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- Info
Urban Forestry and the Eco-City: Today and Tomorrow
| Author: |
Carreiro, M.M. and Zipperer, W.C. |
| Date: |
2008 |
| Periodical: |
Ecology, Planning and Management of Urban Forests: International |
| Abstract: |
In 1990, the Chicago Academy of Sciences held a conference on Sustainable Cities:Preserving and Restoring Urban Biodiversity, which lead to the publication of a book entitled The Ecological City (Platt et al., 1994). This symposium differed from others on cities at thattime by focusing principally on cities as habitats for biodiversity. The thrust of the symposium was that interactions between people and non-human biological entities in urban landscapes had not received much scientific attention and warranted increased ecological investigation. Morethan a decade later in Shanghai, the conference, International Meeting on Eco-Cities and Urban Forests, explored the role of urban forestry in creating more environmentally sound cities that enhance people's quality of life. During the interval between these two symposia, urban ecologyhas rapidly developed as an ecological discipline exploring the myriad elements that comprise an urban landscape. No longer are urban ecologists trying to convince the ecological communitythat urban landscapes are important and productive subjects for research, planners that ecological concepts need to be incorporated into urban design, and environmental managers that a multiplescale approach is needed to manage ecological goods and services and to restore habitats.However, this symposium also did reveal that implementation of these principles can be difficult for a variety of reasons, not the least of which is that we still do not understand the nuances ofthe political and socio-ecological interactions that affect the structure and function of urban landscapes and how they can be influenced to improve environmental conditions citywide (e.g.,Perkins et al., 2004). |
| View: |
Urban Forestry and Eco City.pdf
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