ABSTRACT
‘The environment’ arose as an issue of major political and academic interest already in the early 1970s. Since the mid 1980s, this interest has taken on a greater importance and broadened out to a concern for ‘sustainable development’. In the case of Southern cities the focus of attention has hitherto been almost entirely upon the inability of urban authorities to implement – often well understood and quite straightforward – measures to control the negative environmental side-effects of rapid urbanisation. In the case of the Northern countries, the new urban environmental concern is more related to a growing awareness of the unsustainability of the development process as a whole, including the way in which cities are built and function; this is referred to as the ‘green agenda’. Management of the urban environment can be interpreted as simply an extension or adjustment of urban management in general.
