Overview

Environmental issues have always burdened cities and their residents. This volume analyses how cities have solved past environmental challenges to provide a framework on which to build solutions to the problems caused by the climate crisis. It sets urban environmental crises within the socio-technical history of urban development. With six application chapters that provide rich and detailed examples of urban environmental transitions - including water resources, air quality, and public health - this book promotes better understanding of how urban environmental change takes place across a wide array of social-ecological-technological systems. It illustrates the process of urban environmental transition and the role crises play in shifts in urban environmental policy. Readers of the book will gain a deeper understanding of urban climate action and activities for future action. It is invaluable reading for students, researchers, and policymakers in environmental sustainability, climate change, urban studies and planning, and public policy.

Full Product Details

Author:   William Solecki (City University of New York)
Publisher:   Cambridge University Press
Imprint:   Cambridge University Press
ISBN:  

9781108463027

ISBN 10:   1108463029
Pages:   322
Publication Date:   28 August 2025
Audience:   College/higher education ,  Professional and scholarly ,  Tertiary & Higher Education ,  Professional & Vocational
Format:   Paperback
Publisher's Status:   Active
Availability:   Manufactured on demand  
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Table of Contents

Foreword Debra Roberts; Acknowledgments; Part I. Framing Chapters: 1. Setting climate change within the narrative of urban environmental crises and transformation; 2. Why do cities face environmental crises?; 3. What about cities make them places for environmental problem solving?; 4. Framing how urban systems change; Part II. Application Case Chapters: 5. Natural resource supply and scarcity: securing urban drinking water; 6. Environment degradation and quality: urban air quality; 7. Public health: disease and epidemics; 8. Environmental risk and hazards: acute and chronic events; 9. Resource use efficiency and pathways to environmental sustainability: the three R's (reduce, reuse, recycle); 10. Mobility, Livability and Sustainability: Balancing economics, ecology, and equity; Part III. Synthesis Chapters: 11. Urban environmental crises and policy transitions; 12. Opportunities to advance environmental policy transitions and transformative climate action; References; Index.

Reviews

'Part of the fascination of urbanization is the ability of urban places to simultaneously be a source of crisis, and also its solutions. Solecki's analysis brings this tension to the fore. He helps the reader to scrutinise trajectories of urban risk and resilience as expressions of imbalance in power, knowledge and action. This is an important book for all those interested in the progressive potential - and wary of the regressive danger - of cities: students, scholars, policy makers and committed city dwellers. This is a guide to understanding the forces shaping who wins and losses (including the non-human), in struggles for sustainability across the urbanized world we are making together.' Mark Pelling, University College London

Author Information

William Solecki (Ph.D. Geography) has studied the interaction of urbanization and climate change for almost thirty years. He has served as an author on several Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) assessments and is a co-founder of the Urban Climate Change Research Network (UCCRN). He is a Fellow of the American Association of Geographers.

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