Understanding Urban Ecology: An Interdisciplinary Systems Approach

Description

Over half of the world’s population now lives in urban areas. Few who live in cities understand that cities, too, are ecosystems, as beholden to the laws and principles of ecology as are natural ecosystems. Understanding Urban Ecology: An Interdisciplinary Systems Approach introduces students at the college undergraduate level, or those in advanced-standing college credit high school courses, to cities as ecosystems. For graduate students it provides an overview and rich literature base. Urban planners, educators, and decision makers can use this book to help in designing a more sustainable or “green” future. The authors use a systems approach to explore the complexity and interactions of different components of a city’s ecology with an emphasis on the energy and materials required to maintain such concentrated centers of human activity and consumption. The book is written by seventeen specialized contributors and includes ten accompanying detailed field exercises to promote hands-on experience, observation, and quantification of urban ecosystem structure and function.The chapters describe one by one the different subsystems of the urban environment, their individual components and functions, and the interactions among them that create the social-ecological environments in which we live. The book’s emphasis on social-ecological metabolism provides students with the knowledge and methods needed to evaluate proposed policies for urban sustainability in terms of ecosystem capacity, potential positive and negative feedbacks, the laws of thermo-dynamics, and socio-cultural perception and adaptability. Front Matter ....Pages i-xxii Front Matter ....Pages 1-1 What Is Urban Ecology and Why Should We Study It? (Myrna H. P. Hall)....Pages 3-25 Urban Ecology from a Biophysical and Systems Perspective (Charles A. S. Hall)....Pages 27-57 Social Processes, Urban Ecosystems, and Sustainability (Richard C. Smardon)....Pages 59-82 Front Matter ....Pages 83-83 Scale and Metabolism in Ancient Cities (Joseph Tainter)....Pages 85-99 Economy and Development in Modern Cities (Kent Klitgaard)....Pages 101-116 Front Matter ....Pages 117-117 The Urban Hydrological System (Ning Sun, Karin E. Limburg, Bongghi Hong)....Pages 119-136 The Climate System (Gordon M. Heisler, Anthony J. Brazel)....Pages 137-173 The Atmospheric System: Air Quality and Greenhouse Gases (David J. Nowak)....Pages 175-199 Nutrient Biogeochemistry of Urban Systems (Dennis P. Swaney)....Pages 201-218 Material Cycles (Brandon K. Winfrey, Patrick Kangas)....Pages 219-237 The Biological System: Plants in the Urban Environment (Myrna H. P. Hall)....Pages 239-268 The Biological System—Urban Wildlife, Adaptation, and Evolution: Urbanization as a Driver of Contemporary Evolution in Gray Squirrels (Sciurus carolinensis) (James P. Gibbs, Matthew F. Buff, Bradley J. Cosentino)....Pages 269-286 Environmental Justice in the Urban Environment (Myrna H. P. Hall, Stephen B. Balogh)....Pages 287-303 Front Matter ....Pages 305-305 Urban Food Systems (Stephen B. Balogh)....Pages 307-320 Urban Design Toward More Holistic Systems: Improving Discipline Integration and Sustainability Evaluation (Stewart A. W. Diemont, Timothy R. Toland)....Pages 321-345 Epilogue (Stephen B. Balogh)....Pages 347-354 Back Matter ....Pages 355-360