Cities present significant opportunities for new landscape perspectives that can help inform conservation and development decisions. Early in the twenty-first century, the majority of the planet’s population became urban as more people lived in city-regions for the first time in our history. As the global population increases, so does this urbanization. The environmental challenges of populatio...

This paper revisits the classical issue of port-city relationships by applying for the first time network analytical methods to maritime flows connecting cities of the world, over the period 1950–1990. A global matrix of interurban vessel flows was elaborated for about 600 cities using data from the Geopolis and Lloyd’s Shipping Index databases and the rigorous assignment of ports to both coast...

The core argument of this chapter is that the Smart Cities Mission appears to present a disconnect between the actually existing city development and urbanization, and its primary goal of creating wealth by embedding technology in the built environment without first addressing the basic city problems is flawed. This chapter comprehensively presents the three challenges of urbanization facing In...

Cities are the most dramatic manifestations of human activities on the surface of the earth. These human-dominated organisms—i.e., cities—degrade natural habitats, simplify species composition, disrupt hydrological systems, and modify energy flow and nutrient cycling. Today, these consequential impacts of human activities, originated from population increase, rapid urbanization, high private mo...

EACH PHASE IN THE LONG history ofthe world economy raises specific questions about the particular conditions that make it possible. One ofthe key properties ofthe current phase is the ascendance of information technologies and the associated increase in the mobility and liquidity of capital. There have long been cross-border economic processes—flows of capital, labor, goods, raw materials, tour...

Understanding varying levels of biodiversity within cities is pivotal to protect it in the face of global urbanisation. In the early stages of urban ecology studies on intra-urban biodiversity focused on the urban-rural gradient, representing a broad generalisation of features of the urban landscape. Increasingly, studies classify the urban landscape in more detail, quantifying separately the e...

Janet Abu-Lughod's most recent book, New York, Chicago, Los Angeles: America's Global Cities (1999), represents an impressive accomplishment. Framed with reference to contemporary debates on globalization and world cities, the book articulates a powerful appeal for a more historically nuanced perspective on contemporary forms of urban restructuring. Whereas scholars such as Anthony King (1991a,...

China is the epicenter of the global tobacco epidemic. China grows more tobacco, produces more cigarettes, makes more profits from tobacco and has more smokers than any other nation in the world. Approximately one million smokers in China die annually from diseases caused by smoking, and this estimate is expected to reach over two million by 2020. China cities have a unique opportunity and role...

Discourses on urban globalisation have been considering the homogenisation of the built form as evidence of the impacts of internationalisation of economy on the city space. This is a statement that follows other similar approaches: the existence of a global architecture, the global domain of mass-media or the imposition of homogeneous lifestyles all around the planet. However, despite the fact...

Scholarship in urban sociology has pointed to the reliance of city governments on ever-more market mechanisms for organizing social and economic policy. This form of governance involves prioritizing cities’ cultural and social assets for their value in a global competition of urban “brands,” each competing for new infusions of human and investment capital. At the same time, however, cities have...