Ian Douglas, Cities: An Environmental History, London, IB Tauris, 2012, 320 pages, £18.99 paperback, ISBN 9781845117962.

Today over half of the world’s population live in urban areas and United Nations projections indicate that all of the world’s population growth over the next four decades will be absorbed by cities, mostly in low- and middle-income countries. On one hand, urban built environments reflect the unparalleled human capacity to shape our surroundings to suit our needs and enrich our lives. On the other, urban living creates unique environmental challenges that can undermine human welfare. In our increasingly urban world, a clear understanding of these challenges, and how to manage them at local, regional and global scales, is necessary to ensure sustainable global development.

Cities: An Environmental History by Ian Douglas is therefore a welcome reflection on a wide range of urban environmental issues. The title is somewhat misleading; this is not really a ‘history’ with a clearly periodised metanarrative that traces the evolution of urban environments. Instead, the book is structured around thematic chapters that cover an impressive range of issues, including: the origins of cities, disease and public health, conflicts and natural disasters, the urban metabolism, pollution, water management, solid waste and sewerage, noise pollution and urban odours, geophysical transformations and risks in built environments, green spaces and sustainability. These are illustrated with case studies from across the globe and spanning some 6,000 years. In other words, the ‘history’ is generally deployed for illustrative purposes. The breadth of thematic and empirical material ensures that nearly any reader will learn something new and interesting. However, while offering a useful overview to physical geographers and environmental scholars, urban scholars and other social scientists will ultimately be left craving greater analytical depth.

In the introductory chapter, Douglas declares his intention to focus on environmental issues within urban built environments and set aside ‘the environmental impact that urban areas have exerted on rural landscapes’ (page 1) and global commons resources, such as the oceans and the atmosphere. This, however, appears to be a somewhat problematic choice: urban environments cannot be analytically divorced from their ‘hinterlands’ (broadly defined) given that the environmental fabric of every city extends well beyond immediate physical and administrative boundaries. This inescapable fact becomes apparent later in the book when (for example) Douglas traces the geographically extensive (and politically contentious) engineering works that supply Los Angeles with water, and again when he discusses the ’serious side-effects’ of the ‘global trade in waste’ (page 173). Both of these cases reflect the emergence of an increasingly ‘global circulatory urban metabolism’ (page 173), an interesting theme that crops up in the book several times but unfortunately is never fleshed out.

Other key concepts such as ‘environmental injustice’, ‘ecological modernization’, ‘adaptive management’ and ‘development’ are introduced in the text but left underdeveloped.  Similarly, in a rather awkwardly placed discussion of urban resilience in the aftermath of natural disasters and conflicts (Chapter 2), the key characteristics of ‘resilient’ or ‘vulnerable’ cities are not outlined. At times the book advances bold arguments that do not follow from the discussion or exposition of evidence, such as the assertion that ‘Slow recovery in the Ninth Ward [of New Orleans after hurricane Katrina] may reflect the non-viability of a laissez-faire approach to post-disaster housing recovery’ (page 41).  This may well be true, but a ‘laissez-faire approach to post-disaster housing recovery’ is not defined and nothing in the preceding paragraphs justifies this conclusion.

In terms of geographic coverage, Douglas makes an effort to draw on  case studies from across the globe, but there is a clear bias toward UK, European, American, Australian and Chinese examples. While this is partly a consequence of the highly geographically skewed distribution of relevant literature, it nevertheless leaves the critical reader wanting either more balanced geographic coverage or deeper coverage of fewer regions. The latter approach might have facilitated the development of a more coherent historical metanarrative and a richer analytical discussion.

As a physical geographer, Douglas is at his best when reviewing the geophysical and hydrological characteristics of built environments and how they evolve.  However, simmering underneath the text is a clear concern with issues such as the consequences of capitalist development and globalization, population growth, the rise of mass consumption, the influence of neoliberal ideology, the challenge of social justice, and the appropriate roles of states and markets in managing urban affairs. All of these issues are raised in the text but, from my point of view, treated too superficially to offer any novel insights.

The final chapter, in which Douglas summarizes the takeaways from each of the previous chapters, is peppered with hackneyed phrases. There is no technical constraint to providing adequate water and sanitation for all, he argues, it is merely a ‘question of political will and government priorities’ (page 305). Similarly, ‘history shows’ that retrofitting existing cities to make them more sustainable will require ‘integrated thinking and action’ (page 307). These tired observations do not add to the dialogue concerned with equitable and sustainable urban development.

In many respects, the book is torn between providing a comprehensive review of the physical characteristics and changes in urban environments across the globe and offering a critical commentary on how urban environmental challenges have been (and should be) addressed. Overall the book is a decent survey of urban environmental issues and as such, it will provide a useful reference resource to a broad audience, including physical geographers and environmental scholars working on cities. However, social scientists and policymakers will have to look elsewhere for a nuanced critical synthesis of urban environmental challenges and how they might be addressed.