ABSTRACT
This chapter will:
describe how the development of industrial society in the ‘West’ changed social relations
consider the impact of such changes on the non-human environment
examine the ways in which different spaces and places are constructed, both ideologically and physically as ‘wilderness’, ‘countryside’ and ‘city’
evaluate the notion that urbanism has become ‘a way of life’, particularly in the richer counties of the globe, in the light of critiques of urbanism from various sociological and environmental perspectives
compare competing ways of seeing and using the ‘countryside’, drawing particularly on the British example, and indicate the possible environmental impacts of changing land use
