ABSTRACT
It is well understood that urban areas differ from rural in certain fundamental characteristics. Normally attention is drawn most strongly to the peculiar characteristics of urban climate and, increasingly, to urban soil. ‘Pollution’ is usually regarded as a climatic factor, although there are serious problems of chemical contamination in urban soils. The key points of these various topics are reviewed below, not with the intention of again recapping information that already exists in many texts, but to draw attention to the particular design and management challenges and opportunities presented.
