66 Economic dimensions and socio-cultural patterns
primary linkage areas. In this example, four of the outside linkage landscapes
are distant and six are in the urban region. The approach also highlights a next
spatially explicit step in footprint analysis.
In public policy terms, ecological footprint analysis has mainly been used
as shock treatment, to alert people to their consumption or over-consumption
patterns in market-growth and other economies, and to highlight consumption
disparities among different peoples and areas. It has provided an easily mea-
surable quantitative method, which is useful to the public and somewhat rig-
orously confirms generally familiar patterns. Making footprint analysis spatial
within a city or culture or region (Costanza2000,Lucket al.2001)offerspromise
forpolicy recommendations. For example, comparing the footprint of suburban
residents with and without transit-oriented development could help highlight
the relative value of TOD. Comparing the conversion of a community from oil-
tocoal-generated power, or vice versa, would be indicative. Multivariate com-
parisons of populations with different consumption habits and resource uses,
analogous to public health studies, could lead to useful policy changes.
Finally, through whichever economic lenses one looks, the urban region is
arapidly changing powerhouse tightly entwining the big population with the
finite land around. In the face of rapid outward urbanization, natural-resource
loss, and widespread environmental degradation, an altered economic approach
appears to be important and available. Combining growth and regulatory eco-
nomics with ecological economics for resources and the environment offers a
promising approach. Spatial arrangement also appears to be central to economic
solutions for natural systems and their uses in urban regions.Social patterns
While social and economic patterns broadly overlap, it is useful to sep-
arate the social dimensions, since they are also tightly linked to environmental
patterns. For example, mudslide and flood-prone areas in cities attract squat-
tersettlements and limit the types of social interactions and the quality of
life therein. An expanding residential neighborhood of large houses and house
lots focused around schools and shopping malls effectively destroys a productive
agricultural or large natural area. It also consumes a huge amount of energy, pro-
duces greenhouse gases accordingly, and degrades water bodies, aquatic ecosys-
tems, and fish populations. Based on such examples, both poverty and wealth
degrade nature, and therefore our future.
Social patternsfocus on groups of people, their interactions, and their spatial
and organizational arrangements, obviously key factors in understanding urban
regions and uses of natural systems. Also important from a different perspective