Little urban ecological research has been done in South Africa. The papers in the Ecology and Society special feature Urban Ecological and Social-Ecological Research in the City of Cape Town make, therefore, an important contribution to the development of urban ecology locally and globally. Different approaches have been used in the study of urban ecology of different urban areas in South Afric...

While sanitation is fundamental for health and wellbeing, cities of all sizes face growing challenges in providing safe, affordable and functional sanitation systems that are also sustainable. Factors such as limited political will, inadequate technical, financial and institutional capacities and failure to integrate safe sanitation systems into broader urban development have led to a persisten...

Our modern society is filled with stressful stimuli that impact our daily lives, and lead to problems that eventually threaten our mental and psychological wellbeing. Expanding urban life and urbanizing people's interactions have drastically increased and resulted in more stressful circumstances. Unfortunately, the role of nature and nature-based design in our urban societies as an alternative ...

Indian society divided along the lines of Caste is a unique case for the study of exclusion. Caste based divisions and consequent exclusion has a significant impact on human well being in India. Even after significant restructuring of living spaces and social equations in the form of urbanisation, exclusion is implicit in Indian cities. It manifest in the form of social and spatial exclusion in...

Space and society are clearly interrelated in such a way that conceiving of the former without the latter as well as understanding society without its spatial components is impossible. Public urban spaces provide the grounds for citizens' social interactions and communication. More importantly, active presence of people in these areas promotes levels of social interaction, sense of cooperation ...

A reliable urban transport system provides citizens’ access to workplaces, social engagements and other services (Browne and Ryan, 2011). At the same time, high levels of traffic impose negative externalities on society, including congestion, accidents, noise pollution or environmental damage (Santos et al., 2010). Decision-makers objectives are made up of a variety of different impacts (econom...

Objectives. Park planning and development in the Los Angeles metropolitan area offer an opportunity to explore the assertion that ‘‘Western cities are now being managed, organized and governed in different ways’’ leading to a ‘‘new urban politics,’’ and the suggestion that urban regime theory captures cultural and civil societal influences and organizations in its descriptions of coalitions and...

Anthropogenic landscapes provide opportunities for ecologists to deliberately and intentionally design urban food webs. Ecologists working as full, collaborative partners with designers can construct functional food webs for urban environments that benefit society. As a first step, ecologists can learn to partner with designers by translating ecological knowledge at scales relevant to design st...

How is the organisational structure of urban environmental stewardship groups related to the diverse ways that civic stewardship is taking place in urban settings? The findings of the limited number of studies that have explored the organisational structure of civic environmentalism are combined with the research on civic stewardship to answer this question. By bridging these relatively disconn...