Urban areas are complex and dynamic systems that reproduce within their territory the interactions among socio-economic, geopolitical, and environmental processes on a local, regional, and global scale. The interactions of urban areas with global environmental change are bi-directional with a large proportion of the human impact on these changes originating in urban areas but its consequences in turn having severe effects on urban areas and the urban poor in particular. The specific aspects, however, have been understudied, particularly the latter one. The specific focus of this new Urbanization Project will be on understanding the nature of the interactions between global environmental change and urban processes, the direction, rate, intensity and scale of these processes as well as the challenge of global environmental change to the functioning, stability and sustainability of urban areas.
Main Research Foci:
- Urban processes that contribute to global environmental change.
- Pathways through which global environmental change affects the urban system.
- Interactions and responses within the urban system.
This section includes questions on lifestyle and consumption patterns, urban land use and land cover change as well as effects of social and biophysical “teleconnections”.
This section explores the consequences of global environmental changes on human behaviour and interactions, their contribution to shaping the built environment and their impact on the resource base upon which urban systems rely.
This section poses questions on how interactions between the human and the physical systems shape the impact of and the responses to global environmental change as well as their consequences for urban livelihoods.
- Consequences of interactions within urban systems on global environmental change.
This section focuses on the feedbacks of interactions within the urban system to various components of global environmental change.
You can download the new Urbanization Science Plan, IHDP Report No. 15, from here.
You will find information on the project at: http://www.ugec.org
Address of the UGEC International Project Office:
Michael Fragkias, Ph.D.
Executive Officer, International Project Office
Arizona State University
P.O. Box 873211
Tempe, AZ 85282-3211
USA
Michail.Fragkias@asu.edu
http://www.ugec.org
Co-Chairs of the Urbanization Project:
Prof. Dr. Karen Seto
Geological and Environmental Sciences
450 Serra Mall
Braun Hall, Building 320
Stanford University
Stanford, CA 94305-2115
kseto@stanford.edu
http://www.ugec.org
http://cesp.stanford.edu/people/karencseto
and Prof. Dr. Roberto Sánchez-Rodríguez
UC MEXUS, Environmental Sciences
Olmstead Hall
Riverside, CA 92521
Uniersity of California
roberto.sanchez-rodriguez@ucr.edu
http://www.ucmexus.ucr.edu/
Further members of the Scientific Committee are: Prof. Dr. Frauke Kraas (University of Cologne, DE), Prof. Dr. David Simon (University of London, UK), Prof. Dr. William Solecki (City University, New York, USA), Prof. Dr. Xiaopei Yan (ZhongshanUniversity, CN), Prof. Dr. Ooik Giok-Ling (National Institute of Education, Singapore), Prof. Dr. Sue Parnell (University of Cape Town), and Dr. Cheikh Gueye (ENDA, Senegal).
