This book considers the full range of urban environmental burdens, from the very local to the inherently global. In the main body of the book, the chapters progress from those concerned with the environmental problems associated with urban poverty towards those of urban affluence – which in physical terms also turns out to involve a progression from the local towards the global.

The first three chapters provide an introduction to the book and a critical review of the concept of urban environmental transitions. The starting point is that economic success does not so much improve or harm the environment than change the scale at which the most severe burdens manifest themselves. The conventional Environmental Kuznets Curve thus becomes a special case, representing the way in which some intermediate-scale burdens such as urban “smog” first rise and then decline with affluence. The editors argue, however, that this transition is neither inevitable nor uniform, but is both politically dependent and politically influential. They also argue that we should not rely solely on local governance to address local burdens such as poor sanitation, nor depend solely on global governance for global challenges such as greenhouse gas emissions, but that scale is crucial to both understanding the problems and designing responses.

The next group of four chapters starts with a review of local urban environmental health problems in low- and middle-income countries, and what inhibits improvement – locally, nationally and internationally. The following chapter examines the spatial dimensions of urban water and sanitation provision, the resulting boundary problems, and the health implications. This is followed by two case studies, one focusing on environmental health-related disparities in Accra and another on the changing quality of the microenvironment in and around Delhi.

The next three chapters focus on urban environmental issues in middle-income countries. First there is a review of urban motorization in rapidly developing countries, and in the following chapter the authors use the Millennium Cities database for sustainable transport to compare the urban transport in 50 different nations, setting their analyses within the context of the urban environmental transition. The third chapter examines the conditions in Mexico City, outlining the competing environmental agendas, their social construction and their relation to the concept of environmental transitions.

The two chapters on environmental issues in affluent urban areas consider a range of sustainability concerns. There is a critical reconsideration of the very concept of the “affluent” city and the simplistic dualisms so often used to structure urban environmental analysis, followed by a chapter on the Greater Manchester City region, which examines the wide range of structural changes that Manchester’s environment is undergoing, again applying the rubric of urban environmental transitions.

In the final chapter, the author draws on his experience with Local Agenda 21, both internationally and in many localities, to assess the scope for achieving transitions that reflect local agendas while addressing challenges at every scale. While this chapter identifies a number of obstacles to the pursuit of Local Agenda 21s, including a lack of support in the international arena, it concludes that: “In a time of renewed calls for state building, even in the bastions of neoliberalism (e.g. to address public issues like security), the timing for a Local Agenda may never be better.”