Urban Development and the Environmental Challenges—“Green” Systems Considerations for the EU

Abstract

When discussing “green” issues in connection with urban challenges, a starting point is the sustainability challenges connected with the urban space itself. However, you also find highly relevant considerations dealing with what the urban development implies for other activities distributed in geographical space as mirrored e.g. by the urban-rural connections in the form of the connection between urban space and its natural resources supporting “hinterland”. Thus the impacts of the urban activities on the surrounding world is here at heart - in all its different ecological dimensions, such as water quality and quantity, biodiversity erosion, implications of the chemical impact on the ecological systems of the hinterland - and in terms of the competition over land use among different functions.