17. Geotechnologies & Sustainable Urban Environments

The objective of this volume was to focus on and collect a range of real world case studies, novel examples, and innovative approaches towards urban sustainability – particularly focusing on research using geotechnologies and/or a geographic framework. Ideally, the volume will be used by academic and professional researchers, community leaders, planners, students, and anyone else who has a desire to better assess urban environmental change. Additionally, the volume examines the prospect of deploying geotechnologies, broadly conceptualized, to understand and enhance the sustainability of urban systems. The chapters included examples of cultural/social adaptation, political-ecology, the impact of little investigated industries, economic development, land use change, and human-environment interactions. In contrast to other books on the subject, which tend to focus on planning, engineering, environmental impacts, or political discourses (i.e., political ecology), this volume unites the three pillars of sustainability – socio-political/cultural, economic, and environmental change – by focusing on spatial methodologies and emerging technologies.