The place of space in the population/environment equation

Abstract

The literature still ignores the importance of space in interactions among population, development, and environment. In other words, it responds poorly to the advantages of different patterns of demographic distribution for sustainability. The concepts of weight capacity, ecological traces and environmental space are useful for generating environmental awareness, but not for distinguishing the relative merit of different forms of occupation of space for sustainability. The concept of the “sustainable use of space” is offered here as a very practical tool for focusing on this issue. The reasoning that the distribution of the population in space affects sustainability is exemplified in the case of urban concentration.