Cities and the Environment on the Constitutional Stage

Abstract Human influence on the environment is now widely considered to be so significant as to constitute a new geological epoch, the Anthropocene. The rapidly accelerating pace, scale, and impact of urbanization makes it a critical driver of that influence, so much so that some prefer the term ‘Astycene’—an era altered and characterized by the ‘astos’, or urban dweller. The widespread adoption of modern constitutional environmental rights provisions speaks to the scale and severity of contemporary environmental threats in general. However, the centrality of cities in causing and experiencing environmental threats, and the corresponding constitutional implications, remain substantively unaddressed by constitutions and their scholars. This chapter applies an environmental lens to the key questions of whether constitutions should recognize cities, and what any such recognition should seek to accomplish. It uses the metaphor of the constitutional stage, first describing the environmental backdrop to that stage in physical and institutional terms. It then argues that although cities can act in the role of both environmental victim and villain, recognizing them in constitutions would help address important environmental problems in both situations. Both situations also support constitutionalizing intergovernmental coordination mechanisms that can adapt to changing circumstances—in other words, action on stage that unfolds using dialogues and improvisation, rather than the ‘constitutional soliloquys’ of exclusive powers and rigid constitutional formulations. Finally, the chapter explores factors relevant to the casting call—determining what counts as a city for the purposes of an environmentally informed constitutional narrative.