Contact: Reid Lifset, 203-432-6949

New Haven, Conn.–Cutting-edge research on the global impact of cities is the focus of a special issue of Yale’s Journal of Industrial Ecology.

Cities are an environmental paradox. As dense centers of commerce and industry, they are responsible for more than their population share of global environmental impacts. On the other hand, their compactness provides opportunities for economies of scale in transportation, waste and water services and infrastructure.

The environmental impact of cities importantly extends beyond their borders. Cities produce greenhouse gases whose impact is global. More subtly, urban residents engender resource extraction and manufacturing–with all the attendant environmental pressures– beyond the city boundaries.

Contributors to the special issue, Industrial Ecology and the Global Impact of Cities, examined environmental impacts of cities in Singapore, Barcelona, Toronto, China and Southeast Asia as a whole. The topics ranged from the prospects for addressing global warming in urban policy to resource flows in cities.

“We have always known that cities are a fundamental piece of the environmental equation, as a source of both challenges and opportunities.” says Gus Speth, dean of the Yale School of Forestry & Environmental Studies. “What is new here is recognition, front and center, that they have a global role to play.”

“Industrial ecology, an emerging field that examines the relationship between industry and the environment, is especially adept at analyzing the flows of resources–materials and energy and their environmental impacts–at many scales,” says Reid Lifset, editor-in-chief of the Journal of Industrial Ecology. “The application of industrial ecology to cities is beneficial at both ends–it provides powerful analytical tools and it enriches the field of industrial ecology.”

The Journal of Industrial Ecology is a peer-reviewed international quarterly owned by Yale University, published by MIT Press and headquartered at the Yale School of Forestry & Environmental Studies. This special issue of the Journal of Industrial Ecology was guest edited by Dr. Xuemei Bai of the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO), Australia's national science agency, where she is a Senior Science Leader at CSIRO Sustainable Ecosystems. Partial funding for the special issue was provided by the Institute for Global Environmental Strategies in Kanagawa, Japan, and the Industrial Transformation Project of the International Human Dimensions Programme on Global Change.

The selected articles in the special issue are available in electronic form through www.mitpressjournals.org/toc/jiec/11/2.