While both very broad and very narrow usage are common in the literature, when people complain of environmental problems they are typically referring to damage to the physical environment, mostly caused by other people, and usually with harmful consequences for human welfare, either now or in the future. For example, defining urban environmental problems as the degradation of urban water, air and land excludes many of the environmental health problems suffered predominantly by the poor, as well as the extra-urban impacts that threaten regional and global sustainability. For example, Einsteins oft-cited definition of the environment as everything that is not me, could be used to designate anything from better shopping facilities to better televisions as urban environmental improvement.īut if urban environmental problems are defined too narrowly, many of the generalizations noted in the introductory paragraph cease to be true. If urban environmental problems are defined and pursued too broadly, then almost all urban development initiatives can be labeled environmental. Most of the confusion arises from the qualifier environmental and what it should mean in an urban context. This is not just a semantic question, as it is intimately related to how and where funds are allocated and to who can expect to benefit from the resulting environmental improvements. While there is now widespread agreement that urban environmental issues are important, there is little coherence in how international agencies and others define the urban environment and identify its critical problems. What are Key Urban Environmental Problems?Įxtracted from: DANIDA Workshop Papers: Improving the Urban Environment and Reducing Poverty DecemCopenhagen, Denmark.
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