Unsustainable development in coastal urban areas

Urban areas are increasingly associated with the environmental problems of our time. These areas, which are apparently local, directly impact the environment in the territories they are part of and contribute to climate change. In parallel, there is a direct connection at both the local and the global level between the socio-economic situation of metropolitan areas and flows of regional and international human mobility. We have to take fairly complex physical and social factors into account to analyse the intricate connections between situations and problems, and – like multinational and multidisciplinary comparative analysis projects – use the experiences of different countries and the knowledge of a variety of fields to draw conclusions. Evaluating comparative analysis of urban areas over the past thirty years enables us to evaluate how this procedure has evolved since it was first carried out in the mid-1970s. The number of such projects grew over the next two decades, though they were essentially restricted to individual fields. From the first decade of the 21st century, however, there was a considerable increase in the number of projects, and environmental issues made closer collaboration between natural and social sciences a necessity.