ABSTRACT
The mixture of urbanization, poverty and the environment is all too frequently producing a deadly cocktail. While urbanization can generally be regarded as a benign process leading to improvements in poor people’s lives, the combination of unregulated, unequal and rapid urban growth creates major problems. This chapter explores some of the interrelationships between those variables with illustrations from two major cities, Metro Manila and Mexico City. It demonstrates: first, how an integrated human and physical analysis is necessary to understand such relationships, and second, that integrated human/physical approaches are necessary to provide effective solutions to the interlinked poverty and environmental problems. Geographers have contributed extensively to the study and solution of urban problems. Their skills in both physical and human analysis has been helpful in re-evaluation of the risks of geophysical phenomena and the development of better hazard reduction procedures following a disaster.
