Urbanization and
Global Environmental Change

Urban areas are complex and dynamic systems that reproduce within their territory the interactions among socio-economic, geopolitical, and environmental processes on a local, regional, and global scale. The interactions of urban areas with global environmental change are bi-directional with a large proportion of the human impact on these changes originating in urban areas, but its consequences in turn having severe effects on urban areas and the urban poor in particular. The specific aspects, however, have been understudied, particularly the latter one. The specific focus of this new Urbanization Project will be on understanding the nature of the interactions between global environmental change and urban processes, the direction, rate, intensity and scale of these processes as well as the challenge of global environmental change to the functioning, stability and sustainability of urban areas.

Main Research Themes:

• Urban processes that contribute to global environmental change.
  This theme includes questions on lifestyle and consumption patterns, urban land use and land cover change as well as effects of social and biophysical “teleconnections”.
  
• Pathways through which global environmental change affects the urban system.
  This theme explores the consequences of global environmental changes on human behavior and interactions, their contribution to shaping the built environment and their impact on the resource base upon which urban systems rely.
  
• Interactions and responses within the urban system.
  This theme poses questions on how interactions between the human and the physical systems shape the impact of and the responses to global environmental change as well as their consequences for urban livelihoods.
  
• Consequences of interactions within urban systems on global environmental change.
  This theme focuses on the feedbacks of interactions within the urban system to various components of global environmental change.
  

You will find information on the project at: www.ugec.org

Project Goals Develop conceptual frameworks that support the study of interactions between GEC and urban systems. Guide the study of these interactions in order to facilitate parllel and comparative cross-study analysis Identify the points and strength of interaction, the thresholds for change, and the direction of causality in couple human-environment urban systems.

Science Plan: Urbanization and Global Environmental Change Download English Version

Project Website

www.ugec.org

Urbanization
and Global
Environmental
Change

International Project Office
Arizona State
University
P.O. Box 875402
Tempe, AZ
85282-5402
USA

Co-Chairs of the
Scientific
Steering
Committee

Prof. Dr. Karen Seto
School of Forestry
and Environemental
Studies
Yale University
Connecticut, USA
karen.seto
@yale.edu

Prof. Dr. Roberto
Sánchez-Rodríguez
University of
California,
UC MEXUS,
Environmental Sciences
Calfornia, USA
roberto.sanchez-
rodriguez@ucr.edu

Executive Officer

Michail Fragkias, Ph.D.
fragkias@asu.edu