Cities and Environmental Change
From Crisis to Transformation

This book examines how cities address environmental concerns, identifying key strategies used and suggesting solutions for future action.

William Solecki (Author)

9781108463027, Cambridge University Press

Paperback / softback, published 28 August 2025

322 pages
22.8 x 15.1 x 1.7 cm, 0.47 kg

'Solecki offers a masterful synthesis of interdisciplinary research on urbanization and environmental change, crafting a practical and adaptable framework for understanding the evolving relationship between cities and the environment. Drawing on a rich tapestry of global case studies and historical insights, this book provides a structured yet flexible lens for examining urban transformation across time and place. Essential reading for big-picture urbanists, planners, and sustainability scholars alike.' Michail Fragkias, Boise State University

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.

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.

Subject Areas: International environmental law [LBBP]