Regreening the Metropolis: Pathways to More Ecological Cities: Keynote Address

Abstract

Eighty percent of the American population now lives in metropolitan regions whose geographic extent continues to expand even as many core cities and inner-tier suburbs lose middle-class populations, jobs, and tax base. Urban sprawl and the socioeconomic polarizing of metropolitan America have been fostered by public policies including (1) federal subsidies for new infrastructure on the urban fringe; (2) tax policies that favor home ownership over rental properties; (3) local zoning codes; and (4) federal and state neglect of older urban neighborhoods. In the face of diminished access to "nature" outside of metropolitan areas, locally based efforts to protect and restore greenspaces within urban areas seek to make older communities more habitable and more "ecological." Some pathways to more ecological cities include the following: (1) the notion of rus in urbe ("the country in the city"); (2) the "usable outdoors"; (3) garden cities and eco-villages; (4) green buildings and green roofs; (5) urban biodiversity; (6) ecological services; and (7) space, nature, and place.

Improving city life: options for ecological restoration in urban landscapes and how these might influence interactions between people and nature

“…In addition, there has been increasing recognition of the value of F o r r e v i e w o n l y private gardens and green space to biodiversity conservation in urban landscapes (Gaston et al 2005;Goddard et al 2010). The -regreening‖ of cities as part of an urban renewal process, for instance in US rustbelt cities such as Pittsburgh, is also an important trend in providing both human amenity value and potential habitat or food resources for wildlife (Platt 2004). In this paper, we argue for a broadening of the traditional goals of conservation and restoration in urban landscapes beyond that of biodiversity conservation to better encompass the diversity of ecological and social values of nature in cities.…”

Inhabitants' and Experts' Assessments of Environmental Quality for Urban Sustainability

“…As a consequence, the so‐called “ecosystem approach,” originated in the bio‐ecological sciences, is increasingly being adopted as a principal conceptual frame for addressing urban environmental problems (Celecia, 1996; di Castri, Baker, & Hadley, 1984). Thus, the issue of urban sustainability has become a priority on the current environmental agenda, in both the scientific and the political domain (Moser, 2004; Platt, 2004).…”

Semi-Urban Areas in Landscape Research: A Review

“…In developed countries, an increase in residential area, mostly also means an increase in garden area, since the majority of the 'growing' residential area, in the fringe, sprawling, in the semi-urban area, is low density housing, accompanied by gardens and on top of that public or semi-public green areas like road verges, parks, golf courses and other forms of green recreation sites (Colding, 2007;Loram et al, 2007;Poole, 1993;Smith et al, 2005). While, on the one hand, this increase in green biomass could be an improvement when considering it as pure 'biomass' and carbon dioxide storage (Bjerke et al, 2006;McDonnell et al, 1997;Platt, 2004;Yokohari et al, 2000), this is not always the case when discussing biodiversity. Gardens and parks possess large amounts of exotic plant species and thus not only introduce non-native species, but also increase competition between exotic and native plant species, in some cases resulting in a decrease of native flora as well as native fauna ecologically linked to those native species (Alberti, 2005;Gallent et al, 2004;McKinney, 2002;Niemelä, 1999;Pauchard et al, 2006;Savard et al, 2000;Theobald, 2004;Vogtländer et al, 2004).…”