This book focuses on the rural and urban environments, and the wide-ranging representations of various players' interacting activities that preserve or destroy these environments. The key issues contemporary to the rural and urban communities include appropriate overall environmental governance involving collaboration and competition among different actors, preservation or creation of a rich and lively living environment, and a search for ways to ensure the inheritance of our greatest assets for following generations. This volume presents current key academic findings, while also considering interactions between humans and nature, such as local resource management through the commons, and rural-urban interdependence.