urban ecology essay

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Urban Ecology: where the wild meets the city

This is a Guest Post written by PLOS ONE Academic Editor Christopher Lepczyk

Urban ecosystems are expanding around the world as people migrate to cities and the human population continues to grow. What happens to other species as these urban ecosystems expand, and how species live and interact in established urban ecosystems, is the central focus of urban ecology. Over the past two decades, urban ecology has rapidly expanded from simple studies evaluating what types of species are present in urban ecosystems to complex investigations of the characteristics that allow species to thrive in urban environments. In a recent PLOS Collection , curated by PLOS ONE Academic Editor Christopher Lepczyk and PLOS ONE staff editors, we highlight the diversity of recent urban ecology research published in PLOS ONE .

Today, urban ecology covers a vast array of questions and topics that are helping to shape our understanding of both people and human society. For instance, a large area of research focuses on how urbanization affects basic patterns of urban wildlife in time and space In this vein, Hung and colleagues demonstrate how urbanization fragments bee habitat and what that means for bee diversity through the seasons. Because of such fragmentation effects on species, there has been increased attention at whether conservation-conscious urban planning should prioritize expansion or densification of cities, as discussed by Wolff and co-workers . Not only has the focus been on how to grow cities, but how to co-ordinate this growth with a better understanding of future uncertainties ( Troupin and Carmel ) and in the face of climate change ( Scheuer and colleagues ).

Another area of exciting research has focused on how urbanization affects basic aspects of species’ biology. For instance, Owens and colleagues describe how artificial light affects fireflies and demonstrate the mechanisms by which they attune their behavior to urban environments. Similarly, Lahr and co-workers found notable differences in the physiology of red maples depending on whether they were of urban or non-urban ancestry, with important repercussions for urban tree management.

Species interactions are likewise affected by urbanization, such as how coyotes ( Canis latrans ) and red foxes ( Vulpes vulpes ) coexist in urban areas ( Mueller and colleagues ). Similarly, how wildlife diseases are operating and changing in and around urban ecosystems is nicely described by Lewis and co-authors in the context of cat species (felids). In fact, the merging of urban and disease ecology is of critical importance to both human and wildlife health.

An important aspect of urban ecology focuses on the negative impacts of urbanization on species. For instance, Sumasgutner and colleagues show how poor diet quality of urban Eurasian kestrels ( Falco tinnunculus ) negatively affects their reproduction and health. Along similar lines, Dale and Frank show how warming and drought in cities favor invasive species to the detriment of urban trees. Finally, evaluating how to mitigate the negative consequences of urbanization on species is nicely illustrated by Pena and co-workers in their study of how street trees help alleviate pressures on urban birds.

A final area of importance to both urban ecology- and biodiversity research overall- is how people interact with and perceive species in urban areas. For many people, urban wildlife plays a key role in shaping their views of nature as a whole. Hosaka and colleagues demonstrate how early experiences with species affect individuals’ perceptions of native and invasive species in Japan. Likewise, White and co-authors examine how environmental education programs in cities can aid in awareness and knowledge of urban wildlife. Bringing people into urban ecology is not simply about understanding how they interact with nature, but also in actually engaging them as urban ecologists, as exemplified in a study by Scott and colleagues that uses citizen scientists to collect data on urban carnivores.

Collectively, the studies in the urban ecology collection show an exciting range of research and the increasing importance of the field for basic and applied ecological knowledge. Moreover, these studies indicate how important urban ecology is to conservation and management in city environments. While we have greatly increased our understanding of urban ecosystems, they remain an understudied type of system, and urban ecology provides many open avenues for future research.

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• Published: 25 August 2015

Ecologists embrace their urban side

• Daniel Cressey  

Nature volume  524 ,  pages 399–400 ( 2015 ) Cite this article

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• Conferences and meetings
• Environmental sciences

Climate change and the rise of cities have broadened what it means to study ecosystems.

Baltimore, Maryland

A concrete megalith overshadowed by skyscrapers and surrounded by roads that roar with traffic, the convention centre in downtown Baltimore may seem an inappropriate setting for an ecology conference. But the resolutely urban backdrop for the annual meeting of the Ecological Society of America (ESA) is a fitting symbol of the growing acceptance of, and interest in, ‘urban ecology’ — the study of cities and the organisms that dwell in them as ecosystems.

“In the past 10 years, it’s really become more mainstream. People’s reactions have shifted from ‘What’s that?’ or ‘Why do you do that?’ to ‘Oh, cool’,” says Laura Martin, a historian and urban ecologist at the Harvard University Center for the Environment in Cambridge, Massachusetts. She presented work at this year’s centennial meeting (which ran on 9–14 August) showing that orange jewel­weeds ( Impatiens capensis ) in Manhattan and other urban settings are evolving defences to incursions of certain deer that eat them ( L. J. Martin et al. J. Ecol. 103, 243–249; 2015 ).

Martin is part of a team that called at the 2010 ESA meeting for more researchers to resist ecology’s traditional bias towards pristine ecosystems .

This now seems to be happening. The sheer number of presented papers relating to cities this year points to a “phenomenal” growth of urban ecology, says Wayne Zipperer of the US Department of Agriculture Forest Service, who studies the urbanization of ecosystems in Gainesville, Florida. He recalls an ESA conference in the early 1990s that had just one oral presentation and one poster on the sub-field — this year, there were around 450 presentations, posters and events that touched on urban issues, roughly 10% of the conference total. Among them: a study of people in New York City, in particular immigrants from China, who rely on fungi and street trees such as ginkgo, white oak and linden for foods and medicines; and research showing that urban streams are as microbially diverse as wild ones.

The rise in papers shows “the maturity of urban ecology”, says Mark McDonnell, director of the Australian Research Centre for Urban Ecology in Melbourne and editor of the new Journal of Urban Ecology , which started accepting submissions in March.

Urban ecologists attribute the swell of interest in their discipline to multiple factors, including the realization that human actions are warming the planet, that people are migrating to cities in increasing numbers and evidence that the study of urban ecosystems provides important and practical insights.

Standing room only for urban ecology? When does that happen?

One move in particular that spurred the field was the decision in 1997 by the US National Science Foundation (NSF) to include two cities — Baltimore and Phoenix, Arizona — in a group of more than 20 long-term ecological research (LTER) sites that it funds. The studies based on these sites “changed the way ecologists feel about working in urban situations”, says Steward Pickett, an urban ecologist at the Cary Institute of Ecosystem Studies in Millbrook, New York, and director of the Baltimore LTER site.

The studies are offering up results. Among many findings, the Baltimore Ecosystem Study showed that urban streams — historically considered useless dead zones — retain nitrogen run-off from fertilizers , providing a valuable ‘ecosystem service’ by preventing the nitrogen from reaching other water courses where it can spawn damaging algal blooms.

Such findings are becoming ever more important as both the absolute number of people and the proportion of the world’s population living in cities grows, and as cities seek resilience to the effects of climate change, said sustainability scientist Nancy Grimm to meeting attendees. In July, researchers including Grimm — who heads the Phoenix LTER project from Arizona State University in Tempe — launched the Urban Resilience to Extremes Sustainability Research Network , a US$12-million project funded by the NSF. The aim is to work out how cities can be designed to better withstand storms such as Hurricane Sandy, which hit New York in 2012, and Hurricane Katrina, which tore apart New Orleans in 2005. Such extreme weather events are predicted to become more frequent in future.

The behaviour of ecologists at the meeting suggests that they may already be converts. As one session started, Madhusudan Katti, an ecologist at California State University in Fresno, looked around as people continued to file into the overcrowded room. “Standing room only for urban ecology?” he said. “When does that happen?” Jon Christensen, a historian of science and the environment at the University of California, Los Angeles, detects another sign that a shift has occurred. “The city is no longer ‘the other’, the negative example contrasted with the pristine,” he says. “Urban ecology has arrived.”

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Related links, related links in nature research.

Society: Realizing China's urban dream 2014-May-07

City birds use cigarette butts to smoke out parasites 2012-Dec-05

The science of cities: Life in the concrete jungle 2012-Nov-20

Ecologists shun the urban jungle 2010-Jul-16

Nature special: Science and the city

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ESA Baltimore

Baltimore Ecosystem Study

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Cressey, D. Ecologists embrace their urban side. Nature 524 , 399–400 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1038/524399a

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Published : 25 August 2015

Issue Date : 27 August 2015

DOI : https://doi.org/10.1038/524399a

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Urban ecology emerged as a sub-discipline of ecology in the early 1970s due, in part, to the fact that human impacts on the planet were becoming well documented and the growing size of human settlements was resulting in serious environmental problems that threatened the health and wellbeing of both urban and non-urban dwellers around the world. Influenced by these events, coupled with the demise of the ‘balance of nature’ paradigm, ecologists have acknowledged that human settlements are legitimate subjects of ecological study. The creation of the UNESCO Man and the Biosphere Program (MAB) in 1974 and the establishment of two urban LTER programs by the US National Science Foundation in the late 1990s were instrumental in encouraging the study of the ecological and social components of urban ecosystems around the Globe. Urban ecology has evolved as a unique field of study through the integration of several disciplines that investigate the ecological and human dimensions of urban ecosystems. Urban ecologists can be engaged in basic (i.e., fundamental) research focused on understanding the structure and function of urban environments, or they can be engaged in applied (i.e., practical) research that is focused on solving important environmental problems. The interdisciplinary field of urban ecology is at the forefront of creating the knowledge base, conceptual frameworks and tools that are crucial for building and maintaining sustainable and resilient cities and towns in the future.

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• PUBLICATIONS

Urban Ecology Essays: Part 1

• March 26, 2012

To function, a city must integrate the daily needs of its inhabitants, including mobility, space for work, housing, entertainment, and basic needs. The varying needs of populations in cities and towns means that any one area will necessarily have multiple uses. This differs from a rural area or farm, where the collection of human uses in an area may be fewer or even singular. The view along K Street (left) in Sacramento shows how one block tries to integrate multiple uses into a relatively small area. The city recently converted the street area to allow for both cars and light rail service. As a main commercial strip, K Street has many restaurants, theaters, and shops, exemplifying how cities must integrate multiple uses into small areas in order to support the diversity of activities required by citizens.

Within this fabric of infrastructure are collections of plants, animals, and organic materials beyond the concrete, brick, and plastic humans use for construction materials. Even though cities are considered to be human creations, they are bound to the natural environment. Cities are built upon soil and full of plants. Dynamic combinations of natural and human-built objects foster micro-habitats for all sorts of animals. Urban ecology seeks to understand the interactions between natural species, physical infrastructure, and the social processes that take place in a city.

Urban ecology might be most apparent in the parks that are found in most cities. These spaces create small havens for residents, where they can retreat to green spaces for recreation or relaxation. Some of the great urban parks in the U.S., including Central Park in New York City, Rock Creek Park in Washington, D.C., and Golden Gate Park in San Francisco, offer residents an enormous diversity of recreational opportunities. More broadly, however, urban ecology goes beyond promoting green spaces to study the ways in which urban design, social processes, geography, and resource flows influence the distribution and evolution of plant and animal species within an urban area.

Urban ecology also looks at the city as an ecosystem, considering more than species distribution. Plants and animals respond to resource availability, including water and nutrients. Urban ecology seeks to describe hydrologic, climatic, and geophysical processes in cities, and how urban processes and infrastructure influence such processes. As the planet continues to urbanize, this knowledge will be important for established cities in Europe and North America, booming cities in Asia, and bustling cities in Africa. Each city faces challenges within a unique set of ecological and social characteristics. The discipline of urban ecology can contribute to understanding planetary ecosystem dynamics.

Urban areas are often characterized by spatial differentiations in land use. As collections of regions or neighborhoods, a city can harbor incredible diversity within its borders. Some neighborhoods are predominantly residential, some commercial, and many neighborhoods are mixed. Areas of a city also vary by density, so that some areas have greater population and infrastructure density. Thus, within a city’s borders, density and land use alter along gradients that can be gradual or abrupt. For instance, a walk from east to west along L Street in Midtown Sacramento reveals a change from older, middle-density residential blocks, to low- and mid-rise mixed residential and commercial buildings, and finally to taller commercial buildings near the heart of the downtown business district.

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Kate Orff SCAPE New York: Monacelli Press, 2016

272 pages, $50.00

Toward a Manufestograph Manufestograph: this is how SCAPE playfully refers to its new book. Those familiar with landscape architecture and urban design today are no doubt already aware of the originality of this practice and would likely expect this book—part manual, part manifesto, and part monograph—to follow suit. The book’s ambition is nothing short of reconceiving urban landscape design as a form of activism. Informed by her experience practicing landscape architecture and urban design in the context of global crises affecting climate, water, food, and housing, Orff issues an urgent call-to-arms: “What is the agency of the urban designer?” she asks. “How do we not just make landscapes, buildings and public spaces, but make change ?” (7).

What follows is an innovatively structured, image rich, and convincingly argued design publication that leaves the reader energized and, more importantly, empowered. The book is organized into four chapters. The titles of the first three—“Revive,” “Cohabit,” and “Engage”—describe both the principles of and framework for the work contained therein; the final chapter, “Scale,” integrates each of the prior ones. All of the chapters are similarly structured. For example, “Cohabit” (which argues for the need to design for both human and non-human species) begins with a short essay articulating the theme, followed by its comprehensive examination as it manifests in one of SCAPE’s projects, presented through plan drawings, perspectival images, maps, and photographs (in this case, Oyster-tecture, the firm’s widely known and much discussed project to reintroduce oysters to Brooklyn’s Gowanus Canal, Red Hook, and Manhattan’s Governors Island). The chapter’s theme is then amplified through analyses of other projects, and brilliantly augmented and advanced through interviews with various experts, community members, and collaborators. Each chapter concludes with a brief essay, authored by a colleague, which theoretically contextualizes the theme more broadly within the discipline.

The question here becomes, how does the book achieve each of these format aspirations? Who is their audience, and most importantly, what agency might they have in realizing the book’s overarching ambition to catalyze change?

Manual: A ‘How-to’ Guide SCAPE regularly delivers “how-to” manuals as design products.  Urban Flyway: Bird Safe Building Guidelines  (a freely downloadable publication produced in conjunction with the New York City Audubon Society),  Safari 7  (a self-guided tour of wildlife along New York City’s number 7 subway line), and even  Glossary of Terms & Solutions for a Post-Petrochemical Culture  (an insert included in Orff and photographer Richard Misrach’s book  Petrochemical America)  provide useful instruction for those of us designers working in the Anthropocene. This book shares their ambition.

So how, precisely, does Toward an Urban Ecology  serve as a manual, and for whom? Although I can imagine a wide and varied audience for such a work, including designers and scientists, politicians and policy makers, developers and neighborhood advocates (as well as students of these respective disciplines), Orff explains that “The spatial and physical tools explored [in the book, and in the work, aspires to] help designers and citizen activists to conceptualize their local environment in new ways and inspire them to sustainably remake the built-natural world.” (7). In order to achieve this, the firm promises not simply to share the design strategies for or the products of the work (which it does, thoroughly, throughout the project documentation) but also to “highlight what happens behind the scenes” (7), presumably to make the design process understood and, one imagines, replicable. “Behind the scenes” unfolds largely, from what I can see, through images recording community engagement events (Oyster-tecture’s Fuzzy Rope Weaving Evening) and consensus building efforts (public education events held during the Rebuild by Design competition), as well as through the interviews with non-traditional experts who enable SCAPE’s novel work (a Watershed Steward, Aquaculture Teacher, Social Infrastructure Advocate, and Urban Diver).

As successful as these examples are, I find myself wanting a bit more information about “how to” get urban landscape projects done, from the teams of experts one needs to assemble, to innovative ways to collaborate, to the drawing types needed to communicate to a host of constituents, to the way public processes work. Many of the book’s full-spread images—a woman pointing an iPhone down a storm drain, divers looking at bi-valves, a group gathered around models of what appears to be the 7 train’s path—remain uncaptioned. Although powerful in their own right, these images might have been paired with short texts explaining to readers how what they saw fit within the overall process of working within a complex, urban ecological milieu.

Manifesto: Taking a Stance As a manifesto, the book advances a plea for all designers to take a stance in their work; not just an ecological one, as Orff’s mentor Kenneth Frampton urged years ago in his essay “Towards an Urban Landscape” (published in Columbia University’s Documents in 1994), but also an urban ecological stance, which SCAPE continually strives for in its projects. The title “Urban Ecology” is also the firm’s frame used to describe “the joint social and natural, systems-based interdependency [it] seeks to define and regenerate in [all of its projects]” (10). As most contemporaries will recognize, “urban” here moves beyond just the “city” to include networks of energy, food, infrastructure, and living systems that support human settlement, and “ecology” signals more than nonhuman relationships, to now describe interactions between all organisms (including people) and their constructed environments.

As important as the urban-ecological stance, Orff argues for an activist one, which she sees as essential to any endeavor to affect change. To position oneself to make change, she maintains, requires multiple actions, including forming coalitions, asking questions about stewardship, and developing time-based approaches to solutions. It would require what she describes as drawing “visually intuitive, deeply explanatory maps that integrate previously separated silos of information” (12) as well as defining a “new platform of multiparty engagement scaled according to the needs of diverse coalitions of partners” (13).

So how do these stances play out across the book’s pages? In “Revive” (which focuses on restoring both the use and memory of urban water systems), the urban-ecological stance is quite evident and compelling. The Town Branch Commons project introduces a new water-based public realm with deep ties to the city’s regional karst geology as a method for rethinking the public realm of downtown Lexington, Kentucky. The design proposes a series of “water windows” (pools, pockets, fountains, and filter gardens) that evoke and expose an underground stream. Inherent in the work, and the words that describe it, are two important ambitions. First is the (very optimistic) belief that uncovering and rebuilding the hydraulic properties of a region can not only improve water performance but “renew wonder and curiosity” (20) about how systems work, thereby generating a stance toward future, improved water projects. Second is a critique of more conventional urban water projects such as South Korea’s Cheonggyecheon River project (essentially a long, linear decorative fountain that serves as a veneer to the actual water systems of the city), which Orff suggests “represents a fantasy world” (21). Orff’s criticism is energizing, and, as a manifesto, the book could benefit from more of it.

What is abundantly present in these pages—seen through images and interviews and prose—however, is evidence of SCAPE’s effort to advance landscape architecture as a form of activism. It takes its activist stance most notably through the argument that “representation”—both as a drawing technique and as public engagement—plays an essential role in producing urban landscape. Orff’s Introduction suggests that the “primary task of the designer is to visualize landscape history and interconnectedness” (10), which requires new forms of drawing as a starting point for design. She refers to the firm’s use of the “thick, rendered, and heavily notated section” (11) as a means to convey the complexity of the city. Members of the practice believe that new ways of seeing and sharing information is essential to communicate and shape common purpose.

Here, Orff and her office colleagues certainly join a distinguished group of landscape architects who share similar interests, including Elizabeth Meyer, James Corner, Anuradha Mathur, Pierre Bélanger, and Alan Berger; each investigates the relationship between seeing, valuing, representing, and acting on landscape as living material, shifting systems, and political and logistical phenomena. As richly illustrated as the book’s projects are, I miss examples of the sorts of drawings to which Orff refers—the ones that gather and communicate the complexity of SCAPE’s sites and its work to the public. In its place, however, are vivid images in which the practice’s passionate stance on public engagement is clear. These images depict various publics being represented in the process of making urban landscapes—landscapes that are not simply for them, but by them.

Monograph: Sharing Work Out of all the genres to which this book aspires, perhaps “monograph”—in the conventional sense of a highly-detailed study of a specific field of inquiry, often focused on a single person—does the least justice to its contents. Although SCAPE’s built projects, installations, exhibitions, and speculative projects are thoroughly presented, the focus is on urban landscapes that have been collaboratively produced. This is their distinguishing characteristic. While the projects are both urban and ecological in the broadest sense, the practice excels at innovating community-based design. Landscape architecture has always been a field in which public process plays a key (if not always peaceful) role in the formation of urban landscapes. So any contemporary concern with public engagement and process is not, in and of itself, notable. Moreover, in the last ten years both the discipline and profession have increasingly been focused on engagement work characterized by constructing creative partnerships, relying on interdisciplinary expertise, and utilizing creative venues for doing work with communities. What sets SCAPE apart— as landscape entrepreneurs —is their tremendous emphasis on and capacity for advocacy. This is not only through new publication formats (such as this one), disciplinary alignments, and modes of dissemination, but also of new forms of public space. This is extremely important in a discipline that too often calls its work public but fails to reach its audience through contemporary venues and technologies.

Some might look at SCAPE’s monograph and feel slightly disappointed. When assessed through the lens of “appearance” (i.e., in the projects’ formal, spatial, and visual preoccupations) the built work seems less compelling. In this way, one could say the practice has proudly, and successfully, moved beyond “landscapes to look at” in service of producing “landscapes that work,” which has been the promise of landscape urbanism since its formal inception. In Orff’s case, landscape not only works, but works for you, and for us, and for the public good, and as an advocate for itself. I can think of no better future for the field.

As an adjective, the “Toward” of the book’s title refers less to “in the direction of” and more to “not long before.” In other words, Toward an Urban Ecology suggests that we hope to find ourselves, soon, within an ethos that embraces the complexities of today’s urban landscapes, where we act to design and build in sustainable and resilient ways. Through the innovative outreach strategies and how-to aspirations it articulates (manual), the activist stance it advances (manifesto), and the design work and writing it presents (monograph), SCAPE’s Manufestograph begins to address how we as a discipline can actually effect change. Of all the things this requires—design vision, enabling policies, strategic funding streams, creative partnerships, innovative maintenance strategies, feedback loops, new representation strategies—the most important message this book imparts is the tireless advocacy that change requires, and which SCAPE is able to model. I want to be doing this. We all should be doing this. SCAPE has got something important going. And we have to believe it will make a difference.

How to Cite this Article: Czerniak, Julia. Review of Toward an Urban Ecology , by Kate Orff.  JAE Online. September 27, 2017. https://jaeonline.org/issue-article/toward-urban-ecology/

The urban resource frontiers that sustain city life

By Kristian Karlo Saguin, author of Urban Ecologies on the Edge: Making Manila’s Resource Frontier

Cities around the world are learning to live with the challenges of increasing urban ecological precarity. In watery Manila, the metropolitan population of around 25 million is constantly exposed to the threats of monsoon rains and typhoons. Attempts to address the problem of urban flooding have historically relied on constructing a network of infrastructure that transfers risk across space and time, occasionally breaking down but always transforming lives and livelihoods in the process. Keeping the city dry requires relying on spaces beyond the city, which are expected to deliver vital resource such as food and water.

In Urban Ecologies on the Edge , I explore these conflicting fluid urbanisms in Manila through stories of resource flows and I show how the environmental trajectories of cities are tied to “urban resource frontiers.” The layered and intertwined urban socioecologies bring together natures, landscapes and peoples, and imaginaries, politics and materialities in finding geographic solutions to urban challenges.

The following passage is excerpted from pages 140-143 of Urban Ecologies on the Edge.           

A few months after one of the worst floods in its history struck Metro Manila in 2012, I paid a visit to the operations center of a flood control infrastructure that managed stormwater flows in the city. Anna, a state engineer, showed me a map of the stations that recorded water levels and pointed to the channel capacities of different streams within the hydrological network of Metro Manila. She explained the details of the complex hydrological design and the need for synchronizing flood control operations through infrastructural control from this particular site and a few others in the city. For the flood control infrastructure to work and keep the city dry, stormwater flows must be diverted away from the urban core and into Laguna Lake to its southeast, turning the large body of water into a temporary stormwater reservoir. This happened in 2012 when engineers had to close the floodgates to save Manila from the possibility of worse flash flooding after monsoon rains dumped near-record rainfall. During the time of this particular visit to the flood control operations center, Laguna Lake had already been flooded for ten weeks, and water levels that rose to double the lake’s volume would not return to average conditions until December, some two months later.                                                                  

Images of disrupted lives greeted me several kilometers southeast in the Laguna Lake village of Navotas, where up to a foot of lake water had invaded most homes weeks earlier. Lampitaws or outriggers plied the streets instead of the usual motorcycles, ferrying villagers who otherwise would have had to carefully wade through the near knee-high floodwater. Over a meal of adobong kanduli , Julie, my host, recounted how the floodwaters had risen slowly in her house a few weeks earlier and had stayed high since then. The turbid waters had cleared enough by then such that I could see a small school of tilapia fry swimming in her living room. She mentioned that she had lost her appetite from seeing her house flooded as she and her family tried to maintain a semblance of normal everyday life and resume making a living off the lake. The impact on their livelihood of the lake swelling caused by stormwater from elsewhere reminded lake dwellers of the urban infrastructural control of Laguna Lake. Over the succeeding weeks, fisherfolk groups routinely called for the opening of floodgates downstream, which they believed were responsible for the extended lake swelling, as these prevented the outflow of water to Manila Bay.                                                          

These contemporary encounters revealed an aspect of the imaginaries of an urban frontier and the ecological work such spaces are expected to perform. Socioecological risk takes place as a result: risk is spatialized and territorialized through material flows from the city and the construction of Laguna Lake as a particular type of space in relation to the city. Urban flood disasters have erupted with increasing frequency, especially between the years 2009 and 2013. But the production of urban flood risk has deeper historical roots, stretching back decades to colonial Philippines, and intertwines the city and the lake through flood control infrastructure and flows.                                                               

As Anna, the city engineer, had shown me, understanding flood risk in Manila must be situated within the context of the hydrological spaces and engineering interventions in the city and beyond, as well as the bureaucratic work and infrastructural politics associated with which sites would get flooded, by how much, and why. Julie and her flooded village illustrate the implications of urban risk for everyday lives and livelihood already transformed by other urban metabolic relations. The physical transfer of flows intersects with patterns of vulnerability shaped by past modern interventions in the lake such as aquaculture.

Manila’s network of flood control infrastructure was constructed with the modern aim of efficiently draining the city of stormwater and wastewater. Despite shifting governance contexts, flood control remained a crucial component of Manila’s urban modernity and the promise of accumulation. Similar to the modern networked infrastructural ideal, state knowledge recognized the need to expand the network of flood control beyond the city to account for the scale and scope of urban hydrology, making the urban drainage frontier legible by tracing both the upstream origins of floodwaters and possible spaces where they could be redirected. The land- mark monsoon floods of 2012 and the years before and after demonstrated the breakdown of this infrastructural ideal and the limits of its design. The politics of infrastructure resurfaced and laid bare the urban metabolic connections that shape city and frontier lives.

TAGS: #AAG2024 , 9780520382664 , cities , environmental , flooding , Manila , Philippines , Urban Ecologies on the Edge , urban ecology , urban sociology

CATEGORIES: Asian Studies , Environmental Studies , From Our Authors , Geography , Sociology

About the Author

Kristian Karlo Saguin 

is Associate Professor of Geography at the University of the Philippines.

Rethinking How We Think About Urban Ecosystems

April 9, 2024

As the world continues to rapidly urbanize, in a few decades we will find ourselves inhabiting a “planet of cities” that are larger and more complex than ever before. How to better plan and develop cities so that they truly meet the needs of diverse populations, at the same time minimizing their impact on the environment, is therefore crucial and urgent. In a recent paper, E&E Professor Luis Bettencourt explores how we can work towards these goals with new conceptual and analytical tools, using science-based approaches to make cities more livable and sustainable.

In a paper entitled “Emerging Scientific Frameworks and Tools for Sustainable Cities” , published recently in the International Journal on Smart and Sustainable Cities , Professor Bettencourt examines the “uneasy discipline” of urban planning, which in the past has often offered utopian visions of cities based on simplistic concepts rather than “empirical realities of existing and past cities”. He highlights a new way of thinking about urban improvement that begins with a scientific attitude towards cities and a better understanding of their underlying processes. To this end, he examines two analytical tools: the ego-network of functions for person-centric city design, and the circular diagram of urban material flows for more circular economies and sustainable cities.

The ego-network of functions visualizes the accessibility of all the functions that fulfill a person’s needs. Reflecting the heterogeneity of cities, agents at the center of the network can be changed to “provide a diversity of tests on urban equity and livability.” The cumulative data can inform urban planners where public intervention is necessary to improve the quality/quantity of functions to better serve the varied needs of urban populations.

A circularity diagram of urban material flows visualizes a city’s intake of energy and materials and output of waste or carbon and environmental impact. It shows the network processes involved in creating circular urban economies and achieving sustainability. The agent at the center of the diagram can be a city, but could also be a household, a firm, or even a neighborhood community. The point is to have an analytical tool for material and energy flows that can be performed around any city, with the ultimate goal of containing such flows more locally to create more sustainable cities that “do not degrade external ecosystems as sources of materials or change the Earth’s atmosphere as a sink for pollutants, such as CO2.”

The thinking behind such tools reflects a new mindset in considering cities and how to make them better. Namely it calls for a scientific approach to all the data that is available from cities around the world, building up knowledge over time that contribute to methods and analytical tools to help create more livable, equitable, and sustainable cities for the future. As the paper concludes, this “analytical approach supports a practice of planning that must become rich in evidence, driven by hypotheses, and subject to empirical testing, bringing the logic of science and the ability to learn cumulatively to urban practice in a way that has so far been uncommon.”

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Urban Ecology

Urban spaces are complex as a result of their socionatural relations and histories, which are shaped by both physical and social processes. The complexity necessitates theoretical frameworks that can demonstrate how urban socionatural outcomes result from the combination of social actions and physical surroundings. Henri Lefebvre suggests,

This essay may be found on page 192 of the printed volume.

Making Green Cities pp 401–422 Cite as

Urban Greening as a Response to Societal Challenges. Toward Biophilic Megacities (Case Studies of Saint Petersburg and Moscow, Russia)

• Diana Dushkova 8 ,
• Maria Ignatieva 9 &
• Irina Melnichuk 10  
• First Online: 17 March 2023

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Part of the book series: Cities and Nature ((CITIES))

The population density in megacities is continuously increasing, resulting in a reduction of green spaces and a deterioration in the urban environment quality. Urban green is often being replaced by parking places, shopping centers, and service enterprises. This chapter examines the efforts of two megacities in Russia—Moscow and Saint Petersburg—to organize sustainable greening solutions for their residential areas using new achievements in landscape design theory and practice, such as the concept of the biophilic city. The chapter analyzes the history of greening strategies and discusses the concept of urban green infrastructure and its implementation in both Russian megacities. The chapter presents an assessment of the current state of urban green spaces and the most recent master plans and how these cities are facing and responding to modern societal challenges. The results of an analytical review of the most successful urban greening projects in Moscow and Saint Petersburg are presented as well. The economic and climatic features of the urban green areas and their architectural and planning features are considered, along with strategies for further development of the urban green spaces in both cities, aiming to address the new principles of biophilic cities.

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Acknowledgements

This work was supported by the Russian Foundation for Basic Research (RFBR) project “Mathematical-cartographic assessment of medico-ecological situation in cities of European Russia for their integrated ecological characteristics” (2018–2020) under Grant number No 18-05-406 00236/18 and by the Horizon 2020 Framework Program of the European Union project “Connecting Nature” under Grant Agreement No 730222.

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Dushkova, D., Ignatieva, M., Melnichuk, I. (2023). Urban Greening as a Response to Societal Challenges. Toward Biophilic Megacities (Case Studies of Saint Petersburg and Moscow, Russia). In: Breuste, J., Artmann, M., Ioja, C., Qureshi, S. (eds) Making Green Cities. Cities and Nature. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-73089-5_25

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UNIT 3: The Formal Argument: Ecological Voices and Changemakers

The Formal Argument: Ecological Voices and Changemakers

Ana Zalyubovskiy

This unit introduces some of the critical voices and ideas surrounding Ecology of Place . The list of readings is, for the sake of brevity, limited: there are many, many significant voices writing and speaking about biodiversity and ecological issues. Readings presented here will spur students to explore, choose an individual topic and question at issue for a research-based argumentative essay, read and research about it, and limit the scope enough to be able to present an in-depth discussion of their chosen facet of the argument. Students are invited to browse through the categories and titles to see which ones pique their interest or bring up a question: Is there a topic here that relates to your major in some way? Have you touched on related ideas in another class that you would like to follow up on? Have you experienced a place that has a serious ecological problem? A great goal is to find a topic you can feel passionate about.

The unit includes a 12-category selection of Ecology of Place issues with links to corresponding articles and other media forms. Many texts overlap categories.

Key to Topic Category Abbreviations

ANI: animals; CLI : climate crisis; DEF: deforestation; EA : ecological attitudes; ECON : economics; ENJU: environmental justice;  INDIG: indigenous peoples;                KNOW: knowledge; LAND: land use; REG : regulations; RIGH: the rights of nature; URB : urban ecology.

Unit 3.1 Readings: Ecological Attitudes, Economics and Regulations

CLI-DEF-EA-ECON-LAND-URB

Coady, Theresa. “Rebuilding Earth’s Forest Corridors: Renewing Connections Above and Below.” kosmosjournal.org, Excerpted from Rebuilding Earth: Designing Ecoconscious Habitats for Humans , North Atlantic Books, 2020.

CLI-ECON-REG

“Debunking Science Denialism.” Editorial, Nature Human Behavior, 3 , 887. June 24, 2019. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41562-019-0746-8

Elgin, Duane. “Great Transition Stories for Becoming a Global Eco-Civilization.” duaneelgin.com, Great Transition Stories , greattransitionstories.org, August 5, 2014.

EA-ECON-CLI-REG

Felber, Christian. “Economy for the Common Good.” RSA (Royal Society for Arts, Manufactures and Commence). YouTube. Aug. 18, 2016. (27:03 minutes)

EA-INDIG-LAND-REG

Hardin, Garrett. “The Tragedy of the Commons.” AAAS Science , sciencemag.org, Pp. 1243-1248, Dec. 13, 1968.

EA-ECON-INDIG-REG-URB

Korten, David. “The New Economy: A Living Earth System Model.” davidkorten.org, The Next System Project, pp. 1-15.

CLI-EA-RIGH

Margil, Mari. “Advancing Change in a Time of Disruption: Forging a New Pathway for Nature.” Common Dreams commondreams.com April 1, 2020

CLI-EA-LAND-REG-URB

McDonough, William. “Cradle to Cradle Design.” TED, ted.com, Feb. 2005. (Video: 20:05 min)

CLI-ECON-REG-URB

Newburger, Emma. “Trump is Rolling Back over 80 Environmental Regulations. Here Are Five Big Changes You Might Have Missed in 2019.” CNBC, cnbc.com, 3 Jan. 2020.

CLI-EA-ECON-INDIG-KNOW

Norberg-Hodge, Helena . “What Indigenous Wisdom Can Teach Us about Economics: Strengthening Local Economies.” #CuraDa Terra essay series, Kosmos Journal , kosmosjournal.org, Fall 2020.

CLI-ECON-REG-LAND-URB

Omkuti, Jessica.. “Climate Adaptation Finance is Ineffective and must be More Transparent.” The Conversation, theconversation.com, 13 May 2021.

Robbins, Jim. “Ecopsychology: How Immersion in Nature Benefits Your Health.” Yale University, yels.edu, 9 Jan. 2020.

Rowland-Shea, Jenny and Mary Ellen Kustin. “A 13.5 Million Acre Lie.” Center for American Progress, 20 March 2019.

ECON-CLI-EA-REG

Sadasivam, Naveena. “Regulating While Sheltering.” Grist , grist.org, 14 Apr. 2020.

CLI-EA-ECON-LAND

Shiva, Vandana. “Big Data Doesn’t Add Up–Except to Disaster.” Resurgence & Ecologist, Issue 305: Light in the Dark Days, resurgence.org, November/December 2017 .

ECON-EA-LAND-KNOW-INDIG

Todd, John. “The Ecological Design Revolution” Bioneers, bioneers.org, 12 19 2014. (Video: 23:24)

Unit 3.2 Readings: Climate CRISIS, Deforestation, Animals and the Rights of Nature

CLI-DEF-REG-EA

Carrington, Damian, Paul Torpey, and Paul Scruton.  “The Climate Crisis Explained in 10 Charts.” 4 November, 2022.

CLI-DEF-REG

Ceslo H.L. Silva, Jr. et al. “The Brazilian Amazon Deforestation Rate in 2020 Is the Greatest of the Decade.” Nature: Correspondence . nature.org, 21 Dec 2020.

RIGH-DEF-LAND-ANI

Chapron, Guillaume, Yaffa Epstein and José Vicente López-Bao. “A Rights Revolution for Nature.” Science. 14 Mar 2019, vol 363, Issue 6434, pp. 1392-1393.

DEF-CLI-REG-LAND-EA

Dellasala, Dominick A. et al. “Letters: Post-Fire Logging Debate Ignores Many Issues.” Commentary: Science , Nov 2006, 314(5796):51-2.

Evich, Helena Bottemiller. “I’m Standing Right Here in the Middle of Climate Change: How the USDA is Failing Farmers.” Politico , 15 Oct. 2019.

EA-ENJU-RIGH-LAND

Galeano, Eduardo. “Nature is not Mute.” IPS News, ipsnews.net, April 2008.

DEF-CLI-REG-LAND-EA-URB

Gramling, Carolyn. “Why Planting Tons of Trees Isn’t Enough to Solve Climate Change.” Science News , 9 July 2021.

ANI-CLI-EA-ECON

Jenson, Derrick. “Beyond Civilization.” Orion Magazine, orionmagazine.org, 11 December 2019.

CLI-EA-ENJU-LAND

Kolbert, Elizabeth. Excerpt from Field Notes from a Catastrophe: Man, Nature, and Climate Change. Bloomsbury, USA , 2006.

Herring, David. ““Isn’t There a Lot of Disagreement among Climate Scientists about Global Warming?” NOAA , 3 February 2020.

ANI-EA-ECON

Hall, Lee. “Hogwash! Or, How Animal Advocates Enable Corporate Spin.” Dissident Voice , dissidentvoice.org, 29 August 2007.

ANI-CLI-DEF-EA

Hilborn, Ray. “Keep Eating Fish: It’s the Best Way to Feed the World.”  OUPblog. Oxford University Press’s Academic Insights for the Thinking World, blogoup.com, May 31 2019.

EA-REG-RIGH

Levang, Emily. Can We Protect Nature by Giving it Rights? University of Minnesota., Environmental Institute: Ensia. 4 Fe b. 2020

Margil, Mari. “Nature and the Law.” Democracy: A Journal of Ideas, democracyjournal.org, 20 Dec. 2016.

ANI-CLI-DEF

MacGowan, Brian. “Harvesting Our Forests – The Wildlife Debate.” Department of Forestry & Natural Resources, Purdue University, 31 Jan. 2018.

CLI-ANI-RIGH-EA-REG-ECON

Monbiot, George.  “Stop Eating Fish. It’s the Only Way to Save the Life in Our Seas.” The Guardian , 9 May 2019. 

ANI-RIGH-EA-REG

Nelson, Michael Paul, et al. “Emotions and the Ethics of Consequence in Conservation Decisions: Lessons from Cecil the Lion.” Conservation Letters . Society for Conservation Biology. Jan. 28 2016. 

ANI-RIGH-EA-CLI

Reasor, Jamie K. “Ocean City.” 1997. (poem).

Robins, Becki. “To Save the Redwoods, Scientists Debate Burning and Logging.” Undark , 16 12 2019.

ANI-EA-RIGH

Safina, Carl. “What Animals Think and Feel.” Bioneers, 2014, Pp. 10-15.

Shah, Sonia. “Think Exotic Animals Are to Blame for the Coronavirus? Think Again.” The Nation , 18 Feb. 2020 .

CLI-EA-RIGH-REG-KNOW-ECON

Solnit, Rebecca. “If You Win the Popular Imagination, You Change the Game: Why We Need New Stories on Climate. The Guardian , 12, Jan 2023.

ANI-DEF-RIGH

Quammen, David. “Clone Your Troubles Away.” Harpers , February 2005.

Regan, Tom. “The Case for Animal Rights.” Excerpt from “A Case for Animal Rights.” In M.W. Fox & L.D. Mickley (Eds.), Advances in Animal Welfare Science, 1986/87 (pp. 179-189). Washington, DC: The Humane Society of the United States. The Humane Society Institute for Science and Policy Animal Studies Repository, 1986.

Weise, Mikaela and Elizabeth Dow Goldman. “We Lost a Football Pitch of Primary Rainforest every 6 Seconds in 2019.” World Resources Institute, wri.org, 2 June 2020.

Unit 3.3 Readings: Indigenous Peoples, Knowledge, Land Use and Environmental Justice, uRBAN ECOLOGY

ENJU-INDIG-KNOW-LAND-REG

Anderson, Terry L. “The Case for Transferring Federal Lands Back to Native Americans.” The Hill, 3 June 2020.

CLI-ENJU-LAND-INDIG

Baker, Janelle and Paulla Ebron, Rosa Ficek, Karen Ho, Renya Ramirez, Zoe Todd, Anna Tsing, Sarah E. Vaughn. “The Snarled Lines of Justice: Women Ecowarriors Map A New History Of The Anthropocene.” Orion Magazine , orionmagazine.org, 19 Nov. 2020.

ENJU-REG-LAND-URB

Beatley, Tim. “The Natureful City: Rediscovering Nature during a Pandemic.” Biophilic Cities Journal . Vol. 4 No.1, April 2021, Pp. 6-9.

ENJU-REG-URB

Berardelli, Jeff and Peggy Shepard. “Summer’s Social Unrest Highlights Environmental Racism in the U.S.” CBS News. July 17, 2020. (Video: 10:44 min.)

Bhat, Meera. “Opinion: For People Working to Protect Nature, Cities Can No Longer be an Afterthought.” Ensia , ensia.com, 14 Sept. 2018.

EA-ENJU-INDIG-REG-URB

Buford, Talia. “A Brief History of Environmental Justice.” ProPublica , 4 August 2017. (Video: 3:35 min)

URB- LAND- REG- ENJU

Lieber, John.  “Urban Ecology: A Bright Future for Sustainable Cities.” The Revelator. 14 Dec.  2018. 

ECON-ENJU-INDIG-LAND-REG

CLI-ENJU-INDIG-LAND-REG-URB

Isaacson, Walter. “‘Pollution is Segregated’ Says the Father of Environmental Justice.” PBS, Amanpor and Company , Interview with Robert Bullard, 3 March 2020. (Video: 17:43 min.)

ENJU-INDIG-LAND-REG

Koza, Fiona and Naolo Charles, Jennifer Beeman, Ingrid Waldron, Dayna Scott, Kristian Ferreira and Peter Wood.  “Canada’s Big Chances to Address Environmental Racism.” TheTyee.ca, 26 Nov 2020.

ENJU-KNOW-LAND-REG-URB

Lantham, Drew J.  “Nine New Revelations for the Black American Bird-Watcher.” Vanity Fair , 27 May 2020.

Lantham, Drew J.  “Nine Rules for the Woke Bird-Watcher.” Orion Magazine , 3 Dec. 2020.

ANI-CLI-EA-INDIG-KNOW-LAND

Nicholas, George. “Indigenous Intelligence: Diverse Solutions for the 21st Century, ‘When Scientists ‘Discover’ What Indigenous People Have Known For Centuries.” The Conversation, smithsonianmag.com, 21 February 2018.

CLI-EA-INDIG-KNOW-LAND-REG

Martinez, Dennis. “Indigenous Integrity.” Resurgence & Ecologist, resurgence.org, Issue 250, September/October 2008.

CLI-EA-ENJU-INDIG-KNOW-LAND-REG

“Indigenous People’s Collective Rights to Lands, Territories and Resources.” The United Nations Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues, un.org, 19 April 2018.

ENJU-EA-URB

Seamans, Georgia Silvera. “The Risks and Rewards of Being Black in Nature.” Medium. medium.com. August 21, 2020.

Ecology of Place Copyright © 2021 by Ana Zalyubovskiy is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License , except where otherwise noted.

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Moscow, like other international urban areas , is decentralizing, despite considerable barriers. The expansion will lead to even more decentralization, which is likely to lead to less time "stuck in traffic" and more comfortable lifestyles. Let's hope that Russia's urban development policies, along with its plans to restore population growth, will lead to higher household incomes and much improved economic performance.

Wendell Cox is a Visiting Professor, Conservatoire National des Arts et Metiers, Paris and the author of “ War on the Dream: How Anti-Sprawl Policy Threatens the Quality of Life ”

Note 1: The 23 ward (ku) area of Tokyo is the geography of the former city of Tokyo, which was abolished in the 1940s. There is considerable confusion about the geography of Tokyo. For example, the 23 ward area is a part of the prefecture of Tokyo, which is also called the Tokyo Metropolis, which has led some analysts to think of it as the Tokyo metropolitan area (labor market area). In fact, the Tokyo metropolitan area, variously defined, includes, at a minimum the prefectures of Tokyo, Kanagawa, Chiba and Saitama with some municipalities in Gunma, Ibaraki and Tochigi. The metropolitan area contains nearly three times the population of the "Tokyo Metropolis."

Note 2: The expansion area (556 square miles or 1,440 square kilometers) has a current population of 250,000.

Note 3: Includes all residents in suburban districts with at least part of their population in the urban area.

Note 4: Urban area data not yet available.

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Road in city area.

The roads and ways of the city areas are very clumsy and many accidents are happening due to the short road. But you need to maintain the driving properly otherwise you may face accident. So now the government decided to expand the road which may put the positive effect on automobile sector. I think it is a helpful service for the society people. If you have a BMW car and you have faced any problem then better to repair it at BMW Repair Spring, TX for the best service.

Transit & transportation

Transit and transportation services are quite impressive in most of the urban cities; therefore people were getting better benefits from suitable transportation service. Urban cities like Moscow, Washington, New York and Tokyo; we have found high margin of transportation system that helps to build a better communication network in these cities. I hope through the help of modern transportation system we are able to bring revolutionary change in automobile industries; in this above article we have also found the same concepts to develop transportation system. Mercedes repair in Torrance

Moscow is bursting Noblesse

Moscow is bursting Noblesse at the seams. The core city covers more than 420 square miles (1,090 kilometers), and has a population of approximately 11.5 million people. With 27,300 residents per square mile (10,500 per square kilometer), Moscow is one percent more dense than the bleach anime watch city of New York, though Moscow covers 30 percent more land. The 23 ward area of Tokyo (see Note) is at least a third more dense, though Moscow's land area is at least half again as large as Tokyo. All three core areas rely

Belgravia Villas is a new

Belgravia Villas is a new and upcoming cluster housing located in the Ang Mo Kio area, nested right in the Ang Mo Kio landed area. It is within a short drive to Little India, Orchard and city area. With expected completion in mid 2016, it comprises of 118 units in total with 100 units of terrace and 18 units of Semi-D. belgravia villas

Russians seeing the light while Western elites are bickering?

What an extremely interesting analysis - well done, Wendell.

It is also extremely interesting that the Russian leadership is reasonably pragmatic about urban form, in contrast to the "planners" of the post-rational West.

An acquaintance recently sent me an article from "The New Yorker", re Moscow's traffic problems.

The article "abstract" is HERE (but access to the full article requires subscription)

http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2010/08/02/100802fa_fact_gessen

One classic quote worth taking from it, is: "People will endure all manner of humiliation to keep driving".

I do find it odd that the "New Yorker" article author says nothing at all about the rail transit system Moscow had, on which everyone was obliged to travel, under Communism. It can't surely have vaporised into thin air?

Moscow is a classic illustration of just how outmoded rails are, and how important "automobility" is, when the auto supplants rails so rapidly than even when everybody did travel on rails up to a certain date, and the road network dates to that era, when nobody was allowed to own a car; an article written just 2 decades later does not even mention the rail transit system, other than to criticise the mayor for "failing to invest in a transit system".......!!!!!!!!

This is also a give-away of "The New Yorker's" inability to shake off the modern PC ideology on rails vs cars.

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