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Urban Environmental Management in Shanghai: A Multiscale Perspective
- Michigan State University Press
- Chapter
- Additional Information
■ WEI TU / DANIEL SUI / WEICHUN MA UrbanEnvironmental ManagementinShanghai A M U LT I S C A L E P E R S P E C T I V E Since the late 1970s, Shanghai—China’s economic capital and the largest city—has transformed rapidly from a deteriorating industrial center of the Maoist era to one of the most dynamic, vigorous, and fastest-growing metropolitan areas of the Asia-Pacific Rim.1 The unprecedented urban redevelopment process has greatly improved the economic, social, and environmental conditions of Shanghai. Moreover, after successfully hosting the 2010 World Expo and with a Disney theme park under construction, the economic growth of Shanghai in the near future seems assured (figs. 1, 2, and 3). As cities become larger and wealthier, the driving forces and the manifestations of environmental burdens are also changing rapidly and becoming increasingly complex.2 In particular, many scholars have observed the shift of urban environmental burdens from local and regional levels to national and even global levels.3 It is indeed more urgent than ever that urban environmental management strategies be adjusted according to the spatial and temporal evolution of environmental problems in order to achieve the goal of urban sustainable development. Due to Shanghai’s pivotal role in China, the city’s environmental problems have received rather extensive interdisciplinary attention in the literature. Some are overviews of general environmental quality and management issues;4 some examine specific environmental threats, such as water and air pollution;5 some analyze issues related to the environmental policies and management instruments;6 others simulate and predict future environmental conditions.7 The existing studies are valuable in helping to understand the current situation and evolution of the environmental burdens and policies in Shanghai. The spatial scale of most of the existing studies, however, has been largely limited to the intraurban level. Few studies were conducted to examine Shanghai’s environmental issues from a multiscale perspective. By focusing solely on environmental issues at the intraurban level, important environmental processes operating at other spatial 36 ■ WEI TU / DANIEL SUI / WEICHUN MA scales may be overlooked and the links among problems across different geographical scales may be ignored. For example, by discharging industrial wastewater into Changjiang River, water quality of the inner-city river might be improved, but one of the negative consequences is the deteriorating water quality in the Changjiang River Estuary and East China Sea, which will be costly to clean in the long run. Aiming at bridging this gap in the literature, this study attempts to conduct an assessment of Shanghai’s urban environmental issues and policies at three spatial scales: intra-urban, interurban /regional, and global. As such, the rest of this chapter has been organized into five sections. After a brief introduction in section 1, section 2 briefly discusses the importance of a multiscale perspective in understanding urban environmental burdens and policies. Section 3 examines Shanghai’s urban environmental management at three spatial scales since the late 1970s, followed by section 4, which discusses the opportunities and challenges of formulating a multiscale environmental policy. The last section contains conclusions. Figure 1. New central business district skyline, Pudong. PHOTOGRAPH BY WEICHUN MA PHOTOGRAPH BY LOUIS E. SCHMIER PHOTOGRAPH BY WEICHUN MA Figure 2. Apartments under construction, Pudong. Figure 3. Traffic flows on Sichuan Road, Puxi. 38 ■ WEI TU / DANIEL SUI / WEICHUN MA The Role of Spatial Scales in an Integrated Urban Environmental Assessment Spatial scale refers to the unit or level of analysis in space.8 Both the importance and relationship between macro-, meso-, and microscale phenomenon and processes have been discussed extensively in geography and environmental studies literature.9 According to these studies, a multiscale approach is essential to understanding urban environmental problems and to achieving the goal of sustainable development. First, urban environmental burdens are continuous in space, and macro-scale environmental problems tend to converge in microscale localities. Environmental problems at microscale localities , in turn, contribute to macroscale environmental conditions.10 For example, climate change, a typical global issue, can be sensed by many coastal cities worldwide as the threat of rising sea levels escalates. And greenhouse gas emissions in cities, usually a localized environmental problem, are often cited as one of the major leading causes behind global warming. Second, the magnitude of urban environmental burdens at different spatial scales is interrelated , although not necessarily positively correlated. Reducing local environmental burdens may either decrease or increase impacts at the regional scale.11 Reclaiming land...