The use of the metabolism concept, expanded to include aspects of livability, is applied to cities to demonstrate the practical meaning of sustainability. Its application in industrial ecology, urban ecology, urban demonstration projects, business plans and city comparisons are used to illustrate its potential. # 1999 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.

Urban Ecology has come to the forefront of ecological studies in an attempt to further understand what patterns of biodiversity are present within urban environments. Urban Ecology looks to use the many principles of ecology and apply them to the ever expanding cityscape to understand the roles the physical environment in urban landscapes play on species assemblages (Pickett et al. 2008). Citie...

An ecosystem is traditionally defined as a community of organisms functioning as an ecological unit in nature. Ecologists often study sites as far away from human influence as possible to get closer to nature. Likewise, when urban educators teach ecology, they often take their students outside the cities to study nature's ecosystems. However, leaving the city limits may no longer be necessary a...

Jordi López-Pujol1, Hua-Feng Wang2 and Zhi-Yong Zhang3 1BioC-GReB, Botanic Institute of Barcelona (CSIC-ICUB), Barcelona, Catalonia 2Beijing Urban Ecosystem Research Station, State Key Laboratory of Urban and Regional Ecology, Research Center for Eco-Environmental Sciences, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 3Laboratory of Subtropical Biodiversity, Jiangxi Agricultural University, Nanchang, J...

Introduction: Climate change and urbanization have been shown to alter plant phenology. However, a mechanistic understanding of these changes in flowering phenology and associated pollinator communities is lacking. Thus, this study was designed to examine finer scale flowering phenological patterns and driving processes in an arid urban ecosystem. Specifically, we tested the effect of water ava...

This article provides an overview on different types of managing interdisciplinary knowledge integration in environmental urban research projects: 1. "synthesis-then", 2. "synthesis-online", 3. "synthesis-first", 4. "synthesis-as contracted". We present two projects in the context of urban ecology, in order to discuss two types of integration management in more detail. In the "synthesis-first" ...

this study investigates the application of landscape ecology in planning and design of urban ecological systems. the ecological approach to landscape planning and the concepts of designing and implementing ecological systems have gained increasing attention in the last two decades. however, the ecological systems of urban environment need more research to consider built and natural patches and ...

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...

Urbanization is one of the great challenges of our time and unchecked haphazard urbanization is a serious threat both to the environment and social and economic balance. In order to meet global sustainability targets, rapid urban growth must be channelled into environmentally friendly, sustainable and liveable urban environments. Thus, this special issue focuses on sustainable urban design whic...