Often cities under the global spotlight use their landscape as a stage. The idea of a living performance is unique and at times problematic. We see this every other year with the winter and summer Olympics. Cities spend years working to prepare their city as all eyes will be on how well they can “perform”. In this article, author Anne Rademacher puts Kathmandu under a microscope. Soon after the state of Nepal declared a state of emergency, it had to host many South Asian countries for a major trade conference. Within days, many dilapidated housing complexes were leveled and new urban parks rapidly created. As with the Olympics, the long-term implications of the performance landscape after the performance has ended can often leave cities with inefficient and a landscape that is too-purpose built to be sustainable. This is not just a problem Kathmandu faces, but Kathmandu’s unique status as a place in need creates a unique problem. Globalization, in this instance, forced Kathmandu to compete with other global cities. In reality, the city is not on the scale of other global cities and normally, wouldn’t have to compete with the resource-privileged communities around the world. In fact, in a time when resources were strained, they had to be diverted away from crisis-alleviation and instead to meeting the demands of a global society.

The growth of the Caribbean tourism industry has lead to a changing landscape. New urban centers are emerging as a new type of development. These urban centers are not dense with budding Caribbean populations but exist only as concentrated areas of tourism development. On any given day, the population of the area is made up of a high demographic of tourists, sometimes even more tourists than locals. This is true for many tourist centers around the world. These tourist centers emerge as demand increases for particular areas. The days of an area anchored by a single resort have passed. The creation of these resort towns which concentrate tourism into internationally-recognized places is causing a shift in the landscape. These are urban landscapes built not for growing populations but for growing tourism. Having an urban landscape dictated by an inherently transient population neglects the rich anthropology of the local people. These landscapes no longer reflect the culture of the place but rather, what the place is advertised to be. Author Amelia Moore argues that a greater incorporation of culturally- and naturally-dictated design and a respect for urban anthropology should be prioritized over the growth of the tourism industry. Failure to do so will deteriorate the sustainability of the region.

Demaria et al.’s argument hinges itself on the concept of degrowth, an anti-utilitarian form of development. This concept has garnered quite the following as cities and nations around the world have begun to adopt the degrowth concept. Communities that adopt degrowth aim to retroactively eliminate inefficient development and return landscapes back to their natural aesthetic. Degrowth is seen as a more workable solution to those who feel that the world has grown too quickly and left too many behind. Those behind the degrowth thinking believe that a reduction in development will improve democracy, justice, and environmental conservation. However, growth is a reality that we are all facing as a human populous and failure to create the proper infrastructure for growth will not limit growth but rather reduce the quality of life in times of an exponentially increasing population. If degrowth is to continue, it must exist in the form of responsible growth that eliminates the impact of development. Degrowth should not be seen as a retaliation against all growth. Rather degrowth seeks to transform growth metrics away from quantity but rather into metrics of quality. Development which has many costs should not increase in size and shape like many of the urban areas of the last century, but should be seen as an evolution, increasing the quality of life for community members and the quality of the local landscape.

Edelman’s piece identifies international agriculturalists as an actor in the global environmental politics stage. With a lack of resources or formal recognition, government agencies have sprung up to speak on behalf of their livelihood. In the past few decades, these international agriculturalists, farmers that export surplus to other countries, have organized and mobilized to force themselves into the discussion. Sometimes this is accomplished by disrupting talks by agencies such as the WTO (formerly GATT) and other times they host their own talks to strengthen the bond of their community. The organization of these farmers, Via Campesina, is a heterogeneous organization made up of members from over 50 countries. This diversity does create some issues as naturally not everyone has the same goals. The organization recognized this early on and decided that instead of trying to homogenize ideology, they should focus on organizing and mobilizing so that the farmers in their position have a louder and more prominent voice in the discussion. This type of interaction represents a common pattern in citizen roles of environmental politics. Often citizens need to organize together to make a concentrated impact but goals and ideology are not always homogenous. The coalition model is more effective than the collective model because it allows for a rigid diversity that can withstand occasional differences in opinion but results in a net positive impact.

Can our past failures at community development be traced back to something as elementary as having accurate definitions of urban rural, and suburban environments? While there are no universal quantitative parameters defining these descriptors, generally, they are used in terms of comparing population density relative to other spaces with different density. What we consider urban areas only exist because we are able to distinguish them from other areas that are noticeably less dense. The density difference is so noticeable that we believe the characteristics of daily life in these areas are different enough that we cannot call them urban areas, but rather rural areas. However, in the last few decades, we have seen a new human environment be created in the space between the urban and the rural in which elements of both environments are combined to form suburban environments that are not quite rural or urban yet are both rural and urban at the same time. This is a widely accepted understanding, but what if its wrong? After further study, anthropologists reveal that the characteristics that define these environments are much more diverse. Economic activity, social diversity, and access to natural resources all contribute to the establishment of urban, rural, and suburban environments. In fact, after reading this section, I would argue that proximity to resources and economic activity exist as two ends of a scale. Areas that have a close proximity to resources and economic activity are urban. Areas that have a close proximity to resources but less economic activity are rural. Areas that do not have a close proximity to resources but have relatively higher economic activity are suburban. Anthropologists and urbanists have to understand that these definitions are fluid with time and subject to change.

The 1984 Union Carbide gas leak left thousands in Bhopal, India dead and even more injured. The disaster was two-fold. The first wave of victims were those immediately killed or injured by the explosion. The second wave of victims were those left with chronic illnesses that have permanently reduce their quality of life. In both cases, a careless and distant corporate culture that prioritized profit over safety left one of India’s largest urban centers with a permanent social handicap. Further, the abandonment of any efforts to seek long-term solutions to this disaster has left a society paralyzed. Failures by the Union Carbide Company, a multinational corporation headquartered half a globe away from Bhopal, to make safety-conscious decisions and take actions contrary to the recommendations of local management officials is only one environmental disaster in a pattern that is all too common. The inability of the Indian state to adequately respond to disasters of this scale, early on in the recovery efforts, led to community-based attempts to organize and advocate. This ability of these groups to do so may be the only positive outcome from this lasting disaster. It is virtually impossible for even the wealthiest cities to prepare for an environmental disaster of this scale. However, the double standard becomes clear when studying the ability of wealthy cities to prevent such disasters. As the author, S. Ravi Rajan suggests, anthropologists, as community leaders and policy makers, are in a unique position to maneuver the public and private sectors to social development. By prioritizing proactive measures over reactive, and installing mechanisms to adequately hold those responsible accountable, the impacts to people and planet can be reduced or hopefully eliminated.