ABSTRACT
This chapter explores key evolving debates around cities, sustainability and environmental change and how the increasing urgency of the issues has impacted on ideas and policies aimed at addressing the environmental challenge. The global environmental movement and constantly evolving academic discourses on the environment have generated a bewildering array of concepts and debates, which can be challenging to navigate. Sustainability has risen to the top of the global development agenda, to the extent that it has been built into the foundations of the 'post-2015' development vision embodied in the 'Sustainable Development Goals'. The relationship between cities and sustainability has become a focus of growing interest amid awareness of the challenges arising at the intersection of two of the defining trends of the twenty-first century: threats to the natural environment and dramatic increases in the numbers of people living and working in cities. Environmental change caused by urbanisation is inevitable.
