Sustainable Landscape Planning in Selected Urban Regions, 1st ed. 2017 Science for Sustainable Societies Series

This book provides a unique contribution to the science of sustainable societies by challenging the traditional concept of rural-urban dichotomy. It combines environmental engineering and landscape sciences perspectives on urban region issues, making the book a unique work in urban study literatures. Today?s extended urban regions often maintain rural features within their boundaries and also have strong social, economic, and environmental linkages with the surrounding rural areas. These intra- and inter- linkages between urban and rural systems produce complex interdependences with global and local sustainability issues, including those of climate change, resource exploitation, ecosystem degradation and human wellbeing. Planning and other prospective actions for the sustainability of urban regions, therefore, cannot solely depend on ?urban? approaches; rather, they need to integrate broader landscape perspectives that take extended social and ecological systems into consideration.

This volume shows how to untangle, diagnose, and transform urban regions through distinctive thematic contributions across a variety of academic disciplines ranging from environmental engineering and geography to landscape ecology and urban planning. Case studies, selected from across the world and investigating urban regions in East Asia, Europe, North America and South-East Asia, collectively illustrate shared and differentiated drivers of sustainability challenges and provide informative inputs to global and local sustainability initiatives.

Addresses diverse environmental, social and planning issues in today’s urban regions from interdisciplinary perspectives

Introduces selected urban regions in Asia, Europe and North America, including South-East Asian regions (Bangkok, Jakarta, and Metro Manila and others) that are rarely seen in other sustainability and urban study literatures

Provides local and regional planning and policy professionals with innovative ideas on the linkages between urban and rural issues regarding sustainable society