Discovering and Applying the Urban Rules of Life to Design Sustainable and Healthy Cities
TLDR
In this article, the authors propose to apply what they have learned to engage residents of the urban biome, and design cities that are more biologically diverse, are provided with more and better ecosystem services, and are more equitable and healthier places to live.Abstract:
The city and its urban biome provides an extreme laboratory for studying fundamental biological questions and developing best practices for sustaining biodiverse and well-functioning ecological communities within anthropogenic built environments. We propose by studying urban organisms, urban biotic communities, the urban biome, and the interactions between the urban biome and peri-urban built and natural environments, we can (1) discover new "rules of life" for the structure, function, interaction, and evolution of organisms; (2) use these discoveries to understand how novel emerging biotic communities affect and are affected by anthropogenic environmental changes in climate and other environmental factors; and (3) apply what we have learned to engage residents of the urban biome, and design cities that are more biologically diverse, are provided with more and better ecosystem services, and are more equitable and healthier places to live. The built environment of the urban biome is a place that reflects history, economics, technology, governance, culture, and values of the human residents; research on and applications of the rules of life in the urban biome can be used by all residents in making choices about the design of the cities where they live. Because inhabitants are directly invested in the environmental quality of their neighborhoods, research conducted in and about the urban environment provides a great opportunity to engage wide and diverse communities of people. Given the opportunity to engage a broad constituency-from basic researchers to teachers, civil engineers, landscape planners, and concerned citizens-studying the translation of the rules of life onto the urban environment will result in an integrative and cross-cutting set of questions and hypotheses, and will foster a dialog among citizens about the focus of urban biome research and its application toward making more equitable, healthy, livable, sustainable, and biodiverse cities.read more
Citations
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Extending Our Scientific Reach in Arboreal Ecosystems for Research and Management
Charles H. Cannon,Colby Borchetta,David L. Anderson,Gabriel Arellano,Martin G. Barker,Guillaume Charron,Jalene M. LaMontagne,Jeannine H. Richards,Ethan Abercrombie,Lindsay F. Banin,Ximena Tagle Casapia,Ximena Tagle Casapia,Xi Chen,Polina Degtjarenko,Jane E. Dell,David Durden,Juan Ernesto Guevara Andino,Rebeca Hernández-Gutiérrez,Andrew Hirons,Chai-Shian Kua,Hughes La Vigne,Maurice Leponce,Jun Ying Lim,Margaret Lowman,Andrew J. Marshall,Sean T. Michaletz,Benjamin B. Normark,Darin S. Penneys,Gerald F. Schneider,Joeri S. Strijk,Bashir Bolaji Tiamiyu,Tara L. E. Trammell,Yalma L. Vargas-Rodriguez,Samantha R. Weintraub-Leff,Alexis Lussier Desbiens,Matthew Spenko +35 more
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References
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Enabling Green and Blue Infrastructure to Improve Contributions to Human Well-Being and Equity in Urban Systems
Erik Andersson,Erik Andersson,Johannes Langemeyer,Sara Borgström,Timon McPhearson,Timon McPhearson,Timon McPhearson,Dagmar Haase,Dagmar Haase,Jakub Kronenberg,David N. Barton,McKenna Davis,Sandra Naumann,Lina Röschel,Francesc Baró +14 more
TL;DR: It is argued that more fully connecting green and blue infrastructure to its urban systems context and highlighting dynamic interactions among the three filters are key to understanding how and why ecosystem services have variable distribution, continuing inequities in who benefits, and the long-term resilience of the flows of benefits.
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Birds and the City: Urban Biodiversity, Land Use, and Socioeconomics
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors examined bird diversity in relation to land use and socioeconomic indicators in Leipzig, Germany and found that the potential to experience biodiversity in a city is associated with population density, household income, unemployment, and urban green space.
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The peppered moth and industrial melanism: evolution of a natural selection case study
TL;DR: Modelling and monitoring of declining melanic frequencies since the 1970s indicate either that migration rates are much higher than existing direct estimates suggested or else, or in addition, non-visual selection has a role.
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