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This chapter lays out the concept and framework for a “patch dynamics” approach and briefly reviews its contributions to describing and quantifying patterns and changes in spatial heterogeneity of bioecological systems. Patch dynamics emerged in ecology as an approach to understanding spatial heterogeneity. Though ecology is its original disciplinary home, patch dynamics resonates with contemporary urban social theory. Consequently, a patch dynamics approach can serve as a critical node of synthesis between contemporary social and ecological approaches for an ecology of cities. Thus, the chapter applies patch dynamics to urban systems and demonstrates how it addresses the drivers of urban systems identified in earlier chapters.

This chapter examines the interdisciplinary issues and strategies relevant to a patch dynamics approach as it is applied to urban ecological systems. Many of the issues are common to a wide range of interdisciplinary research topics and fields. Some are specific to patch dynamics, and a few are specific to patch dynamics applied to urban ecological systems. Based upon this assessment, this chapter reviews the benefits and burdens of interdisciplinary research as practiced using patch dynamics. It suggests some practical mechanics or effective practices to encourage successful programs of research, in order to reveal how an interdisciplinary patch dynamics approach can invigorate studies of urban ecological systems and confront the essential issues of twenty-first century cities.

This introductory chapter examines Baltimore as a key site for the development of a new approach to urban ecology: an ecology of cities. This approach is based on four propositions. First, the ecology of cities addresses the complete mosaic of land uses and management in metropolitan systems. Second, the urban mosaic is complex: spatially, organizationally, and temporally. Third, an ecology of cities is an integrative pursuit utilizing midrange theories and is often designed to both enhance fundamental understanding and address practical issues. Ultimately, the book's goal is to develop a more general scientific understanding of urban ecological systems and to increase the practical capacity of decision makers to address the complexity and interdependence of urban ecological problems. Fourth, an ecology of cities can be useful for linking and advancing both practice and science. In addition, the chapter discusses the advantages of using a patch dynamics approach to urban ecology.

This chapter describes the shape of the secular city, illustrating two characteristic components of the social shape of the modern metropolis: anonymity and mobility. Not only are anonymity and mobility central. They are also the two features of the urban social system most frequently singled out for attack by both religious and nonreligious critics. The chapter demonstrates how both anonymity and mobility contribute to the sustenance of human life in the city rather than detracting from it, why they are indispensable modes of existence in the urban setting. It also shows why, from a theological perspective, anonymity and mobility may even produce a certain congruity with biblical faith that is never noticed by the religious rebukers of urbanization.

Discusses the state of the Philippine environment by studying the trends of available data on environmental quality and natural resource degradation, and comparing them with those of other Asian countries. It then presents a brief review of theoretical links among environment quality, resource depletion, and development strategies and outcomes, considering Philippine data in light of this theory. Recent economic trends and policy initiatives affecting the environment and development are discussed, and simulation results indicating likely trends in economic and environmental variables under alternative policy regimes are presented. The chapter concludes with what past experience and current trends might indicate for the future of the Philippine environment.

This chapter explores debates over how the role of the car and related policy developments, including neoliberalism, new realism, and the competitiveness agenda, have shaped city transport systems over the last 30 years. It then explores what the uncertain conditions of the post-financial crisis economy may mean for urban transport and its contribution to the sustainable city of the future. It argues that transport is critical to the physical form of the city, and that the opportunities it provides in large part shape the social and economic life of urban places. Urban transport has been a laboratory for regulatory change, with the neoliberal era and its focus on promoting the car contributing to profound changes in the organisation of urban life. The key policy choice for the future of urban transport is between applying new technologies to try and ‘green’ the existing mobility system, such as electric vehicles, and the more radical task of reorganising the city to reduce reliance on motorised transport, especially the private car.

Economic development is geographically uneven; incomes differ widely across places. After a long period during which incomes tended to become more even across cities and regions within developed countries, they are now diverging again. In 1970, the San Francisco Bay Area and Greater Los Angeles regions had very similar per capita incomes; in 2012, Los Angeles was almost 30 percent lower than the Bay Area. Understanding this process of divergence, which is widespread among metropolitan regions around the world, is a window on understanding economic development more generally.

This chapter discusses how the creation of an urban transportation system transformed New York City. After private railroad companies built tracks for elevated railroads (Els) above the city's streets in the 1870s, the city's population spread out and grew rapidly from Lower Manhattan. To continue growing, however, the city had to build electric-powered rail lines, underground, that would travel faster and further and would accommodate even more people than the Els. Thus, the City of New York paid the construction costs for its first subway and in 1900 entered into a long-term lease with the Interborough Rapid Transit Company (IRT) to build and operate it. In 1913, the City of New York entered into contracts with two companies—the IRT and the Brooklyn Rapid Transit Company (BRT)—to build more lines in Manhattan, Brooklyn, Queens, and the Bronx. However, in the early twentieth century, New York's politicians took a shortsighted approach to the transit system. Instead of raising fares, they raised false expectations that New Yorkers could have high-quality subway service with low fares. The repercussions would last for generations. The chapter then looks at the establishment of the Office of Transit Construction Commissioner, the construction of a city-owned and city-operated “Independent” (IND) subway system, and the planning for a Second Avenue subway.

This chapter examines India’s urbanization and urban system. It shows that urbanization in India continues to be driven by natural increase and reclassification of rural settlements into urban, with rural-to-urban migration playing, at best, a modest role in the urbanization process. Recent economy-wide shifts including higher economic growth have made little impact on either the pace or the structure of urbanization, which continues to be dominated by a large number of small towns and a small number of large cities. India’s urban system displays neither primacy nor does it conform to the rank-size distribution. Upper-tail cities are not large enough to fit into the rank-size distribution and the populations of the lower end are smaller than the predicted values, raising questions about their capacity to generate scale and agglomeration economies. Marked variations are observed in urban systems across states. This chapter emphasizes the need for further research to help understand the urban systems of India’s federal structure.

This introduction suggests that political practices, discourses, and events in fifteenth-century England were shaped by the experiences of those who governed, lived in, and travelled through towns. The tradition, however, of studying individual English towns, rather than assessing the collective influence of multiple towns, has made it difficult for the role of townspeople and urban spaces in English political life to be appreciated. Here, a new methodology is proposed for studying relationships between towns and for tracing the relative strength of this inter-connected ‘urban sector’ at particular points in time. Fluctuations in the membership and strength of this ‘urban sector’ had significant implications for how pivotal events in English history—including the Wars of the Roses—played out.

This chapter identifies the role that cognitive systems could play in city life. City leaders and sociologists often talk about the importance of the holistic approach in solving a city's problems. Cognitive systems that learn, obtain insights from mountains of data, and penetrate complexity enable this holistic approach toward the major issues cities face, from crime to traffic to pollution to education; they have the potential to interconnect all the systems in a city. IBM and other companies are designing and building these urban operating systems, which will serve as platforms for innovation, enabling city employees, businesses, and citizens to better comprehend the workings of the city, and to come up with ideas to make cities better places in which to live. In the meantime, another type of urban technology is already flourishing: applications that make cities work better, or help people manage their lives in urban settings, such as parking-space locators.

This chapter introduces and critically discusses the concept of food justice; broadly conceived as the inter-relation between social justice and environmental justice as these issues are expressed within food systems. The chapter takes an interdisciplinary approach to exploring food justice and builds on a range of literatures to explore the development of this important and powerful organising concept for contemporary society in challenging structural inequalities and environmental problems. The discussion explores the application of justice in relation to urban food systems more generally through focusing on particular actions within the city of Newcastle upon Tyne. However, the chapter concludes that without radical reform of the institutional arrangements and practices in this and other urban food systems the pervading structural inequalities and injustices risk remaining.

This chapter broadens the perspective on causes of failures, enabling the deeper analyses of subsequent chapters addressing proximate, distal, and ultimate causes. The rich history of multi-level analysis and modeling is briefly reviewed, citing key contributions by a wide range of research disciplines. Numerous applications of the multi-level framework in a variety of domains, including healthcare delivery, academia, traffic congestion, and air transport are discussed, including the insights gained from use of the framework. An overall methodology for applying this framework is presented and elaborated. The application of this methodology to the line of reasoning throughout this book is summarized.

This chapter provides an Introduction to the edited volume. After briefly outlining the background on urbanization in Asia, it discusses the benefits and costs of urbanization, leading to the conclusion that Asia’s urbanization will be led by megacities. Finally, we offer policy recommendations which may be applicable to other countries and continents.

This chapter highlights possible solutions to avoid global warming and its consequences for health. An energy policy firm, Energy Innovation, created a model on how current energy policies would impact future carbon emissions. Industry has the greatest potential for cutting back on global emissions through policies focused on more efficient energy production and stricter emissions standards. Power sector (electricity) emissions would decline with renewable energy incentives and improving the grid's capacity to accommodate multiple energy sources. Transportation sector emissions would drop with stricter fuel economy standards and more green urban transportation systems. The energy consumption of buildings could decrease with more efficient building codes and appliance standards. Meanwhile, carbon pricing is a cross-sector policy that would create carbon taxes and caps, while land use emissions could be reduced through policies aimed at reducing deforestation and forest degradation.