Skip to main content Accessibility help

We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.

Close cookie message
×
Hostname: page-component-7479d7b7d-c9gpj Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-07-11T13:18:30.989Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

3 - Flows, movements, change

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 June 2014

Richard T. T. Forman
Richard T. T. Forman
Affiliation:
Harvard University, Massachusetts
Get access

Summary

Thanks to the automobile, cities no longer have to dispose of tons of horse manure every day.

Virginia I. Postrel, Reason magazine editor, speech for City Club of Cleveland, Ohio, 19 June 1990

And then the tidal wave appeared as a high wall of foam rushing towards them, and soon it was on them, on everyone, crashing onto the land, crushing houses, sweeping huts away, drowning cattle and people … Yet, a kind of miracle, most trees – the palms, the bunches of pandanus with great stalking roots, the sweeps of mangroves – were left undisturbed by the same wave that swept away fortress-like walls and paved roads.

Paul Theroux, Ghost Train to the Eastern Star, 2008

The nature of flows and movements

Imagine a walk in the city and suddenly reaching a spot where nothing moved. People, leaves, birds, air, water, vehicles, and clouds are absolutely still. Weird, even scary. Better stop and look sharp. Flows and movements around us are universal, never stop.

Processes in urban areas are in effect flows, movements and transport through space (Forman, 1999; Ball, 2009). Some are mainly vertical, including rainfall, evapo-transpiration, tree falls, and ecological succession. Horizontal flows, the focus here, generally cross heterogeneous space thus linking different land uses and habitats (Wegner and Merriam, 1979).

Type
Chapter
Information
Urban Ecology
Science of Cities
 , pp. 65 - 90
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2014

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure coreplatform@cambridge.org is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×