By Vijaylakshmi Suman

Along with several issues and debates around urbanisation, the concept of urban ecology also arose around 1990’s- states a new article published in Science.

Image by: kamalnishad

As the author writes, there was a need to introduce the discipline of urban ecology. This would help to increase our knowledge of human and ecological dimension in urban system. In addition to this, the article mentions factors like socioeconomic processes, urban management, planning and design that have now become a field of interest for urban ecologists. Different approaches are being deployed to study urban systems. Some of them focus on small scale ecological elements, while others aim to study the interaction between physical, biological and social components. Present day urban systems are complex and heterogeneous. For scientists and researchers, they work as living laboratories to test the relationship and interaction of social and ecological factors in cities. The article indicates all these issues in detail, providing insights to the framework of ecology in cities.

Reference:

McDonnell, M. J., & MacGreor-Fors, I. (2016). The ecological future of cities. Science, 352(6288), 936-938.