ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses the generation of anthropogenic compounds in the urban environment and evaluates critically their impacts. The chapter examines the transfer of chemical elements and chemical compounds in urban areas. The better urban biogeochemistry is understood, the more people, householders, communities, businesses and local and national governments can do to improve the quality of urban life, avoid disease, and enhance urban ecosystem services and sustainability. Management of the urban chemical system varies from regulation and enforcement of pollution standards, especially those relating to factory and vehicle emissions, systems of waste collection and disposal, need for irrigation of gardens and greenspaces, to the effectiveness and extent of sewerage and drainage. Detailed enquiries into both the flows and stocks of individual nutrients and the interactions between the addition or removal, or accumulation, of any particular nutrient and the mobility or release to the atmosphere of other nutrients, are needed to establish the true nature of urban biogeochemistry.
