Urbanization and Global Environmental Change

How do cities shape the planet, and how can we shape cities for a sustainable future? This book explores how urbanization drives global environmental change and how cities function as dynamic ecosystems within the Earth system. Connecting urban ecology, Earth system science and socio-environmental thinking, it provides the knowledge and perspective to understand cities not just as challenges but as critical spaces for innovation and change. From air and water systems to energy flows, biodiversity, and climate impacts, it offers clear frameworks, real-world case studies, and tools for analyzing urban ecosystems and their impacts across scales. Written in accessible language, the book is for both physical and social scientists working in urban ecology, urban planning and sustainability. It will equip advanced students, researchers and professionals with the knowledge and tools to reimagine cities as critical hubs of resilience and sustainable innovation.

Galina Churkina is a professor of Urban Ecosystem Science at Technische Universität Berlin, Germany. She started out studying mathematics in Russia and later morphed into a quantitative ecologist in the US. These days, she dives into data to understand how cities work as living systems and loves finding surprising patterns in the messiness of urban life. Her expertise lies in modelling changes in ecosystems, land use and the atmosphere, from local to global scales, and the feedbacks between these changes and urbanization. She has published three book chapters on this topic, as well as numerous journal articles. Churkina was the first recipient of the Aquila Capital Transformation Award in 2020.