Urban Landscape Ecology: Past, Present, and Future

Cities are home to more than half of the world population. Cities have been the centers of economic and social developments, as well as sources of many major environmental problems. Cities are created and maintained by the most intense form of human-nature interactions. Cities are spatially extended, complex adaptive systems—which we call landscapes. The future of humanity will increasingly rely on cities, and the future of landscape ecology will inevitably be more urban. To meet the grand challenge of our time—sustainability—cities must be made sustainable and, to this end, landscape ecology has much to offer. In this chapter, we discuss the intellectual roots and recent development of urban landscape ecology and propose a framework for helping move it forward. This framework integrates perspectives and approaches from landscape ecology, urban ecology, sustainability science, and resilience theory.