Urban Ecology

by Young,Robert F.

• ISBN13: 9780415331036
• ISBN10: 041533103X
• Edition: 1st
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2018-05-13
• Publisher: Routledge

Summary

The explosion of human population and the growing pressure on the global environment has created worldwide concern over the future sustainability of human communities and the ecosystems upon which they depend. The unprecedented concentration of this rising population in the world's cities has yielded both a renewed interest and exciting advancements in urban ecology and green city planning. Urban Ecologyexamines how innovations in archeology, urban history, urban and landscape ecology, and environmental city planning and design present a new narrative about the relationship between human communities and their ecosystems. The book then follows the science and perspectives pioneered by early ecologists, such as the Chicago School in Human Ecology, and early urban environmental planners, such as Patrick Geddes and Fredrick Law Olmsted, and their reinvigoration and expansion in the work of contemporary urban ecologists and "green city" planners and designers. Examples of this evolution arereflected in case studies of current day efforts such as the Long Term Ecological Research project and the European Commission's Urban Agenda in the European Union. Urban ecologybrings together a unique, interdisciplinary approach to the origins and trajectory of the fields of urban and landscape ecology and environmental city planning and design. In doing so it illuminates the parallel genesis and development of these fields toward the context of a common set of goals and language. Such integration has been called for repeatedly in the urban environmental literature yet to date no text has provided such a context.