Urbanization's Toll On The Environment

Researchers and environmentalists have long known that fuel use has been one of the most significantly concentrated problems in urban areas. But this problem, and other commonly associated with the urban experience, is not isolated to urban areas. Global warming, for example, has causes in both urban and rural areas. In many instances, the impacts of rural areas are more significant than those caused by urban areas.

" 'What is needed is research that focuses on the large-scale, long-term environmental changes, not just on the immediate impact of cities,' concludes the International Human Dimensions Programme on Global Environmental Change (IHDP), a global research alliance."

" 'Until recently, this has been quite unexplored territory,' it says. It is territory which badly needs exploration if the full impacts of 21st Century urbanisation are to be fully understood."