Copyright © The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. Permission required for reproduction or display. Chapter 14 Lecture Outline

14-2 What kind of world do you want to live in? Demand that your teachers teach you what you need to know to build it. –Peter Kropotkin

Learning Outcomes After studying this chapter, you should be able to answer the following questions: How have the size and location of the world’s largest cities changed over the past century? Define slum and shantytown, and describe the conditions you might find in them. What is urban sprawl? How have automobiles contributed to sprawl? What are some principles of smart growth and new urbanism? Describe sustainable development and why it’s important. What value do we get from free ecological services? What’s the difference between GNP and GPI? What do we mean by internalizing external costs? 14-3

14.1 Cities Are Places of Crisis and Opportunity More than half of humans now live in cities, and in the next quarter century that number will approach three-quarters of us. This is a dramatic change from all previous human history, in which most humans lived by hunting and gathering, farming, or fishing. 14-4

Large cities are expanding rapidly You can already see the dramatic shift in size and location of big cities. In 1900 only 13 cities in the world had populations over 1 million. By 2007, there were at least 300 cities—100 of them in China alone—with more than 1 mil lion residents. By 2025, it’s expected that at least 93 cities will have populations over 5 million. 14-5

Immigration is driven by push and pull factors People migrate to cities for many reasons. In China over the past 20 years—or in America during the twentieth century—mechanization eliminated jobs and drove people off the land. Many people also move to the city because of the opportunities and independence offered there. Cities offer jobs, better housing, entertainment, and freedom from the constraints of village traditions. Government policies often favor urban over rural areas in ways that both push and pull people into cities. 14-6

Congestion, pollution, and water shortages plague many cities Pollution from burgeoning traffic and from unregulated factories degrades air quality in many urban areas. China’s spectacular economic growth has resulted in an flood of private automobiles mainly in cities. Worldwide, at least 1.1 billion people don’t have safe drinking water. 14-7

Many cities lack sufficient housing The United Nations estimates that at least 1 billion people live in crowded, unsanitary slums of the central cities or in the vast shantytowns and squatter settlements that ring the outskirts of most major cities in the developing world. Around 100 million people have no home at all. 14-8

14.2 Urban Planning Transportation is crucial in city development – Cities that were once compact began to spread over the landscape, consuming space and wasting resources. This pattern of development is known as sprawl. We can make our cities more livable – One option proposed by many urban planners is smart growth, which makes effective use of land resources and existing infrastructure by in-fill development that avoids costly duplication of services and inefficient land use. 14-9

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14.3 Economics and Sustainable Development Development means improving people’s lives. Sustainability means living on the earth’s renewable resources without damaging the ecological processes that support us all. Sustainable development is an effort to marry these two ideas

Our definitions of resources shape how we use them Classical economics assumes that natural resources are finite—that resources such as iron, gold, water, and land exist in fixed amounts. Neoclassical economics, developed in the nineteenth century, expanded the idea of resources to include labor, knowledge, and capital. Ecological economics applies ecological ideas of system functions and recycling to the definition of resources

Ecological economics and neoclassical economics distinguish between Nonrenewable resources exist in finite amounts: – minerals, fossil fuels, and also groundwater that recharges extremely slowly are all fixed, at least on a human timescale. Renewable resources are naturally replenished and recycled at a fairly steady rate. – Fresh water, living organisms, air, and food resources are all renewable (fig )

Scarcity can lead to innovation Many economists contend that human ingenuity and enterprise often allow us to respond to scarcity in ways that postpone or alleviate dire effects of resource use. The question of whether this view is right has to do with the important theme of limits to growth

Communal property resources are a classic problem in economics One of the difficulties of economics and resource management is that there are many resources we all share but nobody owns. Clean air, fish in the ocean, clean water, wildlife, and open space are all natural amenities that we exploit but that nobody clearly controls. In 1968 biologist Garret Hardin wrote “The Tragedy of the Commons,” an article describing how commonly held resources are degraded and destroyed by self-interest

14.4 Natural Resource Accounting Decision making about sustainable resource use often entails cost benefit analysis (CBA), the process of accounting and comparing the costs of a project and its benefits

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14.5 Trade, Development, and Jobs If most wealth is held by just a few people, the misery and poverty of the majority eventually lead to … instability. International trade allows us to take advantage of all the best or cheapest products from around the world. The World Bank makes loans for Third World development projects

Microlending Local development programs, often called microlending, have begun to develop. Banks make small loans, averaging just $67, to help poor people buy a sewing machine, a bicycle, a loom, a cow, or some other commodity that will help them start, or improve, a home business 14-20

14.6 Green Business and Green Design Environmentally conscious, or “green,” companies, have shown that operating according to the principles of sustainable development and environmental protection can be good for public relations, employee morale, and sales. Examples of green companies: – The Body Shop – Patagonia – Aveda – Malden Mills – Johnson and Johnson 14-21

Environmental protection creates jobs Green businesses often create far more jobs and stimulate local economies far more than environmentally destructive ones. Wind energy, for example, provides about five times as many jobs per kilowatt-hour of electricity than does coal-fired power (chapter 12)

Practice Quiz 1. How many people now live in urban areas? 2. How many cities were over 1 million in 1900? How many are now? 3. Why do people move to urban areas? 4. What is the difference between a shantytown and a slum? 5. Define sprawl. 6. In what ways are cities ecosystems? 7. Define smart growth. 8. Describe a “green” roof. 9. Describe a few ways in which BedZED is self-sufficient and sustainable. 10. Define sustainable development. 11. Briefly summarize the differences in how neoclassical and ecological economics view natural resources. 12. What is the estimated economic value of all the world’s ecological services? 13. How is it that nonrenewable resources can be extended indefinitely, while renewable resources are exhaustible? 14. In your own words, describe what is shown in figure What’s the difference between open access and communal resource management? 16. Describe the genuine progress index (GPI). 17. What is microlending? 14-23