agglomerations (Bettencourt et al., 2007; Bettencourt, 2013). Urban economists have also documented the positive correlations between urban (population) size and productivity measured as average wage or value added (Melo et al., 2009). New interdisciplinary urban theory (Bettencourt et al., 2010; Glaeser and Resseger, 2010) provides novel explanations for the strong positive relationship between urban size and productivity.

Given the advantages that cities provide, it is thus not surprising that the turn of the century marked a milestone in human history: in 2008, for the first time in human history, more than half of the world’s population lived in urban areas. Projections suggest that cities will continue to be the dominant type of human settlement for the foreseeable future (UN, 2014). Thus, the bidirectional positive feedback loop of urban population agglomeration and wealth is expected to continue its cycle. At the same time, the era of the Great Transformation is advancing (Kates et al., 1990). Through centuries of interventions, humans have literally changed the ‘face’ of the earth. Although the transformation started in ancient times through the use of fire, irrigation, afforestation and new technologies that allowed us to make steady progress in increasing our material living standards, it has accelerated through time resulting in extensive changes in the functioning of social-ecological systems (Kates et al., 1990). Today, the results of global environmental change (GEC) force us to face a sobering reality—human activity is a planetary force, and its scale has important human well-being implications. Entering a new geological era, branded the Anthropocene, scientists claim today that humanity has surpassed limits in Earth system functioning and operates today in an ‘unsafe space’ (Rockström et al., 2009). At the same time, the debate regarding the energetic limits to economic growth continues (Brown et al., 2011).

As agglomeration phenomena across scales continue to drive urban economic growth, the urbanization process—ranging from local neighborhood dynamics to regional clusters of cities and global urban interdependencies—has significant effects on the local and global environment. Urban agglomeration has complex interconnections with GEC (agricultural land conversion, habitat loss, urban form, added wealth generation, etc.). The study of urban growth is complicated by the fact that as a process it operates across scales and spatial boundaries. Urban agglomeration processes lead to consumption and production decisions that in turn result in GEC (e.g. climate change, biodiversity and habitat loss, air pollution), but could also result in other global socio-economic pathologies (e.g. inequalities, poverty, unrest, etc.). Urban agglomeration and economic growth can be in turn affected by GEC, resulting in a suite of issues such as altered migration patterns, shifts in infrastructure investments and changes in quality of life.

Furthermore, in light of the emergence of sustainability as a new paradigm for organizing our thinking about cities, calls have been made for a new ‘science of cities’ and an ‘urbanization science’ to address the challenges of the Anthropocene directly (Bettencourt et al., 2007; Seitzinger et al., 2012; Solecki et al., 2013). These authors suggest that a better understanding of the interconnections between urbanization, wealth and sustainability can only emerge through an interdisciplinary, systems-oriented, integrated study of cities as a process—not through a ‘place-only’ approach. A new urbanization science could potentially provide ideas for improved national and local policies as well as more effective institutions.

The following sections address major questions at the intersection of urbanization, economic growth, human well-being and sustainability, while providing an interdisciplinary viewpoint on the above themes, connecting distinct strands of urban research. The chapter is not a comprehensive summary of the literature, but an overview of selected themes that are ignored in the past reviews and recent findings from a multiplicity of disciplines. The first section reviews the often forgotten historical connections between urbanization, economic growth and sustainability. The second section focuses on basic facts and empirical evidence on systems of cities and their human-environment interactions globally, exploring the broader effects of these interactions at the regional, national and international levels and across time. It also examines recent data on the relationship among urban growth, national economic growth and economic development. The third section reports on future projections of the relationship between urban sustainability and economic well-being. The fourth section concludes the chapter.

Historical foundations of urbanization, economic growth and sustainability

The connection of the formation and interaction of cities with economic growth and sustainability has been the subject of many important works in the fields of economic history and urban studies (Pirenne, 1925; Jacobs, 1969, 1984; Bairoch, 1988; Hall, 1998). The roots of this scholarship go back in time, more than 200 years ago; Smith (1776) identifies a major source of the wealth of nations as the division of labor and suggests that the “division of labor must always be limited by […] the extent of the market” (I.3.1). Braudel (1982) points out that historically “[w]here there is a town, there will be division of labour, and where there is any marked division of labour, there will be a town” with markets occupying a central position in dense settlements. For Braudel, it is the town that is responsible for the development and diversification of consumption; dense settlements “generalize the market into a widespread phenomenon” (p. 481) since town-dwellers depend on central markets for obtaining basic goods such as their food supply. It is thus the decision of people to move into cities that brings prominence to the institution of the market and the workings of commerce and capitalism, the institutions responsible for the rapid growth in standards of living and wealth accumulation.

As markets developed and scholars better understood their functioning, the concept of ‘knowledge’ or ‘information spillovers’ became central to the question of what causes economic growth and the formation, existence and flourishing of cities. The ‘informational’ role of cities was pinpointed early on in economic scholarship (Marshall, 1890); cities simply allow for more frequent interactions between people and firms, facilitating the exchange of ideas that lead to higher productivities. Knowledge spillover is such an important concept that Jacobs (1969) even hypothe...