TITLE:
Managing the Urban Environment of San Juan, Puerto Rico
AUTHORS:
David J. Edelman
KEYWORDS:
Urban Environment, Environmental Problems of Developing Countries, Sustainable Development
JOURNAL NAME:
Current Urban Studies,
Vol.14 No.2,
April
28,
2026
ABSTRACT: This article, Managing the Urban Environment of San Juan, Puerto Rico, is the twelfth in a series of books that focus on the practice of Urban Environmental Management (UEM) in developing countries, which both face more immediate, critical problems than the developed world and have fewer resources to deal with them in a comprehensive manner. Previous studies have proposed environmental plans for Mysore, India, Lagos, Nigeria, Manila, the Philippines, Lima, Peru, Santo Domingo, the Dominican Republic, Jakarta, Indonesia, Istanbul, Turkey, Bangkok, Thailand, Casablanca, Morocco, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, and Dhaka, Bangladesh (Edelman, 2025). In the wake of the HABITAT III Conference ln Quito, Ecuador in 2016, these studies contribute directly to understanding the urban environmental challenges inherent in achieving the objectives of the conference’s final document, The Quito Declaration on Sustainable Cities and Human Settlements for all (HABITAT, 2016). This article’s objective, then, is to enable graduate students to study the issues faced by San Juan as it attempts to develop an environmental plan using published data sources. The sectors covered are poverty alleviation, industry, energy, transport, water, wastewater/solid waste and finance. San Juan has implemented a comprehensive suite of environmental policies, noted here, aimed at addressing climate change, enhancing sustainability, and protecting its natural ecosystems. Some of these are locally initiated and, others are the result of the city taking advantage of its Commonwealth status to access Federal programs.