Brief look into Urban Ecology

1. Urban Ecology

2. Zach Nilsson
Savannah College of Art and Design
Professor Sam Olin

3. Table of Contents
Urban Wildlife
Plants
Urban Permaculture
City Farming
Farmscape
A Changing Climate
350.org
Design Strategies
Urban Ecology
Human Ecology
An Engineered Evolution
Ecological Urbanism
A Basis for Shaping Cities
A New Urban Ground
New Urbanism
Water
+POOL
The Plastiki Expedition

5. The traditional design values of the past have contributed
greatly to the shape of the physical landscape of our cities
and towns, at the same time have contributed very little
to their environmental health. Today, more than half of
the world’s population lives in cities and suburbs, and they
share these urban habitats with many other species. Urban
Ecology is the study of the distribution, abundance and in-
teractions of plants and animals (including humans) within
urban and suburban environments.
As the urban landscape develops there is collateral dam-
age along the way. Urban ecologists study vegetation, wa-
ter flow, wildlife, and open spaces in cities to monitor the
health of these resources and how they respond to pollu-
tion, development and other pressures created by humans
and the urban landscape.
Throughout this book I will shed light on a few effects of
urbanization and what some people are doing to counter
act and correct it.
Urban Ecology
Culture
EcologyPolitics

6. Human Ecology
Human ecology is the study of the relationships and in-
teractions among human, their biology, their cultures, and
their physical environments. Within these relationships are
the concepts of change and adaptation to change. As an
environment changes, the organisms within it must adapt
with it.
Humans are self-aware, cooperative, technological, and
highly social making their interactions with the environ-
ment more complex. Fore instance, in developed countries,
instead of adapting through natural selection as most or-
ganisms do, humans tend to use technology to adapt their
environment to their needs, wants, and desires. We can
sometimes see changes in our environment as problems to
solve with out considering the effects of our actions.
There is a need for the realization that humans and their
cultures are an integral part of the environment around
them. Through their actions, humans stimulate change
within their environment, thus must then adapt to this
newly created environment.
Problem
Action
Solution
Ecological
Effects
Human Ecology
Human Biological Ecology
(Adaptation through
Biological Means)
(Adaptation through
Cultural Means)
(The Overall Study of Human Interachtions with the
Environmantal)
Cultural Ecology

7. An example of this cycle in action is the creation of Geneti-
cally Modified Foods (GMO’s). GMO’s are foods produced
from organisms that have had specific changes introduced
into their DNA using the methods of genetic engineering.
These techniques have allowed for the introduction of new
crop traits as well as a far greater control over a food’s ge-
netic structure than previously afforded by methods such
as selective breeding and mutation breeding. GMO’s were
introduced into our food chain was originally to achieve
greater yield. Crop species were engineered to produce
larger fruits and in larger quantities, to be more resistant
to insect pests and microbial infections, to have greater
tolerance to drought and frost, to require less growing
space, etc. These all result in more pounds of apples, car-
rots, corn, potatoes, and so on being harvested, leading to
greater market supply and thus lower prices.
Some foods were modified to produce chemical compounds
such as vitamins and other nutrients not normally present in
them, to make for a more efficient source of nutrition.
The problem: By genetically engineering the food we pro-
duce and digest we have caused changes both in ourselves,
and the environment around us. Countries that produce
“GM Foods” have seen an increase in disease, food aller-
gies, and antibiotic resistance.
An Engineered Evolution

8. Ecological Urbanism - Addressing the retrofit of existing
urban conditions as well as our plans for the cities of the
future, ecological urbanism utilizes a multiplicity of old and
new methods, tools, and techniques in a cross disciplinary
and collaborative approach toward urbanism developed
through the lens of ecology.
A collaborative, trans-disciplinary approach through eco-
logical urbanism can give designers a potentially more fer-
tile means of addressing the challenges facing our urban
environments today and pave the way to the cities of the
future with an emphasis on biodiversity.
In Curitiba, Brazil, city planners and designers are working
to improve the quality of life for its inhabitants through en-
vironmental planning and landscape ecology. This city of
roughly 1.7 million people has become a world model of
reference for sustainable development.
As the populations of the world increase, more and more
people are flocking to cities faster than the infrastructure
can adapt. With this rapid growth of city dwellers comes
greater exploration of the planet’s limited resources.
Ecological Urbanism

9. A Basis for Shaping Cities
“An open space is like virginity, once lost it can never be
regained.”
Above is a blunt statement that rings some truth when
we are confronted with the destruction of priceless land-
scapes and cultural heritage in the face of urban devel-
opment. With design, there is a direct connection to the
notion of change, and the constructive opportunities that
change provides.
When looking at civil engineering, building, planning and
design there is a desire to control, not only nature, but also
human behavior. The very nature of pedigreed design has
had little time or understanding for the natural processes
that shape human environments.
The urban environment serves to isolate us from an aware-
ness of the natural and human processes that support life.
But, the essential creativity of nature, the processes that
continue modified and often degraded, continue to func-
tion. The problem with the way in which cities were de-
veloped in the past is that we failed to see nature as an
integrated connecting system that operates in one way or
another regardless of locality, whether this is the rural or
natural region, or within the city itself.

10. an integrated and reciprocal organi- zation of natural and
hard infrastructure systems. A combination of strategies,
including perimeter wetlands, a raised edge, and sponge
slips paired with new upland street infrastructure systems,
protect the island from flooding in the event of a large storm.
Their proposal consists of two components that form an in-
terconnected system: porous green streets and a graduated
edge. Typical rain events will infiltrate porous streets and
help keep surface water out of the city’s combined sewer
system. In larger storms, the streets filter and carry water to
new perimeter wetlands to enrich coastal ecologies.
MoMA Rising Currents: A New Urban Ground
Calling attention to Manhattan’s vulnerability to the im-
pacts of climate change, DLandStudio partnered with
ARO want to create “A New Urban Ground”.
Currently an oppositional relationship exists between the
built city and water. “A New Urban Ground” proposes
A New Urban Ground
The image to the right illustrates a comparison of how Manhattan looked in 1609 to 1960.

11. New Urbanism is based on principles of planning and archi-
tecture that work together to create human-scale, walkable
communities. The trend has had a substantial impact with
more than 500 new towns, villages, and neighborhoods in
the US, all using principles from New Urbanism. The New
Urbanism includes traditional architects and who believe in
the power and ability of traditional neighborhoods to re-
store functional, sustainable communities.
Portland, Oregon is one of America’s most walkable cities
Principles of the New Urbanism
1. The neighborhood is the basic building block of a com-
munity.
2. Neighborhoods should have a fine-grained mix of land
uses, providing opportunities for young and old to find
places to live, work, shop, and be entertained.
3. Corridors form the boundaries between neighborhoods
both connect and define the neighborhoods. Corridors can
incorporate natural features such as streams or canyons.
4. Human scale sets the standard for proportion in build-
ings.
5. Must provide equal consideration to all modes of trans-
portation to relieve congestion and to provide people with
useful, realistic choices.
6. Streets designed as a network, to create the greatest
number of alternative routes from one part of the neighbor-
hood to another.
7. Civic buildings belong on preferred sites such as squares
or neighborhood centers, or where the view down a street
terminates.
New Urbanism

13. Water
Urbanization, industrialization, and population growth
have greatly modified landscapes, and by doing so have
also effected the continuous circulation of water within
catchments and the hydrological cycle. The hydrological
cycle controls many important processes for the earth.
Several of these being the transportation of pollutants,
water chemistry management, nutrient fluxes, erosion, and
the management of surface and groundwater levels. The
function of many ecological processes depend on the wa-
ter cycle and the quality of aquatic habitats and ecological
stability of their ecosystems.
When we develop within a watershed, we affect the hydro-
logic cycle. The increase in impervious or hard surfaces,
including rooftops and pavement (roads, driveways, and
parking lots), decreases the amount of water that soaks
into the ground, or infiltrates. This increases the amount
of surface runoff. The impervious surfaces collect and ac-
cumulate pollutants, such as those leaked from vehicles, or
deposited from the atmosphere through rain or snowmelt.
The runoff water carries pollutants directly into water bod-
ies. Because there is less infiltration, peak flows of storm
water runoff are larger and arrive earlier, increasing the
magnitude of urban floods. However, affects on the water
cycle are not limited to surface water. Paving may alter the
location of recharge, or replenishment, of groundwater
supplies, restricting it to the remaining unpaved areas. If
infiltration is decreased sufficiently, groundwater levels may
decline, affecting stream flows during dry weather periods.
Lowered groundwater levels can result in subsequent well
failures. While the effects of urbanization on the water cycle
can be major, if wise choices are made during the develop-
ment process, the impacts can be minimized and our future
water supply protected.

14. +Pool is an initiative to build a floating pool in the rivers of
New York City for everyone to enjoy.
The most important aspect of +Pool’s design is that it fil-
ters river water through the pool’s walls - like a giant strain-
er dropped into the river. The concentric layers of filtration
materials that make up the sides of the pool are designed
to remove bacteria, contaminants and odors, leaving only
safe and swimmable water that meets city, state and feder-
al standards of quality. This pool will be the first of it’s kind,
which is of course very exciting, but really we just want to
be able to swim in the river.
They also wanted +Pool to be enjoyed by everyone, at
all times, which is why it is designed as four pools in one:
Children’s Pool, Sports Pool, Lap Pool and Lounge Pool.
Each pool can be used independently to cater to all types
of swimmers, combined to form an Olympic-length lap
pool, or opened completely into a 9,000 square foot pool
for play.
Prevents objects and contanimants of 150 microns and
larger from passing through:
Removes contaminants down to 1 micron:
Deactivation of microorganisms:
Primary Screening
Secondary Filtration
Disinfection
WILDLIFE FLOATABLES GREASE & SEDIMENTS SUSPENDED
& DEBRIS OIL SOLIDS
SUSPENDED ORGANIC ALGAE BACTERIA
SOLIDS MATTER
BACTERIA VIRUSES
1
2
3
+POOL
Layered Filtration System

15. The Plastiki Expedition took sail on March 20th, 2010 with
a crew of 6 from San Francisco, CA on a journey spread-
ing environmental awareness and landed in Sydney, Aus on
July 26th, 2010. The crew consisted of three sailors, two film
crew and a british adventurer/ecologist/environmentalist,
David De Rothschild.
Plastiki was a 60’ catamaran made from reclaimed plastic
bottles and other recycle PET plastic and waste products.
Built with a philosophy adopted from Cradle to Cradle the
hull was designed by naval architect Andrew Dovell, and
features renewable systems including solar panels, wind
and trailing propeller turbines, and bicycle generators.
Their mission was to sail across the Pacific on a vessel built
of 12,500 reclaimed plastic bottles with plans to visit sev-
eral ssites along the way of either econlogical importance
or that were susceptible to environmental issues caused by
global warming, such as the rise in sea level, ocean acidifi-
cation, and marine pollution.
The Plastiki Expedition

16. When people feed stray cats, they may have their hearts in
the right place. People should be kind to animals. However
there are unintended consequences when feeding strays. A
well fed stray can breed more often and will typically have
bigger, healthier litters with better survival rates for the kit-
tens.
Feral cats thrive in urban and suburban environments. Liv-
ing amongst us and feasting on the food waste we throw
out and the mice and rats that are attracted to it. This has
happened due to people abandoning their non-spayed
and non-neutered cats to the wild.
The average life span of a feral cat is about six years,
around the same as a pet cat. However, female cats of re-
productive maturity, 4 to 6 months old, will go into heat
and
twice a year, once in their first year of life and twice each
year thereafter. That’s on average 11 heats before they die,
more if they live longer. At an average of eight kittens a lit-
ter, that’s 88 new cats in a lifetime and each of these new
feral cats will be breed also. By some estimates, a male and
female cat can create a population of over 400,000 cats
in seven years! So it’s easy to see how feral cats can grow
quickly and become a problem.
Over time human civilization has switched from an Arca-
dian view of peaceful co-existence with wildlife to a Util-
itarian of nature as a resource. Urbanization has radically
altered natural habitats and the wildlife communities with-
in them. For example, within cities more than half of the
plants are alien to area, all arriving by human assistance.
Wildlife however is much more difficult to control, so their
presence becomes more obvious and can be problematic.
As the natural environment continues to be disturbed by
human activity, there is an imbalance within plant and an-
imal communities. This imbalance can cause the loss of
habitats on which species depend on for food, shelter, and
breeding means that they have to adjust to the new con-
ditions for survival. The more adaptable the species, the
better chance for it to survive and flourish, the less adapt-
able do not.
The Feral Cat Dilemma
Urban Wildlife

17. “Plants are the basis for life on earth. They produce all the
oxygen in the earth’s atmosphere; they provide the food
and habitat through photosynthesis that supports all living
creatures.”
Society has disregarded and mistreated this vital building
block that allows us to exist here on this planet. But, even in
the urban landscape plants manage to survive due to their
tenacity and ability to evolve and adapt to the new condi-
tions and niches that we create within a city.
In the developed world we’ve replaced our forests and
meadows, and replaced them with steel, concrete, and oth-
er man made objects. We then added carpets of mown
turf with ornamental trees and shrubs in the locations we
choose for where we could “control” them.
But, there are more sustainable tactics that we could be im-
plementing into our urban settings that could bring back
the natural systems that are found in nature.
Plants

18. A forest garden, which aims to recreate the way a forest
grows, is a typical permaculture approach. By planting
your garden area in a series of four layers, you imitate the
natural processes of a forest. First, you have a canopy lay-
er, created by planting trees, especially fruit or nut-bearing
trees. Then you plant shrubs, like blackberry or other fruit
bushes that thrive in the shade. The third layer is created
by climbers, like vines that can climb up the trees toward
the light. The fourth layer is a ground layer of leafy greens,
like lettuce or strawberries.
People and the community are very much included as part
of permaculture design. In fact, permaculturists want to
help people be part of their community and be involved
in caring for their environment. One of the aims of urban
permaculture is to transform the cityscape by making it
greener and more sustainable, offering people a more
holistic way of living, even in the big city. With ideas like
gray-water reclamation systems, the use of solar and wind
power; permaculturists aim to create a way of living that
increases efficiency and minimizes waste.
The permaculture movement runs a variety of courses teach-
ing permaculture design principles, which can be applied
to any setting. Permaculture designs can be site-specific,
meaning you can use a variety of permaculture principles,
transform your lawn, balcony or patio into a food-producing
permaculture garden.
We could easily introduce permaculture into urban environ-
ments. We have great access in the city to a variety of free,
excess nutrients and materials to build healthy soil and gar-
den infrastructure.
Urban Permaculture

19. The process in which the food that appears in our grocery
stores today is produced is foreign to the way we did it
in the past. Today it is dependent on worldwide market-
ing and distribution networks operating on fossil fuels and
based on international trade agreements. But, in the last
decade, there have been signs that patterns of consump-
tion and ecological priorities are shifting. One of these
signs of change is the pursuit of a more healthy diet.
There has been a growing number of health food stores,
farmers’ markets, organics, and allotment gardening, sug-
gesting that communities are ready for a return to home-
grown versus “factory-made” food. We are seeing more
and more gardens sprouting up all over America cities, gar-
dens being tended by your everyday citizen, co-op commu-
nity gardens, and even restaurant gardens.
City Farming

20. Farmscape is the largest urban farming venture in Los An-
geles. They design, install, and maintain urban farms. Farm-
scape is bringing the farm back to the city one plot at a
time.
An expert Farmscape farmer will visit your urban farm week-
ly to manage all aspects of your vegetable cultivation. Their
weekly farming service includes successive plantings, pest
and disease control, crop rotation, and irrigation mainte-
nance. Your farmer will make quarterly visits to prune and
maintain home orchards. All of their methods are organic
and food safe. Having a garden does not have to be time
consuming or difficult anymore - Know your farmer, with
Farmscape.
Hose Bib Irrigation Rig
Irrigation
Soil
Modular Frame
Gopher Wire
Site conditions can vary, but farmscape makes sure to po-
sition the garden for best results based on sun exposure,
grading, and drainage.
Farmscape

21. Pre-Industrial
Revolution
Present Day
398Ppm
287Ppm
350Ppm
We need
to get back
to here!!
Extreme Weather
Rise in Sea Level
Melting of Glaciers
Droughts
Ocean Acidification
Flooding
Number of Major Floods per Decade 1960 - 2000
United States
Europe
Africa
Asia
Australia
2008 Australia suffers
worst drought in 1000 years.
Hurrican Katrina’s
wrath in 2005
Coral Reefs are bleaching
The planet is heating up, and fast! Yes, the climate has
always gone through cooling & warming periods through-
out the earth’s history. But, this has always happened at a Now that carbon in the atmosphere
has rocketed past 350 ppm, we can
already see measurable impacts
happening now all around us.
global temperature
change of 0.05-0.005°c
every 100 years or
more. In the last 50
years the earth’s tem-
perature has increased
by 0.5°c.
This rapid heat up is due
to The Greenhouse Effect.
This is when CO2 and other
greenhouse gases trap heat
from the sun in the Earth’s
atmosphere.
A Changing Climate
1
0.8
0.6
0.4
0.2
0
-0.2
-0.4
1840 1860 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020
Global average temperature change from 1850
Copenhagen Diagnosis, Figure 12. http://www.ccrc.unsw.edu.au/Copenhagen/Copenhagen_Diagnosis_HIGH.pdf)
Carbon in the atmosphere is measured by Ppm (parts per
million) and there is threshold for how much carbon the
atmosphere can handle before we begin to see the effects
of climate change, 350.

22. 350.org is building a global climate movement. Their on-
line campaigns, grassroots organizing, and mass public ac-
tions are coordinated by a global network active in over 188
countries.
350.org was founded by a group of university friends in the
U.S. along with author Bill McKibben, who wrote one of the
first books on global warming for the general public.
When 350.org started organizing in 2008, they saw climate
change as the most important issue facing humanit. They
didn’t know how to fix things, but that one of the missing
ingredients was a movement to reflect on the climate crisis.
350.org started organizing coordinated days of action that
linked activists and organizations around the world, includ-
ing the International Day of Climate Action in 2009, the
Global Work Party in 2010, Moving Planet in 2011, and Cli-
mate Impacts Day in 2012. They held the “world’s biggest
art installation” and “the most widespread day of political
action in the planet’s history.” If there was going to be a
movement, they had to start acting.
Today, 350.org works in almost every country in the world
on campaigns fighting coal power plants in India, stopping
the Keystone XL pipeline in the U.S, and divesting public
institutions everywhere from fossil fuels. All of their work
leverages the power of people to dismantle the influence
and infrastructure of the fossil fuel industry, and to develop
people-centric solutions to the climate crisis.
350.org

24. Process
Natural Forces:
- geological uplift and erosion of mountains
- hydrological cycle and forces of water that are
continually shaping the land
- succession of woodlands
- phases of inhabitation
City Forces:
- economic, political, demographic and social change
- urban decay and renewal
- new building, replace, and adaptive reuse
Economy of Means
- the principle of least effort
- maximum benefit = minimum resources and energy
Diversity
- ecological diversity (health)
- diverse urban society (choice)
Connectedness
- everything is connected to everything else
- lakes, rivers, creeks, watersheds, water mains, sewers,
roads, homes, businesses
Transparency
- we are unaware of the processes that sustain life and
contribute to the to the impoverishment of our living
environment
- make decisions visible (awareness)
Alternative Design Strategy
- urban environment shaped by technology
- goals should be social and environmental instead of
economic
- clean energy
- proper management of resources
- promotion of health and quality
Design Strategies

25. Environment - The surroundings within
which an organism interacts.
Abiotic - One of 2 primary components of
an environment, consisting of the inorganic
materials present within an environment.
Biotic - One of 2 primary components of
an environment, consisting of all materials
within an environment that are biological in
origin.
Biome - A division of the biotic environ-
ment that is a large scale, broad region of
similar temperature, rainfall, and biology.
Environmental Zone/Ecozone - A division
of the biotic environment that is a geo-
graphic area defined by fairly specific biotic
communities within biomes.
Ecotone - Both the geographic intersection
of, and the transition between ecozones.
Refugia - A remnant of a past biome or
ecozone that survives into the present as a
living fossil.
Ecosystem - A geographically bounded
system within which a defined group of or-
ganisms interact with both the abiotic and
Biosphere - The Largest ecosystem current-
ly defined the global environment and all of
its interacting ecosystems.
Symbiotic - Close, prolonged relationship
between two or more entities that may, but
does not necessarily, benefit each other.
Biomass - The quantity of living matter
within a specified area at a specific time.
“Productivity”
Biodiversity - The number and distribution
of species present in an ecosystem. “Com-
plexity”
Succession - Orderly process of change in
an ecosystem brought about by the pro-
gressive replacement of one community by
another until stability is established.
Niche - The role a species plays within its
environment, community, or ecosystem.
What it eats, how it reproduces, and what it
does.
Habitat - The geographic location where a
species lives and operates.
Resource - Something that is actually used
by an organism.
Tether - The up most extent of limit of abili-
ty or resources.
Carrying Capacity - A measure of the
maximum number of individuals of a spe-
cies that can be supported within a specific
ecosystem for a specific period of time.
Liebig’s Law of the Minimum - The princi-
ple of a limiting resources.
Boom and Bust Cycles - The highs and
lows in which carrying capacity tend to fluc-
tuate due to a wide number of reasons.
Trophic Pyramid - Levels of relationship
among producers, heterotrophs, and de-
composers. What is eaten and how many
conversions from solar energy have taken
place.
Food Chain - A hierarchy of organisms that
consumer other organisms.
Herbivore - An animal that consumes
mostly plants.
Carnivore - An animal that primarily con-
sumes other animals.
Mutualism - When species develop mutual-
ly beneficial.
Key Terms