This important volume focuses on the sensitive issue of interrelationships between national parks situated near or within urban areas and their urban environment. It engages with both urban and conservation issues and and compares four national parks located in four large cities in the global South: Rio de Janeiro, Cape Town, Mumbai, and Nairobi. Though primarily undertaken as academic research, the project has intensively collaborated with the institutions in charge of these parks. The comparative structure of this volume is also original and unique: each of the chapters incorporates insight from all four sites as far as possible.The term “naturbanity” expresses the necessity for cities endowed with a national park to integrate it into their functioning. Conversely, such parks must take into account their location in an urban environment, both as a source of heavy pressures on nature and as a nexus of incentives to support their conservation. The principle of non-exclusivity, that is, neither the city nor the park has a right nor even the possibility to negate the other’s presence, summarizes the main argument of this book. Naturbanity thus blurs the old “modern” dichotomy of nature/culture: animals and human beings can often jump the physical and ideological walls separating many parks from the adjacent city. The 13 chapters and substantive introduction of this volume discuss various aspects of naturbanity: the histories of park creation; interaction between people and parks; urban governance and parks; urban conservation models; wildlife management; environmental education; and so on. This is a must-read for students and researchers interested in social ecology, social geography, conservation, urban planning and ecological policy.

This Handbook provides an essential guide to the study of resources and their role in socio-environmental change. With original contributions from more than 60 authors with expertise in a wide range of resource types and world regions, it offers a toolkit of conceptual and methodological approaches for documenting, analyzing, and reimagining resources and the worlds with which they are entangled. The volume has an introduction and four thematic sections. The introductory chapter outlines key trajectories for thinking critically with and about resources. Chapters in Section I, "(Un)knowing resources," offer distinct epistemological entry points and approaches for studying resources. Chapters in Section II, "(Un)knowing resource systems," examine the components and logics of the capitalist systems through which resources are made, circulated, consumed, and disposed of, while chapters in Section III, "Doing critical resource geography: Methods, advocacy, and teaching," focus on the practices of critical resource scholarship, exploring the opportunities and challenges of carrying out engaged forms of research and pedagogy. Chapters in Section IV, "Resource-making/world-making," use case studies to illustrate how things are made into resources and how these processes of resource-making transform socio-environmental life. This vibrant and diverse critical resource scholarship provides an indispensable reference point for researchers, students, and practitioners interested in understanding how resources matter to the world and to the systems, conflicts, and debates that make and remake it.

Against the background of unprecedented rates of urbanisation in the Global South, leading to massive social, economic and environmental transformations, this book engages with the dire need to understand the ecology of such settings as the foundation for fostering sustainable and resilient human settlements in contexts that are very different to the Global North. It does so by bringing together scholars from around the world, drawing together research and case studies from across the Global South to illustrate, in an interdisciplinary and comprehensive fashion, the ecology of towns and cities in the Global South. Framed using a social-ecological systems lens, it provides the reader with an in-depth analysis and understanding of the ecological dynamics and ecosystem services and disservices within the complex and rapidly changing towns and cities of the Global South, a region with currently scarce representation in most of the urban ecology literature. As such the book makes a call for greater geographical balance in urban ecology research leading towards a more global understanding and frameworks. The book embraces the complexity of these rapid transformations for ecological and environmental management and how the ecosystems and the benefits they provide shape local ecologies, livelihood opportunities and human wellbeing, and how such knowledge can be mobilised towards improved urban design and management and thus urban sustainability.

David South Consulting is an international development media and consulting service. Designing human development and health. Editor and writer of Southern Innovator. Website: www.davidsouthconsulting.com

This book examines and addresses the particular character of urban tourism occurring in the global South. It presents research essays on tourism in urban areas of South Africa, a country which is associated with big 5 nature tourism but where urban areas are also major tourism destinations. The book contextualizes urban tourism in South Africa as part of ‘the other half of urban tourism’, an overlooked but energetic scholarship which is emerging on urban places in the global South. The volume moves to present a collection of original material variously on national perspectives on urban tourism following by a cluster of city level perspectives. The last three contributions turn to the role of tourism in small towns, the bottom rung in the urban settlement system. Issues of concern include gastronomic tourism, VFR travel, airportscapes, climate change, AirBnb and creative tourism. Finally, as COVID-19 is potentially a defining historical moment for urban tourism, the volume incorporates historical research perspectives in order to address the overwhelming ‘present-mindedness’ of mainstream urban tourism writings. The book highlights the challenges and opportunities for tourism development in the environment of the urban global South and is relevant to scholars of both tourism and urban studies as well as researchers in development studies.

A multidisciplinary examination of alternative framings of environmental problems, with using examples from forest, water, energy, and urban sectors. Does being an environmentalist mean caring about wild nature? Or is environmentalism synonymous with concern for future human well-being, or about a fair apportionment of access to the earth's resources and a fair sharing of pollution burdens? Environmental problems are undoubtedly one of the most salient public issues of our time, yet environmental scholarship and action is marked by a fragmentation of ideas and approaches because of the multiple ways in which these environmental problems are “framed.” Diverse framings prioritize different values and explain problems in various ways, thereby suggesting different solutions. Are more inclusive framings possible? Will this enable more socially relevant, impactful research and more concerted action and practice? This book takes a multidisciplinary look at these questions using examples from forest, water, energy, and urban sectors. It explores how different forms of environmentalism are shaped by different normative and theoretical positions, and attempts to bridge these divides. Individual perspectives are complemented by comprehensive syntheses of the differing framings in each sector. By self-reflectively exploring how researchers study and mobilize evidence about environmental problems, the book opens up the possibility of alternative framings to advance collaborative and integrated understanding of environmental problems and sustainability challenges.

This book shows what role nature can play in a city and how this can make it a better place for people to live. People, planners, designers and politicians are working towards the development of green cities. Some cities are already promoted as green cities, while others are on their way to become one. But their goals are often unclear and can include different facets. Presenting contributions from world leading researchers in the field of urban ecology, the editors provide an interdisciplinary overview of best practices and challenges in creating green cities. They show examples of how to build up these cities from bits and pieces to districts and urban extensions. Each example concludes with a summary of the collected knowledge, the learning points and how this can be used in other places. The best practices are collected from around the world – Europe, America and Asia. Contributions cover a wide range of biophysical and cultural backgrounds within these three continents, including the Central, Southern and Eastern European region, as well as Latin and North America. The new dynamic urban development of Asia is illustrated by case studies from China and the Indian subcontinent. The reader will learn which role nature can play in green cities and what the basic requirements are in terms of culture, pre-existing nature conditions, existing urban surroundings, history, design and planning.

This textbook on urban ecosystems answers important questions about the ecological structure, functions and socio-ecological development of cities worldwide. Based on how cities are developing today in an increasingly urbanized world, it explains ecological challenges for cities of the 21st century such as resource efficiency, climate change, moderation of quality of life and resilience. The book combines theories of urban development and ecology with practical applications and case studies, thus identifying potential for improvement and examples of good ecological urban development worldwide. It shows that cities are by far not only problem areas but also offer great potential for a good life and that the various urban ecosystems can make a considerable contribution to this. The "eco-city" is thus not a utopia,but a real goal that can be pursued step by step in a targeted manner, taking into account the local and regional context. Four renowned urban ecologists have contributed their specific experience in sub-areas without losing sight of the big picture. Jürgen Breuste is an urban ecologist and works at the Paris Lodron University in Salzburg, Austria, on the topics of sustainable urban development, urban biodiversity, ecosystem services and eco-cities. Dagmar Haase is Landschaftsökologin and works at the Humboldt University of Berlin on urban ecosystem services and land use modeling. Stephan Pauleit is a landscape planner and works at the Technical University of Munich on strategies for the sustainable development of urban landscapes. Martin Sauerwein is a geographer and works at the University of Hildesheim on geo-ecology in cultural landscapes, geoarchaeology and soil protection. The textbook addresses a broad audience of students, teachersand also to practitioners in the fields of ecology, urban ecology, urban development, sustainability, urban geography, nature and landscape conservation, spatial planning, landscape ecology, social sciences and urban studies. The numerous photos and graphics, many of them in four colors, as well as clear tables illustrate the facts. Case studies, examples and explanations allow a deeper insight. Questions at the end of each chapter allow the progress of knowledge to be checked, and a comprehensive bibliography for each chapter provides further studies.This book is a translation of the original German 1st edition Stadtökosysteme by Jürgen Breuste published by Springer Fachmedien Wiesbaden GmbH, part of Springer Nature in 2016. The translation was done with the help of artificial intelligence (machine translation by the service DeepL.com). A subsequent human revision was done primarily in terms of content, so that the book will read stylistically differently from a conventional translation. Springer Nature works continuously to further the development of tools for the production of books and on the related technologies to support the authors. This springer essential is a translation of the original German 1st edition essentials,Stadtökosysteme by Jürgen Breuste published by Springer Fachmedien Wiesbaden GmbH, part of Springer Nature in 2016. The translation was done with the help of artificial intelligence (machine translation by the service DeepL.com). A subsequent human revision was done primarily in terms of content, so that the book will read stylistically differently from a conventional translation. Springer Nature works continuously to further the development of tools for the production of books and on the related technologies to support the authors.