Global Cities: Urban Environments in Los Angeles, Hong Kong, and China

by Robert Gottlieb, Simon Ng

How Los Angeles, Hong Kong, and China deal with such urban environmental issues as ports, goods movement, air pollution, water quality, transportation, and public space.

Over the past four decades, Los Angeles, Hong Kong, and key urban regions of China have emerged as global cities--in financial, political, cultural, environmental, and demographic terms. In this book, Robert Gottlieb and Simon Ng trace the global emergence of these urban areas and compare their responses to a set of six urban environmental issues.

These cities have different patterns of development: Los Angeles has been the quintessential horizontal city, the capital of sprawl; Hong Kong is dense and vertical; China's new megacities in the Pearl River Delta, created by an explosion in industrial development and a vast migration from rural to urban areas, combine the vertical and the horizontal. All three have experienced major environmental changes in a relatively short period of time. Gottlieb and Ng document how each has dealt with challenges posed by ports and the movement of goods, air pollution (Los Angeles, Hong Kong, and urban China are all notorious for their hazardous air quality), water supply (all three places are dependent on massive transfers of water) and water quality, the food system (from seed to table), transportation, and public and private space. Finally they discuss the possibility of change brought about by policy initiatives and social movements.

447 pages, Hardcover

Published January 1, 2017

About the author

Professor of Urban & Environmental Policy, Emeritus, Occidental College.

Reviews

[Tommy · Rating 3 out of 5]

Basically the only reason I read this was because an ebay seller was offering a discount if you bought three books, so I looked for a third, and the summary sounded interesting enough for a few more bucks.

The goal of the book was to contrast Los Angeles, Hong Kong, and Mainland China in the Pearl River Delta region. However, the moments of comparison seemed minimal to me. Instead it was three short primers on each's geography and history. Which was interesting! But I guess I just expected a bit more.

Here was a quote I liked, though:

"In a way, despite a vastly different urban form, Hong Kong has parallels with the Los Angeles urban identity in which residents live in cul-de-sacs or gated communities, drive everywhere, and primarily encounter fellow citizens in controlled, privately owned spaces such as malls and gyms. A Hong Kong resident may live in a tower above a shopping mall, which connects directly to the metro system, which brings her to another shopping mall in the central business district, which is connected to her office building through a series of skyways. She ultimately may go days at a time without venturing out onto the street. Streets then become not a part of the rhythm of daily life but a part of the civil and transportation engineering emphasis on moving people between locations without contributing to a sense of place"

[Levicent Mira · Rating 4 out of 5]

Unbiased, but research based. Incorporates some history, local issues, the emergence of industry, and socio-economics with environmental impacts that have emerged over the last century in Los Angeles, Hong Kong, and China. It's a great lesson on public policy for anybody wanting to get involved in politics.

Great book if you're somebody in the public policy, environmental, or logistics field. Also an okay book for college students to connect the dots across multiple fields of general study. If you're somebody from LA, HK, or China, there's also a bit of local cultural history taught here you might learn.

[Maarten Markus · Rating 3 out of 5]

The authors succesfully connected urban environmental issues in LA, Hong Kong and China to global trade and social-economic networks shaping local issues. While it took me some effort to get into the argument, I really enjoyed and was fascinated by the thematic chapters on food, water and transportation. The emphasis on local activism and environmental groups make a great addition to the book by giving environmental issues a face, thereby humanizing the issues to the reader.

[Mills College Library]

333.77 G686 2017