city ​​and nature

There are no such things as "natural" disasters in cities, just as there are no cities that exist independently of nature. ——"City and Nature", page 3

Geotheorists have always considered cities to be just a social phenomenon, while environmental scientists tend to ignore cities. Therefore, "City and Nature" aims to reconnect science and social science by examining cities, criticize mainstream academic discourse that ignores the foundation of urban life and living environment, and discuss how the urban natural environment and the city itself are affected by society.

This book revolves around three core themes: 1. Urban environment in historical context; 2. Issues of city-nature relationship; 3. (Re)adjustment of city-nature relationship. Content includes advanced readings and case studies on topics such as Bangladesh, Paris, Delhi, Rome, Cuba, Thailand, Los Angeles, Chicago, New Orleans, and Toronto. The author attempts to reintroduce the perspective of social sciences and examine urban nature, cities, and the physical environment of cities. This book is of great value to students and scholars of environmental studies, urban studies, and planning.

Chapter 1 of the book outlines the structure of the book; Chapter 2 examines how early cities changed the natural environment, and the natural environment also affected the city. As cities emerge and grow, new environmental problems such as pollution and disease also drive new regulatory systems and infrastructure renovations, revising the city-environment relationship. Chapter 3 explains how the rise of industrial cities caused increasing air, land, and water pollution, but also triggered subsequent policy reforms and new urban designs. Addressing urban environmental issues during industrialization was an important stimulus for new knowledge and inspired the creation of new policies and infrastructure.

Chapter 4 brings the story to today, introducing five trends in the current wave of urban transformation; the impact of huge urban areas and megacities; post-industrial cities and brownfields (abandoned land), urban sprawl ), new industrial space, and illegal construction areas (shantytown). Many cities have more than one trend happening at the same time. Chapter 5 shows how occupying specific sites (such as deserts, beaches and floodplains) creates constraints and opportunities, and produces scenes of urban imagery and urban-nature dynamics.

Since September 11, the 2004 tsunami, and Hurricane Katrina in 2005, cities' vulnerability to disasters has become increasingly clear. Chapter 6 will explore this vulnerability and argue that there is no such thing as a “natural disaster”, preferring to use the term “environmental hazard-disaster” because it emphasizes the social, economic and political forces that mediate or exacerbate hazards. It also acknowledges that cities are resilient. For example, recovery and reconstruction efforts after fires and earthquakes often provide the impetus for urban growth.

Chapter 7 describes the emergence of urban ecology. Viewing cities as ecosystems opens up great possibilities for combining traditional ecological insights with critical social science perspectives. Developments in the research field allow us to more accurately view cities as social-biophysical complexes. In Chapters 8, 9 and 10, water, air and waste issues are examined respectively. In some cases, cities have made significant improvements and progress. For many of the developing world's megacities, this is a picture of mixed positive development, but there are also examples of cities that are nearly overwhelmed by the scale of their growth relative to available resources.

Chapter 11 examines how issues of class, race, and gender are related to urban environmental issues; Chapter 12 combines Slow Growth and New Urbanist movements, the laws of Smart Growth, and Historical preservation is seen as an example of these new urban environmental discourses. Finally, the sustainable development of cities is discussed, trying to reconnect the main theoretical and practical discussions of cities and their local, regional and global ecology.