Advancing Urban Ecology toward a Science of Cities

Urban ecology: advancing science and society

www.frontiersinecology.org © The Ecological Society of America I proposing the ecosystem as an organizational framework, Tansley (1935) explicitly included the effects of humans. When asking, “Is man part of ‘nature’ or not?”, Tansley concluded that “human activity finds its proper place in ecology”. Nowhere is the human–nature interface more unmistakable than in urban ecosystems, and urban eco...

Sustainability science: the emerging paradigm and the ecology of cities

Humans are a true force of nature and human actions have taken their place alongside the biosphere, lithosphere, hydrosphere, and atmosphere as defining processes shaping the global landscape (Ellis & Haff, 2009). Much like forecasting the weather and trends in the economy, the interactions of humans and complex ecosystems (such as a food web in a tropical rainforest) are fraught with complexit...

Developing a science of infrastructure ecology for sustainable urban systems.

Systems Ming Xu,*,†,‡ Marc Weissburg, Joshua P. Newell,† and John C. Crittenden †School of Natural Resources and Environment, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, Michigan, United States ‡Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, Michigan, United States School of Biology, Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, Georgia, United States Center for Biolog...

Ecology of Child Well-being: Advancing the Science and the Science-practice Link

Expansion and Densification of Cities: Linking Urban Form to Urban Ecology

Despite much research on the ecological impacts of urbanization, we still do not know what development patterns are most effective in supporting ecological function. In particular, it is as yet unclear if compact urban forms are ecologically more favourable than dispersed forms. Using historical data from the city of Geneva in Switzerland, we present results on its growth from 1841 to 2005, or ...