ABSTRACT
Traditionally, within mainstream urban geography, the focus has been overwhelmingly on the human dimensions of the city. While geographers and others have looked at the physical geographies of the city, for example in Michael Hough’s Cities and Natural Processes (1995) and Ian Laurie’s Nature in Cities (1979) these have tended to have relatively little impact on the practice of mainstream urban geography. This, however, is changing and the issue is likely to represent one of the major foci of debate in urban geography in the coming years (see Chapter 1), and may well be so fundamental as to affect a major rethink of its practices and concerns. The late 1990s have witnessed an explosion of debate amongst academics, politicians, pressure groups and in the media, about sustainability at global, regional and local scales. Much of this debate has been focused on the city. The city has been identified as being a key building block in the path towards a more sustainable world. It is clear that cities have, and will continue to, fundamentally affect the development of the environment and that the environment should, if present concerns are taken seriously, affect the development of cities. For these reasons questions of sustainability and the interrelationship between cities and the environment are likely to emerge at the heart of urban geography in the future.
