Cities have experienced an unprecedented rate of growth in the last decade. More than half the world's population lives in urban areas, with the U.S. percentage at 80 percent. Cities have captured more than 80 percent of the globe's economic activity and offered social mobility and economic prosperity to millions by clustering creative, innovative, and educated individuals and organizations. Clustering populations, however, can compound both positive and negative conditions, with many modern urban areas experiencing growing inequality, debility, and environmental degradation. The spread and continued growth of urban areas presents a number of concerns for a sustainable future, particularly if cities cannot adequately address the rise of poverty, hunger, resource consumption, and biodiversity loss in their borders. Intended as a comparative illustration of the types of urban sustainability pathways and subsequent lessons learned existing in urban areas, this study examines specific examples that cut across geographies and scales and that feature a range of urban sustainability challenges and opportunities for collaborative learning across metropolitan regions. It focuses on nine cities across the United States and Canada (Los Angeles, CA, New York City, NY, Philadelphia, PA, Pittsburgh, PA, Grand Rapids, MI, Flint, MI, Cedar Rapids, IA, Chattanooga, TN, and Vancouver, Canada), chosen to represent a variety of metropolitan regions, with consideration given to city size, proximity to coastal and other waterways, susceptibility to hazards, primary industry, and several other factors.

In this multidisciplinary and multi-jurisdictional account of sustainability in urban tourist destinations, the Handbook on Sustainable Urban Tourism draws together the latest academic research and provides key practical insights on this developing area of study. It not only considers the importance of cities as ideal tourist destinations due to their complex characteristics and the variety of attractions they offer, but also the challenges they are confronted with, most notably sustainability.

Research related to justice and tourism is at an early stage in tourism studies. Challenges abound due to the complex scope and scale of tourism, and thus the need to transcend disciplinary boundaries to inform a phenomenon that is intricately interwoven with place and people from local to global. The contributors to this book have drawn from diverse knowledge domains including but not limited to sociology, geography, business studies, urban planning and architecture, anthropology, philosophy and management studies, to inform their research. From case-based empirical research to descriptive and theoretical approaches to justice and tourism, they tackle critical issues such as social justice and gender, discrimination and racism, minority and worker rights, indigenous, cultural and heritage justice (including special topics like food sovereignty), while post-humanistic perspectives that call us to attend to non-human others, to climate justice and sustainable futures. A rich array of principles is woven within and between the chapters. The various contributions illustrate the need for continuing collaboration among researchers in the Global North and Global South to enable diverse voices and worldviews to inform the pluralism of justice and tourism, as arises in this book. The chapters in this book were originally published as a special issue of the Journal of Sustainable Tourism.

Tourism is at the forefront of the debate on development versus sustainability. The challenge facing the industry is how to translate principles into practice and to attain a balance between the objectives of tourism development and the long-term conservation of physical, ecological and sociocultural environments. This book addresses these issues, particularly from economic, ethical and environmental perspectives. It has been developed from selected papers presented at a conference held at Newton Rigg College, Cumbria, UK, in April 1996. It is divided into four parts, addressing: concepts, theories and methodological issues; the tourism industry's promotion of sustainable tourism; minimising environmental impact by means of alternative forms of tourism; and policy implications. The book includes a wide range of case studies and destinations where tourism is rapidly developing in fragile environments, including Belize, Crete, Goa, the English Lake District, Madagascar, Malaysia, the Seychelles and Spain. It represents important reading for both undergraduate and postgraduate students, research workers and tourism industry practitioners, whether from the standpoint of geography, sociology, economics, management and marketing or planning.