Environmental Quality in the 21st Century City

In both the UK and Japan, the great majority of citizens live in towns and cities. Urban areas face many environmental challenges that have a direct impact on the standards of living and health. The Royal Commission on Environmental Pollution previously announced that its next major study would be on the urban environment. The Commission held a seminar at the end of March 2004 to determine the exact focus of the study. Japan’s experience in transforming itself from an urban society with serious pollution problems to one which, with some exceptions, manages to combine high population densities with high standards of physical environmental quality, could well be relevant to the Commission’s interests.

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