Discovering and Applying the Urban Rules of Life to Design Sustainable and Healthy Cities
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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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Influence of Urbanization on Body Size, Condition, and Physiology in an Urban Exploiter: A Multi-Component Approach
TL;DR: The results suggest that the urban environment is inadequate to satisfy early-life sparrows’ nutritional requirements, growth, and development, and may have life-long consequences for developing birds.
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Spontaneous Urban Vegetation: Reflections of Change in a Globalized World
TL;DR: In this article, the authors propose to learn how to manage spontaneous urban vegetation to increase its ecological and social values, rather than attempting to restore historical ecosystems that flourished before the city existed.
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Redlines and Greenspace: The Relationship between Historical Redlining and 2010 Greenspace across the United States.
TL;DR: In this article, a racist mortgage appraisal practice of the 1930s, established and exacerbated racial residential segregation boundaries in the United States, is discussed. But the authors do not discuss the role of race in this practice.
Journal ArticleDOI
Gene flow and genetic drift in urban environments.
Lindsay S. Miles,Lindsay S. Miles,L. Ruth Rivkin,Marc T. J. Johnson,Jason Munshi-South,Brian C. Verrelli +5 more
TL;DR: It is suggested that future research makes comparisons of multiple cities and nonurban habitats, and takes into consideration species' natural history, environmental variation, spatial modelling and marker selection, as well as dispersal ability of species and environmental heterogeneity between cities.
Book
Among Cultures : The Challenge of Communication
TL;DR: Among Cultures: The Challenge of Communication, Third Edition explores intercultural communication and the relationship between communication and culture, using narrative as a common and compelling thread for studying intercultural interactions.
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